Customer Reviews

The Way I Feel

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Let me clarify something right away in regard to the reviewer who wrote there is no singing on this CD. If an individual says there's no singing on a recording that has a fair amount of singing on it, I induce this person has not listened to much of the recording. Now, for more substantial matters ... Rice's language on this disc is very often not pretty. Some is apparently racist. Whether he meant this language to shock or offend, I neither know nor care. Let me explain why I think this recording has merit. Rice is not afraid to admit that life is often about annoyance and nuisance and sometimes about what is undeniably intense pain. He admits that people are as they are, with their galaxies of flaws included. I can't imagine that self-help books have any place in his cosmology. I think he tries to see both himself and his world pretty much just as they are without ever resorting to the escapist optimism that seems to have become mandatory for U.S. citizens. He doesn't feel that either people or civilization have changed for the better at any point since the inception of civilization. The world Rice depicts isn't pretty or nice. The representation of the world and the way it really is and really works is, I think, more or less accurate. Rice is clearly an independent thinker and would prefer, all other things being equal, that others be independent thinkers as well; thus he doesn't feel that the listener has to agree with his worldview point by point. He is letting the listener know in a quite direct way that he's long since gotten rid of his rose-colored glasses. I'm reminded of the lyrics of James White: "I don't want to be happy. I don't think people are very pretty inside." The record should appeal to those who appreciate the lyrics of Glenn Danzig, Michael Gira, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Sage Francis and the band Portishead.

Let's say past all his aggressive social Darwinism, racism and chauvinism (none of which really gel with his claims to be "misanthropic", because that means hating everybody), Boyd Rice was really just a crude prankster all along, and so most of his critics miss the point. Fair enough. But that means conversely, if you buy his music, the joke is really on you.

At his best, he's slightly amusing, at his worst, he's a strawman Christian pundits used to use to make all atheists look bad. To all the gawffs who dig this, I guess you could be listening to less interesting music. Still, you'll grow out of it.

First off, i'd like to say something just about the vinyl and the condition i received it in.

This album sounds much better on vinyl than it does on CD or in mp3 format. Such is the case with most vinyl records. I was shocked to see that the record was pressed on red vinyl. There we're no scratches on the record when i got it in the mail. A huge bonus, considering how far it traveled to get to where i was. All in all i was very satisfied with the condition i received the record in. I won't be listening to it any time soon, you know, in order to preserve it.

Now about the content of the album. It's about feelings and thoughts. You would be surprised how often Boyd's thoughts mirror your own. Some of the ideas that are discussed are racist or sexist, which i don't embrace. But after listening to the record a few times, you start to discover a lot of what old Boyd has to say is very true.

A lot of the songs are just spoken word with some interesting little melody going on in the backround. But there are some actual songs with singing in them. If your a fan of the whole neo-folk scene then you'll recognize some of the collaborations on this record. Douglas P., David Tibet, and John Murphy to name a few. While the main focus of the songs are the words being spoken, the backround music is always interesting and does a pretty good job of capturing the ear's attention. COIL lends their devious hand to this album in a dark little instrumental piece. Joel Haertling also produces a few instrumental pieces for the record, most notably in "Pearls before swine" , the album's opening track.

"The way i feel" is not for everyone. If you do a little research, you find that Boyd Rice is affiliated with the church of satan. And he has an eletist and darwinistic view of the world. But the album itself does not discuss any of these beliefs directly. So sit back, smile, relax, and let the hate come in. This album is sure to please even the casual listener.

Don't get fooled by the hammering beginning. You might miss a lot. We progressively get deeper into the muddy deposit of history in order to bore through the bark of trees and the shell of nuts and finally penetrate into the oily flesh of all fruit from all planets. Musical echoes are so numerous that it would be vain to ever try to quote them all. So, follow my advice and go there yourselves to learn how to taste everything and remember all you have eaten one day or other. Be careful : some of the echoes are only two or there notes, one or two intervals. And mix all arts remembering that Mahler was a musician though his name means painter in all dictionaries. Let's say Boyd Rice has gathered quite a lot of pollen from quite many flowers in his life. And suddenly there he speaks : hate is a destination you can only reach with a first class ticket. Does it means it is a feeling for the rich ? By far no ? It is only man's most fatally narcissistic feeling as if his bellybutton were made of gold and the others' were only made of despicable lead. He prefers the weak to the strong, but that's normal for this particular individual and it has become nearly politically correct. The humdrum music that nearly covers the voice reveals that the words are less important than the rest, hence nearly forgettable. And then he turns apocalyptic and lures us into a long and progressive transformation on some gregorian music. He carries in himself a deep need to express the desire for spiritual and social eugenics of men to clean up the planet of all its blabberers that have never done anything, the liars and other hypocritical and useless or dangerous moralisers. Life is ugly and this ugliness justifies our getting rid of the authors and perpetrators and procreators of this perpetual ugliness. We need, he says, a brutal guide in this life of ours, and this thought triggers echoes of Mussolini and Hitler. Oppression is the opium of the masses. A vision of society as the perfect realization of fundamentally human masochism, the desire to get off in the most physical way possible, with the enjoyment of the violence that is imposed onto us. With Boyd we go down into the deep layers of the diabolical universe imagined by Clive Barker and all the others who consider Satan was created by man in his image and hell in the image of his desires to survive through and with suffering, especially that of others. I will not tell you why feminists cross the street. Go and see all by yourselves or even better wait for them to do it and enjoy the surprise. The definition of women flows from this ocean of truth but I don't want to tell you what it is, except that his « fair lady » has a lot to do with Oscar Wilde's and Bernard Shaw's humor, Gide's and Proust's if you want to sound French. And do not forget to memorize the name of the street and the positional coordinates on the city map of the telephone booth from which you are calling the emergency services after having been brutally assaulted. And a telephone booth does not walk around. So think of the reaction of these emergency services if you were calling from a mobile cell phone. No, 911 is no longer what it used to be. Is it because 9/11 has become more dramatic ? Get out of the 60s when they believed love could change the world. And look at the real world and find out what progress means : Boyd has so strong words about the present world that you may catch a jaundice or some VD of some type or other, or the incurable fear that is mental cancer. To round it up let's say that the music is not more creative than Beethoven's but certainly not less than Picasso's. It is nothing but a gallery of sonorous audio pictures that are here only to caress your ears inside out and make you admit you like it. And I can guarantee you will say it's good and you will ask for more because this music is nothing but the echo of the world and the picture of your mug, and what's wrong with my bloody damned mug, tell me ? Not much indeed, except it is kind of twisted and it blocks my vision beyond the looking glass.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Paris Dauphine & University of Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne