In pop music there is such a thing as being too fucking smart for your own good, and Don and David Was certainly fit that bill. It's no accident that What Up, Dog? ­ the third and best album by Was (Not Was) ­ is being released on the group's third record label: the band's razor-sharp amalgam of soul, rock and dance music doesn't fit into any radio format currently known (at least on this planet). And the lyrics speak ­ in a voice ranging from bemusement to disgust ­ of a world inhabited by mooks, morons and maggots.

The creative and performing axis of Was (Not Was) is an unlikely yet remarkably well-matched quartet composed of lead vocalists Harry Bowens and Sweet Pea Atkinson and songwriters and instrumentalists Don Was (Donald Fagenson) and David Was (David Weiss). A floating entourage of sidemen make up the rest of the band, which tends to average somewhere around ten members in performance and on video.

Atkinson, who used to work on a Chrysler assembly line, is a smokyvoiced soul belter in the tradition of Wilson Pickett; Bowens formerly worked with the O'Jays, and if his singing style invites a comparison, it is to Phillipe Wynne, the late Spinners vocalist. As a vocal team, ...

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