I’ve recently completed a track with long-time musical hero JG Thirlwell, aka Foetus, Manorexia, Steroid Maximus and many more, for my new record due out in Sept. To say it was an honor is an understatement as well a dream fulfilled. Since first being given a cassette of seminal album’s ‘Hole’ and ‘Nail’ in the 80’s I’ve been hooked on his music and always checked for new releases. He’s been on the list of collaborators I’ve wanted for this new record for years and, to add the icing on the cake, I’m pleased beyond words with the resulting track – ‘Prey’. It will kick off my third EP this autumn, before the album compiles the trilogy shortly after.
If you’re not familiar with his work, the Quietus have just published this piece by my good friend Mark Emsley of ireallylovemusic. It’s as good a place as any to start. I’ve also put together a visual discography of all his many guises – Foetus, Wiseblood, Steroid Maximus, Manorexia, Garage Monsters, Stinkfist, Clint Ruin, The Flesh Volcano, Baby Zizanie, Hydroze Plus and of course, JG Thirlwell. Three decades’ work and that’s just his own productions, not including remixes, collaborations and four season’s worth of scores for The Venture Brothers TV series. One of the joys of any JGT production is that the artwork is always excellent, with themes and colours recurring to form a visual identity.
If this has piqued your interest but you don’t know where to start, I suggest the 80’s albums ‘Hole’, Nail’ and ‘Thaw’. ‘Sink’ is a great catch-all compilation of a lot of the surrounding singles and compilation tracks of the era. Noughties albums ‘Flow’, ‘Damp’ and ‘Hide’ are amazing and, if vocals aren’t your thing, any Steroid Maximus album is worth a try.
i love foetus music.
i am a foetalmaniac.
“i wanna die with my hands around a black man’s throat” from the provocatively-titled “free james brown (so he can run me down).”
or maybe a line like “it’s a coon doggy hoe-down / black-eyed peas and fried nigger with … coon on the cob” from “hauss on fah” and all the images of a gang of black guys “venting steaming baboon lust” as they kick the brains of some “white bitch” they just gang banged.
or maybe a line like “you mix the whites and colors / everything is turning grey” from “verklemmt.
when he says “let’s lynch a nigger in that tree / the christian way of life” in “wholesome town,” it’s easy to see that he’s making fun of rednecks and racists and country assholes who commit violence against those who are different from themselves, and when he talks about “a posse of irate fatback rednecks / looking for another white nigger to trash,” again, it’s easy to say that he’s taking the piss out of those culturally-backwards assholes, especially when he is the one they are after.
same thing with “english faggot.” it might at first sound homophobic, as if JGT is the one expressing the hateful violence towards gay people, but when you realize he is the one who has experienced this hatred, he is the one who had someone leave a message on his answering machine calling his an “english faggot” and threatening to beat his ass… ah hah! you see the character behind the song.
but i can’t say that about all the songs with racist words and imagery. some of them i just… man… i just simply don’t allow anyone else to hear them, so that i don’t have to explain.
is it that his music is a way of dealing with guilty feelings of racism that plague him, so he makes those feelings into characters to explore them and open them up to derision? does he himself deplore racism, and this is his way of getting people to talk about it in very provocative terms?
or… what?
i mean, i have never heard the word “nigger” in so many of an artist’s songs outside of hip-hop as i have with JGT’s music. why do you suppose that is, and what should we make of it?
ideas?
personally, i adhere to the “creating a persona to explore fucked up ideas” thing, but still… there are songs i simply don’t show people so i don’t have to defend them.
Logged
Sounds amazing
Pizza