Pop Music Reviews : Bollock Brothers Quintet at Long Beach Bogart’s

Never mind the Bollock Brothers. The English-German quintet, which headlined Bogart’s in Long Beach on Thursday, has pulled such ridiculous stunts as re-recording the Sex Pistol’s entire “Never Mind the Bollocks” (hence the name). The band has currently garnered KROQ favor for its rendition of decadent French popster Serge Gainsborough’s “Harley David Son of a Bitch,” and its latest assault on good taste is rather an easy target--covering one of the lamest songs of the decade, Berlin’s “Sex.”

But anyone expecting an evening of sharp wit and loony antics would have been underwhelmed by this performance. Hardly the Monty Pythons of alternative rock, the group dinosaur-stomped its way around a keyboard-flavored brand of post-punk disco, leader Jock McDonald tonelessly dead-panning his way through at least three songs about Dracula and other monsters, including a half-funny bit comparing a meeting between Frankenstein and Wolfman to Rodney Bingenheimer encountering Boy George.

Otherwise, the group’s genial but inane pub-rock buffoonery is best suited for the British equivalent of frat boys so bombed on brewskis they don’t realize that, with material as thin as its musical settings, these Bollocks are boring.