Here's a fun fact: when I got my first "proper" hifi when I was 18, the very first song I played on it was Everything's Cool by Pop Will Eat Itself. I wanted something heavier and with thick layers of instrumentation so I could hear them all clearly through (what I considered at the time to be) an expensive amplifier and speakers, so picked that song. I'm sure had I bought my hifi any other month in my life, the first song would have been different, but in October 2002 I was really into that particular tune. Of course, audiophiles will talk about "burn in" time (even if not asked), so maybe I wasn't hearing the very best version of it, but I'm sure it was better than the mini-system I'd been using up to that point (which is maybe doing that little all-in-one Sony hifi a disservice - I still have it and it still mostly works).
I'd been a big PWEI fan for a while, but Dos Dedos Mis Amigos was a world apart from their earlier albums - big and dark and basically industrial. I was introduced to PWEI by the Sega Saturn game Loaded and the two tracks that were playable on the cd - Kick to Kill and RSVP - were both from this album. However, I'd go on to hear a lot of their earlier years before coming back to this era. My first PWEI compilation was Wise Up Suckers, which covered the narrow period in time when they were signed to RCA, and I then bought a scattering of albums and singles and the newer, more exhaustive compilation PWEI Product (on which I heard Everything's Cool for the first time, and played on my new hifi). I finally got a copy of Dos Dedos Mis Amigos on cd for £7 on eBay in 2003, towards the end of my PWEI-buying frenzy (I also got the double-cd remix album Two Fingers My Friends on eBay a couple of years later, mostly out of completeness).
I loved the album back then and think it's aged remarkably well, but maybe that's because I love crunchy NIN-style guitars as much now as I did in 2002. Given this was my introduction to the band, it was strange to go on an extended jaunt through their dancey-indie sampling days and back to their early grebo days before coming back to where I started. I wonder if I'd just got this album first whether I'd have been more shocked by the sound of the earlier styles. This was the PWEI I wanted - edgy and cool - but I was happy to go with the other versions of them too. It's a strong album with a bunch of roughly equal highlights - Ich Bin Ein Auslander, Kick to Kill, Underbelly, Everything's Cool and RSVP. I initially misheard the lyric in the opener as "the bassist is racist", which raised a number of difficult questions, before eventually finding out that they were singing "the basis is racist"; the extent to which I'd misunderstood what that song was getting at is almost funny. Babylon is a bit of an anti-climatic ending.
15 years after buying the cd (nearly to the day) I bought this copy of the LP from a friend on Twitter called Rob - he was having a clearout and I was more than happy to buy a bunch of the records he was selling. I'd not seen Dos Dedos on vinyl back in the day, and hadn't made much effort to seek a copy out. But when a copy was offered to me at a very fair price, I couldn't say no. It's in incredible condition for its age and, whilst nearly every part of my hifi has changed since I played Everything's Cool on it when I was 18 (I still have the same speakers, at least until I move and have room for some floor-standing ones), it's still pleasing to sit back and actually listen to these songs and all their layers of fuzz and industrial noise.
Format: Double 12", gatefold sleeve
Tracks: 11
Cost: £17 second-hand
Bought: Rob, Twitter
When: 07/03/18
Colour: Black
Etching: none
mp3s: none
