Got some words on #projectIDGAF this week, hurrah!
Music might have saved Will, but the valley’s only radio station spent ten minutes out of each hour praising Jesus, ten minutes advertising albums of popular music rewritten to praise Jesus, and forty minutes begging for donations to help spread the Word. The county health department knows that the station mostly spreads clamydia, but it also spreads bribes so everything works out. There wasn’t any chance that he’d encounter any of the music that would have helped. The Cure would have taught him he might be horribly isolated, but he wasn’t alone. A hit of Ministry or Front Line Assembly would have given a voice to his malformed masculinity, while Depeche Mode would have shown him that men are allowed to have the Forbidden Feelings. A hit of Prince would have taught him to move his feet. That alone might have saved him. Staying up late one night last summer he’d caught skip from an alternative station way out in Los Angeles and captured eighty-two seconds of enlightenment, but he had no idea the song was called “Assimilate,” or the band Skinny Puppy, so it didn’t help.
Today I’m listening to Bill Leeb’s lush solo album Model Kollapse and Allie Goerz’s delightful album of acoustic Nine Inch Nails covers. If you’re catching this episode on release day, October 4 is Bandcamp Friday. Buy music and the band gets all the money.