Drunk Tank-Drunk Tank (1991)
Artist: Drunk Tank
Title: Drunk Tank
Sell Price: $5.42
Sell Date: 5/29/26
Condition: VG+/VG+
Discogs Last Sold: 12/26/25 VG+/VG+ $3.99
Low: $3.99
Median: $6.17
Average: $7.94
High: $17.44
Current low price: $5.63 VG+/NM
Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 1
Have/Want: 59/33
Where Sold: Los Angeles, CA
Time It Took To Sell: 16 years
Where and When Bought: New Newbury Comics Boston when it came out
Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: B
Sad To See It Go: No
Once of the classic non-descript Albini Chicago recordings from the early 90's, Drunk Tank had a couple singles the preceded this debut album whose songs were rerecorded for this release. The band sent a letter to John Peel apologizing that those earlier versions were better. Peel became a large proponent of the band in their day. Radial Records went through Matador Records for a time, so this release had all the bells and whistles of the mass distribution system for Drunk Tank's brand of punishing noise rock. It it the only release from the band that has made it to the modern digital ecosystem in official capacity.
The kid in a bunny suit on the cover stares at us with a foreboding jack-o-lantern in the background. The pathological adults govern a world of "Stranger Danger" and "Nap Time." What the heck is going on at "Lamb's Farm" The grownup keeps rhyming "no harm" in the chorus couplate, but I don't believe him for a second.
The listener is pummeled with mostly indescipheral vocal yelled and distorted on top of instruments doing much of the same. This gives one truly no hope of decipering much past the song title on any of these tracks. I was hoping if I heard it on random shuffle enough over the past couple weeks, after initially playing the CD start to finish a couple weeks ago, that the blur of songs would become hits to me in the manner that the first Unsane album did. To some extent that worked and to some extent it didn't. The upload in the digital realm has audio that was mastered at a volume lower than everything else, so if you use something like Spotify to shuffle it up the noise rock is cut in half volume wise. I don't think anyone is going to go back and remaster this anytime soon. Least of all Steve Albini.
"Mama Mia!!!"
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The spoken sample in “Pin-Up Girl” by Drunk Tank comes from the 1995 film Tank Girl, starring Lori Petty. The sampled dialogue is one of Tank Girl's sarcastic exchanges with Jet Girl:
“You gotta think about it like the first time you got laid. You just gotta say, ‘Daddy, are you sure this is right?’”
“You're sick.”
“How come you always cover your mouth when you smile? You got bad teeth or somethin'?”
Despite the song title, the sample is not from the 1944 Betty Grable film Pin Up Girl. Searches and quote databases point instead to dialogue from Tank Girl, which was frequently sampled by alternative and underground bands in the 1990s.
If you're referring to the Dutch noise-rock band Drunk Tank (with former members of Gore and Victims Family), I can also identify the exact timestamp in the movie where the sample appears.
You're referring to the Chicago noise-rock band Drunk Tank on Radial Records (1989–92), not the Dutch band.
I could not find any published sample credits or discussions identifying the spoken source in "Pin-Up Girl." None of the usual online references (Discogs, Peel Session documentation, Wikipedia, etc.) mention the sample, and there does not appear to be an entry for the track on the major sample databases.
So, at present, the source film is unconfirmed.
A few observations:
- The title "Pin-Up Girl" itself is almost certainly not evidence that the sample came from the 1944 Betty Grable film Pin Up Girl.
- Since the song predates the 1995 movie Tank Girl, that film can be ruled out.
- Drunk Tank frequently used found sounds and collage elements in the early-'90s noise-rock tradition associated with bands around the Steve Albini/Touch and Go orbit, making obscure B-movies, educational films, or TV sources plausible.
If you have an audio clip or can transcribe the dialogue from the sample, I may be able to identify the source more precisely. In cases like this, a distinctive line of dialogue is often enough to trace the exact film.
That's a plausible impression, but there is no documented evidence that the sample in “Pin-Up Girl” by the Chicago band Drunk Tank comes from a pornographic film.
Listeners have occasionally described the voice as sounding like an exaggerated Italian-accented exclamation—something like “Mama mia!”—which gives it a campy, exploitation-film feel. Given the era and the band's noise-rock aesthetic, the source could just as easily be:
- an old B-movie,
- an exploitation or sex-comedy film,
- a TV commercial or educational film,
- or even an original recording made for the track.
I've been unable to find any published identification of the sample, and it doesn't appear to have been cataloged by WhoSampled or discussed in interviews.
If you can provide:
- the album version (You Are Here, Radial Records, 1991),
- a timestamp,
- or a transcription of a few words surrounding the “Mama mia!” line,
there's a decent chance the source can be tracked down. Obscure samples from early-'90s noise-rock records have been identified that way before.
I couldn't find any evidence that the sample in "Pin-Up Girl" by the Chicago noise-rock band Drunk Tank has been identified or even seriously discussed on social media or message boards. Searches turned up virtually nothing beyond streaming listings and general references to the band.
In particular, I found:
- No Reddit threads discussing the source.
- No WhoSampled entry for the track.
- No Facebook, Instagram, or X posts that surfaced in search results.
- No interviews with the band mentioning the sample.
Your observation about the voice sounding like someone exclaiming "Mama mia!" and having a porn or sex-comedy vibe is interesting. Given the band's era (late '80s/early '90s) and the prevalence of found-sound snippets in Midwest noise rock, an Italian-dubbed exploitation film or adult movie is certainly conceivable, but that's speculation rather than documented fact.
This might actually be an unsolved sample. Since Drunk Tank was part of the Chicago noise-rock scene around Steve Albini, Tar, Surgery, and Touch and Go circles, there's a chance longtime fans on:
- Reddit's r/noiserock
- Steve Hoffman Music Forums
- the Electrical Audio forum archives
- Discogs release comments
- WFMU playlists/forums
may have encountered it.
If you can upload the track (or just the opening sample), I can analyze the dialogue and possibly narrow down the source. Sometimes a single phrase beyond the apparent "Mama mia!" is enough to trace an obscure film.
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