BEHOLD! The inspiration and artwork of the Mad Metal Man, Harrison Kopp, knows no bounds.
In this incredible piece of art, Harrison has paid homage to Albany’s greatest band, BLOTTO, in Lego form! This is a first of its kind for the band.
In the artwork you can clearly see the five core members of the band, with their images paying tribute to the “Metal Head” music video (and the Combo Akimbo album in Bowtie Blotto’s case). Their backdrop is a reference to their Across & Down EP, with a crossword puzzle painstakingly made by Harrison. Even the audience members in the photo contain Easter eggs and references to Blotto songs, and maybe even the artist himself.
No AI was used in this image, and only minimal Photoshop was employed. The lighting itself is made in a very creative and cool way, with physical lights. Harrison breaks down all the details in the video below. Can you spot them all yourself?
As thanks for creating this art, Harrison has been honoured with the privilege of choosing his own Blotto name. Watch the video to see what name he chose!
There’s an old saying; I think it goes back to Aristotle. It goes, “Never meet your heroes.”
I think we can prove that wrong, right here.
Quick recap: I first heard Blotto’s song “Metal Head” as a young kid. Not sure what to make of these guys, I filed it away as “interesting” but never had the opportunity to hear more through my younger life. I even worked at a used CD store from 1994-2006. You know how many used CDs by Blotto came in during that 12 year span? Zero! Not a one! I started to wonder if they were a real band. Fortunately, along came the internet, confirming that my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me. Some of the core Blotto members first assembled in the early 1970s, as the Star Spangled Washboard Band. They had albums and singles. Yet, up here in Kitchener Ontario Canada, nobody I knew had the record, heard the record, or knew where to buy the record. It was frustrating as hell, but I never forget the name “Blotto” nor the song “Metal Head”. The music video was indelible. The singer had charisma! The band looked unique. One guy was bald (a rarity in 80s rock bands) and one guy had glasses and wore a tie!? What was with that? In the 80s, we had Revenge of the Nerds and I couldn’t help but wonder what this band was about, because visually, that was what I was seeing! A nerd with a guitar? It made no sense to 13 year old me.
But I never forget.
Fast forward to 2018. My pal Aaron and I had this summer ritual of hitting Toronto to go record shopping. This trip almost never happened because Jen’s mom was dying of cancer and we only had so many weekends together left. However, she ordered me: “Mike, go with your friend.” And so, first thing in the morning, we embarked. The first store we hit was BMV and there it was: Combo Akimbo by Blotto, featuring the song “Metal Head”. Flip the record over. There was the bald guy, and the guy with the glasses! I snapped it up immediately. It went under my arm and stayed there until checkout. There was no question I was getting it. The whole trip was documented on video, including this find. In the video, I was delighted to find the guys all had “Blotto” names: Sarge Blotto, Bowtie Blotto, Broadway Blotto, Cheese Blotto, and Lee Harvey Blotto too. I got the gag, and all my hopes were confirmed when I dropped the needle on that record later that night.
Fast forward again. We lost Jen’s mom, and I started writing again. My Blotto reviews were spotted by drummer F. Lee Harvey Blotto himself, who contacted me in gratitude. He even sent me a shirt, while defending their cover of “Stop! In the Name of Love” which I wrote slightly negatively about. “What a cool guy,” I thought to myself.
I wore that Blotto shirt with pride until it pretty much wore out. I also emailed F. Lee in 2019 when Sarge passed away from cancer. What shitty disease it is.
I continued to listen to and love my Blotto albums over the years. I purchased the Collected Works CD which has most of their studio material. The rest of their discography eluded me, at least at prices that Jen won’t smite for me. And finding Blotto, in the wild, in Ontario? Not frequent, or I would have had an album sooner than 2018!
I’ve lost a lot of weight since then!
Fast forward again! It is now 2025, and to my delight, I discovered that a Blotto documentary film was coming! Hello! My Name Is Blotto – The Movie, directed by Rob “Bert Blotto” Lichter will premier April 12 at the Cohoes Music Hall. I asked for any band member to come on my show Grab A Stack of Rock to talk about it.
A day or two later, F. Lee emailed. “Why not!” he said, and offered the whole band and director Bert too.
And so we did the interview, and it was a lot of fun and hopefully gained the band a few new fans. I know that among many of my regulars, particularly in Australia, it was their first time hearing and seeing Blotto.
What was really cool was the pre and post-show chat when we weren’t recording. Bert was first to arrive in the virtual studio, and his passion for Blotto was only exceeded by his feelings of camaraderie with them. We chatted a bit, and then Bowtie arrived. He was curious about me, so I told him I was from about an hour west of Toronto in a place called Kitchener/Waterloo.
Without pause, Bowtie said “We played there as the Star Spangled Washboard Band in the early 1970s. 1975 or so. We also played Guelph and Richmond Hill.”
My jaw must have dropped at that moment. Guelph is pretty obscure even among Canadians. And Bowtie pronounced it right, which most people don’t do on their first try. He said that Broadway Blotto would remember. I speculated that they might have played at the Coronet Club, not far down the street from me. They were known for their regular-hours lunch menu, and strippers and rock bands at night. That was the kind of place that Blotto would have played up here, as Bowtie and Broadway confirmed.
Also confirmed by F. Lee: There are lots of Blotto live collections up on Spotify waiting to be streamed. Lots more music for me to hear, right at my fingertips.
At the end of the show, the Blotto guys thanked me for my support over the years and said some very kind things about my writing. I’ll tell you, there is nothing better than when someone whose art you admire, tells you that they also like what you do.
Broadway called us “kindred spirits” which I find very flattering, but this is where it gets really cool.
He asked me to choose my own “Blotto name”.
I thought about it, and I played with Hoser Blotto for a little bit. I ultimately decided on “Kitchener Blotto”, because that really identifies me. Maybe there are lots of fellow hosers who are Blotto fans, but I hope when Blotto hears the word Kitchener, they think of me. And the strip club.
Thank you guys.
Don’t meet your heroes? Pfft. Choose your heroes wisely, I say.
2018 was, shall we put it mildly, an interesting year. It was the summer that wasn’t. The year I spent the best months of the year driving to and from Toronto, at first waiting for a miracle, and then waiting for the inevitable. When my beloved mother in law finally passed away in September of that year, at least she left the pain behind.
Her decline at the end of the summer was rapid. Before she got too sick, she insisted that I still go record shopping with Aaron as we used to do annually. “You go and have a good time.” She had no way to know how important that was. That one record shopping excursion changed everything for Jen and I that summer. A discovery I made on that trip impacted the whole rest of the summer. That discovery was Blotto.
I’ve talked numerous times about how the skillfully comedic sounds of Blotto made the summer driving tolerable. I’ve trumpeted the merits of Blotto ad nauseum, but it cannot be overstated how important that music was to us at that time. And I had no real idea what I was buying. I just knew Blotto had one song in the 80s – “Metal Head” – that I saw on MuchMusic as a kid. But I didn’t think they were a metal band. They had a bald guy and a guy who looked like Revenge of the Nerds. They sported funny names like “Bowtie” and “Cheese”. For the sake of personal musical history, I wanted “Metal Head” in my collection. So there in the basement of BMV, with Aaron at my side, for a mere $8.99, I acquired their important album Combo Akimbo. It was the best decision I made all summer.
What I got was a nine-track comedy-rock album that kept us in positive spirits as we drove up and down Highway 401 all summer. And what is amazing is that I can play the album today and still feel the same things.
The bad memories are still there. They bubble to the surface. I can see myself behind the wheel, stopping and starting again all the way to Toronto. I hear Jen singing along next to me. But the pain is manageable, and the positive feelings outweigh the bad.
Of the nine songs, there was always one that made us laugh the most. That song was “It’s Not You”. Not only is it a catchy song with a cool guitar lick, but the lyrics are hilarious. I’m glad that Blotto was not tainted by the summer of 2018 and I can still enjoy their music with a huge grin on my face. That’s the gift. All too often, because acquires the feelings of the times you hear it, and if those times weren’t good, it’s hard to get around. Fortunately that didn’t happen with Blotto. I feel only good feelings, especially when I play “It’s Not You”. I can’t help but smile, every time.
This is something that’s not easy to do, It will hit you like a bolt from the blue, After last night, I have to tell you we are through.
When we’re alone, everything is OK, But it’s never gonna stay that way, When I take you home, your family has so much to say.
I try and I try, to be cool when they start, But girl, they’re the ones who are tearing us apart.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand. And it’s driving me crazy!
Your mother wants to know if I am on drugs, Your brother shows me his collection of bugs, Your aunts don’t like me and your uncles are a bunch of thugs.
Your father coughs and blows smoke in my face, He still believes in the superior race, He says if he were president, the world would be a better place.
I try and I try, to ignore them for our sake, But girl, I’m afraid it’s too much for me to take.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand.
There is no future baby can’t you see, Picture in your mind how it would be, All of us living in relative misery.
I try and I try, to be cool when they start, But girl, they’re the ones who are tearing us apart.
It’s not you! Don’t blame yourself It’s not you! No-one can help. It’s not you! I can’t be your man. It’s not you! It’s your family that I can’t stand.
It isn’t you, It’s only your family, Don’t take it personally, It’s just all those little things, Like when I come over to your house and your father tells me “Don’t park in the driveway, ‘cause your car gets oil on the new white pebbles,” and then when I go inside the house, the cat jumps on my lap, and gets hair all over my shirt and pants, and your grandmother sits the newspaper and gets it so wrinkled and bunched up that I can’t even read it, and your sister brings out her scrapbooks and wants me to look at all of her prom pictures, I mean, who cares! And your brother wants me to help him with his science project, dissecting frogs, ick, what a mess, and I go into the bathroom to wash my hands, and all they have is soft soap, and my hands smell like coconuts, and I can’t dry them on those little guest towels, so I gotta wipe them on my shirt, which is already covered with cat hair, and then when I come outside, your father corners me, and wants to tell me all the jokes he read in Playboy magazine….
Given everything that happened in 2018 (cancer, more cancer, death), I wasn’t as tuned-in to rock and roll as I normally would be. I missed a lot of new releases, some on purpose, others by accident. Therefore, this year I’m doing something different from my Top Lists of 2018. Before we get to the lists, let’s talk about the past 12 months.
2018: RELEASES IN A NUTSHELL
January saw new CDs by Joe Satriani and Corrosion of Conformity, finally reunited with Pepper Keenan on vocals. There was new Loudness, and a release by Beth Hart & Joe Bonamassa. Def Leppard had a low-key EP exclusive to iTunes (The Lost Session). In February we got the return of the mighty Saxon. March was a big month, featuring Judas Priest, Stone Temple Pilots, Jack White and Myles Kennedy. The rock kept rolling in April. The big metal one here was Stryper‘s God Damn Evil, along with new Godsmack and Thirty Seconds to Mars. During this time I was personally only able to get the Stryper and Priest.
As temperatures warmed in May, Bad Wolves came out with their novelty cover of “Zombie” by the Cranberries which became a predictable hit. Frank Turner and Five Finger Death Punch also released new records in May. News in June was unfortunately dominated by Kanye West and Drake, but don’t forget Ghost, The Darkness (with their first live) and Nine Inch Nails! In July, Halestorm came out with the critically acclaimed Vicious. Alice in Chains made their long awaited return in August with Rainier Fog, an album I bought but have not yet fully penetrated.
Autumn began with the biggest name in rock and roll, Sir Paul McCartney himself. Slash, Paul Simon, Lenny Kravitz and Suicidal Tendencies had records out on the same day. VoiVod, Therapy?, Metric and even Rod Stewart returned in September as well. October featured two big soundtracks: Bohemian Rhapsody, andA Star Is Born. Ace Frehley, Greta Van Fleet, and The Struts came out with new music the same month. In November we got Mark Knopfler, the Smashing Pumpkins, Ted Nugent and yet another live Beth Hart. The month closed with the latest Def Leppard best-of. December boasted Metal Church but not a lot of rock. Thank the Metal Gods that Max the Axe swooped in with Status Electric to save the year.
I spent most of 2018 checked out mentally. I missed most of the new releases and have a lot to catch up on. The summer was spent on Highway 401, and a flash drive loaded with music helped me survive it. New releases were not the be-all and end-all for me. Therefore, my Top Albums of 2018 list includes some oldies that just helped me get through it all. It seems right to do it this way, since I can’t really do a well-curated list of new releases without absorbing them properly.
Blotto’s discography was dominated by singles and four track EPs. They had one album, the supremely entertaining Combo Akimbo (1982), and that was that! So, when the CD age rolled around, the suits over at Blottones publishing must have decided to get in on that! Almost all Blotto’s output was reissued in a single CD collection, including the complete album Combo Akimbo.
Blotto’s Collected Works is probably the most logical pit-stop to check out the band on your musical journey. We begun with their hit “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard”, from their debut EP Hello, My Name Is Blotto, What’s Yours?. “Lifeguard” represents the hopes and dreams of a shoe salesman who really just wants to get paid to hang out on a beach all day. Done in the surf-rock style of course. Then “(We Are The) Nowtones” is a musical advertisement for the band you should hire for your next event. “We are the Nowtones! We do Top 40! We wear matching outfits! We look real sporty! Like a living juekbox, we play the hits. Appear in nightclubs that are the pits.”
At this point the compilation presents the Combo Akimbo album in sequence. For my money, I prefer the vinyl. Not only is it a self-contained work, but it’s got way more beef to it. Comparing LP to CD, there is no question which sounds better. Combo Akimbo is blast of an album, but we’ve already reviewed it, so check that out for more detail. The key takeaway for most people will be the song “Metal Head” featuring Buck Dharma of Blue Oyster Cult, which received some MTV and MuchMusic play in the early 80s. For a certain generation, this is the only Blotto song they know due to its presence on the legendary compilation LP Metal For Breakfast.
Blotto’s second EP Across and Down (1980) is also presented in sequence. “She’s Got a Big Boyfriend” has a riff similar to the Beatles’ “Paperback Writer”, but the song goes in another direction — 80s pop rock. Then “Gimme the Girl” is tropical reggae vibes via Albany NY. It’s supremely fun for parties. Run for cover if you’re overly sensitive when “My Baby’s the Star of a Driver’s Ed Movie” begins! The classic ballad stylings contrast with the words. The final Across and Down song is the punk rock scorcher “H.S.H.” — “High School Honey”, a clear winner in any race.
“Lightning Strikes” is a real rarity, from a 1982 indy compilation called Hudson Rock: Fifteen Bands From Albany. It’s an also-ran with nice harmonies but is otherwise largely forgettable. A live version of “I Wanna Be a Lifeguard” is better than the studio original, and it’s another rarity. It was originally released on a low quality flexi-disc that came with a 1987 compilation LP also called I Wanna Be a Lifeguard. Then there’s an amusing song called “The B-side”, from the single for “When the Second Feature Starts”. “The A-side gets all the glory, the B-side, that’s another story…and you’re probably not even listening to this right now!”
The only serious skipper is the cover of “Stop! In the Name of Love” with lead vocals by former singer Blanche Blotto. This B-side from the first EP is campy but not particularly good. The overwrought vocals ruin what might have been a cool disco arrangement. Another dicey inclusion is a “karaoke” mix of “Lifeguard” (eww). A better song to include would have been “Bud…Is After Us” from the first EP which otherwise would have made the CD too long.
Yes, it’s the Collected Works, but there’s still a bit more out there to collect. There’s even another compilation CD called Then More Than Ever from 2000, all unreleased material. Still more to explore; but in the meantime consider Collected Works as a great way to get really, really Blotto.
Blotto were just too much fun! A variety of rocking styles and amusing lyrics makes Combo Akimbo, their only studio album, a blast to listen to front to back.
Singer Sergeant Blotto takes lead vocals on “Too Much Fun”, a punky vintage Alice Cooper rock and roll romp, powered through a particle accelerator. For track two, guitarist Bowtie Blotto leads. “It’s Only Money” is just pure and simple rock and roll: Kiss with a hint of early Beatles. Broadway Blotto (guitar) takes over lead vocals on “Scream”. It’s a pleasantly New Wave 80s-sounding rock song with a great chorus, aided and abetted by Sarge and Bowtie. “I Quit” (vocals by Broadway) is a perfect rock anthem for those who wanna take this job and shove it. Sassy, fun rock and roll.
The most legendary of the songs is of course “Metal Head”, lead vocals by Sarge. It’s a funny and uncomplicated story of what could happen if you too inadvertently become a metal head. Done in the metal style, Sarge complains that “suddenly there’s an endless void where I used to keep my brain”. It plays on the 80s brain-dead metalhead stereotype, but for a comedy song it works. “Wanna customize my van, and I don’t even own one.” That’s Buck Dharma from Blue Oyster Cult on lead guitar (and in the video). Dig those four (count ‘em!) false endings.
Side two is just as much fun as side one. “It’s Not You” boasts chiming, jangly guitars and catchy everything. Bowtie proclaims that “It’s not you, it’s your family I can’t stand!” It’s just a quick blast of gleeful complaining. “Occupational Hazard” sounds, strangely enough, like an outtake from Peter Criss’ first solo album…if it was the best song on the album. It has that old-timey style that Pete was so good at back then…but better. Then the very New Wave rock-styled “When the Second Feature Starts” is a memento of the old drive-in days. Kissing through the cartoons, fogging up the windows…remember what it was like?
Possibly the most intriguing and entertaining song on the album is closer “Goodbye, Mr. Bond”. From the perspective of the villain who has just captured 007, it’s a brilliant homage to the greatest spy of all time. “We’ve been expecting you, monsieur Bond.” The bad guy invites him to sit and chat before discussing how Bond should die. “This is your last interference. I could shoot you right now, but NO! Hahahaha, there’s a better way!” We all know how it goes from there! “Goodbye, Mr. Bond” is a treat whether you like the super spy or not. The music captures the Bond essence and the lyrics pay tribute to both the good and bad Bond clichés.
What a blast Combo Akimbo is. It’s not an outstanding classic album by any stretch, but it’s fun, doesn’t overstay its welcome, and every song is good. Worth tracking down if only for “Metal Head” and “Goodbye, Mr. Bond”.
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