It isn’t often a musician promoting their new record openly admits many of the songs contained on said recording are completely awful. But Tex Perkins and His Ladyboyz’ debut No. 1’s and No. 2’s is no ordinary covers record, no respectful trawl through the group’s musical influences. Instead, it’s a very funny assemblage of some of the worst musical kitsch to ever grace Gold FM play-lists.

These are the songs you hear in supermarket aisles, in muzak form when you step into a hotel elevator, or when you decide to tune into love song dedications for a laugh. On a bad taste scale of a one to ten, this scores an eleven.

Lionel Richie’s Three Times a Lady gets a guernsey, as does Captain and Tennille’s Do That To Me One More Time. These are the kind of songs one appreciates more several drinks and several hours into the night. So why these tunes? Does Tex Perkins, critically adored from ventures as diverse as Thug, Beasts of Bourbon, The Cruel Sea and Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses consider them guilty pleasures? “There’s probably only a handful of guilty pleasures, really,” he begins. “I mean they’re all guilty pleasures now, but the originals weren’t. Two or three of them were songs I just absolutely detested. And therein lies with the real challenge. When you’re doing covers albums, most people like to do something cool.”

Songs he particularly loathed include Come Said The Boy: “It has always made my skin crawl”. Eric McCusker, who played guitar on Mondo Rock’s original, has heard the Ladyboyz cover and was, perhaps unsurprisingly, quite frightened to hear Perkins’ guttural swamp-rock vocals reworking the tune. His fear quickly dissipated at the thought of a beefed-up APRA royalty cheque, however.

Putting together the tracklist for this record, Perkins explains, was almost the inverse of how the process normally goes. “I’d make a list and bring it into the studio each day, and I’d read out the list and the loader the groan of disapproval the bigger the tick next to the song…A lot of times [the band] would say that’s kind of cool. That’s on the verge of being kind of OK.” Such songs were promptly abandoned.

“It was kind of important to do songs for the project that we didn’t respect, because then you’re free…free to do whatever you want with them. It’s also a challenge to draw something from something that you don’t like. It’s more challenging on every level and a far more interesting process really.”

Perkins considers No. 1’s and No. 2’s easily the most enjoyable record he’s ever made – and it shows. Special guests such as Adalita Srsen (Magic Dirt) and Jimmy Barnes (“a great bloke”) join in the fun, while Jet’s Nic Cester and former Baby Animals singer Suzie DeMarchi both ended up singing duets after hearing of the project and asking to be involved.

Over 30 songs were recorded in the session, and whittling them down to 18 proved another challenge. Those left on the cutting-room floor include George Harrison’s My Sweet Lord (oh, come on, Tex, it’s not that bad), Pat Benatar’s unintentionally hilarious Love is a Battlefield and, sorry any Alex Lloyd fans, Amazing. Bonnie Tyler’s ridiculous mega-hit Total Eclipse of the Heart was also considered, though not recorded, with the bombast of her It’s A Heartache getting the nod instead.

Throughout, Perkins seems determined to dirty up these often innocent-sounding songs. In particular, Eric Carmen’s Hungry Eyes sounds sleazier then one remembers, Perkins growling lyrics like “I feel the magic between your thighs”. Was this an aim, to bring out the sleaziness with this cover? “Absolutely,” he says. “Actually, that’s one of the songs on the album we had to completely deconstruct because the music was so shit, that there really wasn’t anything there to work with…We just basically kept the vocal melody, because there was just nothin’ there, nothing to latch on to with the music. It was really, truly atrocious.”

This reputation for debauchery was parodied by Melbourne band Root! on last year’s non-hit I Wish I Was Tex Perkins (sample lyric: “In his gasoline-stained dacks / He waits to meet your daughter on the wrong side of the tracks”). Perkins remains nonplussed by the song. “It didn’t really offend me…It’s OK, I just wish it was funnier.” So does he feel detached from the hard-living, Errol Flynn meets Keith Richards images that song play upon? “Exactly. I don’t have to live that [persona] every day.”

Perkins has another solo record ready to go, and another album from TnT, his collaboration with Tim Rogers, is likely, though not in the near future. And promoters take note – he also expresses enthusiasm for my suggestion his classic record Tex Perkins and the Dark Horses be reprised in its entirety, as has been done with albums by Ed Kuepper and Died Pretty in the Don’t Look Back series. For now though, his focus is on the forthcoming tour with the Ladyboyz.

This run of shows, which kicks off in October, will eschew the pubs his bands have always favoured for glitizier locales like showrooms and casinos theatres. The venues this time around, he explains “had to be as bad and as dodgy and as tacky and as spectacular as the music itself! A lot of effort has been put into the production of the show.”

The mind boggles. Are we talking a full-on Las Vegas style revue, complete with the so-bad-they’re-good white suits the band sport on the record’s cover? “It kind of is, it’s a big production and stage design is…” He pauses for effect. “Specfuckintacular.”

No. 1’s & No. 2’s is out 11 October on Universal. Tex Perkins and his Ladyboyz bring their stage show spectacular to the following swanky venues.

17 Oct – Wrest Point Entertainment Centre, Tasmania
18 Oct – Country Club Casino, Tasmania
22 Oct – The Ruby Room, Perth
25 Oct – Star City Ballroom, Sydney
26 Oct – The Palms at Crown, Melbourne
31 Oct – Discovery Nightclub, Darwin
1 Nov – Twin Town Resort, Tweed Heads, NSW

And check out the very funny infomercial for No. 1’s & No. 2’s.