KENT STATE
Mostly, the Gynecologists mined pop culture – “Aunt Bee” (a character on The Andy Griffith Show), “M.A.S.H.E.R” (based on the long-running sitcom, M*A*S*H), “Love and Haight” (a reference to the center of hippiedom in the Haight-Ashbury section of San Francisco) – news stories – “McMartin Preschool”, “Kent State” – and bodily functions – “Bloody Kotex”, “Gotta Piss”, “Peanut Butter Prophylactic” – as the subjects of their songs. The “Psychopaths” side of their first release, an EP called Feces and Psychopaths (1981) includes songs about Rev. Jim Jones (who was also from Indiana) called “Jimmy Jones” and the child-killing mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, “John Wayne Gacy”. Another song, “Dahmer’s Diner” refers to the cannibalistic serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer.
Song lyrics are hard to come by on the Internet for songs by the Gynecologists, and what is being sung is usually hard to understand. John Barge quotes some of the song lyrics in his liner notes. For instance, “Ron and Nancy” imagines sexual antics not far removed from those envisioned in “Sex Orgy with the Bradee Bunch”: “Even Ed Meese got a piece!” In “Kent State”, Tommy Afterbirth sings: “Those traitors don’t even deserve a decent burial.” As Barge puts it: “Those who seek succor from politically correct song lyrics will find little sustenance here.”
(June 2016)
