Chicken Out of Hell
An Andrew
Hamlin Joint
Made in
Merrie England Dept.: After accepting
John & Yoko's Unfinished Music No. 1 Two
Virgins into my life I shortlisted the
people I could share it with, and ended with a
page dripping solid ink. Scratch the one Yoko fan
I knew well, but haven't known for years. Scratch
the reclusive producer with the David Berkowitz
eyes, always sticking a thumb in such lost causes
until he lost me. Scratch the Metal Machine
Music fan club--took me long enough to get
it, but each of us mostly stood around waiting
for the others to break. Scratch even the
far-thinking couple who gave it to me for my
birthday, whom I haven't heard from since about
then--L. and C., if you're out there, I'm loving
it and I'm still waiting to hear about your
housewarming party.
So I'm stuck with
this lovely record that degenerates into ear pain
any further than my cubbyhole's hallway door
(I've seen big slick ads for the new Onoseries
but haven't yet seen any of them for sale, a
handy enabler for this persecution fantasy). The
record's naked cover no longer shocks but only
cracks a smile, blown into a laugh by the
goggling voodoo doll around Lennon's neck and
Paul McCartney's testimonial typewritten
underfoot: "When two great Saints meet it is
a humbling experience. The long battles to prove
he was a Saint."
Saints aside--and
that's exactly the point. As the kid in the
supermarket pronounced "definitely
alternative" Frank Kogan's tape of Bo
Diddley singing "Bring It To Jerome,"
so too I think we're far enough past Mark
Chapman's bio Let Me Take You Down, past
Season of Glass, December 1980, Double
Fantasy, "How Do You Sleep?",
early 1970, etc., to make this record make sense
as the larking of two intelligent and
incidentally famous people.
"Side
One" is mostly bird calls, bolstered by
Lennon druggily pondering how "It's really
odd making the tape 'cause you've got to
superimpose...," a piano so distorted it
sounds like a guitar, a guitar so quavery it
sounds like a steel guitar, Yoko's patent-pending
torture cries (brought to the fore on the next
album Life With the Lions, where the
liner notes were George Martin's "No
comment"), and some musical hall
ivory-pounding. "What's that noise?"
Yoko inquires. "It's just me honey, putting
the fire on!" "Whooooooooooo's
theeeeeeeere?"
"Bullfucking
tiddle, I tellya..." A boat whistle rises
into a demonic Lennon laugh. "'Scuse
me..." he mutters; then a dark pause into
which we can project amusement or horror.
"...Thank you," he finishes. End of
"Side One."
"Side
Two" features of ostinatos, burbling static,
and absconded material still uncredited,
presumably because nobody bothered to sue over
the last thirty years. The couple's grace- given
timing never deserts them; wrong speed banjos
come in at exactly echo Yoko's burbling; the
unseen hand arrests and releases the trombone
swing record trombone swing record at only
optimum moments of sparkle and comedy. Still, the
ubiquitous echo and the druggy organ dampen the
humor, blowing cold winds through the whole
half-hour. The sound of two people trying to keep
warm in a ruined cathedral, dead of winter. The
bonus track, "Remember Love," plays a
game with much simpler rules, John picking out a
pretty variation on "Julia," paean to
the two women in his life.
Skeleton
Dance Dept.: Blur, "Song 2,"
from Blur. A band this stuck in the 80's
would swipe at grunge with a riff taken
down from the Beat's wall ("Big Shot"
to be exact), but methinks they doth drool too
much for their own ironies. David Essex's
"Rock On" chilled because the 50's
icons wouldn't stay still--they kept poking hands
and ruined blonde heads through the sod David's
goth reverence kept rolling out. Blur's two
minutes and change gives off none of that
luxuriating horror or the conventional horror
tale's safe conservatism. It's more like dancing
on a grave yet to be filled.
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