desert island discs

My theory: the music of the insane is the only fitting music for the sane, the only music that can keep the sane from monotony's madness. My proof: none except what follows, but hell, what do you want me to listen to on a damn island, Dave Matthews?

* Half Japanese, Charmed Life and Nirvana, Nevermind: Half Japanese opened for Nirvana in 1993, and Jad Fair sang the entire set through a nine-dollar plastic megaphone, asking the crowd, "Do you want to know how an angel kisses?" "No!" all replied. Sincere craziness rejected--with fans like these, is there any wonder a certain unstable blond kicked his own can a few months later?

* Dr. Octagon, Dr. Octagonecologyst and Prince Paul, A Prince Among Thieves: Kool Keith's Dr. Octagon persona has the nympho-alien-gynecologist base covered, but if anything, Prince Paul is even kookier, following up his depraved Psychoanalysis with rap's first epic. It's wilder than anything you've heard, and it has Keith as an arms dealer. Insanity? Art? Genius.

* Public Enemy, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back and Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension: Chuck D might not have been on crack, but everyone else in P. E. was: Flavor Flav, literally; Professor Griff, figuratively; the Bomb Squad, in every way possible. Comic relief, race-baiting, and the most abrasive beats ever, plus Chuck, "the hard rhymer." Tricky wishes he could rhyme hard, and he rips off enough P. E. songs to prove it. But he's British. Instead he stands and shakes from too much hydroponic, "tryin' hard to lose my head." Goes to show: if the rock don't get you, the herb will.

* The Shaggs, Philosophy of the World and various artists, Incredibly Strange Music Volume 2: I know the Shaggs want me to love them, because they love me. Doesn't matter that they have no clue, because they mean it, sincerely. On the other hand, I have no idea what the artists on Incredibly Strange want from me. Del Close wants me to "speak hip," Lucia Pamela wants to walk on the moon with farm animals, and Myrtle K. Hilo is just a singing cab driver. Figure it out yourself.

* Lou Reed, Metal Machine Music and Lester Bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung: Reed made the horrible noise, Bangs just wrote about it. "Thus, the shriek, the caterwaul, the chainsaw gnarlgnashing, the yowl, and the whizz that decapitates may be reheard by the adventurous or emotionally damaged as mellifluous bursts of unarguable affirmation." My point exactly.

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