Psycho Magnet

I actually had a similar experience with DFW and the end of Infinite Jest, where he makes an extended reference to how depressing the isolated vocal track of Linda McCartney singing with Wings is. Curious, I found a YouTube video with said isolated vocal tracks: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoH9zP_n_g0

I'll tell you, it really adds something when you can find the reference like that. What's a little odd is that I don't have the sense that DFW himself was much of an Internet user, and of course both Infinite Jest and "Big Red Son" were written before the Web became REALLY BIG -- yet in some ways DFW is the quintessential Internet writer.

That vocal track is horrifying.

One thing that I find interesting and very sympathetic is that DFW seems to have avoided the internet and at one point didn't want to have email access in his home "because if you can get out, they can get in." In his work he did not so much extrapolate where all of this was headed as dig down to the substrate upon which all of it rests. It's pretty much all there already in his early essay on TV and postmodernism -- which may be one of two or three things about pomo that I recall reading that felt like they involved more than juggling conceptual tropes.

But yes, I totally agree that "Big Red Son" now feels like it has at least as much to do with the internet as it does with pornography. And not for the obvious reasons involving the direct relationship between them. Likewise, his essay on talk radio feels like it has something to do with the present political situation, at least as much as it does with right-wing ranting under the first Bush administration.....

That's just right, that he dug down to the substrate. I too had heard the e-mail story.

I just have to reproduce here the relevant passage from Infinite Jest:

The CD playing was one C'd played all the time in the car when Gately had been with him in a car: somebody had taken an old disk of McCartney and the Wings -- as in the historical Beatles's McCartney -- taken and run it through a Kurzweil remixer and removed every track on the sonfs except the tracks of poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney singing backup and playing tambourine. [...] Poor old Mrs. Linda McCartney just fucking could not sing, and having her shaky off-key little voice flushed from the cover of the whole slick multitrack corporate sound and pumped up to solo was to Gately unspeakably depressing -- her voice sounding so lost, trying to hide and bury itself inside the pro backups' voices; Gately imagined Mrs. Linda McCartney -- in his Staff room's wall's picture a kind of craggy-faced blonde -- imagined her standing there lost in the sea of her husband's pro noise, feeling low esteem and whispering off-key, not knowing quite when to shake her tambourine: C's depressing CD was past cruel, it was somehow sadistic-seeming, like drilling a peephole in the wall of a handicapped bathroom. (pp. 978-9 in my edition)

What a find. Thanks.

Yes, that nails it. The singing is hideous, but it's the intentionality behind the whole thing that makes listening to it horrifying.

As opposed to a similar track from Van Halen where somebody has stripped away everything except David Lee Roth singing, which is just silly:

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0a54ce784d/david-lee-roth-vocal-track-runnin-with-the-devil-from-unearned-happiness

It's a standard case made by theater people that the Tony Awards show always succeeds with the kind of big song and dance numbers that Hollywood consistently makes boring or out-right embarrassing on the Oscars. What, then, of the adult film industry?

I like the fact that Dyanna's band has tuxedos -- you stay classy, guys -- while she's in the (scalded) catsuit. Dyanna's is way different from Linda McCarthy's -- DFW's right. Listening to McCarthy's vocal track was just sad. (Trying to) listen to the unlistenable Lauren makes one realize that, we must admit, her song may well have proved extremely successful. It's hard to imagine anyone stalking her after that.

Getting this song stuck in your head is not a good thing. So I have learned.