| Caroliner The Singing Bull Memorial Band |
[Apr. 26th, 2005|06:47 pm] |
| [ | music |
| | Radio Phnom Penh | ] |
I guess it was a couple of years ago when i somehow got the idea that i need to get to know Caroliner. I had heard about some mysterious cult band called Caroliner Rainbow, who were playing some weird music in San Francisco, but i never saw their records anywhere and never heard any of their music so i just forgot about it. But somehow the idea of this band started to haunt me. I read some descriptions about their vinyl-only albums from the internet, and got the idea that this band is definitely something else, and well worth checking out. I also learned that all their albums were still available. So i went and asked advice from some wise men. The wise men admitted that yeah, Caroliner is the greatest, but they warned me. "Your life will never be the same!". "It'll melt your brain!". With trembling hands i then finally proceeded to place an order in Eclipse Records. I ordered three vinyl albums, I'm Armed With Quarts of Blood, their second lp from 1986, Strike Them Hard - Drag Them to Church, their fifth lp (from 1989), and Banknotes, Dreams and Signatures, which was their 7th lp from 1991. I chose these mainly because of the fascinating titles and partly also because of the descriptions i had read about them.
So what is Caroliner? There's a weird story behind the band. According to a tale, sometimes in 1800's there was a bull named Caroliner, who could sing songs. The bull was owned by a girl who took it around the fairs and different places, and the miners and all would sing some folk songs to it and the bull repeated them. But then came some hard times and the girl had nothing to eat so she had to kill the bull and eat it just to survive. She then sew the bull's skin back and somehow it continued to sing. And somehow these forgotten songs came to the posession of a man called Grux, who formed the band Caroliner in 1983. The idea was to bring these ergot-poisoned hallucinatory days of 1800's back to the people of today. The music to eat the rotten meat to while in cabin fever, the music to stare at the sun. The music to bring all these dusted forgotten sick folklores back to life.
The members and their names have been changing constantly, also the band name, it has been for instance Caroliner Rainbow Hernia Milk Queen, Caroliner Rainbow Stewed Angel Skins, Caroliner Rainbow Wire Thin Sheep Legs Baking Exhibit or even Caroliner Rainbow Scrambled Egg Taken For a Wife, but the short version is Caroliner, not Caroliner Rainbow. Makes sense? Well, nothing about this wonderful band makes sense. So is it just a joke? I haven't yet mentioned their stage appearance. Everything is decorated in these dayglo-painted fabrics with tiny details, and the musicians surely don't look like humans, they have big heads, lots of extra arms and limbs and whatever, it's like a giant psychedelic paintings coming to life. You can't really tell where a "person" starts and an instrument ends etc. But, Caroliner has been going on for over 20 years now so if it would be just a joke then we'd be pretty tired of it by now, wouldn't we?
And then one day (hurray!)... another package from Eclipse arrived. Inside i found (among a bunch of the coolest underground limited edition cdr's and such crap) three vinyl albums, packaged inside plastic bags and very weird hand-made DIY sleeves. All the Caroliner records include hand-made packaging and a lyrics sheet, and you're supposed to keep the lyric sheet in hand while listening. It can be helpful if you're trying to identify the songs, and i think i might have been able to catch the opening lines from some of those, but it's pretty hard since the music isn't really the most usual kind, not to mention the vocals. Listening to Caroliner for the first time can be quite an experience. Imagine The Residents playing Trout Mask Replica, add Butthole Surfers' Locust Abortion Technician played at the wrong speed and mix it with the weirdest bits from Harry Smith's Anthology of American Folk Music, shake well and serve while in sleep deprivation and high fever...
I started from the oldest lp, I'm Armed With Quarts of Blood. I looked at the lyric sheet and noticed that the record has four locked grooves first. You were supposed to listen to each groove one week non-stop until proceeding to the next. I'm not sure if anyone's tried, but had i tried, i'm sure i wouldn't be here writing this piece. It's not that these grooves are bad, they're actually the coolest locked grooves i've ever heard. I could imagine one could listen to them forever, they're pure magic. But the thing is, they're so twisted and sick you'd lose your mind pretty soon... and then i finally lifted the needle from the fourth groove and started to listen to the first proper track, Corn Red Moon. It started with the weirdest and catchiest banjo riff ever, and then came the vocals. Later i found out it was a female guest vocalist (still sounding very typical to Caroliner, as i later found out), but how could you tell WHAT it was... "there was a moon who would stay in the corner of your eye / it would follow your bread smells and wring pantries dry / knocking food down for bugs again and again / corn red moon gets shot at but copper stealings don't end..." I had no idea what it was all about but all i knew that for a long time i had been searching for the most mindblowing psychedelic out-there experimental underground freak-out music experience and now i knew i had found a new favourite band.
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