Simballrec's "45 Seconds Of" compilation isn't just a great CD, it may be the most punk rock thing in my entire collection. The basics are these: it's an album featuring 99 tracks by 84 artists. Each track is exactly 45 seconds long, with no fade ins or outs. Other than that, Simballrec imposed no other submission rules. No rules! How punk is that?

And what could be more punk than a 45 second song? The Minutemen made a career out of it, and look how popular they are today, years after their demise! People crapped themselves over Elastica's supposed "authenticity" when they wrote the 50-second "Vaseline". As if that one song could silence the naysayers who claimed that Elastica were just ripping off melodies from their favourite bands. "See, they wrote a 50-second song -- so they DO mean it, man, they ARE 4Real"! I'm going to sit on the fence with this one. Elastica were shite, but "Vaseline" was the best song they ever wrote. I mean, how can you hate a song that short? It's too short to offend you that much! Before you have a chance to hate it, it's over and you're thinking about something else.

This is one of the secrets behind "45 Seconds Of". Anybody can sound good for 45 seconds. Creating 45 minutes of brilliance is hard, but 45 seconds is dead easy. You barely need even one good idea to fill up 45 seconds. And even then -- a lot of this stuff sounds like throwaway junk that was improvised on the spot without even trying. And that's the beauty of it! Anyone with a few ounces of musical smarts and creativity could have done at least one-third of these tracks themselves! How DIY is that?

The 45-second rule is essentially Step One of a paint-by-numbers punk kit. It ensures that no artist starts to indulge in gamelans or 100-piece choirs, because who's going to waste that stuff on a 45-second recording? Thus, everyone is forced to keep it basic. There's no time for solos, intros, outros, showing off your chops, telling a story, grandiose concepts, or taking the listener on a journey into sound. 45 seconds, no more no less, just get on with it!!

There are established names such as Blevin Blectum and Jan Jelinek slotted right in there among the nobodies (and there are plenty of them). There's no top billing for the stars, their names are written with the same size letters as everyone else's. Punk! Nobody is excluded, everybody can join in! Everyone gets a try! No prima donnas!!

The pace of the record is, as you'd expect, dizzying. So many things are happening so fast. There are no breaks and no pauses. There is no silence. Tune out for a few moments and you've missed three tracks. You say you don't like the track you're hearing now? Who cares! Something else will be along in a few seconds!

After thirty songs or so, you've completely lost track of what's what. You can't remember who did what, what you heard ten minutes ago, and you have no idea what to expect next. Surprise! Excitement! Unpredictability! That's rock and roll, baby!! That's what we love about it! And the damned record keeps going and going and going. After fifty tracks or so, you're desperately in need of a break to have some hope in hell or taking it all in. But the show must go on! And it's only halfway done at this point! You've now got the attention span of an eight year old child who just ate ten chocolate chip cookies and forgot to take his Ritalin in the morning. When it finally does end, your emotional state has run through a considerable psychiatric spectrum, spanning disorientation, frustration, several instances of boredom, and you can't wait to hear the CD again.