Using Your Indoor Voice

Most people who know me are aware of my phobia for insects -- particularly flying insects, stick bugs, or anything with more sharp pointing body parts than nature should ever allow. But other than Joe few people know about my second worst fear: William S. Burrough's voice.

Kinda weirdly selective, I know. Especially since Burrough's has passed on and one doesn't often come across his voice unless one purposely exposes themselves to it. Or in my case, pops up unexpectedly in a random song, which thankfully happens less and less these days because, again, the man done gone.

And it's not even every time I hear his voice, because sometimes his voice can sound perfectly fine to my ears. I can listen to his Spare Ass Annie & Other Tales album and enjoy it thoroughly, savoring his creeky-old-door drawl and enjoying it the way one would when your delightfully perverted old grandfather tells you a rip-roarin' good yarn.

However, I cannot listen to Dead City Radio. Just flat-out... cannot. The very first time Joe had it cranking in the same room where I was dozing, sort of half in and half out of consciousness, and that voice... there's just a, a subtle difference between the Dead City Radio voice and the Spare Ass Annie voice that perhaps only I can detect, but that day it brought back horrifying memories of the very first time that I ever heard Burrough's voice. That day back in my freshman year of college, 1987 -- and I was so unnerved I snapped out of my somnolent state and nearly screamed to Joe to take the CD out of the player, cowering within the cocoon of my covers as if... as if flying insects were bombarding my carcass (which is probably what his voice may have sounded like to my ears). We ended up selling the CD, although more because we needed the money than my protestations. But I wasn't complaining in the least.

And what was it that I had heard in 1987, during my freshman year of college, that forever fucked me up over Burrough's voice?

"Sharkey's Night" by Laurie Anderson (whom I had just blogged about several days ago).

When I bought Laurie Anderson's Mister Heartbreak album on cassette, which had next to zero liner notes within, I was already familiar with Anderson's penchant for using devices to modify her voice to sound like a man on occasion, whenever the song might call for it. I was not, however, familiar yet with William S. Burroughs, having not fallen into the collegiate literary crowd and therefore not having read Naked Lunch and Junky until sometime in the early 90's. So as much as I enjoyed Mister Heartbreak all the way up towards the end, when the final track "Sharkey's Night" came on and "guest vocalist" Bill Burroughs' frightening groan slithered out of my tape deck speakers I can remember my first thoughts were something along the lines of "OH MY MERCIFUL GOD WHAT FRESH HELL IS THIS????!!!" completely thinking that it was coming out of Laurie's mouth and not the mouth of some elderly drug-ravaged homosexual Beat poet that at the time I never even knew existed. And I never wanted to hear that sound again. Never never never never never. And for several years, I couldn't even play that album anymore, just knowing that "Sharkey's Night" lurked somewhere at the end.

And like I said before, I'm perfectly fine with Bill's voice most times that I've heard it. I can watch Drugstore Cowboy without flinching. And of course Spare Ass Annie, and several other instances. I can even listen to Anderson's live version of "Sharkey's Night" from Home Of The Brave when she does the voice herself.

But "Sharkey's Night", as sung by William S. Burroughs, still haunts me over twenty-some years later. And the only reason I bring it up now is that yesterday, as I was biting the bullet for the first time in years listening to that song in the link above to make sure that it was the correct version, I was BUZZED overhead by the biggest housefly I had ever seen. Like, with fangs and everything. While "Sharkey's Night" was playing on my computer speakers! Needless to say that I am a quivering mess and may never be a whole woman ever again. But I suffer greatly for the sake of of bringing you art. Now I'm going to go hide under my blankets with a fly swatter again.

EDIT: Okay, I for the life of me cannot understand why the last.fm page for "Sharkey's Night" is not coming up in that link, but it appears to not want to post the entire URL. Just add "'s+Night" at the end of the URL and it should do the trick. Or do a search on it. It exists. It's just being a punk.