Isaac Hewlings
Some things in life sometimes appear totally inexplicable – the printed sign in my local, which has the legend ‘Drugs’ crossed out, for example. I like to imagine a situation in which a couple of junkies walk in, spot the sign, turn around and then head off to a more welcoming hostelry, muttering something about bigoted locals. Others are less amusing, such as the vagaries of the mental life of a bouncer. The musical equivalents of these are harder to find, but are that much more rewarding when found, a kind of musical Kinder-Surprise. I happened to uncover amongst my elder brother’s vinyl collection ‘Classic Bavarian Drinking Music’ which at the time felt like a resounding success. This wasn’t the songs, no, it was the music to swill your Oktoberfest steins to. But like the crap toys you sometimes uncover after your chocolatey enjoyment has finished, this turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. It’s basically just a bit of brass music and for all the Bavarian gusto in the world, it just wasn’t that bizarre. Funny yes, bizarre, no; unless you consider wearing pig–skin shorts and slapping your friend’s thighs a lot. Weird.
But, finally, I uncovered a real gem. The one that just doesn’t bear explanation is porno music. I mean, which skin-flick producer was thinking, “this is great and all, but it just needs something else, a bit more, y’know, production value” and then bam, “Sax! Man I’m good at this.” Maybe I’m naïve. Perhaps even at the beginning of porn (when was that, by the way?) there were some brisk overtures in the background. Be that as it may, when did ‘porno-groove’ begin its sordid existence? I fear this may be one of those questions that will ring through the ages, along with the harder metaphysical questions of categorical imperatives and the like. Whoever found a guitar, rigged up a Wah-wah pedal and started laying down some gentle licks deserves a medal for inadvertently creating the most hilarious sub-genre in existence. In the course of writing this I’ve managed to find such tracks as, ‘Bedtime Bongos’, ‘Love Dance’, and the quite frankly filthy, ‘I Can’t Believe I Ate The Whole Thing.’ It’s like Ron Burgundy returned from Pleasuretown with as much vinyl as he could carry. Its influence on popular culture, though small, is noticeable – the Beastie Boys give it a nod in ‘Shake Your Rump’ and most obviously in ‘Hey Ladies’, the video of which is itself extremely funny.
So, this also got me thinking, what do people listen to when actually getting it on? As I’m not human but a robot, I wouldn’t know anything about the complexities of human sexual reproduction, beyond that of an interested spectator. So when I was told of my friend getting it on to the dulcet tunes of the (now closed) radio station ‘The Jazz’ I couldn’t help a chuckle. The DJ, expecting to please some late-night experimental latin boogaloo afficionados, was in fact providing an accompaniment to the inexpert love making of two students. When I asked my friend what the point of the music was he said, “well, at least it fills the uncomfortable silences.” A noble objective for any art form.
Loading ...