Twenty-six years ago, I bought the LP titled Hole by Scraping Foetus Off The Wheel, and in nearly every year since then, on September 1st, I think of it. Somewhere in my journey through history, I probably learned on which day the Nazis invaded Poland, but it was Jim Thirwell with his SFOTW project that seared the date into my memory. In the third track on this album, I’ll Meet You In Poland, Baby sings of Hitler using his dick as a measure of guaranteeing unilateral security as he prepares to invade Poland back on September 1, 1939. This was the beginning of World War II. By the way, I was a specialist in the U.S. Army stationed at Rhein-Main Airbase in Frankfurt, Germany, and the gravity of the song had me questioning if it was illegal to listen within those borders. All things Hitler was forbidden.

Following up the ballad for Poland was the provocatively titled Hot Horse which I thought was going to continue the World War II theme, but alas, I was wrong: this was about fucking and so not all that provocative after all. Mind you that by now, I’d listened to the first track in which Foetus wants to shove his head under some pantyhose. He follows that by singing about his lust for death before hitting the song that struck me hard in my historical senses.

This was Oingo Boingo for the angry crowd who required some seething controversy in their pop songs while swing dancing in the cabaret. Foetus delivered all the attitude one needed to feel their teeth were sparkly white after a fresh listen to this journey into the absurd. If someone had told me that Mr. Thirwell had dedicated this masterpiece in honor of Antonin Artaud, I would have had no reason to doubt it. Strangely enough, almost ten years later I felt that it was Marshall Mathers who picked up the baton of master lyricist that transported the listener onto a different stage, one that was often cruel.

I’d first seen Jim Thirwell at a spoken word performance at the Anti-Club on Melrose Blvd in Los Angeles back in 1983. I’d not gone for him; I was there for Lydia Lunch, probably like almost everyone else in attendance. It wouldn’t be until 1988 at my favorite club, the Batschkapp in Frankfurt, Germany, that I’d see him again. Unbeknownst to me, Caroline was in the audience as well. She also was a Foetus fan, having caught him performing as Wiseblood at the Wartburg in Wiesbaden in 1986 before our paths ever crossed.

I wish I had known to write a diary back then, though I can’t help but think that the music I was listening to is more impactful to my memories now as I can reflect on its place in the ever-evolving world of music. From the ’70s through the ’90s, the emergent music forms of those days were my normal and felt like the logical progression of where music should be going in response to rock, pop, disco, and folk that preceded punk, industrial, electronic, and hip-hop. It’s difficult at the moment, when something is fresh, to realize that 20 years down the road, we’ll look back at what seemed almost mundane and realize how much it was shaping some small part of who we were becoming.