The Culture Bunker

1998 in Review or Up Against the Wal-Mart, Maternal Fornicators!

by William Ham
illustration by Space Jockey

Note: The writer normally responsible for this feature has taken an extended leave of absence from this section of the magazine, due to an unforeseen medical emergency at the semi-annual Lollipop New Year’s Eve party (a bon mot got lodged in his thesaurus, making it difficult to parse). In his stead, a succession of guest writers will contribute material to this space with the understanding that the column’s creator will continue to retain the byline, much of the glory, and all of the water he’s built up in his system until he’s officially declared a gulf. This month’s column is excerpted from the upcoming book by award-filching rock critic/psychic Uri Tosches, which, weeks before its official publication, has already gone out of print.

If 1997 was one of the more elliptical years in music history, with no individual artist making much of an impact (other than John Denver) and the record-company-engineered “electronica” hype proving the least successful movement since Elvis’ last grunt over the Graceland growler, then 1998 was the dried semen stain on the rented prom dress of the collective unconscious. Thanks to a patented concatenation of astral projection, psychic reception, and a unique variation on the standard crystal ball known as the “Magic 8-Ball,” I have already experienced the full spectrum of the upcoming year in music and popular entertainment, the highlights of which I present in hopes of furthering my commitment to the world entertainment community and winning a few wagers to help settle the sexual-harassment suit brought by a young employee at my psychic hotline (she claims that, on several occasions, she was touched by an angel).

(Note to readers: since this magazine will appear on the stands in March, I have decided to delete my forecasts for the first two months of the year, as the events that I have prophesied for those months, including the U.N.’s declaration of the latest Spice Girls album as “cruel and unusual punishment” and the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in one of the divots in Keith Richards’ face, have assuredly already occurred, so I need not reiterate them to prove the veracity of my extrasensory gift. Also, I’ve just been told I’m not being paid by the word.)

MARCH More trouble arises for the controversial English group the Prodigy, the biggest electronic sensation since my cousin forgot to unplug the TV before trying to repair it, when their latest album is banned from every major record outlet in the world before it is even recorded. In his defense, lead singer Keith Flint, already the subject of a major music-business scandal when he allowed several of the holes in his face to grow over, states that the title of their latest single, “Let’s Kill All the Jews and Bury Their Remains in Mass Graves,” is actually street slang for “I’m feeling terribly perky this morning.” The video for the song, depicting the cultivation of sundry fruits and vegetables on the bald spot of the lead singer’s head, is immediately put into heavy rotation on a hot-dog rotisserie in a convenience store in Milwaukee due to a clerical error made by a slightly-deaf record company executive.

APRIL The latest tragedy in a business beset by them (the drowning death of Jeff Buckley, the murder of the Notorious B.I.G., the reunion of Fleetwood Mac) occurs on the 17th of this month, when Diogenes Schwartz, lead rhythm guitarist for noted ecru-metal combo Festering Pus-Ridden Tumors U.K., loses both his arms and legs and bends his styling comb permanently out of shape in a drunk-and-stupid-driving accident, which also claimed the life of his fiancée, who sustained fatal puncture wounds and deflated. In a heartworming show of support, the rest of the band announces that Schwartz would remain an integral part of the group. “He can’t really play the guitar, I guess,” says baked stuffed bass player Hieronymous Guh, “but we’re gonna fill him up with helium and bounce him around a stadium a bit.” Schwartz is acquitted of all charges after claiming in his defense that Lincoln-Mercury was in retrograde.

MAY The much-delayed follow-up album to the unreleased EP that came after the twelve-inch remix of the outtakes left over from the bootleg tape of Nine Cent Royalty Check’s vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/litigant Mamie Van Hauptmann whistling into a microcassette recorder is finally released. The triple-CD set, The Down-filled Spiral, shot immediately to the top of the Billboard, CMJ Music Journal, and Self-Sucklers Magazine charts, only to plummet only twenty minutes later to a dismal #1,612 (right between Off-Key Carmelite Nuns Sing the Songs of Vanilla Fudge and the latest from Hammer) after it is discovered that the album consists of the following spoken message: “Since I started making unconscionable amounts of money, have appeared on the covers of every publication in the world, and can have sex with whoever and whenever I want to, I’ve found that I am no longer angst-ridden. In fact, I’m feeling downright let’s-kill-all-the-Jews-and-bury-their-remains-in-mass-graves!”, followed by four hours of a cappella Huey Lewis and the News covers.

JUNE Scandal rocks the cheese-metal and talentless bimbo communities when a tape is clandestinely distributed featuring Cöntråçtuál Oßligatioñ skin-slammer (and sometime drummer) Kinkko Vas Deferens and his wife, actress/personal flotation device “Buoyant” Babs Billabong engaged in flagrant and explicit abstention from sex. Immediately, dubs of the couple rotating the tires of their car, scratching various unerogenous areas of their bodies, and attempting to read Hop on Pop aloud are posted on the Internet, distributed illegally through subterranean tape-trading circles, and included in higher-quality collections such as Uri Tosches’ Kinkko and Babs Leaving It On, available for only $179.99 from Sporkbender Productions, PO Box 98043, Los Alpos, NM 78659 for a limited time only (until the sun supernovas and the entire solar system collapses sometime next year – oops, that was supposed to be a surprise).

JULY Researchers at the Letme Institute in Farci, California, announce a medical/musical breakthrough – the world’s first full-band cloning. Using advanced DNA technology late one night when they’re really drunk, the team at the Institute successfully carbon-copied the members of Hanson. However, tragedy struck when the clones, upon being informed of the procedure, promptly committed suicide. A tribute album commemorating the fallen dupes is planned until it’s discovered that nobody cares. Not even Sting.

AUGUST Nine Cent Royalty Checks have officially broken up – quite literally, as Mamie Van Hauptmann, discovered by irate fans at a karaoke bar in Akron performing “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” was torn limb from limb and his body parts scattered all over the countryside to shouts of “How’s this for an extended remix?” Ironically, an audio tape of the incident made on the scene quickly becomes their biggest single ever.

SEPTEMBER The tallies for the summer’s package tours are in, and to everyone’s surprise, Lollapalooza ’98 (featuring Superfudgejesus-chunkbox, the Sibling Brothers, and a guy that used to tour-manage the Knack), the Epililith Fair (celebrating the work of women and pale, hairless men in music), and the B.O.R.E.D. Festival (a collection of bands comprised of narcoleptics and people who’ve had ice cream flavors named after them, which fell apart after the mid-tour decampment of Zzzzz Top and DJ Neapolitan) were soundly trounced in receipts by the upstart Decease and Desist Tour. Brilliantly combining a wide variety of up-and-coming alternative acts and the untimely demises of musical icons, which by summer had climbed to fifteen deaths a week, the tour features an ever-expanding lineup of performers playing their latest hit songs and expiring in excruciating pain. The appearances of blues musician Tuberculotic Frank McMickmick and ex-Toe Jam frontman Troy Avoirdupois, who ate a piece of pie crawling with infected ticks on-stage and quickly succumbed to Key Lyme Disease, are among the most critically-acclaimed events of the year.

OCTOBER Country megastar Bobby Bill Robert-Williams breaks all existing attendance records with a free concert held in Median Square, Kentucky. Over two million people attend, resulting in calamity when a pool of chewing-tobacco spittle the size of the Indian Ocean completely engulfs the neighboring states of North and South Carolina. The following week, Robert-Williams receives a Humanitarian Award from the National Council of People With the Proper Number of Chromosomes.

NOVEMBER In band news, Mamie Van Hauptmann’s upper torso and Diogenes Schwartz’ left leg just below the knee announce plans to form a new group, Piecewerk. Their first release, “No Dessert For the Wicked,” can be heard on the soundtrack to Oliver Stone’s speculative docudrama about the president’s sex life, Free Willy 4. (It can be heard during the climactic courtroom scene when Kevin Costner plays and replays a grainy Super-8 film of Clinton wearing nothing but a strategically-placed bolo tie, noting repeatedly that the First Member bends “back and to the left… back and to the left…”)

DECEMBER The year ends much as it began, with the minor addition of the bloody battle between the forces of good and evil on the set of Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve 1999, a struggle whose denouement remains unknown, first, because the always-time-sensitive Clark needed to cut away to pre-taped footage of Paul Revere and the Raiders’ stunning collaboration with Anson Williams, and second, because the program was firmly beaten in the ratings by Fox’s rebroadcast of the restored “special edition” of C.H.U.D. As the new year begins, consumers everywhere clamor for the exclusive octophonic coverage of the death-grapple between benevolence and malevolence as presented in Uri Tosches’ four-billion-selling CD-ROM, The End of Humankind as We Know It on Eight Dollars a Day, featuring exclusive post-struggle interviews with each of the participants and downloadable still photographs of all the historical figures he’s been in previous lives, naked.