Bug Powder Dust: Issa's Sunday Service, #98

Let's see, there are more allusions to literature, song and pop culture than is really imaginable in this one 7 minute Bomb the Bass song.  Here's a list of what I've ferreted out so far:

Bill Lee (protagonist, Naked Lunch), Beatniks, the musical Hair, Kurtz  (The Heart of Darkness), William Tell (Burroughs), Agent Cooper (Twin Peaks), Mr. Mojo Risin' (Jim Morrison of The Doors), Mugwump (creatures in NL) Exterminator (Burroughs short story collection, Cronenberg film of Naked Lunch), Interzone (early draft of NL), Annexia (place NL), Houses of the Holy and Jimmy Page (Led Zeppelin), Jane (Jane Bowles),  black meat (drug in NL), Big Brother (Orwell), Ginsberg's Howl, Lulu/Top of the Pops (British pop star/TV show), Abbey Road (Beatle album, cover pic), Men at Work (Aussie pop group), "Waiting for the Sun" and "Spanish Caravan" (Doors songs), Serpent and the Rainbow (Davis book and film re: zombieism), Jeff Spicoli  (film Fast Times at Ridgemont High), The Fish That Saved Pittsburgh (film!), Great Space Coaster (children's television show), and Dr. Shrinker (from a segment on the TV show The Krofft Supershow)

I didn't include any references that duplicate previous ones.  I'm sure that I missed a whole bunch in this song, but there you go.  Pretty incredible.  Bomb the Bass is new to me - evidently the collective name for the work of musician/producer Tim Simenon.  He says the name came about this way:

Though large sections of 'Beat Dis' were lifted off other people's records, the drums and bass were written by Simenon. It's a credo to which he's remained faithful to this day: he doesn't like to adapt rhythms or bass lines from other people. Programming them himself -- or having them played by live musicians -- is a working method that's essential to him: "It's how the name Bomb The Bass came about, because the samples were either scratched in live or sampled and looped on top of the rhythm section. So the concept was one of bombing the bass line with different ideas, with a collage of sounds. Bombing was a graffiti term for writing, like people would 'bomb' trains or whatever."

Here is a very different, very fine version of the same song "Bug Dust Powder":






Fine work, indeed ...

To ratchet up the vibe a notch, here is William Burroughs spoken word collaboration with Kurt Cobain titled "The Priest They Called Him" - this one gets a bit intense, even for ol' Cowboy Bill ...





There is a recent documentary out on Burroughs, William Burroughs: A Man Within, that was just recently released on DVD.  Here is something of a trailer for the film:





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This week's feature poem comes from Lilliput Review, #99 from October, 1998.   Enjoy.

recognizing the
emptiness

seeing it as
holy.

Mark Terrill

the holy man leaves
them behind...
cherry blossoms

Issa
translated by David G. Lanoue

best,
Don

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