John Oswald:
Pretender (based on ‘The Great Pretender’ written by Buck Ram) features the opportunity for a dramatic gender change, suggesting a hypothesis concerning the singer, Ms.Parton, perhaps worthy of headlines in the National Enquirer. The first inklings of this story came from fans of Ms.Parton’s earlier hit single ‘Jolene’. As many consumers have inadvertently discovered, especially since the reemergence of 12′ 45rpm records of which this present disc is a peculiar subset, it is not uncommon to find oneself playing 45rpm sides at the LP standard speed of 331/3. In this transposed tempo ‘Jolene’ reveals the singer to be a handsome tenor. Additional layers of homosexual longing , convoluted mŽnages ˆ trois and double identities are revealed in a vortex of androgyny as one switches, verse to verse, between the two standard playback speeds.
Pretender takes a leisurely tour of the intermediate areas of Ms. Parton’s masculinity. This decelerando reveals, complete with suggestive lyrics, an unaltered transition between the ‘Dolly Parton’ the public usually hears and the normally hidden voice, pitched a fourth lower. To many ears this supposed trick effect reveals the mellifluous male voice to be the more natural sounding of the two. Astute star gazers have perceived the physical transformation, via plastic surgery, hair transplants and such, that make many of today’s media figures into narrow/bosomy, blemish-free caricatures and super-real ideals. Is it possible that Ms. Parton’s remarkable voice is actually the Alvinized* result of some unsung virile ghost lieder crooning these songs at elegiac tempos which are then gender polarized to fit the tits? Speed and sex are again revealed as components intrinsic to the business of music.
*chipmunked
From http://www.plunderphonics.com/xhtml/xnotes.html, which is associated with his tune Pretender, which you can download in a zip, from here. Click through to see his awesome, edgy and totally not race-baiting or queerphobic take on Michael Jackson.
I want to be on his side because he fought for fair use, but this stuff is really assholish. It’s like wanting to side with Larry Flint. I was trying to find out if he was gay or not, because that might sort of his explain his gender stuff or least make it possibly deeper than a cheap laugh,. All I could find was that his official bio claims he did sound for a Bruce la Bruce film, Hustler White, which he claims is a gay pron film. Wikipedia and IMDB imply otherwise (the latter doesn’t tend to cover porn films, for example Deep Throat has no entry) and neither mentions Oswald.
The Dolly Parton track, by the way, is really, really good (as is the Michael Jackson one). It’s just the liner notes that suck. And usually, changing the speed of a recording of somebody’s voice just sounds weird. But her voice slowed down gets a James Brown-like tenor quality which is quite remarkable. So he’s on to something, but then he went for the cheap laugh.
ha.
ha.
I always thought he was gay.