Friday, September 02, 2011

Loutallica and The Insane White Posse

Okay, so Lou Reed and Metallica are doing an album. Fine. The guy behind Metal Machine Music hooking up with LarsCo should surprise no one. The album covers looks like something Tool left on the cutting-room floor, but whatevs. Good for them. Maybe it won't suck.

But Jack White cutting a song with the Insane Clown Posse? The news made me a little sad inside. And it's not because I consider ICP unworthy of the Hipster Sage of Nashville. The White Stripes are hardly cultivated. And it's not because I find ICP so repellent and loathsome that the very mention of their name inspires violence. Fat kids who can't read need music, too.

No, I find the ICP's self-conception completely at odds with what they actually do. If they were just another (c)rap-rock band from the sticks, then there would be nothing specifically objectionable about them. At the very least, they don't consider themselves sex gods like Fred Durst clearly does.

But ICP seems to think of themselves as artists, the leaders of a movement of the dispossessed, and speakers of a primal truth. They think that every thing they do, from their juvenile name on down, is terribly terribly clever. That annoys me more than any goofy makeup or sprayed Faygo.

But if you listen to the song, and you don't laugh, then there's probably something wrong with you. Because it's a cover of a Mozart song called "Leck Mich am Arsch" ("lick me in the ass," the German equivalent of "get stuffed"). Underground classical ditty about nothing? How can ICP not be perfect for that?

Insane Clown Posse - Leck Mich Im Arsch by Third Man Records

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