Psychiatric explorations of the fetus with needles. Not that I want to seem to be poaching on the good folks at Sadly, No! Industries, but I've got to throw a little love in the direction of their latest (and most priceless) winger discovery: Bruce L. Thiessen, the singing (alleged) psychologist. I think I can say, with little fear of contradiction, that Dr. BLT (as he styles himself) is the greatest right-wing pop performer named after a sandwich of this or any other era.

Dr. Tuna-on-Toast (whose jukebox of free mp3 downloads is here) hails from Saskatchewan originally, per his online bio, but currently inflicts psychology and music on the Sacramento area. There's nothing to indicate where he got his degree: and I admit I'm a little nervous about his credentials, based on his habit of diagnosing people like, say, Michael Moore as paranoid psychotics, based solely on his disagreeing with them politically. Probably just means he studied under Charles Krauthammer.

But it's not about the psychology, is it? It's about the music—and the political rants tricked up as songs—and the youth-oriented product placement—and, well, maybe about the psychology too. Considering that we are talking about a man who's penned such masterpieces as "Great Sex Can Ruin Your Life" (sadly no longer available on the free page), whose message to the kids seems to be, great sex can ruin your life. Or, my nominee for his chef-d'ouevre, "Womb Tomb," the inspiration for the title of this post, a dirge (whose inappropriately BUBBLY bass line and FUNKY bongos make it somehow even more ineffably dirge-like) that laments the fate of a soon-to-be-aborted "Baby Jane Doe"—unless Dr. Ham-and-Swiss can intervene in time! (Which is what seems to be happening about midway through the number, if you can get that far.)

[Among the non-topical songs, I highly recommend the Doc's cover of "Norwegian Wood," though I warn you you have to start out listening to it just a few seconds at a time. Actually, that's pretty much true of everything he's got on offer. I'm aiming within a few weeks to be able to make it all the way through one of these pieces without my ears starting to bleed; it's a form of endurance training. What doesn't induce hysterical deafness only makes us stronger.]

The thing that fascinates me about this body of work—in its ever-out-of-step rhythms, its weirdly slack, affectless vocals, its fetish for misplaced psychelic gestures—not to mention the sub-literacy and the attraction to useless punning—is how perfectly it seems to be a musical expression of the hive-mind qualities of the Great Right Wingosphere. Dr. Italian-Beef-with-Peppers makes the sort of music a politically deranged android would make, one with access to a library of forms but with no idea what music was actually supposed to do. This is what the Borg would sound like if it tried to put on a hootenanny.

Dr. Corned-Beef-with-Sauerkraut will take everything you ever thought or felt about pop songs, kill it, reanimate the corpse, and kill it again. That's just how powerful this music is. A perfect soundtrack for the next time you're heh-indeeding your way across the internets.

posted by michael  2:17:21 PM  
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If you want a very clear understanding of the threat that Hurricane Katrina presents to New Orleans, this article in the Times-Pic series on The Big One is indispensable. There's a real sense that the survival of New Orleans itself, in anything like the way we've known it, is at risk here. Which means that in addition to the potential for significant loss of life, there's the prospect of a great hole being gouged out of our common cultural patrimony.

I lived just up the road a piece from NO in the nineties, and it's true: in its mixture of graciousness and insanity, in its historical meaning, it's like no other city in the country. Nothing to do but hope the storm turns.

posted by michael  1:05:50 PM  
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