Scraping Foetus Off TheWheel - Hole

Mon 7th Feb, 2005 in Music Reviews

Many of you may not have heard of him, but you will have, more than likely, sampled some of his musical talents in work he has done with NIN, Ministry, Lydia Lunch, Panterra, White Zombie, JSBX, Coil, RHCP and countless others.

Those of you that are lucky enough to know of this talented man will be aware that he is the driving force behind the enigma that is Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel and all the sordid, incestuous offspring that J.G. Thirwell has spawned, musically that is.

Some of these include You’ve Got Foetus On Your Breath, Foetus Over Frisco, Clint Ruin & Lydia Lunch, The Foetus Of Excellence, Foetus Interruptus, Wiseblood, The Flesh Volcano, Steroid Maximus, Garage Monsters, and more recently Manorexia and Baby Zizanie.

He is also extremely talented with a paintbrush and pencil, doing all his cover art and various more formal art works. http://foetus.org/art/

Leaving Melbourne in late 1978, Thirwell does a few years in London before settling in the U.S. The traditional band seems too binding for his musical ideas. In London, he sets up his own label, Self Immolation, and in 1981 the first release, the Spite your face/O.K F.M. 7 inch appears by the artist Foetus Under Glass.

J G Thirwell recorded Hole in late 1983 and released it almost 12 months later. The one-man band that he is produced, arranged and performed all of the material on the album.

”... I like the way you fill out your clothes, I gonna soak my head under your hose…” says the seedy, nasal voice at the opening of the first track, Clothes Hoist. In front of a frantic industrial/jungle beat teamed with soaring buzzsaw guitar and galvanised pipes. Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel seems to be telling us, from behind a soiled trench coat, that it’s golden showers all-round the seeds for the nightmare have been sown.

The soundbyte of the kamikaze fighter on the down gives us an idea of what this little gem is about. Like some score from a kooky horror movie, the big beats are happening again in Lust For Death. Together with some catchy organ playing, your foot is tapping and you may think you’re at Luna Park. Awesome lyrics, just don’t read them, as they may spoil your childhood memories of merry-go-rounds. Too bad.

Clanking of pipes/sticks and tribal/jungle style drumming with military precision continues in I’ll Meet You In Poland, Baby and Hot Horse. Memories of Adam and the Ants immediately spring to mind, but the drumming is where that comparison starts and ends. Again, with these two numbers, Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel takes some extremely questionable lyrical content, tars it with his brush and turns it into a fun little jaunt in the park. Well, kind of.

The opening vocal on Sick Man sounds like Tom Waits would sound with flu, after a bottle of scotch had washed down a card of Mogadon or something to that effect. That quickly wears off with some neat honky tonk piano building to an inevitable sonic crash. This crash takes the form of an up-tempo interpretation of the original theme from Batman. Lovely.

Street of Shame puts us back in the comfort zone with some funky little bongo work and gets the feet tapping and the fingers snapping once again. This could be a biographical account of himself or his take on the Good versus Evil thing. I don’t know. When he croons:

“I like to stay in holy places,
I’m happiest on consecrated ground.
I worship the earth that I walk upon,
I seldom eat anything but sacred cow…” 

I can picture him just cruising around, oozing with confidence, hands raised, inviting everyone to joins his ‘flock’. Just preaching the good word that he stands for (cough, cough). Then, the evil twin is un-masked.

“I’m an angel who’s had his wings clipped – an angel in devil’s boots, an angel in devil’s boots?
Sling back pumps for the cloven hoof someone’s tied tin cans to my tail someone’s always driving in one last nail.
I’m trying to use my halo as a life preserver, but it’s sprung a leak. This is holy murder…”

And the secret is out. But everyone is converted by now.

Staying with the religious style theme, we pull on the boardies and wax up for Satan Place. I’m sure he has kidnapped the Deltones for this one. Cowabunga, we got woo ooh ooh oohs, surf guitars, Wipeout samples and oom paappa oom mou mous’ paappa oom mou mous’ coming out of all of our orifices here. All in a song about checking out the big guy down stairs and being the last surfer in hell, who’d have thunk it? Only Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel me thinks. Another gem.

White Knuckles sounds as though it was forged in a steel works, not recorded, but that’s in a good way. The comical, cartoon like soundtrack is again coupled to some questionable lyrics, but it is this marrying throughout that works so well. Is this guy so disturbed and on the verge of total collapse that this is how he always thinks? No.

He did suffer from some mental and financial strain around 1983 due to his one-man team efforts and this could well explain a lot of what we hear throughout this offering. This was relieved somewhat, when Some Bizarre came on board to license and distribute the recordings.

Words aren’t any easier to digest with the closing track, Cold Day In Hell. Combining a number of history’s atrocities in one small package and taking the blame for the lot, he sums it up with one lyric for me:

”... The inscription on the tombstone reads wish you were here…”

I did it and so what. I wish I got you all.

A listen through some of his later offerings and you would never pick it was the same person. Some is the coolest uber-phonic, most lounge-a-delic stuff you are ever likely to hear. As a rule of thumb any work with the name Foetus in the artist’s title will be in the same vein as what is heard here.

Maybe there is some kind of bi-polar disorder? The fact that he is an enormous talent remains constant throughout. Hole was my first taste and I bought it in 1985. I saw the word Foetus, saw the artwork, and thought that this person had balls. I was right and it reflects in his music.

Get it for the music, get it for the lyrics or get for the artwork but don’t take it too seriously, just enjoy it.