Is Obscurest Vinyl Channeling Abbie Hoffman? We Need Vital Political Theater
by Phil Wilson
As we finally and inevitably burn the planet to a smoldering toxic dump, we need a sound track to put a smile on our faces. If we are going to let capitalists out of the zoo and supply them with matches and lighter fluid isn't that bad enough without imposing solemn death masks on the attendees?
I don't believe that any god pushes and pulls at the gears, widgets and crankshafts of our fading existence, but if we invent an immortal force - one that schemes and cavorts within the boundaries of our craziest fantasies - shouldn't our homemade deity have balance and compassion? The god that tosses us into the greenhouse oven, like so many sticks fed to a wood stove, ought to have a wicked sense of humor and a generous inclination to provide anesthesia. We have toxic encephalopathy and parkour, metastatic cancer and Irish dancing, plantar fasciitis and theater of the absurd, environmental collapse and AI generated retro tunes from the 1950's - doom and techno doowop.
Imagine this lively number as the oceans leapfrog over concrete barriers and the Amazon jungle blazes its green guts out for the purpose of assembly line flame grilled Whoppers - sing it with me.
"OJ Simpson the man of the hour
With every touchdown he wields his power
In the hearts of fans his legacy will thrive
The greatest of all time
He'll forever be alive
He'll forever be alive
He'll forever be alive."
This tune, designed to send us off the edge of the flat earth, to float and suffocate in the infinite and airless cosmos, has been posted on YouTube by something called "Obscurest Vinyl." This restores my faith in humanity. A genius from the the coldest most remote villages of cyberspace - which, like the cosmos, may be infinite - realizes that we have reached the end of the line and there is nothing to be done.
"Nothing to be done," is the opening line uttered by Estragon in the play Waiting For Godot. But there is always - no matter how fatalistic and resigned one might be - the force of mockery as a last resort. The OJ Simpson song by Obscurest Vinyl raises up a middle finger on behalf of the powerless masses. If we assemble to celebrate the enormity of human folly, this is the song I want to hear blaring out of the loud speakers.
Even the YouTube comments about this tune inspire awe. If some big headed, wrinkled and more advanced team of aliens finds our ruins in a billion years they ought to grab the nearest fossilized I-Phone to read the thoughts skittering back and forth while we choked on the toxic fumes of our immolated woodlands.
"I'm just glad he can rest easy knowing his wife's killer is finally gone," quipped one reader.
"Shame he will never be the one to catch him though," answered another.
"He missed his chance every time he went to shave," observed a third reader.
The retro tint of Obscurest Vinyl offerings skewers those who long for the past.
If these musical mutations evoke memories of The Coasters, Petula Clark or The Teddy Bears, the lyrics are the crudest, most scatological and tasteless offerings to ever make people cringe. These manifestly hideous doowop confections will disabuse the most addictively nostalgic people of their notions regarding a glorious lost world of post war growth and prosperity.
If one wishes to escape from bleached coral reefs and credit card debt into a world of Elvis, Connie Francis and musical memories, Obscurest Vinyl offers,
"It's Time to take a Shit on the Company Dime:"
"Getting paid to shit
Getting paid to wipe
The best 45 minutes
Of my fucking life"
This might suggest the aura of vintage Huey Lewis singing Power of Love, but it takes a dystopian U-turn to the sweatshops of Walmart and Amazon. In the Obscurest Vinyl version of capitalism, the most indulgent conceivable fantasy is about taking a 45 minute shit in the company stall. It is impossible to know if the workplace or the institution of rock and roll takes the worst hit.
In 1968 Abbie Hoffman came to the Chicago Democratic Convention to nominate a pig for president, fantasize about smoking dope with Mayor Daley and imagine that collective thoughts could levitate the Pentagon. Abbie Hoffman understood that nonsense was a political weapon, and that political theater unified the cause. Maybe Obscurest Vinyl has stumbled on Hoffman's legacy or invented something similar by shear chance. In 1968 nonsense altered history.