In Regard to the State of My Gender

“If you were stranded alone on a desert island and had to take ONE album with you, what would it be?”

Ugh. We’ve all been asked this question, whether it be from an uninterested date to a party icebreaker to an automated survey on Facebook. I don’t think anyone really even thinks about this, or actually cares at all.

I’ve never really thought much of it. But I got asked again recently and for some reason, this time it stuck with me. Rolled around in the back of my head asking me, honestly, what is the one album I would take with me if I was stranded alone on an island and had to listen to over and over again?

The answer came back unanimously:

Mr. Bungle – California

It was August of 1999 when this album fell into my hands, one month after it’s release date. At the time, the only thing I knew about Mr. Bungle was a friend’s scratchy cassette tape version of Disco Volante and the only thing I new about Mike Patton was from hearing Faith No More’s Epic overplayed on the radio while growing up in the mid-nineties.

So I didn’t have a lot to go on. But it was 2am on a sweltering August night, in the middle of a thunderstorm, lying under a skylight and blasting through a dusty Sony Walkman that this album first bled into my brain.

Make no mistake here, this album is bizarre. It’s completely nuts and definitely isn’t for everyone. This was the prerogative of Mr. Bungle, but a specific and special kind of bizarre is captured on his album. It runs an eclectic range of musical themes and genres, often several in a single song. Everything from middle eastern harmonics, to electronic, jazz, doo-wop, heavy metal, lounge, industrial noise, and about a million things in between.

For my eccentric musical tastes that didn’t seem to fit anywhere, it was perfect.

The album captures a certain feeling for me, a special kind of atmosphere that can’t be recreated anywhere else. A creeping, cautious placidity that you only get in seedy touristy areas. Places that hide their unsavory bits just barely on the surface. Places that beg you to buy snow globes with palm trees in them and yellowing “Wish You Were Here!” postcards while at the same time having it just as equally possible and easily accessible to find yourself overdosed on heroin in a dirty motel bathtub as the chick you picked up at the club rifles through your wallet.

From the opening of beach sounds and bemused grinning lounge vocals in Sweet Charity to the unadulterated metal chaos and angry tribal Kecak in Goodbye Sober Day you’re going to quickly see why the album is so aptly titled. This thing is like a forty-four minute and sixteen second vacation to California, except you end up doing everything there is to do. Everything. The kind of vacation where you come home hungover on a flight with mysterious bruises, tract marks on your inner arms and a tattoo on your back sporting a name you don’t recognize.

It’s bedlam and gorgeousness and hilarity and terror all rolled up into one. Half the time when it comes on I’m embarrassed to have to explain what the fuck I’m listening to, and the other half I won’t stop gushing about how brilliantly disjointed the whole thing is. But every time, regardless I end up listening to it all the way through, never skipping. And it’s the only album I’ve ever had where that happens.

So yeah, the next time I get stranded on a desert island? It sure as hell better be with this audio beast.

Giga Gilgamesh.