Wesley Willis Revisited
Listening to the late Wesley Willis on my Windows Media Player ("I Whupped Spiderman's Ass," "Rock and Roll McDonalds," "Jello Biafra"), so I thought I'd see if he was in the news. He is:
Elvis Presley may have been the King, but Wesley Willis was the Daddy. Willis, a giant of a man who died two years ago of leukemia, was known for his outlandish, schizophrenia-induced songs about "whipping mules' behinds with belts" and rocking "Saddam Hussein's ass to Russia." (Attention, normals: Don't try to comprehend this.) Fortunately, before Willis passed on to battle his demons in the hereafter, filmmaker Daniel Bitton cranked out the documentary Wesley Willis: The Daddy of Rock 'n' Roll, showing [in late September] at Uncle Sam's Music (4580 N. University Dr., Lauderhill [Florida]). In the film, Bitton follows Willis around Chicago, from riding the bus to doing business at record stores. Sure, schizophrenia often took its toll on Willis. But beneath it all, he was a man who truly loved making music -- a pure, unadulterated soul free of any rock-star pretensions. Oh, and as Willis himself once sang, the six-foot-five, 300-pound rocker could have "whipped Batman's ass" any day of the week.
And someone aspires to Willis' musical heights:
While his fall tour just began, one-man band B.A Johnston is continuing his tradition of doing things backwards. With an illogical tour itinerary that sees him jumping all over the map, he'll once again ride the Greyhound to his varied locales — bypassing cities one day only to return there the next....
While he's on tour, and in a transient mood, Johnston will pimp his flighty new concept album, Songs About A Stewardess.
"It's all songs about a stewardess I fell in love with on an airplane flight with my mom," he explains. "She doesn't like me talking to strange women, and strange women don't like me talking to them, but she brushed my arm while handing me sesame sticks. So the album is a fantasy about what could have happened between us; songs about phoning her up, dates on a lake, flying in airplanes together and her ultimate rejection of me. Even in my fantasy, I still can't get to first base."
Johnston doesn't always lose though. His last album, My Heart Is A Blinking Nintendo, was released earlier this year and was a campus radio smash. Still, he admits that his rapid transition between albums doesn't make him as prolific as the late, great Wesley Willis. Instead, he had ulterior motives with Stewardess.
"I like Wesley Willis and I'd love to have his fame and money, but I'm not really like him, aside from the Casios and stupid songs about nothing," he says. "I also have stupid guitar songs about nothing, so I've got that going for me. But, I wrote the album quickly because sometimes you've gotta write a fantasy album about stewardesses. And, I needed something to sell on tour."...
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