Do You Like Waffles?

Album Review

Nerf Herder leader Parry Gripp called his first solo album of short jingles For Those About to Shop, We Salute You. This second one might as well be called "For Those About to Eat, We Salute You." In not much over 17 minutes, Gripp presents 24 catchy tracks briefly addressing various foods, many of them generally consumed before noon. These start (and end) with the title song and also include odes to donuts, English muffins, and bran flakes. Moving toward lunch, there are also accounts of fried chicken, nachos, hotdogs, pizza, sandwiches, etc. Gripp jumps from one pop style to another. "Fried Chicken," for example, is reminiscent of "Surfin' Bird"; "Soup" could have been done by the Ramones; "Garbonzo" has the sort of Tex-Mex organ sound of groups like the Sir Douglas Quintet; and "Hap, Hap, Hap, Happy Birthday" could be a lost track from an early Sparks album. Then there's "The Ballad of Melvin the Magic Hotdog," one of only two tracks to cross the one-minute mark, which is a piano ballad in the style of "Let It Be." Gripp doesn't reference specific brands in Do You Like Waffles?, but this is music that is ready to be applied to commercials with little revision.