Bongwater : Nick Cave Dolls

"They call them Bongwater, that's the name of it? I never heard of that, I never heard of a band with that name."

Ahhhh, Bongwater. The artsy duo consisted of performance artist Ann Magnuson and weird-record-impresario Kramer, who founded Shimmy-Disc records which hosted such classic acts as Ruins, King Missile, Boredoms, Daniel Johnston, Naked City and the astoundingly-named When People Were Shorter and Lived Near the Water. He was King of the Weird in the '90s and produced some of the most mind-bending music around.

Bongwater is notorious for full-on kaleidoscopic freak-show psychedelia, and this is a prime example. The piece starts out with a pastiche of found samples, including a stuttering pontification on Bongwater as a band name and someone abusing a telephone. After a minute and a half of psychotropic randomness, the actual song kicks in. The tune itself is a journey through classic psychedelic territory, with hazy guitars and a martial snare pattern laying down the backdrop for Ann's spoken word performance. Somehow she manages to be both sexy and bizarre, tripping her way through double entendres and references to funnel clouds, chocolate cake, lingerie pose-a-thons, balding actors, Dorothy Stratten, and of course, Nick Cave dolls. I want one.

This tune is a little on the adult-oriented side, with some salty language and vaguely risque situations. I mean, the album is called The Power of Pussy.

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