Tuesday, April 13, 2004
THROBBING GRISTLE
Greatest Hits
Rough Trade USA, 1981
This record was my introduction to industrial music, and probably a better one couldn't have been orchestrated. It was my first day at college. Me and my roommate headed down to the local commercial block and bought a ton of beer (the legal drinking age at that time was only 18). Then we went back to another guy's depressing cinder-block dorm room. We sat around, reveling in the quiet discomfort shared by people who have just met that same day. We're pounding back lousy American beers one after the other.
Then my roommate decided to put this on the record player (CD's had just come out and nobody had one.) "It's really scary" was his recommendation. He was right. It scared the shit out of me. Within seconds I was crawling up the walls, attempting to claw my own eyes out and eat my own liver. COOL!!!! It was almost as scary as the photo of the "Butcher Cover" on the Beatles' "Rarities" LP, which I bought the day before John Lennon died. Whoah. I couldn't even look at that thing for about five years.
In another context, this music was certainly not that frightening, but still remained just as cool, and about as different as possible from the crap they were playing on the local Hair Metal radio station. Who can possibly compare this to The Scorpions? The intentions and artistic methods are about as far apart as the moons of Venus are from Cleveland. I later got a cassette made of this record and one of the most awesome experiences of my life was putting it on in the car REALLY LOUD while remaining in the car as it slowly crawled through the automatic car wash! CRAZY! It was akin to being in a metallic, throbbing, soap covered womb; the cloth wipers of the car wash coming down over the windsheild of the car; smothering you like some giant alien octopus as the music droned menacingly: WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW
WOWAWAWAWAWAW!!! HOLY CRAP!!! Cheaper than a hit of LSD, let me tell you. Plus, your car gets clean!
Years later I picked up a copy of the vinyl, and it was only after years of record collecting that I understood that the cover was a parody of Martin Denny's EXOTICA record. The clues were there all along: on the back cover it says "Dedicated to Martin Denny." Of course, when I first saw the record I didn't know Martin Denny from Joey Bishop. Live and learn.
At first, I thought the retro cover graphics were a cyncial, smart-ass statement of detached post-modern irony: after all, what, in the early 1980's, could have been more modern (or even post-modern) than harsh, atonal, unmelodic industrial music? But now I realize their intentions with this cover art. The larger context in which they were creating music stretched beyond the narrow confines of the sub-genre they had been shoehorned into by the music press: they saw themselves as having a kinship with Martin Denny as fellow creators of intense instrumental mood music. It didn't matter that one mood was designed for the alcohol-numbed overload of 1950's suburbia, and one for the teeth-grinding angst of Thatcher's Britian. There's a whole load of this type of writing on the back of the LP in the form of impenetrable liner notes, so me going on at length like this certainly is not helping to clarify matters. Just get it and drive on over to the car wash. Then you'll know. By God, you'll know. RATING: Life Changing.
Greatest Hits
Rough Trade USA, 1981
This record was my introduction to industrial music, and probably a better one couldn't have been orchestrated. It was my first day at college. Me and my roommate headed down to the local commercial block and bought a ton of beer (the legal drinking age at that time was only 18). Then we went back to another guy's depressing cinder-block dorm room. We sat around, reveling in the quiet discomfort shared by people who have just met that same day. We're pounding back lousy American beers one after the other.
Then my roommate decided to put this on the record player (CD's had just come out and nobody had one.) "It's really scary" was his recommendation. He was right. It scared the shit out of me. Within seconds I was crawling up the walls, attempting to claw my own eyes out and eat my own liver. COOL!!!! It was almost as scary as the photo of the "Butcher Cover" on the Beatles' "Rarities" LP, which I bought the day before John Lennon died. Whoah. I couldn't even look at that thing for about five years.
In another context, this music was certainly not that frightening, but still remained just as cool, and about as different as possible from the crap they were playing on the local Hair Metal radio station. Who can possibly compare this to The Scorpions? The intentions and artistic methods are about as far apart as the moons of Venus are from Cleveland. I later got a cassette made of this record and one of the most awesome experiences of my life was putting it on in the car REALLY LOUD while remaining in the car as it slowly crawled through the automatic car wash! CRAZY! It was akin to being in a metallic, throbbing, soap covered womb; the cloth wipers of the car wash coming down over the windsheild of the car; smothering you like some giant alien octopus as the music droned menacingly: WAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWAWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOWOW
WOWAWAWAWAWAW!!! HOLY CRAP!!! Cheaper than a hit of LSD, let me tell you. Plus, your car gets clean!
Years later I picked up a copy of the vinyl, and it was only after years of record collecting that I understood that the cover was a parody of Martin Denny's EXOTICA record. The clues were there all along: on the back cover it says "Dedicated to Martin Denny." Of course, when I first saw the record I didn't know Martin Denny from Joey Bishop. Live and learn.
At first, I thought the retro cover graphics were a cyncial, smart-ass statement of detached post-modern irony: after all, what, in the early 1980's, could have been more modern (or even post-modern) than harsh, atonal, unmelodic industrial music? But now I realize their intentions with this cover art. The larger context in which they were creating music stretched beyond the narrow confines of the sub-genre they had been shoehorned into by the music press: they saw themselves as having a kinship with Martin Denny as fellow creators of intense instrumental mood music. It didn't matter that one mood was designed for the alcohol-numbed overload of 1950's suburbia, and one for the teeth-grinding angst of Thatcher's Britian. There's a whole load of this type of writing on the back of the LP in the form of impenetrable liner notes, so me going on at length like this certainly is not helping to clarify matters. Just get it and drive on over to the car wash. Then you'll know. By God, you'll know. RATING: Life Changing.
