How About That Thing?

If I mentioned the name Group X, what is the first thing you think of? Odds are you probably think of some sort of shadow organization that secretly controls the world, or is at least plotting on it. Or you think of a post WWI art exhibit from the 1920s. Nowadays, you probably think of modern day X-men, because they changed the name in order to appease some third wave feminists or angry nonbinaries or whatever on Twitter. Yeah, don’t even get me started on THAT rant.

You probably think of all sorts of things… But two white guys pretending to be Arabs while writing the dumbest music this side of Green Jelly probably isn’t one of them. Not unless you were living the hikikomori life in the early 2000s like I probably was, anyway.

In 2001, the internet was a much different place. .” It didn’t have central hubs everybody socialized on like Facebook, or Twitter, or YouTube. True, there were a few popular message boards, but compared to nowadays, the internet of old was basically anarchy. There was no uniform design that screams “I’m a professional!” like there is today. There was no treedy against “unacceptable hate speech” you had to sign in order to make your service readily available to the masses. And in the case of today’s subject, there was no single destination to upload your demo tape to and get an insane amount of listens like there is now with Soundcloud, or Bandcamp, or whatever. And if there was, then it was news to me.

It’s one of the reasons I have more respect for indie artists of old. Where as nowadays, any thirteen-year-old idiot with a copy of Frooty Loops and a Soundcloud account can mumble about how much they love Gucci products and get a recording contract, or at least some sort of cult following, indie music of old was a much bigger crapshoot. I respected artists like Among Thieves or Bacon Shoe because back then, they just threw their shit at the world’s biggest wall, and hoped to god someone would notice.

Group X, near as I can tell, was one of those groups. I’d long since thought they were lost to time, but with a little digging, I found them on Tidal.

Yeah yeah, I use Tidal instead of Spotify. Largely because I heard through the grapevine Tidal pays artists better.

I come to find out that Group X released multiple albums over the years, but everybody whose heard of them probably knows them best for tracks off of this album.

Here, you will find all the classics: “Bang Bang Bang!”, “Don’t Touch That”, and the one everybody probably remembers most of all, “Mario Twins”.

When I think of how to describe their sound, all I can think of to say is this. Have you ever found yourself feeling like you’re on the outside of an insider joke? Like, everybody else gets the joke, but you yourself have no clue why everybody is laughing. That right there would probably describe this band perfectly in a nutshell.

Listening to this album, I will say that the baselines are actually pretty good, the beat is solid, and there is genuine talent in the overall instrumental. It’s not hard to see why I might have liked this at one point.

Then the vocals come into play. And it’s here I begin to wonder what I ever saw in these guys in the first place. True, comedy is subjective, and a victim of the passage of time to boot. So what’s funny in 2001 probably isn’t going to be funny, or even acceptable, in 2024.

In particular, the whole “white people pretending to be Arabs” shtick. Hilarious in 2001, but if you even attempted that shit in 2024, the Twitter mob would probably come to your house and hang you for it.

But suppose that doesn’t matter to you. Does the routine hold up despite twenty-three years going by, and our change in attitude? Honestly… Not really, no.

More than anything else, this seems like the kind of comedy routine that was funny to everybody in the room as they were recording, and nobody else. Like, they were making fun of guys they knew personally, and one day, they decided “Hey, we were looking to make a comedy album. Why not just make an entire album of these two dumbfucks at the Quickstop?” Thus, Group X was born.

in their defense, something like that DOES sometimes work in comedy. IE, Sargent Hatred from The Venture Bros was apparently based on a random pervert the show writers’ encountered in real life. But this? Yeah, Bob and Doug McKenzie this is not.

I almost want to call Group X anticomedy. IE, comedy that’s funny because it’s not funny. See also: Norm MacDonald, Eric Andre… I’m pretty sure Hannah Gadsby would fit in this category, but it’s also possible she’s just not funny. But I digress.

If anticomedy doesn’t fit these guys, then the only other thing I can think of is “internet comedy”. IE, that weird variety of humor that’s not very funny, but we’ve convinced ourselves it IS funny because it’s not mainstream, not popular, and the only people who’ve heard of it are other losers who live on the internet like me.

However you slice it, though, it’s suffice to say that this routine has aged like milk. Or even worse, like room temperature baby formula. But for reasons I can’t explain, there was a time when these guys had their fifteen minutes of fame. And there was a time when even I thought they were amusing. Perhaps the 2000s, in all of its Islamiphobic glory, was a much better time to build an entire career out of pretending to be an Arab. Maybe 2001 me knew something that 2024 me doesn’t. Or maybe, just maybe, it’s because of “Mario Twins”.

When you cut out the silly intro of the guys in the group talking about their latest purchases, It’s literally just the lead vocalist scat-singing the Super Mario Brothers music while the other guy makes dumb sound effects, and someone else plays the drums. That’s literally it. The fact that THIS is probably their most popular song doesn’t surprise me. Even before YouTube, and the retro gaming phenominon of the early 2010s, basement dwellers like me were obsessed with gaming. And an easy way to appeal to that crowd was cover a song that fills them with warm fuzzy nostalgia.

I don’t know, maybe I was just an idiot when I was younger. To put things into perspective, I also used to think Seth MacFarlane could do no wrong, and Quantic Dream was god’s gift to video gaming. I’d like to think I’ve grown up since then, and maybe even matured a little. Not too much, but enough.

Still, for whatever reason, Group X, and this one particular album, still has a spot in my heart. I guess the important thing is that the joke was funny at one point. If only I could remember why, though.