Happy Death-Day, Oderous Urungus!

No.254, aired March 26, 2014. GWAR special, with readings from the Book of Isaiah (KJV), Ezra Pound & Beowulf (trans. Michael Alexander).

David Brockie, AKA Oderous Urungus, exhiled member of the Scumdogs of the Universe & lead bellower for the band of murdurous aliens known as GWAR, died Sunday March 23rd at age 50 (in the case of the earthling Brockie) or 43-billion-something (in the case of Oderous Urungus). 

For the uninitiated, GWAR is a costumed, monstrous, satirical heavy-metal band known for their wild stage-shows at which effigies are murdered & blood & other fluids are routinely spilled into the audience. I previously blogged about two of my four GWAR concerts in Regina and Winnipeg
(scroll to 5th post down).

GWAR is not the work of a solo artist genius directing hierlings – it is a multi-media collaboration involving many musicians, artists, and constume and set designers, film-makers, stage-hands, and not to mention recording engineers & mixers & marketers & everyone else up the art-industry chain which is in turn fed by many other industries stretching back to the BIG BANG BOOM. However, when I, as writer with a taste for the EPIC, think about GWAR, which I often do, I am mostly thinking about the artistic vision present in the lyrics & vocals of Brockie in his Oderous personna. He is the only constant member through the band’s history, and for me, the contributor whose contribution is what most makes the band worth commenting on.

I said in the program that GWAR is dead – which may not be exactly true. I read in one of the online tributes that GWAR may go on in memory of Brockie – which is fine by me – but of course it will not be the same. Brockie gave the project its epic focus, its horrifying clarity. GWAR did not create “literary” metal, as did Iron Maiden & Rush, for example. No, GWAR is an epic original, with deep roots in Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, The Bible, and every other bloody book in the sad yet vibrant history of human literature. Although there are many subtle examples in GWAR lyrics that could demonstrate that Oderous is a well-read monster, what actually matters is that Brockie’s ability to plug into what is REAL in the secular & religious canons allows him to take great creative RISKS in art-life unthinkable to lesser bands, and to invoke a historical gravitas unavailable to other shock-rockers & glam-rockers.

One commentator quoted Brockie in the week of his passing answering a question on the meaning of life, saying that the meaning of life is death. Nothing uncanny or remarkable here, I’m afraid. Looking for Oderous Urungus talking about death is like looking for a needle in a needlestack. If he was not talking about death, then he was probably talking about birth or sex, and often all three. His lyrics are incessently material – base. When he talks about religion, it is bloody wooden crosses and lusting priests. When he talks about war, it is all about the soldier killing, raping & being killed. When he talks about philosophy – he doesn’t talk about philosophy – he talks about human life reduced to its true essence, which is the fragile, breathing, bleeding, dying body itself.

I have much more to say about GWAR – all in time – but for now I feel inclined to comment on a couple of the songs played in this episode, those that some folks may be inclined to call “offensive,” as it were.

In a pair of songs (2 of a trio from the America Must Be Destroyed album), GWAR looks at life from the perspective of a rock star. What is actually disturbing in this pair – Rock N Roll Never Felt So Good and The Road Behind – is the directness & honesty of their performance. Where Frank Zappa combines ernest (if slightly ridiculous) lyrics with a mocking delivery, Brockie delivers horrifying content with a songwriter’s sincerity – he means every word – and in doing so reveals a general condition of falseness in rock music.

If either song were removed from its GWAR context & played on radio (and they sound very much like they could be hit rock songs from the late 70s/early 80s) it might come off as humourless and homicidal, truly horrible. But in the GWAR context they are hilarious send-ups of the rock and roll industry.

Rock N Roll Never Felt So Good is a GWAR original, but it is a also obviously a KISS song, or at least as close as you can get without being KISS. On the album, it arrives in the wake of mostly thrash metal, with some lounge jazz & rock & other sounds mixed in. The sudden incursion of radio-friendly rock is jarring. In GWAR’s typically heavier songs, the mechanized violence of metal becomes comedic ritual mass-murder. In the case of KISS’s glam rock, the violence implied in the music becomes a single violent assault. Go ahead and read the lyrics if you’re curious. In the first posted version of this essay, I mistakenly implied thtat these are Brockie's lyrics - in fact, according to wikipedia, Michael Bishop (Beefcake the Mighty on bass & vocals) was the sole credited songwriter, and therefore the lyricist.

The brutal acts depicted perfectly suit their musical context. Anyone with ears can hear the disconnect between the lyrical content of typical rock songs (school-boy crushes, innocent good-times) and their musical context, not to mention the actual excesses of rock-stars lives. GWAR shows us what is lurking behind rock spectacle – the domination and brutality of modern industry. Note that the images, when combined, are nonsensical – the protagonist first notices his victim’s age and clothing, and later that she is quadraplegic, and even later that her limbs are made of wood. Actually, these images describe the state of the stadium rock audience – immobile and passive in their numbered seats. The debaucherous acts range from conventional – “I laid a line of coke on her tits” – to homoerotic – “I need the taste of dick on my lips” – to bizarre – “I fucked her asshole with a piece of frozen shit.” The last of these could be a description of what bands like KISS are selling their audiences – moments of life fixed into frozen form and sold as shitty, predicable product. What is important is that the violent lyrics are sung in a way that is convincing as a hit rock song – there is no dissociation between the words & music. To demonstrate the point, at the very end of the song Oderous assumes his announcer personna, and asks “how you feelin’ now, baby?”, then the band plays a short metal lick from their Hell-O album – so the song is clearly framed as a rock side-show. (Side note: one of the particularities of 1980s media censorship is that far more explicit content could appear graphically in music videos than could be sung in words on record or printed on a lyric sheet – think of Motley Crue’s bondage videos, which displayed far more of their lived experience than any of their lyrics).

The next song on the album, The Road Behind, continues the rock star theme in ballad form. Again, Oderous sounds frighteningly sincere & plausible. But instead of ridiculous rock-star sentiment, GWAR shows us a spoiled, drug-addicted monster. And again, the imagery works at different registers, from plausible – “signed a million-dollar contract / I puked on every page” – to exagerrated – “slaughtered half the crew cause they ate my deli tray” – to rockstar bullshit combined with GWAR fantasy -

Well there you have it baby
I'm just a sensitive guy
Y'know I snuffed a million planets
But I still find time to cry
 
- all sung with the same affected sincerity. GWAR's homicidal lyrics dramatize the distance between music industry stars and their audience, who are reduced to lifeless corpses in endless revenue chains. Some phrases, “homicidal rage,” “you were a road-kill baby” – could be used in everyday rockstar situations, but in this context the death metaphors are resurrected & made literal.

GWAR’s bloody corpus of recorded events is indeed an epic poem of our time, and it will require a writer’s lifetime to understand & articulate its import. Stay tuned.

Part 1

1. Happy Death-Day - GWAR
2. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
3. Time For Death - GWAR
4. From The Eastern Gate I: Ceremonial Music – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp) -- Isaiah Ch.34
5. The Salaminizer - GWAR
6. From The Eastern Gate: Haiku I – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp)
7. Ham On The Bone - GWAR
8. From The Eastern Gate II: On Permanence – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp) -- Sestina: Alt Aforte - Ezra Pound
9. Rock ‘N’ Roll Never Felt So Good - GWAR
10. From The Eastern Gate: Haiku II – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp)
11. The Road Behind - GWAR

Part 2

1. From The Eastern Gate III: Birds At The Mountain Temple – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp) – Beowulf
2. You Can’t Kill Terror - GWAR
3. From The Eastern Gate: Haiku II – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp)
4. Go To Hell - GWAR
5. From The Eastern Gate IV: The Mandarins – Alexina Louie (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp)
6. Damnation Under God - GWAR
7. Song of Nymphs III: Ritual – Marjan Mozetich (comp.) / Erica Goodman (harp)
8. Sick of You - GWAR

The Defense Secretary's Rite Of Spring

No.253, aired March 19, 2014. Annual “Rite of Spring” episode, featuring Donald Rumsfeld’s audiobook Known and Unknown: A Memoir (Sentinel, 2011). Not a terribly revealing book. I was a bit surprised at how distant, in his own account, the Defense Secretary seemed from the President’s office, and in particular, Vice-President Dick Cheney, during the Iraq invasion.

An interesting moment comes at page.422 of the print version, when Rumsfeld writes: “My concerns about Iraq went beyond Saddam’s support of terrorism or any involvement with AL-Qaeda.” So long out of office, and with the invasion a full decade past, and in a format that will reach a relatively small population, Rumsfeld applies the precise propaganda techniques that were used to justify the invasion in 2003. He makes an association between Iraq and terrorism, implying a connection, but is careful not to say that there is an actual connection. Has he internalized this technique to the point that he doesn’t know he is doing it? Or is he still in political mode, so long after the fact?

Part 1

1. Part I: The Adoration Of The Earth (Introduction) – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
2. Gloryhounds – Royal Red Brigade
3. Young Girl’s Dances – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
4. Pray For Darkness – Cancer Bats
5. Mock Abduction – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
6. Herr Noit – Lederhosen Lucil
7. Round Dances – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
8. Dress To Kill - Royal Red Brigade
9. Games Of Rival Tribes / Wise Elder’s Procession / Adoration Of The Earth / Dance Of The Earth – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Part 2

1. Part II: The Sacrifice (Introduction) – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
2. Lashed Out & Gashed - Pericardium
3. Mystic Circles / Glorification – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
4. Throwing The Fight – Sailboats Are White
5. Summoning The Ancients – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
6. The Fourth Finger Of My Left Hand – Sailboats Are White
7. Ancients’ Ritual – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra
8. Bodies - Pericardium
9. Sacrificial Dance – Igor Stravinsky (comp.) / Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Anxious Dub Monster

No.252, aired March 12, 2014. Dub poetry by Toronto’s Lillian Allen + bits of an audiobook  abbreviation of Gary Zukav’s The Seat of the Soul.

Part 1

1. Anxious For A Revolution – Lillian Allen
2. Dueti (for 2 vioins) No.21 – Luciano Berio
3  Robot Dub Jam – Guerilla Funk Monster
4. Dueti (for 2 vioins) No.16 – Luciano Berio
5. When All Is Said And Done – Napalm Death
6. Dueti (for 2 vioins) No.17 – Luciano Berio
7. Collectivize – Lillian Allen
8. Comp.114(+108A) – Anthony Braxton
9. Totalities – Lillian Allen
10. Nothing To Say – Guerilla Funk Monster

Part 2

1. Dueti (for 2 vioins) Nos.18-20 – Luciano Berio
2. Burgundy / Ani Could Sing – Guerilla Funk Monster
3. Black Voice – Lillian Allen
4. Comp.115 – Anthony Braxton
5. Anxiety – Lillian Allen
6. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
7. Lowlife (Cryptic Slaughter cover) – Napalm Death

Metalstorm

No.251, aired March 5, 2014.

This episode's genesis begins with an urge to play Avram’s Metalstorm. I selected a passage from the fourth Night from William Blake’s Four Zoas, where Los, the prophet of Eternity in the form of a blacksmith, is rebuilding the fallen world out of the smashed body of Urizen, the god of reason. Out of these deathly metal remains, the deeply flawed modern world is fashioned with limits placed on death & chaos. In terms of a single life, a child destroys her own imagination in order to gain acceptance in the fallen “adult” world, and for a time relinquishes her right to reshape reality (the fall of Tharmas, in Blakean terms). Into this void rises the rule of Urizen, corresponding to the  school system, where abstract ideas reign over material existence. When in early adulthood we realize scholastic notions of grammar and geometry have little direct relevance to our survival, Urizen’s empire declines, and we are left in a state of chaos until we can successfully enter the real world of jobs and money. Los’s activities in the fourth Night are humanity’s efforts to create something out of whatever remains of our imaginations, whatever is not utterly destroyed during our adolescence.

But how do I relate Blake’s use of metal to heavy metal music, you ask? Well, Los’s activities in the Fourth Night relate to our imaginative efforts to recreate life out of the fallen world of markets & money. We shore up our own existence, and only then look for a reason to live. The fact that “survival” and “living” are somehow separate activities is a particularly modern problem – a merely philosophical quandary (“existentialism”) to some, and a practical-theoretical question to some others (“Marxists”). But in any event, Heavy Metal music is an attempt to divert the purpose of capitalist machinery to unify the principles of survival and life-force. It puts the buzz of engines to therapeutic use, and adds a scream of protest.

And Ana-Maria Avram is doing something parallel with Metalstorm, a piece of computer assisted music that seems to conjur up a heavy metal pastoral, generating the “metal flies” referenced in GWAR’s Metal Metal Land. A dystopic swamp where gigantic contraptions emerge to breed with ominous high-voltage stormclouds descending.

A small correction: I said Exciter was from the late-1980s – in fact, the band was formed in 1978, with Heavy Metal Maniac released in 1983, which means these Ottawa headbangers anteceded (and are said to have influenced) the first generation of west coast thrash (Metallica, Slayer, Death Angel, etc).

Part 1

1. Moments Of Silence – Sheavy
2. Heavy Metal Maniac – Exciter
3. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
4. The Iron Giant – Hylozoists
5. Iron Dogs – Exciter
6. Bipolar – Metallic Taste of  Blood
7. Is Your Metal Heavy? – Muscle Bitches
8. Fountains Of The Forgotten – Buckethead

Part 2

1. Metal Metal Land – GWAR
2. Metalstorm I – Ana-Maria Avaram
3. One Tooth For The Time Train – Buckethead
4. The Metal – Tenacious D

Ezekiel, Eunoia, Enion

No.250, aired February 26, 2014. Audiobook was Ezekiel chs.22-25. In the second half, read more passages from Eunioa and The Four Zoas (see episode no.249 below).

Part 1

1. Bubble Up – Muscle Bitches
2. Clearly Invisible – Simply Saucer
3. Asscrack Bathmat – Muscle Bitches
4. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
5. Takin’ You Down – Simply Saucer
6. All The Way To Outer Space – Secret Saucer

Part 2

1. Skulls In The Closet – Les Georges Leningrad
2. The Sicilian Clan / You Will Be Shot – John Zorn
3. Sleek Answer – Les Georges Leningrad
4. Disintegrator – Secret Saucer
5. Scissorhands – Les Georges Leningrad
6. Mole Machine – Simply Saucer
7. Sailing - Ripcordz

The Legendary Spectacle of Helen & Enion

No.249, aired February 19, 2014. During instramental tracks, short exerpts from the following three books were read in rotation:

William Blake – Vala, Or The Four Zoas, Night The First
Guy Debord – Society Of The Spectacle, nos.26-39.
Christian Bok – Eunoia, ch. “e”

Not to place a superfluous weir across the free-flow of the listener’s own thoughts, but there’s a fairly obvious theme of separation happening here. In Society of the Spectacle, Debord provides an update to Karl Marx’s observations in the 1850s & 60s on the separation of the worker from the product of labour (commodities). For Debord, writing in the 1950s, the entire world appears as a continuous flow of commodities, with the conditions of their production concealed behind the smooth, illusory sheen of market values, so our separation from reality becomes a general condition. William Blake, anticipating Marx a half-century earlier (c.1800), writes of humanity’s power to shape material existence (Tharmas) separating from our desired vision of the world (Enion). Apart from each other, Tharmas becomes a greedy spectre struggling for existence (in other words, a modern worker), and Enion becomes an aged, vagrant earth-goddess, representing nature devoid of imagination. Bok’s Eunoia separates the five English vowels each into their chapters. Chapter E tells the tale of Helen’s escapades in Troy, separated from her native Greece – for further thots, see my amazonian Eunoia review.

Part 1

1. Dueti (for 2 vioins) No.8 – Luciano Berio
2. Losing My Religion – Kleins96
3. Dueti (for 2 vioins) No.9 – Luciano Berio
4. Stoup-Stained Graves – Rehashed
5. Dueti (for 2 vioins) Nos.10-15 – Luciano Berio
6. Bars – Point Break
7. Mary Jane – William Tell & The Marksmen
8. Go Home Grosep – Kleins96 -- (with some unplanned web audio mixed in)
9. Venture 91-200 – Secret Saucer
10. Fuck My Life – Rehashed

Part 2

1. Right Here Right Now – Ripcordz
2. Naval Aviation In Art? – Frank Zappa
3. Derive 2 – Pierre Boulez