Best Marching Band
The Gomorran Social Aid & Pleasure Club
Anyone who's seen the raucous shenanigans of the Extra Action Marching Band shouldn't be surprised that similarly minded acts have sprung up in its wake. But how the Gomorran Social Aid & Pleasure Club came to be is just as bizarre as its precursor's antics. The band started as an idea rather than a reality, when graphic designer Adam Infanticide coined the moniker and put up a Web site devoted to it, listing musicians he said played in the group but had actually never been told about it. Eventually, all the players many of whom had met years earlier, unbeknownst to Infanticide gathered together and began to write songs based on the idea of a darkly twisted, New Orleans-influenced Tom Waits-goes-to-Dixieland marching band. Resulting tunes like "Whiskey Paycheck" and "Klangmertongnjk" are brassy and boozy, lurching like a drunk on cheap booze, gloriously lurid and gleefully chaotic. Extra Action should be proud.