Otto gets thrown to the Christians
Jan. 27th, 2005 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomusWhat does it mean when art and religion appear to be alternatives to each other? When art seems like a religion, and religion seems like a fiction, a fabrication? Who do you choose when you have to choose between The Creator and the creator?
That seems to be a strong theme in the last couple of design articles I've written. The Vice Design Issue describes how a TV shot of a beautiful shell dissolving into an Eames chair leaves me 'deeply moved, in an almost religious way, by the implicit parallel between human ingenuity and nature'. But later in the article, brought back to earth by Vice magazine, I wonder whether the NHK Eames Special isn't 'essentially, religious broadcasting for elderly humanists.'
The religion theme, peripheral in the Design Observer piece, becomes central to my new AIGA Voice article, Design as Religion. In fact, it becomes a credo, and somewhat OTT. Design bookstores, I assert in The Voice, are 'temples to human creativity, places dedicated to higher values, yes, even spiritual values. In a world that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, these stores and the curated, inspirational printed matter they contain reaffirm my belief that beauty really is elevating and that every 'creator' is a kind of god.'
That sort of religious fervour about cultural creation doesn't seem odd in the country I'm now sitting in, Japan – a country where, according to a 1998 poll, 65% of adults declare themselves atheists. That's no doubt one of the reasons I feel so comfortable here and why, in a debate like this one in which Americans and Japanese answer the same question, I side so readily with the Japanese. I am, after all, an atheist. That is, someone who seeks to locate spiritual value everywhere except in a monotheistic god.
Well, yesterday my new album came out in America. My new album – an album of radical paganism and fertility worship, an album advocating lostness rather than salvation and art rather than religion – came out in an America in which, according to a recent Harris poll, 90% of adults believe in God, 89% believe in miracles, 68% believe in the devil, 69% in hell, 51% in ghosts, 31% in astrology and 27% in reincarnation. An America which, sixty years ago this August, dropped nuclear bombs on the godless country in which I'm sitting, to the approval of 85% of the godly folk back home.
Trying to imagine the reception my album would get in a Christian magazine like Plugged In, which reviews records and films along Christian (and right wing) lines and rates moral content, I came up with the following spoof review:
"Momus: Otto Spooky (American Patchwork, 2005)
The first track sees a computer singing 'I'm going to rape you', then, when his partner agrees, fretting 'Don't say okay because then it's not rape!' That's followed by a pagan paen to spring which describes 'shinto dogs at the phallic symbol' and begs 'pull me down and pump me dry' (sexual reference to the extraction of seed from human genitalia, either by mouth or hand). Next there's a tribute to a lustful 'Corkscrew King' (the double entendre on 'corkscrew' is milked until the white froth runs down the bucket and the udder is dry). The king seems to be impotent -- and the song treats this like a big joke. A character called 'the Yogi Doctor Swami' has 'his hand upon his thing' and the chorus contains many 'humourous' allusions to senile erectile dysfunction.
Next comes a song in Arabic scales, sung in French, in which a Tripoli taxi driver explains the joys of giving your spouse a damn good slap in the face. Although this is recommended in Ecclesiastes 5,9, Judges 3,11 and Ruth 15,12, it's not something we Christians need a pagan to tell us about. Before the song called 'Lady Fancy Knickers' (which seems to be about duct tape, but turns into a thundering of Mongol horsemen's hooves and the Islamic-style threat 'black is what we'll wear when we come to kill you all') there's the song which sees Robin Hood, the notoriously immoral redistributor of wealth, exchanging his bow and arrow for a wheelchair and colostomy bag after a serious beating from his rival, Dooh Nibor, an obvious caricature of a Republican politician.
A song describing a video game in which you compose lute scores and shoot off panda's heads is not something we'd recommend any children hear, especially those who can't distinguish video games from real bamboo forests. The worst is yet to come, though: a children's song which advises kids to 'touch other children's genitals for pleasure' and 'take your parents struggling to the Great Mountain of Death / Sing the party anthem as you throw them off the edge'. 'Your Fat Friend' is an offensive ode to husky girlfriends, then comes a blues song describing a sexual encounter between a man and God. Even more sickening is the sarcastic demolition of the faith of Mel Gibson ('Jesus in Furs') in which 'The Passion' is described as a sick masochistic gorefest and Christ is implored to 'Come back as a girl, or come back as filthy letcher / Please save the world without too much tomato ketchup'. The record ends with an Elizabethan falsetto eunuch song ('You harlequins, you play such s**t...') and a tale of two homosexual archeologists who meet death (in the form of an Edison gramophone demonstration record) in Italy.
'Otto Spooky' is wretched in every way, and Beelzebub has surely got a cosy corner table already laid out for Momus right by the door to hell's hottest kitchen."
Otto Spooky is out now on American Patchwork. The Jack Chick tract follows shortly.
That seems to be a strong theme in the last couple of design articles I've written. The Vice Design Issue describes how a TV shot of a beautiful shell dissolving into an Eames chair leaves me 'deeply moved, in an almost religious way, by the implicit parallel between human ingenuity and nature'. But later in the article, brought back to earth by Vice magazine, I wonder whether the NHK Eames Special isn't 'essentially, religious broadcasting for elderly humanists.'
The religion theme, peripheral in the Design Observer piece, becomes central to my new AIGA Voice article, Design as Religion. In fact, it becomes a credo, and somewhat OTT. Design bookstores, I assert in The Voice, are 'temples to human creativity, places dedicated to higher values, yes, even spiritual values. In a world that knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, these stores and the curated, inspirational printed matter they contain reaffirm my belief that beauty really is elevating and that every 'creator' is a kind of god.'
That sort of religious fervour about cultural creation doesn't seem odd in the country I'm now sitting in, Japan – a country where, according to a 1998 poll, 65% of adults declare themselves atheists. That's no doubt one of the reasons I feel so comfortable here and why, in a debate like this one in which Americans and Japanese answer the same question, I side so readily with the Japanese. I am, after all, an atheist. That is, someone who seeks to locate spiritual value everywhere except in a monotheistic god.
Well, yesterday my new album came out in America. My new album – an album of radical paganism and fertility worship, an album advocating lostness rather than salvation and art rather than religion – came out in an America in which, according to a recent Harris poll, 90% of adults believe in God, 89% believe in miracles, 68% believe in the devil, 69% in hell, 51% in ghosts, 31% in astrology and 27% in reincarnation. An America which, sixty years ago this August, dropped nuclear bombs on the godless country in which I'm sitting, to the approval of 85% of the godly folk back home.
Trying to imagine the reception my album would get in a Christian magazine like Plugged In, which reviews records and films along Christian (and right wing) lines and rates moral content, I came up with the following spoof review:
"Momus: Otto Spooky (American Patchwork, 2005)
The first track sees a computer singing 'I'm going to rape you', then, when his partner agrees, fretting 'Don't say okay because then it's not rape!' That's followed by a pagan paen to spring which describes 'shinto dogs at the phallic symbol' and begs 'pull me down and pump me dry' (sexual reference to the extraction of seed from human genitalia, either by mouth or hand). Next there's a tribute to a lustful 'Corkscrew King' (the double entendre on 'corkscrew' is milked until the white froth runs down the bucket and the udder is dry). The king seems to be impotent -- and the song treats this like a big joke. A character called 'the Yogi Doctor Swami' has 'his hand upon his thing' and the chorus contains many 'humourous' allusions to senile erectile dysfunction.
Next comes a song in Arabic scales, sung in French, in which a Tripoli taxi driver explains the joys of giving your spouse a damn good slap in the face. Although this is recommended in Ecclesiastes 5,9, Judges 3,11 and Ruth 15,12, it's not something we Christians need a pagan to tell us about. Before the song called 'Lady Fancy Knickers' (which seems to be about duct tape, but turns into a thundering of Mongol horsemen's hooves and the Islamic-style threat 'black is what we'll wear when we come to kill you all') there's the song which sees Robin Hood, the notoriously immoral redistributor of wealth, exchanging his bow and arrow for a wheelchair and colostomy bag after a serious beating from his rival, Dooh Nibor, an obvious caricature of a Republican politician.
A song describing a video game in which you compose lute scores and shoot off panda's heads is not something we'd recommend any children hear, especially those who can't distinguish video games from real bamboo forests. The worst is yet to come, though: a children's song which advises kids to 'touch other children's genitals for pleasure' and 'take your parents struggling to the Great Mountain of Death / Sing the party anthem as you throw them off the edge'. 'Your Fat Friend' is an offensive ode to husky girlfriends, then comes a blues song describing a sexual encounter between a man and God. Even more sickening is the sarcastic demolition of the faith of Mel Gibson ('Jesus in Furs') in which 'The Passion' is described as a sick masochistic gorefest and Christ is implored to 'Come back as a girl, or come back as filthy letcher / Please save the world without too much tomato ketchup'. The record ends with an Elizabethan falsetto eunuch song ('You harlequins, you play such s**t...') and a tale of two homosexual archeologists who meet death (in the form of an Edison gramophone demonstration record) in Italy.
'Otto Spooky' is wretched in every way, and Beelzebub has surely got a cosy corner table already laid out for Momus right by the door to hell's hottest kitchen."
Otto Spooky is out now on American Patchwork. The Jack Chick tract follows shortly.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 01:02 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 01:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 01:09 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 04:07 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 11:26 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 01:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 02:18 pm (UTC)2.the cover is brilliant and i really like it
3.plugged in is hilarious,my dad used to have a bunch of them..so i got music reviews a lot like that but it's all 90's so it's got puff daddy/limp bizkit in there.
4.america is a strange country..i believe that it's old roots of violent shove-it-down-your-throat christianity are still very present and it's messed up that people still act/think this way.while there is nothing wrong with believing and practicing a certain religion, using that religion to justify killing and such is out of control cause it's so barbaric...
but go figure,it's like exactly what the terrorists do..but at least they are trying to free their invaded country..
5.jack chick provides hours of entertainment,my favorite track,which you must take a peak at is the dungeons and dragons one.get this,a girl commits suicide after her d&d character dies!!that is the extreme power of satan right there,through use of a rpg!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 02:22 pm (UTC)the Loaf..."
Nice!! Best (only?) Renaldo namecheck of the millennium thus far.
Love the cover, too. Reminds me of This is Pop! (http://chalkhills.org/img.cgi?images/cover/ThisIsPop_O.jpg)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 03:24 pm (UTC)on a side note, I would give - well, some body part - to see a well-executed anti-Momus Chick tract - musicians I actually listen to never end up in them (although I have been known to watch "Bewitched", which is apparently also a favorite of Satan himself, according to Chick).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 02:39 pm (UTC)I also believe in getting out of this wretched country as soon as I can.
P.S. The Chick tract about the guy who molests his daughter and then finds God is by far the most disturbing.
Auto spooky
Date: 2005-01-26 02:42 pm (UTC)Momus is quite adept at writing his own reviews, but perhaps in the future he can leave this task to automation, as well. Check out this clever young MIT asst. prof's page:
http://web.media.mit.edu/~bwhitman/
In the best tradition of Jarry's instructions on how to construct a time machine, he's come up with theories and perhaps practices to enable the machines not only to write music reviews, but to do the listening for us as well. It's difficult to tell how much is absurdity for art's sake and how much is just geekdom taken to a new extreme--whether we should look in the art gallery or the science lab first. All I know is, with more music than I have time for, I could use a computer's ears as well as mine.
"Ten Thousand Statistically Grammar-Average Fake Band Names" will also considerably shorten the time it takes for new bands to come up with appropriate names.
Re: Auto spooky
Date: 2005-01-26 02:44 pm (UTC)"This can level the field for independent under-marketed musicians by having a bias-free musical intelligence perform our filtering. Instead of "Rock and Pop" we can create meaningful similarity clusters of music that are tuned to individual tastes and styles."
Re: Auto spooky
Date: 2005-01-26 11:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 02:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 03:05 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 03:25 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-27 04:13 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 04:01 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 04:58 pm (UTC)I think it's impossible to categorize belief with a toggle switch.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 06:28 pm (UTC)http://www.we-make-money-not-art.com/archives/004285.php#comments
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-26 07:49 pm (UTC)Talk To The Hand
Date: 2005-01-26 09:33 pm (UTC)Re: Talk To The Hand
Date: 2005-01-27 12:44 am (UTC)That meant absolutely nothing to me, but thanks.
Re: Talk To The Hand
Date: 2005-01-27 09:53 am (UTC)Then maybe: it's YOUR hand! The hand of every "Otto Spooky" listener, tentatively reaching for tangible fragments of meaning from the lyrics of Momus?
Re: Talk To The Hand
Date: 2005-01-28 01:10 am (UTC)Re: Talk To The Hand
Date: 2005-01-28 09:08 pm (UTC)chick tracts and more
Date: 2005-01-26 09:06 pm (UTC)It's true, 90% of Americans believe in god. That's crazy, but true. I've been an Athiest all my life, so is everyone in my immediate family. But those people are the only ones I've found that are atheist. If you're in mixed company, you just learn to keep your mouth shut about Religion.
Re: chick tracts and more
Date: 2005-01-26 10:01 pm (UTC)---
oh, and (not you, mr./ms./mrs. whomever I am replying to) congrats on your new album!
Good luck!
Date: 2005-01-26 10:05 pm (UTC)I'm sure having this site will help build popularity and fuel a wave of panic across Godless-fearing America... perhaps even a certain existentialist nausea. Off to patent a vomit plough at the US Patent Office.
Re: Good luck!
Date: 2005-01-26 10:13 pm (UTC)We plough the fields and scatter
The vomit on the land,
But it is fed and watered
By God's almighty hand
Re: Good luck!
Date: 2005-01-26 10:32 pm (UTC)To be sung by flaxen-haired, red-robed choirboys outside "School Disco" on a Saturday night:
Silent night, holy night!
Shepherds hurl at the sight
Otto Spooky is released
sexualised, witty, rum and effete
a new Momus album is bo-orn
Republicans chuck on your lawns...
Don't expect that refrain to catch on, however.
Britain set to become a police state
Date: 2005-01-27 12:03 am (UTC)Re: Britain set to become a police state
Date: 2005-01-27 12:12 am (UTC)Chick Tract Generator
Date: 2005-01-27 12:17 am (UTC)It's based on the tract entitled "Charlie's Ants."
Cordially,
Sean T.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-27 12:33 am (UTC)My Otto Dear Otto Let Me Know
Date: 2005-01-27 03:59 am (UTC)hold whats dear to you, soon it won't be here, the most precious pearl will die from this world, there will be no victories. only spoonfuls of salt and tar fer thee, pouts and pounds round yer skull, no arms will ever replace this love i have for yer place next to me.
Darla Delivered
Date: 2005-01-27 04:22 am (UTC)Richard G
Re: Darla Delivered
Date: 2005-01-27 05:35 am (UTC)I don't know how one puts the Gracenote titles in. You could do it if you're feeling in a boyscout sort of mood. Just don't make the kind of slip that renders 'Go Fishing Willy' off 'Summerisle' as 'Go Fishing Wildly' on every website all over the world...
Re: Darla Delivered
Date: 2005-02-02 12:36 am (UTC)The Gracenote title problem now seems to be fixed, as the titles have now appeared in I-tunes.
Richard
(no subject)
Date: 2005-01-27 05:52 am (UTC)So perhaps while your album may not be as warmly received in the States as in Japan, perhaps a relative or loved one in dire political circumstances would fare better.
Just by way of perspective when it comes to numbers.
Where in NYC can I find Otto?
Date: 2005-01-27 06:22 am (UTC)I'm desperate!
Re: Where in NYC can I find Otto?
Date: 2005-01-27 06:27 am (UTC)Re: Where in NYC can I find Otto?
Date: 2005-01-27 07:46 am (UTC)Great to know.
Any chance there will be a NY show to support Otto? The Oskar show at Knitting Factory (with the face mask) was probably my all-time favorite Momus show.
Re: Where in NYC can I find Otto?
Date: 2005-01-27 07:53 am (UTC)Forms of Things Unknown
Date: 2005-02-02 06:16 pm (UTC)