Best Off[1] (stylised as tism.bestoff.) is a compilation album by the Australian alternative rock band TISM, released on 29 July 2002.[2] The album peaked at No. 44 on the ARIA Charts.[3]
Bronius Zumeris from Beat magazine opined that "Offbeat wit and profanity litter their work" while "Cynics argue that they are a puerile, one joke band trying to flog a dying horse" and the collection "is not a flawless appraisal of their 15 odd years of cultural/musical terror. But it does collate much of the essential TISM for the consumer society."[4]
Initial copies of the album came with a bonus disc, This Is Serious Mum: A Collection of Bedroom Recordings 1982-1992, containing 25 unreleased bedroom demos spanning TISM's first ten years.
This Is Serious Mum: A Collection of Bedroom Recordings 1982-1992
No.
Title
Length
1.
"Eckermann is Very Silly"
2:58
2.
"The Ballad of the Semitic Nazi"
3:30
3.
"Yassa Ara-Thin-A-Go-Go"
4:57
4.
"I Go to Werribee"
3:01
5.
"Ladies and Gentlemen: The Judeo - Christian Ethic"
2:26
6.
"Ezra Pound, Axe-King
Part 1: The Ballad of J. Arthur White Australia Policy
Part 2: The Petty Bourgeois Revolution
Part 3: Art, Religion and the Neo-Classical Dialectic
"I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Whittle Away My Furniture"
2:26
18.
Untitled (titled "(Somewhere in This School...)" on the iTunes release)
3:46
19.
"How to End All Suffering"
2:34
20.
"Frenzy"
1:13
21.
"I'm Gonna Treat Ya to a Neitszche Double Feature"
2:17
22.
"You're Only as Good as Your Fans"
2:18
23.
"My Geronation"
2:23
24.
"This Morning I Had Work to Do"
2:56
25.
"Tu e La Tua Razza fa'un Culo"
1:13
"The Ballad of the Semitic Nazi" and "Doug Parkinson Sings Christie Allen" previously appeared in excerpt form on Great Truckin' Songs of the Renaissance.
The full version of "Unknown, Unacknowledged, Unforgettable, Underpants" would later appear as a hidden track on the 2021 remastered reissue of This Is Serious Mum, the band's 1984 demo tape.
Lyrics from "My Gerontation" reappeared in the 1993 song "Jesus Pots the White Ball" on the band's EP Australia the Lucky Cunt.
"Tu e La Tua Razza fa'un Culo" (correct Italian: Tu e la tua razza vaffanculo) was sampled in a demo recording of "Aussiemandias" dating back to October 1991, included on the iTunes version of the band's 1992 EP The Beasts of Suburban and the 2023 box set of that album.
