Below The Fold

You deserve a break today

To say the music world has lost a giant would be accurate as well as presumptive. While his 6’5” frame carried plenty of weight, to the rest of the music world he was little more than a sideshow—a curiosity the likes of which you might see under a tent in a small Midwestern town with a barker standing out front screaming at passersby.

Wesley Willis died last night.

Wesley once recorded at Dog House Studios in Thornton, the same place where Money Plays 8 recorded our albums. Dog House is a one-man operation by Jerry Jerome, our good friend and sound engineer, and the brother of our bassist. When we were recording our first album in 1998, Jerry often joked about the tags Wesley ended his songs with. He’d say something like “Rock on, London. Rock on Denver.” Then, he’d pick a different jingle and add it afterwards. “G.E. We bring good things to life.”

When I saw him last, it was in 1999 at the Lion’s Lair. He had no band behind him. All he had was a Casio keyboard with one-touch chordal assignments. He sang about his favorite bands—Nirvana whips a werewolf’s ass with a belt” and his distaste for Michael Jackson—“Michael Jackson licks a monkey’s asshole.”

And then there was my favorite—”The vultures/ The vultures/ The vultures/ The vultures/ The vultures/ The vultures/Ate my dead ass up.”

He was a surprisingly talented artist, and the albums released by Alternative Tentacles bear his art. He was a man horribly scarred by years of emotional and physical abuse in his childhood, having grown up in the projects of the South Side of Chicago. He was incapable of violence, and the sweetest human being you’ve ever met. He was extremely schizoid and had a huge permanent black and blue mark on his head because he greeted people with a soft headbutt to show his affection. He talked in broken sentences like a child, and wanted to be loved like one as well.

Rock on, World. Rock on Heaven.

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