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Curious - I found myself searching for a "hook" for my review of the Idiot Flesh CD, when the People's Choice disc arrives and provides it for me. Komar & Melamid are known for their demographic art, for instance, conducting surveys in order to determine what elements are most and least desired in painting. They've turned their tongue-in-cheek sociology to music and have gathered data on what people most and least want to hear in music. The results? "The most unwanted music is over 25 minutes long, veers wildly between loud and quiet sections, between fast and slow tempos, and features timbres of extremely high and low pitch, with each dichotomy presented in abrupt transition. The most unwanted orchestra was determined to be large, and features the accordion and bagpipe . . . banjo, flute, tuba, harp, organ, [and] synthesizer . . . ." While Idiot Flesh fails to offer bagpipes (alas), the rest of the description fits Fancy disturbingly well. And the odds are quite good that this disc will indeed be unwanted by the vast majority of the population. As a Milk writer, though, I'm a card-carrying musical elitist - so I expect to like the unpopular and dislike the popular. The problem is that where Komar & Melamid do not take their task too seriously, Idiot Flesh seem to take their humor too seriously. I mean, it might be perversely funny to include a song whose lyrics are taken directly from the scrawlings of a "teen devil worshipper" who killed his mother - but deliver it in a voice redolent of Peters Murphy and Hammill and the effect is over-anxious, strained. And then include a ten-minute musical setting of T.S. Eliot's The Wasteland. . .did I mention that "intellectual subjects" were among the least wanted musical features in Komar & Melamid's surveys? The best things about the Idiot Flesh CD aren't even musical: it comes in a beautiful, devilishly folded die-cut cardboard case (my copy, alas, was inaccurately cut. . .), and it features the screamingly hilarious "Cheesus," a bogus commercial for "the snack food that dies for you." Play it at Christmas for your Aunt Edna. The Komar & Melamid "Most Unwanted Song," though, is just about the funniest thing I've ever heard. Okay, it will drive you crazy through repetition (remember that "Lonesome Bulldog" bit on the Butthole Surfers' Pioughd album?), but its absurdity quotient is high enough to overcome such trivial reservations. Listen with perversity - the worse it is, the more virtue you obtain by being able to listen to it. (What was I saying about elitism?) And the "Most Wanted Song"? Deeply evil. I found myself thinking, at first, "okay, they'll throw together some horrible schlock sounding just like the worst of the top 40, I can hate it heartily and feel musically virtuous. . ." - yep. But only at first. It sounds almost exactly like late-period Was (Not Was) - the gloppiest pseudo-R&B, lyrics slightly skewed but not enough to overcome the saccharine surface, etc. - but then I started having thoughts like, "hmm...the male vocals actually have a kind of gritty texture that's almost appealing, and Vernon Reid's guitar solo actually is a little more dynamic and musically intriguing than the genre demands, even though it's obviously trying to evoke cliches, too..." - and I realized I was sunk. I found myself sort of liking some aspect of the "most wanted" song. I'll have to turn in my elitist card. I'll probably end up living on the streets, scrounging change to buy Janet Jackson records. The horror, the horror. . . . |
