[This week’s Redigi Throwback is nod to some of my favorite nineties nonsense, Sifl & Olly.]
Hear me out on this one. Though, arguably, artists in their own right, MTV’s silly and sardonic sock puppet duo Sifl & Olly also served as one of the last links to real rock (rock!) during the music channel’s late-nineties drift away from lyrics and melodies and into “reality” television.
The twosome, voiced by my hometown heroes Liam Lynch and Matt Crocco, covered Nazareth‘s “Hair of the Dog” (You know, “Now you’re messing with a son of a bitch”), Blue Oyster Cult “Don’t Fear The Reaper“, The Cars‘ “Just What I Needed” and more.
Somehow singing Twisted Sister‘s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” defeats scary chain-smoking sock punk Stealth, who holds a grudge against Olly for wrecking his bar mitzvah by joy riding through it in a golf cart. The show’s absurd and blatantly false Rock Facts segment was always an antagonist toward avant-garde Icelandic pop singer Bjork. Their late night revelry in non sequitur nonsense and music culture made Sifl & Olly a ray of ridiculous sunshine on the horizon of MTV’s otherwise hazy future.
Both Sifl and Olly, or, more precisely, their real-life counterparts, have went on to continue to have an impact on music. Co-creator Crocco has toured England with his band, Black on Sunshine, described as a Pink Floyd-influenced guitar rock group. While Lynch has not only topped the charts with his own single “United States of Whatever“, which reached the top ten in the UK (where he studied under the Paul McCartney), but has also went on to work some of rock’s current iconoclasts including the Foo Fighters, Queens of the Stone Age, Eagles of Death Metal, Tenacious D, and No Doubt.
Rumors persist that the Sifl & Olly Show is being resurrected–just as MTV’s Beavis and Butthead enjoyed a comeback and reruns of its spin-off show Daria are in heavy rotation–however, it has not been confirmed.
Casandra Armour 