![]() Incidentally, Jay Tiller of Couch Flambeau served as the Frogs’ tour bassist. Later tours’ repertoires dipped into both albums, and added songs aimed to offend bandwagoneering musicians (“In the Year of Our Lord Grunge”) and, well, absolutely everybody (“Fuck Off”). One of them was in blackface and the other was in whiteface and they did songs about racial tension. Were the Frogs actually gay or were they homophobes? Were they making fun of homophobia? Were they making fun of political correctness? Was this argument even relevant? Dennis and Jimmy answered at least one of these questions, and upped the ante, when they reappeared in 1991 with a new (unreleased) recording, Racially Yours, and a new concept. It’s Only Right and Natural sparked a ferocious controversy, played out in any number of public forums. Encased in a sleeve showing a little boy wearing a pink triangle badge, songs like “Been a Month Since I Had a Man” and “These Are the Finest Queen Boys (I’ve Ever Seen)” generated an enormous amount of pissed-off press, but the crazy Tyrannosaurus Rex-like psychedelia and the weird aura created by the lyrics deserve to be heard. Declaring themselves leaders of the “Gay Supremacist” movement, the Flemings/Frogs caused a lot of ruckus with their (presumably) tongue in cheek lyrical thrust. Then, according to rumor, the Frogs began to send around cassettes of a similarly appointed second LP, backed with some examples of the pair “goofing around.” The latter caught the ear of Gerard Cosloy, then head of Homestead Records, and some of the songs were issued as the Frogs’ second LP. That few people noted its release is no great surprise. The self-titled first album is a curiously out-of-time blend of Anglo-clever pop-clichés, heavily referential to Roy Wood and Sparks but with some unusual Christian/smut lyrics tossed into the stew. Since then, the duo has done a lot of home recording. Brothers Jimmy and Dennis Flemion were first noted on the “thank you” list for Die Kreuzen’s Cows and Beer EP back in ’82. There is very little, uh, “hard” information available regarding the Frogs. Nirvana and Pearl Jam had it played over PA systems before performances the Blake Babies named their EP Rosy Jack World after a song on it, and were known to cover “I Don’t Care If You Disrespect Me (Just So You Love Me)” as an encore the Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan and James Iha have joined the Frogs on stage at their rare, mind-blowing live appearances. The duo’s insane 1989 faux- gay-power-folk album It’s Only Right and Natural became something of a cult classic. Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Frogs are about as important as an alternative band could be.
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