People Like Us & Wobbly
Music for The Fire
Though the style’s praise was once marveled as fascinating (John Cage in the 1940’s) and often labeled punk-rock bravura (Negativland’s Fair Use: The Story of the Letter U and the Numeral 2), Plunderphonics, the act of gathering multiple source materials (i.e. films, popular music, all generally unlicensed) and rearranging them into new collage-based compositions, is a bit tired. If you’re a crusty follower of this genre, a lazy splice / edit / splice, place a vocal snippet of “is this the end?” against the sound of an A-bomb, George W. Bush speeches and Porky Pig’s “that’s all, folks” isn’t just a cliché: it’s downright teeth-clenching and irritating. The possibilities of this medium are endless, so why not explore them? Ahem.
Fortunately, veteran crate diggers and video archive scourers Vicki Bennett (People Like Us) and John Leidecker (Wobbly) understand a great deal about creating interest from the mundane and the discovery of thought-provoking stories from of their sound bytes (and vice-versa); every seemingly obvious theme in their work bubbles with underlying allusions and anomalies to thwart both your anticipation and senses. They are also both as goofy as they are political or academic, thriving on the art of the musical pun (the duo often spit-balls before something solid takes shape, then repeat it a few times in a “Get it? Ha ha do you get it?!” manner).
For this venture, Bennett and Leidecker offer a song-cycle “depicting the lifespan of a relationship” that, according to the method of this brand of madness, culls from heaps of disassociated sources to form juxtaposed bread-crumb trails. Beginning with a Lynch-esque missing persons (think Lost Highway) meets prison break scenario, the invisible protagonist(s) moves from introductions, self-discovery and first times (“Naked Little Girl”) to patient, rough sex (“Partners”) to possible affairs (“Pick Up”) to death to murder and birth (“A New Baby”) and… You get it: they push the works all over the place to abort pedestrian notions of boy meets girl.
The duo deftly crosscut their sonic choices, acting as directors, producers and Foley artists to their scenes. “Giant Love Ball” melds a skipping, warbling twang, Disco accents, cartoon xylophones, squealing children, 20 other ideas and portions of the original song of the same name (from Rev. Carey Landry’s 1973 Hi God! album, I believe). A German version of “Wishin’ and Hopin’” turns sour with polytonal guitar counterpoint, DSP glitches, manually spun turntables, maniacal laughter hiccups and a desperate plea of “stop making my head hurt!” (“Everyone Alone”). Sensationalizing strings blare and disassemble over ‘50s sitcom dad mumbles of “I don’t know” and the Manhattans’ Gerald Alston reciting his smooth “this has got to be the saddest day of my life” (“Bad News”). The Carpenters, Elton John and Lionel Richie also make cameos – they don’t call this illegal art for nothing.
Bizarre, naughty, creepy, fun and painfully well crafted: even sans the extra-musical concept, Music for The Fire is just plain clever.
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