Bad music for bad people

Splotchy has put up the complete Lenten Mix: Man, You Know That Sh*t's Not Good For You, my Green Monkey Music Project brainchild. Being the procrastinating blowhard that I am, I waited until everyone else wrote about their song choices before being sufficiently shamed to talk a little bit about my tracks.

Why do I listen to raunchy music? I don't know. As a kid, I didn't listen to it for its shock value--I was too obedient and made sure my parents never heard what I was listening to if it was "offensive". As a parent, it's only recently that I've stopped hiding raunchy music from my kids, once I was sure they had already learned all those bad words, without my help. Another big milestone was when the kids started digging through our LP archives and the vast digital freakshow of the internet and picking out a lot of that raunchy music on their own. Our eldest claims that listening to all that freakery gives her a greater appreciation of our own normalcy.

That, my friends, is a relief.

First up is F*ck the Pain Away by Peaches. Our eldest, Nora, told me an amusing story about Peaches claiming, in an interview in Bust magazine, that this song was once deemed too inappropriate for some strip club. I don't need to post any lyrics for this. Nora describes the song as sounding like the techno soundtrack in a bad Eurotrash nightclub in a sleazy movie. She wants to make sure I note that she means that in a good way.



The second track is Little Girl by John & Jackie. I have this on two compilations, Rockin' Bones and Las Vegas Grind. Released in 1958, it's a manically upbeat little pop number with John crooning some fairly straightforward lyrics:

Little Girl
Little Girl
Well I love you and I think you're fine
Well you're cute let's make some time...

What sets this song apart, especially for 1958, are the backup vocals by Jackie, who gasps and moans and does a better job of vocalizing her orgasms than any porn actress. Whew. I need a cigarette when this song's over, and I don't even smoke.

My favorite is next: Sister Ray from the Velvet Underground album White Light/White Heat, all 17-plus glorious minutes of it. Music that must be endured to be enjoyed. It has drag queens, heroin, oral sex, sailors, gun violence and a police raid. The song was recorded in one take, with all the amps turned up to "11". In a great apocryphal story the recording engineer left during the session after setting the tape to record. I used to get psyched up to work midnights by listening to this track on my drive to work. Here's what Lou Reed said in this interview:

"'Sister Ray' was done as a joke--no, not as a joke, but it has eight characters in it and this guy gets killed and nobody does anything. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear. The jam came about right there in the studio. We didn't use any splices or anything. When we did 'Sister Ray,' we turned up to 10 flat-out, leakage all over the place. [The producers] asked us when it would end. We didn't know. We were doing the whole heavy-metal trip back then. If 'Sister Ray' isn't an example of heavy metal, I don't know what is."

It occurred to me that it would have been possible to do nearly all of this mix and draw only from the collected body of work of The Velvet Underground and Lou Reed. This next track is the title track of Lou Reed's 1978 album Street Hassle.

The tableau set out in Street Hassle can be seen as a worn-out, late 70's version of the scene going on in Sister Ray. A smack fueled orgy without the joy or exuberance:

"Hey that c*nt's not breathing,
I think she's had too much
Of something or other, hey man,
you know what I mean?
I don't mean to scare you,
but you're the one who came here
And you're the one who's going to have to take her when you leave...

Sha la la la man...why don't you just slip away?"

Yes, it's 10 minutes and 52 seconds of good times, presented in three distinct movements, with an absolutely earnest and therefore hilarious spoken word interlude by Bruce Springsteen dropped in at about 9 minutes.

Of course I wasn't the only one to think of Nick Cave when I thought of someone making music that embodies sin.

Stagger Lee is an old blues song that's been recorded hundreds of times, with variations on the theme. We've got about 10 versions of it here at the compound, if you count the Clash's Wrong Em Boyo. Most of the versions tell the story about a killing that takes place over gambling and/or a hat.

The Nick Cave version, snarled out slowly in front of a heavy beat and ominous piano, features gun violence, murder, ass-kicking, a prostitute, ass-f*cking and wildly obscene language that might even make Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann wince.

Enjoy!

So long, and thanks for all the no-bid contracts

Halliburton to move headquarters to Dubai

Where do you start with this? You can start with a nice, angry overview of Halliburton here at Halliburton Watch. You can read an editorial here, a Salon piece on Halliburton in Iraq here, and a nice little piece from that left-wing rag Business Week here. If you've got some time to kill, you can Google "Halliburton Profiteering", "Halliburton wrongdoing", or "Halliburton greed".

*Note: the facility pictured above is not the new Halliburton HQ in Dubai. It's a picture of the Khalifa Resort in Kuwait ,where Halliburton subsidiary KBR set up shop in 2002 to prepare "support" for American troops about to invade Iraq. KBR ran a hotel tab of about $1.5 million per month while they subcontracted (and overcharged) billions of dollars worth of that "support."

How long, Lord?

Today in Televangelism

February 21st, 1988: Jimmy Swaggart gives his famous "I have sinned against you" speech, blubbering and begging forgiveness after getting caught with a hooker in a Metairie, Louisiana motel. Swaggert, who helped drive fellow evangelists Jim Bakker and Marvin Gorman out of the ministry, was then defrocked himself. Clearly the irony was lost on Jimmy, as he then railed against the Assemblies of God for their lack of forgiveness. There are some good accounts of Swaggart's travails here and here.

Showing how much tougher your old school preachers were, Swaggart blamed his hooker and porn problem on demons, and had said demons cast out over the telephone by Oral Roberts--no three weeks of chickenshit Ted Haggard "counseling" for Jimmy. Nope, just one phone call.

The demons stayed cast out for at least a couple of years. In 1991 Swaggart was again caught with a prostitute. Showing that the forgiveness of his followers was near-inexhaustible, he still had a congregation. He addressed his flock: "God says it's none of your business!"

And he still has that congregation: Jimmy Swaggart Ministries.

I'd say it's clear that Rev. Swaggart has been humbled by his struggles with sins of the flesh. During his Sunday sermon on November 10, 2002, Swaggart shared his thoughts on the prophet Muhammad:

Thank God for that Baptist preacher who stood up and said at a Baptist convention, "I'm going to tell you who Muhammad is: he is a sex pervert, deviant, pedophile who married a 7-year-old girl."

You're not hearing me saints? "What did you say," you ask? The Baptist preacher before thousands said Muhammad was a sex deviant, a pervert, a pedophile. He married a 7-year-old little girl! A little girl, seven years old--that's a pedophile. And, oh, the news went crazy. "Ohhhhhhhh! Hear what he said?"

I don't know who you are, Mr. Preacher, but thank God for you--thank God for a spine that's like a Texas sawlog. Thank God for a heart that beats for Jesus Christ.

Speaking for myself, personally, if I'd ever been caught getting freaky with a series of prostitutes, I'd probably refrain from public statements. But that's just me.

Ten Favorite Things

It's been a while since I got on one of these things. Lulu, Wonderturtle and Tenacious S have all composed some wonderful lists so far.

Here is mine:

Ten favorite things starting with the letter S:

The Sazerac. I've mentioned them before, and in my opinion it's a perfect cocktail:

• 2 oz rye whiskey (bourbon will do in an emergency)
• ½ oz bar syrup
• absinthe (you can use Absente or Herbsaint)
• 3 drops Peychaud's Bitters
• Twist of lemon peel

1. Put a few drops of absinthe in a rocks glass and swirl to coat the glass.
2. Mix the whiskey, syrup and bitters in a cocktail shaker over ice until chilled.
3. Pour into rocks glass over two ice cubes. Rub rim of glass with lemon peel.
4. Enjoy!

Sex: Well, duh. Seriously, I'm fascinated with it, all its complexity, joys and horrors. My love of all things sexy and sleazy is ironic, though, given that I'm also offended by the increasing pornification of our culture, and I'm fairly modest in my personal life.

Slot machine noise: That exciting, omnipresent noise inside every big casino. Every once in a while I'll hear something that reminds me of it—a cell phone ring, a video game—and I'll be instantly transported to that wonderful moment when you first walk into a casino.

Skillets. Big iron skillets. We have a nice collection of well-seasoned cast iron skillets, and I use them nearly every day. They feel great in your hand when you're cooking, and they have a great old look. Plus Wanda Jackson had a great song about beating her husband with one.

From My Big Iron Skillet:

There's gonna be some changes made
When you get home tonight
Cause I'm gonna to teach you wrong from right

With my big iron skillet in my hand
Gonna show you how a little woman
Can whip a great big man
If you live through the fight
We're gonna have when you get home
You'll wake up, and find yourself alone

Sweet tea: Summertime in the south. I can only drink it when the temperature goes over 90.

Sunshine: I've always liked being outside, and I dig that near-blinding sunbaked feeling you get in places like Las Vegas, or the combination of sunshine and water in places like the Florida keys. I seem to crave it more as I get older.

Swamps: Why am I so attracted to a landscape that, frankly, scares the shit out of me? Snakes and alligators. Fever, bourbon and decay. Mmmm... I've been in mangrove swamps in Florida, and Cypress swamps in Louisiana. I like the cypress swamps better.

Shotguns: BOOYAH! There is not much in this world more fun and satisfying than shooting a big-ass 12 gauge shotgun. I own two of them, a Remington 870 tactical shotgun (think Ving Rhames in the Dawn of the Dead remake) and an antique Winchester Model 12.

Splatter movies: The wetter, the better. I want so much gore and grue flying off the screen you feel like you need a raincoat.

Summertime: And the living is easy. Catfish, barbecue, sweet tea, drinking on the back porch. Sleepy dogs.