Lubricated Goat - "New Kind Of Animal"
(Amphetamine Reptile Records / Black Eye Records, 1990)
Lubricated Goat were semi-stars of the noise rock scene in the late '80s & early '90s. My first exposure to them was in Mr. Beachy's geography class in 1993 when Ryan Massey or Michael Loeffelholz or Deegan McClung told me their name, since we had a habit of writing the most obnoxious possible band names on the sides of our textbooks. At the time, I found it hard to believe that this was an actual band name. Singer / guitarist Stu Spasm married Babes In Toyland's singer, Kat Bjelland, for a while; they formed the band Crunt, which released one album. Lubricated Goat are infamous in their native Australia for playing (lip-synching) nude on live network television in 1988. Here's the very NSFW clip of them performing their sludgy opus "In The Raw," which is sure to be yanked from YouTube again any day now:
(Hey, I just noticed that if you look in the background, e.g. at the 4:10 mark, you can see the John Wayne Gacy painting that was later used as the cover art for Acid Bath's terrible "classic" album When The Kite String Pops.) That stunt inspired a recent documentary short film called In The Raw. I saw a reformulated lineup of the Goat play at the Circle Bar in New Orleans in March '04 to a crowd of two or three people. I got this album, Psychedelicatessen, a year later on CD at a pawn shop, but sold it on eBay for a pretty high sum. This is the only song I saved from it on my hard drive, though I'm wishing I had burned the whole thing. I redeemed myself by buying it on LP in 2007, though. The song is superior to almost every other song in the genre due to its strangely spacey guitar in the background, which comes to the fore during the "calm before the storm" section (call it a Guitar Solo if you must) starting at the 1:05 mark and again at the 2:00 mark. The scream at the 2:28 mark is truly scary, especially since the producer pushes the master volume up until the scream starts to distort and sounds like shards of glass exploding. Stu is kind of short and very friendly / loquacious (I talked to him for about half an hour after the '04 gig, causing me to miss a performance by Broken Social Scene a few blocks away; well, actually, it was mostly him talking a mile a minute and me listening), so he's not nearly as intimidating as this song and the photo below would indicate. I even bought a L.G. t-shirt, which I immediately donned and wore to a Calexico concert down the street, the show Broken Social Scene was opening. (The band Stars played first but I missed them too.) That was a crazy day because I actually actually saw yet another concert, headlined by An Albatross, that afternoon. 2004!
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| Great band photo from the Psychedelicatessen LP sleeve; Stu Spasm on far right |
I don't know if the lyric used in this post's title, "You feel like the animal who dies for the animal who lives for the animal," is correct, but it's the best I can make out, and I like how it illustrates the food chain in an existential way.
The other night, I watched the end of the Teen Choice Awards, which should just be renamed the Pattinson-Gomez-Bieber Achievement Awards by now. The final moment involved host Kaley Cuoco standing on some sort of DJ platform with lead dude will.i.am from art-rockers The Black Eyed Peas. As the song "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO began to play in the background, I could practically hear what was going through his sunglasses-clad head: "I cannot believe how blatantly these fuckers ripped us off..."
I'll also fess up to watching the last few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, mainly due to the unfathomably gorge (like a younger Stacey Dash) and talented Sasha Mallory, who ended up finishing second:
I'll also fess up to watching the last few episodes of So You Think You Can Dance, mainly due to the unfathomably gorge (like a younger Stacey Dash) and talented Sasha Mallory, who ended up finishing second:
I need a Signature Move.
Currently watching: An In Living Color marathon on VH1
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