The Pornographers (It's A Destroyer cover)

The song is called 'The Pornographers'. I recorded it yesterday. Related to that, I talk about the band name.

This song was always on a long list of Destroyer songs for the New Ps to cover, for obvious reasons. At some point I thought we’d gone back to that formula enough. That old ‘re-work a song from We’ll Build Them A Golden Bridge’ formula. Perhaps the most tired trope in rock history. It had already been done twice! Yet I just went there. Leaving behind the economy of the original’s 57 seconds and stretching it out to a bloated 2:06. I think I was also hesitant to cover a song that opened with the line “I’m not sorry I killed the baby”. This wasn’t Bejar’s typical opening salvo. Forget his ideas about “lesbian rage”, this was on the edge of unacceptable.

My main reason for covering this one now is that current events had me looking back to the 90s and asking myself why I picked the band name. It was so long ago, so distorted by time and the half-fictions of memory, that I don’t really remember. Obviously there was this song from 1996, which is approximately when the first germ of the band idea was possibly engendered. You know, like the shudder in the loins in Yeats’ ‘Leda And The Swan’. The story of the Jimmy Swaggart book where he calls rock and roll “the new pornography” is apocryphal. I’ve never seen it. Someone told me about it and I believed them. If it was true, it was perfect. Even if it’s a lie, it is a good story. It’s an artful lie. The story that feels closest to the truth is that it came from this movie here:

It’s been sitting in a pile of Criterion Collection DVDs, just northwest of my studio desk, for years. There with all the other Japanese and French films that have been kicked out of the main house, with the Lego flow-over, various other toys that aren’t garbage but are not quite wanted. I call my studio the nerd dungeon.

It’s a 1966 film by Shohei Imamura, adapted from the book by Akiyuki Nozaka. He started out as an assistant director with Yasujiru Ozu, don’t you know, but went in his own direction. From the back of the DVD:

“Subu makes pornographic films. He sees nothing wrong with it. They are an aid to a repressed society, and he uses the money to support his landlady, Haru, and her family. From time to time, Haru shares her bed with Subu, though she believes her dead husband, reincarnated as a carp, disapproves. Director Shohei Imamura has always delighted in the kinky exploits of lowlifes, and in this 1966 classic, he finds subversive humor in the bizarre dynamics of Haru, her Oedipal son, and her daughter, the true object of her pornographer-boyfriend's obsession. Imamura's comic treatment of such taboos as voyeurism and incest sparked controversy when the film was released, but The Pornographers has outlasted its critics, and now seems frankly ahead of its time.”

I loved it because it was so disconnected from everything I’d seen in Japanese films. Not a period drama, no samurais. Not a quiet meditation on Japanese society. Even the Kurosawa crime dramas seemed very buttoned down. His films were bizarre and the juxtaposition between what one might expect and what you got made it even stranger. It was also the first time I’d seen the word ‘pornographer’ and I thought it was an oddly clinical term for a person that made pornography. Like calling the janitor a ‘sanitation engineer’. Both of them acceptable, of course.

I liked the idea of putting the word ‘new’ in front of it because it was a continuation of a pop culture tradition. What did Keith Potger of The Seekers do when his band broke up? He put together The New Seekers. I had nothing to do with Imamura’s Pornographers though, I just enjoyed the laughable gall of proclaiming ourselves to be the next generation, the next step.

It didn’t seem like any of it mattered. When we finished the demo of our first four songs (Letter From An Occupant, Mystery Hours, Execution Day and Breakin’ The Law), I sent one cassette to Jonathan Poneman at Sub Pop and one to Nils Bernstein at Matador. I had connections! Never heard back from Jonathan, he later apologized and told me he thought the interest in Canadian rock had already passed. Little did he know! Right?

Right?

I know more about the history of what happened to the Nils cassette that went to Matador. Even then I was unsure of our name, in the accompanying letter I called us the New Phonographers. Why didn’t that stick? I don’t know. Maybe someone told me that we shouldn’t change our name before we’ve even begun. I guess 1998 was at the very tail end of the “cassette demo” era, because Nils would later tell me that it was a big song and dance in the label office to hook up a cassette deck so they could listen to it. I am flattered that they ever did listen. I never knew what happened. I thought both cassettes were sent into the abyss of forgotten demos, where they would languish with many other perfectly legitimate and quality demos. Very few bands get signed because of demos, you usually have to prove that you’re a real band. Release something, go on tour, show that you’re willing to do the work. That tells the label that it’s worthwhile for them to do their work helping you. That’s basically what we did.

Yes, in the end it kind of worked, and now here we are. I enjoyed recording this song yesterday. It is always what I have done. Next I will work on something else and I figure I will keep doing that until I die. According to the tenets of Ikigai, you find your purpose and you never retire. If our first record resonated with people, I think it’s because it communicates ‘music for the love of music’. We expected nothing. I still expect nothing. I always hoped for more and I still hope for more. Lots to consider this last month, it all comes back to… how do you say… keeping on with the keeping on.

Here is the song, just on the other side of the line: