The Twinkie Plea

Roy Watson

Cemental Health Records EEG05

Conceived, written and performed by Roy Watson, 
with the assistance of Ian Shuttleworth.

All tracks © control Anal Memoranda, except I'm Waiting For The Man: 
written by Lou Reed, © Sunbury Music.

Recorded February–September 1982 except 2: instrumental track recorded July 1980 in a warehouse and where noted elsewhere. 
Mastered July–September 1982 at Ghetto.
Digitally remastered October 2004.

Cover: detail from L.H.O.O.Q. by Marcel Duchamp and Francis Picabia, with the eyes replaced.

This title (P) 1982, 2004 Cemental Health Records.

“Write something commercial,” she said...

DEFENDANTS
Roy Watson: synthesizer, guitar, treated guitar, tape montages
Ian Shuttleworth: bass guitar, guitar treatments, backing tapes

PRECEDENT
Domesticated primates are always finding and denouncing “no-good shits” among themselves.  One century it may be adolescents who masturbate, another century it may be ideologists of some new politics, a third century it may be those who smoke the wrong herbs.  Right now, in Unistat, it was Twinkie-eaters.
Twinkies had originally been denounced by Furbish Lousewart, leader of the People’s Ecology Party, but Lousewart denounced so many things that Twinkies did not suffer particularly from his anathemas.  But then, in San Francisco in 1979, a primate named Dan White, who had shot and killed two other primates, hired a particularly clever lawyer to defend him.  The lawyer claimed in court, and succeeded in convincing the jury, that White had been temporarily insane due to over-indulgence in Twinkies.
Primate journalists, who have an instinct for ideas that will spook the primate herd, immediately began publicising the dangers of Twinkies.  Many accounts of the White murders were printed in lurid tabloids, describing how the Twinkie-maddened primate had murdered Mayor George Moscone and then, still gripped by the influence of the high sugar content in the confectionery, lurched wildly down the hall to murder Supervisor Harvey Milk.  Within two years, seventeen defendants in other parts of Unistat had been acquitted or given diminished sentences due to the Twinkie Plea.
By then Twinkies were outlawed in fourteen states and Congressional legislation against Twinkies was pending.
—Robert Anton Wilson, Schrödinger’s Cat II: The Trick Top Hat (1979)
 
 

TRACK LISTING

ORIGINAL
  • Masturprice (7:39) treated guitar, tape montage; IS bass guitar, guitar treatment, original tapes.  A conceptual joke.
  • I’m Waiting For The Man (5:33) RW tape montage; IS bass guitar, original tapes; also Mark Gilliland guitar, Ian McDevitt drums.  The key is in the last item.
  • Suburban Landscape (2:45) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.  Failed Frippery.
  • And On This Rock (3:53) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • The Angel Of Incidents (3:55) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Chase (2:28) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Envelope (1:40) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Annoyance Factor (2:06) RW synthesizer.
  • Uncoiled (4:42) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Brian Eno In The Greenhouse With A Tibetan Nose Flute (2:26) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.  Well, that’s what it sounds like to us.
  • Tuesday Afternoon (5:08) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.  It was, too.
  • I’m Pleased (3:16) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Four Miles Of It (3:32) RW synthesizer; IS backing tape.
  • Kampfwagenschlacht parts 1 & 2 (12:10) RW synthesizer, guitar, treated guitar; IS bass guitar, guitar treatment, backing tapes.  The title means Tank Battle.
Backing tape rhythms by A Certain Ratio, Bauhaus, Can, Free Agents Joy Division, 23 Skidoo.  Words from BBC news/sport and various dramatic productions, Independent Radio News and a private telephone call.		 BONUS