RACHEL ARIEFF & THE SMILEYTOWN BOYS: How To Be Happy All The Time

Rachel Arieff & The Smileytown Boys

How To Be Happy All The Time

© 2002 Rachel Arieff (647987001028)

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Remember the music from Sesame Street and The Muppet Show? Well, it's like that, but sung by a snotty naked woman.

tracks

1 How to Be Happy All the Time
2 Bob Newhart Love Song
3 Smoking Grandma
4 (that Guy's Gonna End Up) Smacking You Around
5 Have a Baby!
6 Gun Control Solutions
7 Plastic Surgery Wagon
8 Internet Porn Polka
9 Hollywood Shitbox

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notes

Rachel Arieff is the girl next door who forgot to take her meds. If you enjoy a Sesame Street sound with Dead Milkmen lyrics, you'll like Rachel's CD. If you're offended by sex, swearing, or snotty social commentary, Rachel's CD will make you upchuck your Slimfast all over your Sassoons.

This CD makes a great gift for people who like simple pop music and sharp satire. It also makes a great gift for people who don't have any sense of humor but you'd like to annoy.

WHO IS RACHEL ARIEFF?
Rachel's parents can take the blame for this mess, since they gave her piano lessons as a child. One day, Rachel decided to combine standup comedy with her songwriting and piano skills to create "extreme cabaret" -- a modern lounge act with an edge.

Rachel's appeared on the NBC standup show "Late Friday" and in the movie "Clockstoppers". But she had the most fun hosting her kooky Hollywood lounge show "Discotown!" in the basement of a Ramada Inn with all her funny and talented friends. Rachel now lives in Spain, enjoying the excellent health care and traveling between Barcelona and Madrid to perform her Spanish-language stand-up comedy show, "Cómo ser feliz todo el tiempo." How crazy is that?

THE STORY BEHIND THE CD:
It all started in Hollywood when Rachel's old New York buddy, ERIC RUDNICK , offered to accompany her on drums when she played her songs at comedy gigs. Then Eric introduced Rachel to guitar genius GARNER KNUTSON of THE PIPER DOWNS. Once Rachel and Eric succeeded in prying the multitudes of screaming, hysterical girls off of Garner, they got together and started playing the songs from Rachel's one-woman show, "How To Be Happy All the Time". Egged on by their fans, they went into "the studio" with a guy named Dustin whose toilet is next to his bed and recorded the "How to Be Happy All the Time" CD. Guest musicians are hairless hillbilly manchild MICHAEL TODD on washboard and accordion virtuoso "BAD MILK JOE" from the band Breech.

"How to Be Happy All the Time" has fans throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia and Australia. As a testament to this CD's underground success, Rachel occasionally gets approached by shifty older men with poor hygeine who want to know if she "likes to party".

The Critics Blather:

"What do you get if you cross a wholesome looking, all-American girl with a perverse, foul-mouthed, surrealist stand up comedian? You get the mutant lovechild of Britney Spears and Richard Pryor on speed that is Rachel Arieff!" -Barcelona Metropolitan, January 2005

"Charming and hilarious, innocent and caustic...Rachel Arieff personifies comedy in its pure state." -Popular1 Magazine, Barcelona, Spain, July 2004

"Slash-and-burn smarts... (Arieff) thinks and writes her sassing." -Laurie Stone, The Village Voice, 1999

"The savvy Arieff has touched a chord with her show." -Tom Murrin, Paper Magazine, 1999.

reviews

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  • Abortions are fun!
    author: Santino

    This cd is the best thing in the world. I was about to kill my un-born child...but before I got the knitting needle...the mail man arrived and handed me this lovely cd. "Have a baby" saved my baby! Thanks Rachel! I can't wait to beat the little fucker!

  • More please Rachel
    author: SnugRadio

    The Snug (snugradio.co.uk) love Rachels music. Come on Girl, you really need to bring out some more stuff...We'd buy it :) Excellent. Mail us if you'd like to be on the show! please!

  • so many valuable life lessons...
    author: leah b

    first listen: crazed giggling....second listening: crazed giggling...third listen.... you get the jist. i can't to start duct taping my friends to chairs and forcing them to listen to this! only downside is its really short.

  • Rachel is my new pretend girlfriend
    author: Mollie

    Damn! This CD kicks so much ass. Even better, I have a new tool to torture my conservative right-wing husband! Yippie!

  • Freakin' INCREDIBLE!
    author: Folk Dude

    This CD is so awesome! You know how when you get sad, you wanna put in something depressing to drag you deeper down? Now that I have this CD, I say screw that! When I get bummed, this is the first thing I put in, just cause one of the songs (and chances are, almost everyone) is going to make me laugh out loud, despite my moody-patoodiness...such a hysterical find...my only problem with it is that it's too short! I need more!

  • Your evil school teacher!!!!
    author: Mitchell Rentzler

    Few things on this world make me smile-this is one of them. She sounds like the teacher who would sing you all those sappy songs when you were in grade school- then bam you get the lyrics and you are smiling from ear to ear.

  • she scares me (but I laughed so hard I cried)
    author: the Jax

    If I ever find myself in L.A., the first place I am going is to see Rachel's live show. What an indestructible woman, bearing witness to the sickness of our lives with a big smile and a genuine musical talent. Relentlessly upbeat in the face of NRA soccer moms and chain-smoking grandmas--something is wrong with her brain and she needs help. I really am "happy all the time" now that I have this CD. Thank you, Rachel and Smileytown Boys!

  • author: Nicola

    I went to college with Rachel. She was insane then. She has merely honed her insanity to perfection!

  • Sick genius
    author: Bastian

    What is there to say except that after listening to this album, I wish Rachel Arieff could find a way to impregnate me with her child. Although male, I would happily carry any number of her offspring, in hopes that the genetic combination that caused the level of demented genius displayed in these lyrics would be passed on.

  • Rachel Arieff is wonderful!
    author: Robert Peate

    This CD is a collection of hilarious and horrifying vignettes, slices of Rachel's life, which are all too normal and representative. We can all relate to them, as comically as she phrases her experiences. Highlights include every track, which is a combination of high satire and scathing social critique. She's not for everyone, but if you get her humor, you will love it all the way. :)

  • a wolf in sheep's clothing...except nude
    author: ian grout

    listening to this cd for the first time is a lot like finding a razor blade in your hallowe'en candy...and liking it. arieff's saccharin sound masks an incredibly astute world view. think ultra-modern tom lehrer. i have not played this for anyone who didn't love it. the only complaint that i have is that, with a running time of just over 21 minutes, there is not enough of a good thing.

  • author: Alan

    I bought the CD on the evidence of Gun Control Solutions, a rip-roaring intelligent punk anthem that truly deserves to be heard. The rest of the album is more theatrical, almost Rocky Horror in places, but always the lyrics are tellingly funny, and the vocal almost whimsical... like a displaced Blondie..."swingin' Sesame Street pop"? actually not a bad description - my kids certainly loved it too! I would have given it 5 stars if only it had a few more songs, but I'm sure the next CD will address that short-fall.

  • Extreme Cabaret - Rachel has invented a new genre
    author: JATH.COM

    One look at the cover of this CD and it's clear Rachel Arieff is not only attractive, but she's more than a bit twisted and willing to do just about anything for a laugh. And laughs are what "How to Be Happy All the Time" is full of, from her "Gotcha" musical rip on a hubby's knack at surfing for online porn, to a scathingly funny take on motherhood ("Have a Baby"). Don''t be fooled by the wacky sense of humor. Rachel is an excellent keybaord player and she has a voice that's innocently welcoming, with just a hint of sex appeal. I've already listened to this CD about 10 times and I don't imagine I will ever grow tired of it.

  • author: John Skipp

    If Tom Lehrer and Charles Bukowski morphed together into one REALLY HOT GURL, that gurl would be Rachel Arieff. Her new album -- HOW TO BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME -- is fucked-up, dysfunctional fun at its finest. I love this record so much that I'm buying another copy for my teenage daughters, because everything they need to know about the horror of living is right here: HEARTBREAKINGLY HILARIOUS, AND TRAGICALLY DELICIOUS!

  • speaks to a generation...
    author: Robin GD Jones

    Rachel Arieff, on her latest CD, has now achieved what she has been working for her whole career... to become the comic voice of an entire generation!In such songs, as "Have A Baby" she seems to be saying, "I speak for you, trailer trash party mother, for I am you, trailer trash party mother." And yet, you ask, can she really be the comic voice of an entire generation with just one CD? And I answer, yes, for her CD comments on not just the concerns of many, but the concerns of all. Songs like "Smoking Grandma" speak to a group of people who just want "Grandma" to watch her "Smoking" habit. And that's a pretty big group of people. And who is this generation Rachel speaks to? Why it's you and me mister! And that fella to your left. The one in the baseball cap with the two beer cans strapped to either side...

  • A chocolate coated cyanide pill
    author: Richard Rushfield

    Rachel Arieff is like a cyanide pill coated in a delicious chocolate and cognac bonbon; her precise and deadly wit, which eviscerates contemporary down-at-heel society, is masked in the most delightfully sugar coated of disguises. HOW TO BE HAPPY ALL THE TIME, is the unlikely title of what will become a battle cry for set upon, disillusioned artistes, struggling to keep their dreams in tact while bleak reality crushes in. It is a mesmerizing thrill to watch Arieff's perky, dizzy, boozy lounge singer persona try to maintain her stage smile while seeing all too clearly the horrors that surrounded her as she tries to sashay and shuffle through her "Hollywood Shitbox" dream-palace or drown her sorrows with the perfect solution, "Have a Baby" Fight on, brave Arieff, with a boa around your throat and a dazed smile plastered across your face, you need never fear.

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