Darryl Rhoades: ‘Teenagers in Heat’

If you’ve been around the Atlanta music or comedy scenes for any length of time, you’ve probably crossed paths with Darryl Rhoades in one of his many guises: stand-up comedian, singer, songwriter, band leader, drummer, emcee, radio host, wrestling manager, raconteur extraordinaire. Beginning in 1975 with the formation of the Hahavishnu Orchestra, Rhoades has been savagely skewering idols, confounding cognoscenti, and inciting mass hysteria among faithful followers in a musical career that spans several bands and a dozen or so recordings.

With his latest release, Teenagers in Heat, Rhoades has assembled a stellar group of performers — refugees from the album’s studio sessions, including Tommy Strain (guitar), Bobby Glick (bass), Jimmy Royals (keyboard, vocals), Jeff Crompton (reeds), James Cobb (bass), Jessica Royals (vocals), and an assortment of guests — to produce a raucously entertaining album. Part sketch comedy, part social satire, part rock ‘n’ roll scrapbook, the 18 tracks on Teenagers in Heat represent the quirky and demented point of view of a man whose professional resume includes comparisons with Frank Zappa and the Fugs, appearances with James Brown and the Sex Pistols, and a list of comedy gigs that stretches from Vidalia, Ga., to Greenwich Village in New York, not to mention a few dives, brothels, and dance parlors in between.

As a comedian, Rhoades occupies a lineup spot somewhere in the vicinity of Bill Hicks and Bill Tush, historically speaking, but with a bawdier repertoire, and near enough to Kathy Griffin and Dave Chappelle, but with a touch of the high school locker room, for contemporary viewers. A talker with a pleasing Southern drawl, and a scattershot observer of the human condition, Rhoades eschews slapstick and physical humor in favor of vicious satire, and he has a keen eye for hypocritical douchebaggery.

As a songwriter, Rhoades bases his material on an encyclopedic knowledge of American popular music. Teenagers In Heat is peppered with references to famous songs and venerable genres from surf and acid-rock (“The Band House”) to indie-pop and country-western (“It’s Not My Cup of Tea”), while every selection gets wrangled by a lethal choke hold in the lyrical department.

Rolling along to a slow-stepping rhythm ‘n’ blues beat, “Don’t Take This the Wrong Way” sets a familiar stage for Rhoades’ rumination on a certain species of citizen commonly encountered around the office, on the bus, or in Facebook threads (on a similar note, see, also, “Asshole,” which sounds like a peppy radio spot for soda pop from the 1950s). “Every word you’ve ever said, came from someone else’s head/On your talk radio/Cause small minds think alike/And all the poison you swallowed/A philosophy you borrowed/That they spouted then you shouted like it’s something you’ve thought about/Don’t take me wrong, but I wrote you this song to say you suck.”

In addition to pervasive individual idiocy and annoying crowd behavior, Rhoades weighs in on the 37-dimensional game theory currently presumed by scientists to form the basis of all interpersonal relationships, filtered through the lens of the playfully naughty bad boy on the neighborhood block. From “She Likes Girls” and “The Lesbian Song (Thinking Outside the Box)” to “Your Husband is Gay” and “Up to My Knuckles in Love,” no subject is too lewd or ludicrous to escape a curmudgeonly bludgeoning on Rhoades’ analytical anvil.