Not
a band named after a book or even a quote from a book, but a band named
after an author; which was either an extremely deferential piece of
homage or one of the most off the wall marketing campaigns ever.
(Even puts Radiohead to shame. [Whose latest gimmick is a real corker: exuberant ticket prices!
Maybe you should have thought that one through, guys].)
Harry Crews: The Band:
A short lived project created by female post punk heavy weights Lydia Lunch, Kim Gordon and Sadie Mae.
Crews, the writer, is their muse, and they make much of his themes, words and ideas.
Their music is most appropriate, capturing the mood of the writing in their bombastic sound.
(Think Big Black [with sticks] with a mighty injection of oestrogen, so more scary!)
Lunch
screams and rants in a most gratifying manner; Gordon big-ups
literature: "They don't censor violence in books, coz They don't think
anyone reads."
Not an easy listen, but there is a Sonic
Youth song and even a Teenage Jesus and the Jerks' number to appease
the ol' folk; a couple we can hum nervously along to after being
chastised by Lunch: "ALL MEN THINK THEY'RE CHRIST!" [her capitals]
Several tracks take their titles from Crews' titles:
Gospel Singer,
The Knockout Artist, and what I think is one of the best novellas of the twentieth century:
Car.
If you've never read it: SEEK IT OUT! [my capitals]
Harry Crews, the writer:
Car
A man, Herman, is thrilled by cars, they are his life.
He's so passionate he decides to eat one.
People around him see opportunity: Herman eating a car will be a public event, a spectacle, a wonder.
Ka-ching!
He
will eat a half ounce a day, in public, that half ounce will be shat out the
following day, in public - but behind a little screen: some decorum,
please - the shat out piece of car will be moulded into a tiny replica
of the very car Herman is eating. And then sold.
Ka-ching!
A couple of days into eating the car, Herman has a strange experience:
'His
eyes were open, but he felt himself dreaming. He heard his blood roar
in his ears, and he heard cars in the roar. He saw cars in his blood.
They squealed and careened through long curving veinous highways. He
took his hands off his stomach and held tightly to the bed. He had not
expected this.
Filled with terror and joy, he tried to wake up.
But he was not asleep. His eyes filled with cars. They raced and
competed in every muscle and fibre. Dune buggies raced over the
California sands of his feet; sturdy jeeps with four-wheel drive and
snow tyres climbed the Montana mountains of his hips; golden
convertibles, sleek and topless, purred through the Arizona sun of his
left arm; angry taxis, dirty and functional and knowledgeable, fought
for survival in the New York City of his head.
And his heart. God his heart! He felt it separate and distinct
in his chest. Isolated and pumping, he knew its outermost limits. And
every car that raced and roared in his vision of himself finally ended
in his heart. An endless traffic of Saabs and Fords and Plymouths and
Volkswagens and modified buggies of every sort and Toyotas and cars from
all over the world lined up and entered his pounding heart.
He
watched, amazed and stupefied, as he filled up with cars tighter and
tighter until finally he was bumper to bumper from head to toe. His skin
stretched. His veins and arteries blared with the honking of horns,
jammed with a traffic jam that would never be over because it had no
place to go. Cars cars everywhere and no place to drive.'
So Herman can't eat it.
But what about the money?
Herman has a twin: Mister.
No one would know; Mister will eat the car.
But can Mister manage it?
The first performance doesn't go well: Mister is in pain with a seemingly damaged throat.
Attended
by a doctor, who believes Mister's problem may be psychosomatic, they
are joined by an anxious Herman, an agitated promoter, Mr. Edge, his
assistant Junell, and Mister's hooker girlfriend Margo, who goes on to
make what has to be one of the greatest and most surprising speeches
ever uttered in the whole of modern literature:
[Warning. Explicit]
'"He wanted to eat it," said the doctor, "but he
didn't want to eat it, if you see what I mean."
"I don't see what you mean because what you say doesn't mean anything," Mr. Edge said.
"His throat kept closing up on him," said the doctor, "trying to expel..."
"I can tell'm what you mean, doc," Margo said. "I can explain it."
They all turned to look at her where she stood with Herman by the
window. Even Mister, his throat swollen and red, cut his his eyes in her
direction. He was lying back on the bed. His breath whistled in
slightly parted bruised lips.
"Everybody's got a gag reflex,"
she said. "If you put something far enough down your throat, you gag,
everybody gags. You don't have to think about it, or want to do it, you
just do it. That's why it's called a gag reflex. Right, doc?"
"Right," he said. "But..."
"But listen to this," she said. "There are whores who have no gag
reflex." She paused and they stood silently watching her. She saw the
look in Junell's face and shrugged. "I'm a whore. It's my business to
know such things. Some whores can open their mouths and let a man fuck
their throats. It's a beautiful trick, but it's not something you can
learn. You've got to want the cock in your throat. You've got to want it
so bad that the reflex just doesn't work. Such whores are few and far
between because as everybody knows, most whores hate fucking. But once
in a while a whore really loves cocks and she's got the best of both
possible worlds. A whore like that can make a fortune, an absolute
fortune in two or three years. It's a speciality act. And everybody
loves a speciality act. But you think a whore like that quits with her
fortune? Of course not. Because finally she's not doing it for the
money, anyway. She's doing it for the love of cocks. And she keeps that
throat of hers in service as long as there's a man who wants to put
something in it."
"Jesus," said the doctor, "Jesus Christ!"
Mister's throat was pulsing and heaving while Margo talked.
In a tiny voice, Junell asked, "Can you... Do you...?"
"No," said Margo. "I can't. I don't." She looked at Mister. "And he
can't either. He's trying to fake it." She walked over to the bed and
looked down into Mister's stretched, bloodshot eyes. "You poor
son-of-a-bitch, you can't fake it. It can't be faked."
Harry Crews -
Naked in Garden Hills (1990)
About the Author
Man Hates a Man
Dystopia
You're It
Gospel Singer
Knockout Artist
The Way Out
Bring Me Down
Car
SOS
Orphans
Decent vinyl rip @320kbs
Harry's Angels
here
Selected extracts from
Car, cited in
Classic Crews, Gorse. 1993.
