Do you remember a time when you could order a hamburger and french fries

at an expensive Italian restaurant and no one minded? An age when no one

would hassle you for playing in the plastic balls at McDonalds? A stage

of life when your parents were mightier than any superhero, but would

still put Band-Aids on your sores and make your tears disappear with a

kiss? But, due to one of nature's many small flaws, something happens to

all of us; we get older. Our sores become scars, all our toys are given

away, and suddenly the phone bills have our own names on them. It kind of

makes you want to run back to the days where you were able to wake up at

six o'clock in the morning to watch re-runs of the Smurfs and Scooby Doo.

There is an easy solution to this struggle to regain your youth; one that

doesn't require you to wake up at an insane hour of the morning. The

answer is The Aquabats, an eight- piece ska band from Southern California.

Common with the ska music style, The Aquabats' tunes make you step into

your dancing shoes and start tapping your toes. Singing spirited little

songs about Martian girlfriends, action figures and itching private parts,

their debut album, The Return of The Aquabats, is filled with

enough adolescent potty humor to wake up the child in all of us.

The first song of the album, "Playdough," is all about the desire to be a

kid again. It opens with the drums and bass pounding out an up and down

beat, reminiscent of hours spent merrily jumping on top of my bed. The

beat steadily increases tempo until it is stopped by rising trumpets which

carry a Spanish-like melody. As the trumpets hold a long vibrato, the

drums, bass, and guitars break out into high-speed rhythms characteristic

of the third wave of ska. Filled with catchy lyrics, "Playdough" starts

off describing the manner of childhood life, "My life was so simple/ I had

not one pimple," where every day was focused on toys, bikes, and ice

cream. The more moderate pace of the chorus, notes a leisurely look back

on the innocence and worry-free days of youth, and asks, "Where has all my

fun gone?" The chorus repeats throughout the song, as much as it is

thought in real life, "Take me back to my happy land."

Many of the songs on this album are about the situations that we all deal

with in life. The second track, "Martian Girl," is about the heartache of

love. This song is a true story about a close encounter with a female

alien from planet V. As the lyrics begin we are brought into the realm of

outer space by the celestial-sounding keyboards. The heartbroken singer

tells us of this beautiful alien that came into his life for a brief

moment. She had green skin (isn't that called olive tone?), orange eyes

(hmm...colored contacts?), and blue hair (definitely a dye job). But as

the song breaks into a lounge-style interlude, the singer informs us in

his best Elvis-like voice, that her intentions for the relationship were a

little different than his, "She had an appetite that couldn't be beat/ She

came from space to eat people meat."

How could a girl who eats human flesh charm her way into the heart of this

poor boy, you might ask? Maybe it was because she came from outer space,

or maybe because she had razor sharp teeth. Nah, probably because she was

wearing only silver underwear. But as many of us have found out, a good

relationship cannot be based on meat and silver underwear alone, and we

are left broken-hearted, "I guess I didn't taste good anyway/ Cuz when she

kissed me she flew away."

But their girlfriends aren't the only ones with foreign homelands. The

Aquabats themselves descended from a long line of amphibious and bat-like

people living on the peaceful island of Aquabania. However after an evil

force invaded the island, the eight young men had to escape. In a

hollowed out log they floated for days until they were found by the

Professor, a "fantastically insane scientist." He decided to help them

seek revenge on the evil force that invaded the island of Aquabania.

Through teaching them to play music, secretly combined with mind

controlling wave patterns, he planned to gain the loyalty of all

individuals who listened to The Aquabats' music. Backed by this

zombie-eyed following, they plan to "Conquer the World!"

The repetitive low tones of the bass line in their ninth song, "CD Repo

Man" leads their listeners into this type of mesmerizing trance.

Inspired by the movie "Repo Man" this song follows the action-packed life

of a CD repossessor. We all know how it goes, we lend a CD to our

friends, and then we never see it again. But CD repo man is the answer to

our problems, "He looks tame but you know he will attack/ He does his job

to get your CDs back." At the beginning and ending of the song there are

lines from the movie such as, "Repo man is always intense." which inspired

me to go and rent it. Unfortunately the movie was nowhere near as

"intense" as the song had suggested.

The album was released a year ago on Horchata Records, an indie label run

by the band's lead singer. The album has many more noteworthy songs,

including one called, "Pinch and Roll," which is a form of itching that

only men are supposed to know about. I guess us just girls have to use

our imaginations. But as good as the album is, nothing compares to their

live performances. From tiki torches to fireworks on stage to wrestling

roadies, The Aquabats steal the show from the many of the bands they play

with. Their performances and this debut CD are not only lively and

entertaining, but do a good job of taking you back to the happy days of

your youth for a few hours.