Pop Music Review : Denmark’s D.A.D--the Thinking Man’s Hard Rockers

Something’s dumb in Denmark. At least, D.A.D, a young Copenhagen-based hard-rock quartet that performed at the Roxy on Wednesday, is dumb. Smart dumb.

Yes, D.A.D (which stands for Disneyland After Dark, but Mickey’s lawyers won’t let them use it) is hard-rock parody, in the great tradition of Blue Oyster Cult, the Dictators and L.A.’s own Redd Kross. What makes it work is that the band keeps the parody relatively subtle, not over-the-top (or, in D.A.D parlance, “overmuch”) a la the Tubes. OK, so poking fun at the hard-rock preoccupation with hair by singing an anthem to the fuzz adorning their ears, noses, backs and toes wasn’t too subtle, but it was hilarious, with singer Jesper Binzer’s nudge-nudge-wink-wink delivery driving it home.

And any doubts about the smart part were erased with the likes of a current-events song featuring a chorus of “Ji- had , I’m gettin’ ma -ad,” which just may be the smartest dumb rhyme in hard rock since the Dictators paired a phrase about not paying their “dues” with the observation that some Texans “didn’t know we were Jews.”

So now, with the fine Warner Bros. debut album “No Fuel Left For the Pilgrims” just out, the challenge for D.A.D is not so much to find hard-rock fans smart enough to get the jokes and sporting enough to laugh at themselves, but to find pseudo-intellectuals willing to drop their guard and just have a good time. The metal-heads will likely get the joke, and if they don’t there’s plenty of crunchin’ tunes to satisfy them. The little girls should understand--these pretty Danes are sure to set many a teen heart aflutter. But the largely industry crowd at the Roxy seemed unwilling and/or unable to loosen up. And that’s just plain dumb.