Solanas is Music to Our Ears

The San Fran duo Matmos released a CD in 2006 entitled “The Rose Has Teeth in the Mouth of a Beast” which, apparently, is a line offered up to the Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. If you knew that, then you probably also knew he was a part of the LGBT community. In fact, so is/was every other person to whom each track on this CD is dedicated. Given there are 11 tracks, and that “Rag for William S. Burroughs” sounds a lot like fourteen minutes of rag-time and type-writing tapping, this is a hell of a concept album. Pitchfork wrote—and I agree—that it’s a CD full of “frenetic dance tracks doubling as reading lists.”

Curious? Copy and paste the youtube link below and take a listen to the track entitled “Tract for Valerie Solanas,” featuring as its lyrics excerpts from the SCUM Manifesto, which I’ve included below. I think you’ll see why this can only be described as “tunefully fractured electronic music” (again, thank you Pitchfork).


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8jn3x2WmS0

"Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy. the male. sex."

"Destroy the male sex."

“Unable to relate or to love, the male must work. Females crave absorbing, emotionally satisfying, meaningful activity, but lacking the opportunity or ability for this, they prefer to idle and waste away their time in ways of their own choosing -- sleeping, shopping, bowling, shooting pool, playing cards and other games, breeding, reading, walking around, daydreaming, eating, playing with themselves, popping pills, going to the movies, getting analyzed, traveling, raising dogs and cats, lolling about on the beach, swimming, watching TV, listening to music, decorating their houses, gardening, sewing, nightclubbing, dancing, visiting, `improving their minds' (taking courses), and absorbing `culture' (lectures, plays, concerts, `arty' movies). Therefore, many females would, even assuming complete economic equality between the sexes, prefer living with males or peddling their asses on the street, thus having most of their time for themselves, to spending many hours of their days doing boring, stultifying, non-creative work for someone else, functioning as less than animals, as machines, or, at best -- if able to get a `good' job -- co-managing the shitpile.”

Then, in the bizarre instrumental interlude that follows, it’s pretty clear that the break on the word “shitpile” was no accident. Finally:

“If SCUM ever marches, it will be over the President's stupid, sickening face; if SCUM ever strikes, it will be in the dark with a six-inch blade.”