VARIOUS ARTISTS”The Beavis and Butt-head Experience” Geffen*...

VARIOUS ARTISTS

“The Beavis and Butt-head Experience”

Geffen

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The thrill of being invited into Anthrax’s tour bus. . . . The humiliation of being kicked off. . . . Getting lucky with Cher. . . . This is the stuff of “The Beavis and Butt-head Experience,” a place that makes Wayne’s World look like a think tank.

There’s no effort to expand the nature of the comedy to make it enduring--this is basically the minimalist approach of the TV show, fleshed out with skits and new songs by some of today’s cool bands.

Their slim intelligence overwhelmed by hormones, obsessed with sex but way too inept to score, Beavis and Butt-head come off as the ‘90s incarnation of the morons, bumpkins and stooges who have populated American humor through the century. Maybe we like them because, as critics, their taste is so pure and unmodulated, and they are so firm and passionate in their convictions.

The great irony is that these twin towers of intolerance would spawn a collection whose stylistic mix represents the kind of cross-pollination that bleeding-heart idealists have been urging for years. The bias is toward hard rock, but rap, alternative, punkish rock, mainstream R&B; and even sunny pop are in the mix. It’s uneven, but as Butt-head points out in a discussion that borders on the metaphysical, it’s like you need stuff that sucks to have stuff that’s cool.

New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four (excellent).