Play Really Bad Original Country Tunes by The Vandals

The Vandals Play Really Bad Original Country Tunes is an album by the southern California punk rock band The Vandals, released in 1999 by Kung Fu Records. Essentially a re-release of their 1989 album Slippery When Ill, it contains 8 of the 10 songs from that album along with 2 newer, previously unavailable songs. Part of the impetus for its release was that the original Slippery When Ill, long asked for by the band's fans, had become very rare and difficult to obtain due to the small size of the record labels it was originally released on. With their Kung Fu label (founded in 1996 by Vandals members Joe Escalante and Warren Fitzgerald) now firmly established, the band was able to re-release this music from ten years earlier in their career. The original Slippery When Ill album represented a turning point in the history of the Vandals. It was their first album to feature Dave Quackenbush on vocals, who would remain the band's singer throughout the rest of their career. It was also something of a departure from the punk rock formula of their previous releases, fusing a country and western style with their humorous brand of punk. The result was a sound the band called "cowpunk" which somewhat mocked the resurgence in popularity of country music in their native Huntington Beach. Two exceptions were the songs "Shi'ite Punk" and "(Illa Zilla) Lady Killa," which relied heavily on scratch boxes. These songs were left off Country Tunes and replaced with the more country-sounding "Play That Country Tuba, Cowboy" and "Complain." "Shi'ite Punk" was re-issued the following year on the special anniversary re-release of their album Fear of a Punk Planet.