(As published in B-Side ... )
MEKONS/KATHY ACKER
Pussy, King of the Pirates (Quarterstick)
For nearly twenty years, both Kathy Acker and the Mekons have hammered away at civilization-as-we-know-it, Acker with her incendiary prose, the Mekons with their punk-inflected country-rock. So why does Pussy, King of the Pirates--the "soundtrack" to Acker's new novel of the same name--sound less like a marriage made in heaven than a drunken one-night stand between strangers who'll hate themselves for it in the morning? Maybe because novels, not even ones full of lesbian pirates who like saying "cunt," don't translate well to thirty-eight-minute CDs. Or maybe because the Mekons sound better when making like rock-and-roll anarchists than they do when parodying show tunes and singing "The moon equals cracks / in my cunt" ("Ange's Song As She Crawled Through London"), "Those Oxford monks, / fingers up her cunt, / instructed her ..." ("The Song of the Dogs"), and "May my cunt come out again. / May my cunt be wild" ("Antigone Speaking About Herself"). True, "Antigone Speaks" packs some of the rockingest electro drums the Mekons have ever used, and the gorgeous "My Song of Night" floats past like a number-nine dream. But both the Mekons and Acker (who shows up here as a narrator) have done better.
MEKONS/KATHY ACKER
Pussy, King of the Pirates (Quarterstick)
For nearly twenty years, both Kathy Acker and the Mekons have hammered away at civilization-as-we-know-it, Acker with her incendiary prose, the Mekons with their punk-inflected country-rock. So why does Pussy, King of the Pirates--the "soundtrack" to Acker's new novel of the same name--sound less like a marriage made in heaven than a drunken one-night stand between strangers who'll hate themselves for it in the morning? Maybe because novels, not even ones full of lesbian pirates who like saying "cunt," don't translate well to thirty-eight-minute CDs. Or maybe because the Mekons sound better when making like rock-and-roll anarchists than they do when parodying show tunes and singing "The moon equals cracks / in my cunt" ("Ange's Song As She Crawled Through London"), "Those Oxford monks, / fingers up her cunt, / instructed her ..." ("The Song of the Dogs"), and "May my cunt come out again. / May my cunt be wild" ("Antigone Speaking About Herself"). True, "Antigone Speaks" packs some of the rockingest electro drums the Mekons have ever used, and the gorgeous "My Song of Night" floats past like a number-nine dream. But both the Mekons and Acker (who shows up here as a narrator) have done better.
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