Hamburger Lady by Throbbing Gristle

So, burn victims.

Here is possibly the most well-known song by British group Throbbing Gristle.  Along with Cabaret Voltaire, Throbbing Gristle is frequently credited with creating the industrial genre in the late '70s.  Composed of 4 members, and fronted by a gent named Genesis P-Orridge, Throbbing Gristle started as a performance art troupe by the name of COUM Transmissions.  In 1976, they gave their final performance as COUM, and debuted as Throbbing Gristle.  For five more years, they tore a bloody swath through the underground music scene.

Throbbing Gristle focused on creating grating and hateful soundscapes using tapes, synthesizers, and traditional instruments.  Add on the horrifically weird spoken-word lyrics that Genesis P-Orridge moaned out, and you had something that made the punk movement look safe and manageable.

Most of the lyrics for Hamburger Lady are obscured by the oscillating filter applied to the vocals.  Swirling around with the undulating droning and alien synth-squeals, the only words I tend to pick out are the sing-song "Hamburger Laaaaady" and "burned from the waist up."  Thus, I didn't immediately gather how horrible the content of this song was until looking up the lyrics.  According to the internet, many of them were taken from an actual doctor's notebook wherein he detailed caring for a woman burned so terribly that she made the attendant nurses ill.  The severity of her injuries has caused her to look like raw hamburger.  In reality, they are a little extra-nutty.

Here are the lyrics for your edification:

By far worse is the hamburger lady.

We must heal them for the qualified technicians,

Worse,

Alternating nights are automatic

She's lying there,

Hamburger Lady

Hamburger Lady

She's dying,

She is burned from the waist up,

On her arm,

Her ear is burned,

Her eyelashes are burned,

She can't hold things up,

And even with medical advances,

There's no end in sight,

For hamburger lady,

She wants me to tell you of her calm mind

From which the double play laying,

The propping chair,

Leave her,

She's burned from the waist down,

Has to eat her life through tubes.

Hamburger Lady 

Hamburger Lady

She's okay if you change the tubes,

Tubes in her legs,

The tubes in her arms,

She's okay,

Then it came out and saw the burn net,

Indeed in the account of killing,

And it flashed on the carpet,

And it flashed on the floor,

The hamburger lady,

She came to rest,

Because of the burn she needs relief, 

From the medication,

The qualified technician.

Hamburger Lady

Hamburger Lady.

Right now, you're either very creeped out by listening to the song and reading the lyrics, or you're underwhelmed.  If you're underwhelmed I imagine you're asking 'Joanna, what is the point of this?  Why did I even bother listening and reading to something so sad and gross?"

Well, let me explain.  Hamburger Lady is indeed horrific.  But, in a way, the fact that it still reads as disturbing today is a testament to how light-years far-out Throbbing Gristle was at the time.  This was before Slayer shrieked about worshiping Satan, or later metal musicians wallowed in songs about having angry sex with demon pigs (I'm not sure that this song actually exists, but I'm not gonna bet against it).  This was a time long before NIN or Marilyn Manson's The Beautiful People music video.  In terms of experimental madness, this was even before Nurse with Wound got going.

These days we find Slipknot cute enough to mash-up with Justin Bieber.  Yeah, there's still really hardcore stuff out there, but one could say that the naive days where parents were willing to sue Judas Priest for corrupting the youth are over.

Considering this cynical age we live in, I think Throbbing Gristle's Hamburger Lady, then, deserves some respect for still pushing boundaries.

-Joanna

Pretty Polly

Go ahead, give it a listen, I'll wait.

Were you not the least bit creeped out by Bogg's slightly tinny slurry voice, the singular banjo picking, and the ever-present old vinyl-esque audio crackle?  The audio of the song is creepy enough in itself but once you actually listen to the lyrics, it gets worse.

I used to be a rambler, I stayed around this town
I used to be a rambler, I stayed around in town
I courted Pretty Polly and the beauty has never been found

Oh where is Pretty Polly, oh yonder she stands
Oh where is Pretty Polly, oh yonder she stands
With rings on her fingers and lily-white hands

Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly come take a walk with me
Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly come take a walk with me
When we get married some pleasure to see

He led her over hills and valleys so deep
He led her over hills and valleys so deep
At last Pretty Polly, she began to weep

Oh Willie oh Willie I'm 'fraid of your way
Willie oh Willie I'm 'fraid of your way
All minding to ramble and lead me astray

Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly you guessin' about right
Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly you guessin' about right
I dug on your grave two-thirds of last night

They went on a piece farther and what did they spy?
Went on up a piece farther and what did they spy?
A new-dug grave and a spade lying by
 
She threw her arms around him and began for to weep
She threw her arms around him and began for to weep
At last Pretty Polly, she fell asleep

He threw the dirt over her, and turned away to go
Threw the dirt over her, and turned away to go
Down to the river where the deep water flow
 
There have been at least 30 covers done of "Pretty Polly" ranging from Dock Boggs to The Byrds, The Dillards, Judy Collins, and even The String Cheese Incident.  Bob Dylan's chords, tune, and verse structure of "Ballad of Hollis Brown" is also based on "Pretty Polly."


Murder ballads made up a significant portion of traditional ballads dating back to the mid 17th century, originating in Scandinavia, England, and Scotland.  Interestingly American versions of murder ballads are often spun off of the Old World versions but with supernatural elements such as vengeant ghosts generally omitted.

The earliest known version of the Pretty Polly story, titled The Gosport Tragedy, was printed around 1750.  In essence, Willie, a ship's carpenter, has gotten Polly pregnant.  He bids her to take a walk with him to make plans for their wedding.  As they are walking, they stumble along a newly dug grave.  Willie kills Polly and buries her.  In the American version, Polly's pregnancy is often omitted.  Perhaps they feel it is too controversial for a man to kill his pregnant fiancee, but tossing her in a shallow grave while not pregnant is perfectly acceptable.  I digress...

Many American versions of the song also omit the second act of The Gosport Tragedy.  Willie went to sea, but was not left in peace for long. The ship was not far from land when a girl with a child in her arms appeared on board. The lookout, who was half-drunk, ran to embrace her, and found it was a ghost.  The captain seeks out the murderer, Willie, who goes mad and dies.  Some later versions of the ballad were shorter and more pointed. In these, Polly's ghost did not merely seek out Willie, but took it upon herself to avenge her death and carried him away from the ship or even tore him to pieces.

The website Planet Slade gives an amazing 15 page in-depth review of the song, its origins, its covers, and its various points of view throughout history.  There are alternate versions of the song performed that make Willie's murder of Polly appear more premeditated than the original version, singing such chilling lyrics as:

“Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is just right,
Pretty Polly, Pretty Polly, your guess is just right,
I dug on your grave six long hours of last night.”

and

“Oh Polly, Pretty Polly, that never can be,
Polly, Pretty Polly that never can be,
Your past reputation’s been trouble to me.”

Pretty Polly In-Depth Review




For kicks and giggles, I've also included Kevin Spacey's/Francis Underwood's own spin on the tune from House of Cards, because who doesn't want to be serenaded with "Pretty Polly" as you share your nightly cigarette on the windowsill?

- Amanda

 

Lustmord: The Word as Power

Have you ever been sitting in your house, maybe trying to write a horror story, and think "Man, I need some music.  I need the darkest, deepest, doomiest music I can find, but if I listen to metal or noise music I'll get distracted.  Or worse, I'll get a migraine.  What I need the is the subtle soundtrack of abandoned demonic temples and vast unknown wastelands.  I need the music that they pipe into the malls in Rl'yeh."

Well look no further than the latest release by my favorite dark ambient artist: The Word as Power by Lustmord.  Brian Williams, the man behind Lustmord, has been producing the spookiest, tastiest dark ambient for decades, unspooling great swaths of bassy synthesizers and groaning guitars over his albums.

With The Word as Power, Lustmord introduces human vocals into his work for the first time.  But this isn't a matter of lyrics or spoken word.  Rather, the voices on this album echo lost and forlorn, wailing heinous incantations to the rising gloom.  They moan in made-up languages as tectonic sub-bass rumblings build and recede at a glacial pace.

Now, I will warn you, I do mean glacial.  Giving The Word as Power a listen can be a deeply rewarding experience if you've got a good sound system and a lot of time on your hands.  But it isn't exactly a speed-rap.  Several of the tracks run in excess of 15 minutes, evolving slowly and evoking a sense of eternal entrapment.  Which, if you're an impatient person, will be exactly what you think of the album: timeless purgatory.

However, I've found this to be one of my favorites, as it's difficult to come by good music to fit otherworldly hellscapes that don't involve lots of screaming.

The Word as Power is available on all the regular sources for music.  I highly recommend it, especially if you need to set the mood with sound that's deeply evocative, alien, yet eerily human.


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I tried to think of a good thing to tie in with this album review.  Some piece of artwork or poetry.  I settled on these passages from one of my favorite books: House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgson.  I think they capture well the scenes that come to mind when listening.  Enjoy!

Presently, I landed, and stood, surrounded by a great waste of loneliness. The place was lit with a gloomy twilight that gave an impression of indescribable desolation.

Afar to my right, within the sky, there burnt a gigantic ring of dull-red fire, from the outer edge of which were projected huge, writhing flames, darted and jagged. The interior of this ring was black, black as the gloom of the outer night. I comprehended, at once, that it was from this extraordinary sun that the place derived its doleful light.

From that strange source of light, I glanced down again to my surroundings. Everywhere I looked, I saw nothing but the same flat weariness of interminable plain. Nowhere could I descry any signs of life; not even the ruins of some ancient habitation.

............ 

And so, after a time, I came to the mountains. Then, the course of my journey was altered, and I began to move along their bases, until, all at once, I saw that I had come opposite to a vast rift, opening into the mountains. Through this, I was borne, moving at no great speed. On either side of me, huge, scarped walls of rocklike substance rose sheer. Far overhead, I discerned a thin ribbon of red, where the mouth of the chasm opened, among inaccessible peaks. Within, was gloom, deep and somber, and chilly silence. For a while, I went onward steadily, and then, at last, I saw, ahead, a deep, red glow, that told me I was near upon the further opening of the gorge.

A minute came and went, and I was at the exit of the chasm, staring out upon an enormous amphitheatre of mountains. Yet, of the mountains, and the terrible grandeur of the place, I recked nothing; for I was confounded with amazement to behold, at a distance of several miles and occupying the center of the arena, a stupendous structure built apparently of green jade. 

From House on the Borderland by William Hope Hodgeson.

-Joanna