No advil, no booze

Sampling the Frozen Food Section

February 5, 2008 3:39:23 PM

Jonathan Toth from Hoth, Tucker Booth, and Rob Getzschman

Members of the Christian Science rap/folk collective known as the Frozen Food Section grew up in St. Louis families who didn’t tolerate Advil, much less drugs or booze. Although these rappers and folk singers, now dispersed across the country, aren’t so doctrinaire nowadays, they remain wildly off-center, musing on science fiction, existentialism, and stalker ex-husbands. Here’s a taste of what some of the more prominent members of FFS are up to now . . .

Jonathan Toth from Hoth with MF Doom, “Ghostwhirl”
Frozen Food Section ringleader Jonathan Toth from Hoth trades off with his idol MF Doom on this track, which, like many of the songs on his second album, The Lovecycle, details a relationship going sour. It’s one of his more straightforward raps, and Doom is in top form.

Jonathan Toth from Hoth, “Cannibalism Will Not Be Tolerated”
On the other end of the Jonathan Toth from Hoth spectrum is this track, from his debut, Brainwashing: The Art of Hip-Hopera. Coming down squarely against the idea of consuming one’s fellow man, its stream-of-consciousness lyrics and hypnotic beat are complemented by its video, which is compiled entirely from Google image searches. You can find it on YouTube.

Rob Getzschman, “We the Freaks”
Rob Getzschman is Toth’s younger brother and an anti-folk singer-songwriter. He sometimes performs with a pop-punk outfit called Analog Jetpack that features Robby Sahm and Dan Ryan of Le Loup. You can find a few of their songs at www.ilike.com/artist/Analog+Jetpack. Or you can see Getzschman perform this misfit anthem in front of a very young, very small audience here on YouTube.

Tucker Booth, “Growing Pains”
The Frozen Food Section artist who’s strayed farthest from the Christian Science Church’s interpretation of Mary Baker Eddy’s ideas is Tucker Booth, a blunt-wielding, freestyling, often homeless street busker who lives in LA. Here he performs “Growing Pains” with Toth, a song about the difficulties of maturation disguised as a homage to Tracy Gold and the rest of the Growing Pains cast.