SLEEVE NOTES FOR MARX, CHRIST & SATAN UNITED IN STRUGGLE SPLIT CD FEATURING STEWART HOME AND SELKKAUS

Ambient/Anti-Ambient

The music on this CD needs little introduction. The two word phrase "Selkkaus rock" is more than enough. I might also add that I find it pleasing that bands as different as Selkkaus and English mavericks The Ceramic Hobs should choose to make such divergent interpretations to my song Kill. Better still, both bands have taken the parodic phrase Marx, Christ & Satan United In Struggle from my writing and appropriated it as a song title. I've always preferred cover versions of my songs to the "originals" and it has long been a matter of regret that all girl Glasgow band We Are The Men - who regularly gave Slaughterhouse Of Love a thrash treatment as part of their live set - split up just as major record companies were showing an interest in them thanks to the furore surrounding the nascent Riot Grrrl scene.

Like the anti-ambient punk rock content of this CD, the non-ambient prank phone calls to prostitutes require little explanation. However, a few words about my ambient radio play Divvy might benefit some listeners since this work has already caused confusion in certain quarters. The play was created by doing a manual cut-up on the first act of Shakespeare’s Hamlet which was then subjected to a certain amount of rewriting and revision. The result was produced using computer generated voices and effects on Sound Edit 16 software. I was interested in the corruptions that slipped in during these various processes - both a loss of meaning and the creation of new meanings. Divvy works on the level of rhetoric rather than that of logic. This play is not something that rewards close attention. It is to be put on in the background and half-listened to in the way that so much conventional theatre is consumed by those who catch plays on the radio while doing something else - whether this be cooking, driving, masturbating or falling asleep.

Both Larry "La La" O’Hara and Cakehead Watson are based on real people. La La O’Hara is a paranoid conspiracy theorist who has denounced as "state disinformation" some fictional pieces I have written that feature a "character" with whom he shares both a name and a number of bizarre personality traits. When I published a story about La La O’Hara having sex with a bread doll and promised further revelations in a future issue of Notes From Cloud-Cuckoo Land, La La put out a "statement" which made it clear that he was unable to distinguish his own xeroxed conspiracy rag from the fictional journal I had conjured up by substituting the phrase "Cloud-Cuckoo Land" for the word "Borderland" in the title of his smudgy production. Likewise, this is not the first CD on which my computer simulations of La La O’Hara’s soft vocal tones have appeared and he has already issued denials that the voice in question is his. It should go without saying that I have made it perfectly clear that the "vocal tones" in question are a simulation and not La La O’Hara’s voice. La La’s inability to differentiate between such simulations and his own speech demonstrates that he is both mentally deranged and extremely stupid.

Cakehead Watson is every bit as idiotic as La La O’Hara but has attempted to cover up this fact by blaming me for his failure to understand a pamphlet entitled The Green Apocalypse. Since the publication in question was edited by Richard Essex, it is difficult to see what Cakehead Watson has achieved by implying I am responsible for the selection of texts it contains, beyond bringing himself and The Fifth Estate - a Detroit smear sheet to which he contributes inanities - into disrepute. Since I am not averse to making shame more shameful by making it public, it is to be hoped that Cakehead Watson will respond to my measured assessment of his imbecility. La La O’Hara’s inability to contain himself means that further ravings from him about me are more than likely. It is, of course, highly amusing that La La O’Hara works as a school teacher since this fact provides yet further evidence that he is my Ubu/Hébert. It is precisely by turning La La O’Hara’s life into a script that I am able to control him.

Stewart Home, London Summer Solstice 1999. These are sleeve notes to the CD Marx, Christ & Satan United In Struggle released by Molotov Records of Jyväskylä (Finland) in 1999.

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