Esquivel meets Herb Alpert meets Tipsy meets Buselli-Wallerab meets Isotope meets Henry Mancini meets Sleepytime Gorilla Museum meets Zappa meets A Small Good Thing meets…well, if you can imagine that kind of collision (ouch!, my brain hurts!), then you know what to expect in this glorious mash-up - or rather, you likely don’t know because there’s not a hell of a lot of this work extent, be it in America, Britain, Turkey, Berserkistan, or Mars. However, were the Merrie Melodies and Loony Tunes cartoons of yesteryear to be properly resurrected today, not subjected to the horrifying Hanna-Barbera and Japanimation infecting so much of modern cartoonery, this is the music that’d score ‘em, a rollicking chaos of styles that would have Tex Avery and Raymond Scott on the floor, laughing their asses off delightedly.

It won’t surprise you to learn, then, that Beninghove’s Hangmen (madmen, more like) arose from arch-loon-genius John Zorn, the guy who smashed every musical convention he could find, condemning himself not to be the next John Williams (aieeee!!!), instead enslaved to true Art, thank God. BH namesake Brian Beninghove (saxes, keyboards) loves chee-zee musix - Gilbert O’Sullivan (hmmm), Neil Diamond (gag!), Air Supply (retch!), and others - and, while entertaining his kids one day, decided to move up on things, importing not-quite-right-in-the-head guitarists Eyol Maoz and Dane Johnson, both of whom worked with Zorn but managed to escape while still peripherally rational. He next trapped a bassist (Ezra Gale) in a lurid back alley, snared a drummer (Shawn Baltozar) into a den of sin (you know drummers!) and headlong into the tiger pit he’d dug there, kidnapped trombonist Rick Parker away from a meeting of Mafia consiglieres, and, TA DA!, the band was born!!!

Catch BH’s irreverent and tightly sloppy take on Neil Diamond’s “Girl, You’ll be a Woman Soon”, and you’ll have your first clue what to expect…though it won’t prepare you at all for the clatterously randomic “Elephant Stampede” (“Terminator”: same thing), as wild as jazzy progfusion gets. John Medeski vectors in somewhere in the list of BH influencers and worked-with’ers, so you can guess what’s what in that situation. More, several cuts will put you in the mood to chat up that slattern over in the corner of Rasputin’s Tavern, and thus I suggest you bring not only an industrial-strength condom but an array of tranquiliizers as well…for yourself.

Releases like this are frequently referred to as “novelty items” – the, uh, same sobriquet once laid on vibrators and various whatnots sold in the porn shop down the street – but, to me, they’re treasures (er, this music, not the vibrators) as maddeningly complex and entertaining as anything PDQ Bach / Prof. Schickele ever put out, FZ ever entertained, and most likely even amusing to Mike “My Brain’s in Another Dimension” Patton. Pineapples and Ashtrays indeed. If you haven’t been to the doctor or psychiatrist lately, buy this disc and wallow; if you have been, give it to them, and you’ll never have to explain yourself again…’cause they’ll be over the state line, screaming for asylum. Pineapples and Ashtrays is that good…

…and, geez, did I just pen a critique designed to laud the CD or accidentally screw these crazy bastards over???

--Mark Tucker