The "Machine Messiah" thing got in the way--it was pretty insistent about getting written--but even as I was writing the Lasorda post, I knew that I was gonna end up writing its inevitable musical tie-in with a post about The Dwarves.Everyone loves Tommy Lasorda, yet his words have often been patently offensive and obscene. His language is of the gutter and supposedly unfit for civilized conversation. But somehow we all understand that Tommy's harmless and that Tommy's a good guy.
Neat trick, that. How does he do it?
Well, what I'm coming up with is that Lasorda is so gleeful in his offensiveness. He is truly a man who doesn't give a fuck. And I think that, as we have become more constrained as a society, more worried about who we're going to offend, more unable to get past the 99.9th percentile consequences, we begin to find that dontgiveafuckitude rather admirable.
Which pretty much brings us as well as I'm able to The Dwarves, and to their EP Blood Guts and Pussy, which in its brief but intense 13 minutes and 6 seconds gleefully bleeds that same dontgiveafuckitude, and which--very much not incidentally--Rolling Stone has proclaimed to have the most offensive album cover in history.I'll just say that Rolling Stone, besides being factually incorrect on the matter, has once again clearly missed the joke.
Or if finding fault with Rolling Stone seems too easy, try to digest AMG's stern tone of moral disapproval in their 4-1/2 star review of the EP. I'd be able to compute the concern over statutory rape if rock 'n' roll hadn't been about fucking 17-year old girls from the get-go . . . .
The Dwarves are I'm sure of the opinion that fuck 'em if they can't take a joke, but clearly, this whole Blood Guts and Pussy joint is nothing but a pre-emptive cannonball shot across the bow of an America that has sunk up to its gunwales in political correctness over the last 20 years.
Hell, when offensiveness is outlawed, only outlaws will offend us.
Or something like that, anyway. It's 2009, and the thug rappers get to say whatever the fuck they want, but the rest of us can't even find something offensive in our cache of porn mpegs. Janet Jackson's nipple was sacrificed so that no more would be seen. They threw Howard Stern and his cruder cousins off the air, and something called "Emo" is the lame substitute that now passes for punk rock among the poor young fools who don't know any better.Three cheers for The Dwarves, harmless good guys, who just wanna fuck and get high, who were born when we still had the capacity to be shocked, back when we still got the fucking joke, back when we weren't too afraid.
The Dwarves - Blood Guts & Pussy - 06 Fuck You Up And Get High.mp3
192 kbps mp3, up for six weeks (or more)
File under: Scum punk
Posts
1 comment:
R: Not sure about the music, but there R WAY more offensive album covers than this, WAY more. Like NEthing by Hipgnosis, Roger Dean, Rodney Matthews, Frank Frazetta, Patrick Woodroffe, Jim Burns, Angus McKie.... (Just kidding, but some people REALLY don't like NE of that sci-fi/fantasy '70s stuff.)
Other nominees: There was that early-'70s cover 4 Mom's Apple Pie that supposedly showed a dripping-wet vagina where a piece of the pie had bn removed...? (The pie-filling was replaced by a buncha bricks on the re-release.)
Or how bout the hideous covers 4 the disco band Love and Kisses? (Blieve me, if U've Cn em U remember em.) Or NE of the Ohio Players' covers?
Or the back-cover of Utopia's OOPS, WRONG PLANET? -- UGLIEST BAND OF ALL TIME! Even uglier than Bowie's Spiders From Mars!
German synth-player Klaus Schulze put-out a late-'70s album called BODY LOVE with a cover that was pretty offensive....
How bout John & Yoko's TWO VIRGINS?
& there was that late-'50s/early-'60s Dean Martin cover where he's obviously lookin in a mirror so he can check-out a woman's ass -- & she's looking back & smiling, so she's obviously Njoying the fact that he noticed....
Course it Dpends on what U find offensive or tasteless. A bad, weak, boring, cliched photo or piece of art -- or even a photo where there isn't enuf lite 2 show me what I wanna C (as w/ the Schulze album) -- could strike me as offensive.
What offends me about THIS cover is that my eyes R so bad I can't actually tell what the figure on the right side of the photo is DOING.
Now, if it was a guy beating off I might B offended, mayB. A little. I'd B suprised, at least. But just splashing blood (or even chocolate syrup, like they do in slasher films) on a coupla nude girls isn't enuf 2 get me upset.
But mayB we could hold a poll? What's the most offensive rock-album cover of all time? Cms a good question. U could also ask what's the most musically offensive rock album ever, & the argument would never end on that 1.
Yours in filth & tastelessness, as always.... -- TAD.
Post a Comment