MP3 Lucid Screaming - A Spoonful of Laudanum
Spoken Word, Poetry, With Music, Comedy, Political
15 MP3 Songs
SPOKEN WORD: With Music, SPOKEN WORD: Poetry
Details:
Zounds! What on earth are you listening to? Why, it’s a new collection of satirical and surreal spoken word and music by Lucid Screaming, a motley group of writers and musicians who are mostly based in Los Angeles and who hail from California, Wisconsin, New Zealand, and quite possibly Neptune. Their pieces — laden with outrage, whimsy and obscure references — are intended to amuse and provoke.
The Lucid Ones write about whatever strikes their fancy: UFOs, dictators, hippos, city living, cell phones, clones, and Sunday drivers are among the subjects of their twisted tunes and rants.
This new collection, Spoonful of Laudanum, explores the collective hallucination that is America in the new millennium. We have entered an alternate reality cooked up by Karl Rove, televangelists, and Enron, with guidance from George Orwell. War is peace, greed is holy, and ignorance is bliss.
Laudanum was a tincture of opium once used to calm nerves and ease pain, and “it helps the medicine go down,” as Cummings sings in the title track. These days, Americans are gulping down bucketfuls of self-righteous and jingoistic laudanum dispensed by George W. Bush, Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Pat Robertson, and other emissaries from the Dark Side.
Speaking of evildoers, Paul Wolfowitz and his colleagues live out James Bond fantasies in Never Say NeoCon; Axles of Evil shows us Bush’s inner thoughts before the Iraqi invasion; and Bush’s Alphabet takes us inside our president’s childlike perspective a few months later. Jesus Crack and Things Jesus Never Said send up self-serving interpretations of the Gospels. Mr. American speaks of “looking out for #1,” while Show Me the Money Sutra chants a Jerry Maguire mantra. Does Aaron’s Bar contain a curiously puritanical message or is it a coded allegory?
Some of the pieces on Spoonful are just plain out there. Visions of Wozbrood is a Kerouac-inspired road trip that mixes the music business and UFOs, while Upside Down Dog recalls a whiskey-drinking neighbor tormented by visions of flying canines.
The rest of the tracks speak, wail, and howl for themselves. Time to get Lucid!