Andy Prieboy, White Trash Wins Lotto

So after Prieboy released his second solo album, Sins of Our Fathers (1995), he kind of disappeared for a while, so far as the casual bystander could see, until he started releasing his own material in 2009. Interesting career path. One thing we knew was that in the late nineties-ish, he created this musical, about an Axl-Rose-esque figure making his way in LA's burgeoning metal scene, but this was very tantalizing, because there was almost no evidence online that it ever existed: a few archived contemporaneous newspaper reviews and a clip of an abridged version of one song as performed by the cast on the Conan O'Brien show (O'Brien had seen and liked it). You sort of think something like this would HAVE to be available somehow somewhere, and the fact that it wasn't made it seem like lost media--and indeed, was, until just this spring Prieboy gave everyone an amazing surprise by releasing a painstakingly cleaned-up and remastered version taken from aging tapes--so now we can all hear what we were missing.

For whatever reason, I didn't get around to actually listening to it a week or so ago. With something like this there' always a certain amount of tension: this is SUCH a long-awaited thing, but what if I don't like it? What a dang let-down that'll be. But HOLY GOD IS THIS GOOD. I must've listened to it, I don't know, a dozen times at this point? And I feel like I want to talk about it in detail.

Remember that Mr. Show sketch, "Rap: The Musical," the idea being now you can enjoy rap culture without any of that terrible rap music? I was reminded of that here; not that these two things are trying to be similar, but there's very little of what you'd call "metal" here. It gets loud, certainly, but the music is basically highly Savoy-Opera-inflected show tunes. I mean, some rock, definitely. I'm not gonna deny it. But not what one would expect from the phrase "heavy metal musical." The G&S influence is entirely intentional--Prieboy has said that seeing The Mikado was a transformative experience for him, and there is a ton of WS Gilbert in the lyrics here. The story follows not an Axl-Rose-esque character, but Rose himself, though the broad strokes of the narrative are a pretty generic rock-and-roll-rise-and-fall(?) story; I don't suppose there's too much specific to the guy here. It's rather charmingly ramshackle; you can tell that it kind of gradually built up over time in a piecemeal fashion. I know it's kind of gauche for a music review to go through an album track-by-track, but that is what I'm going to do.

"Good Evening, Guitar Center"

According to the booklet, this should start with the narrator kicking around ideas for a musical, but that's certainly not evident from what we hear, which is general place-setting--at a famous music store. Like many tracks here, the singers aren't meant to be specific characters; it's more the types you see in this milieu. Features the lines "Thank Wall Street and the Gipper/Thank God for Donald Trump!/Just hear those New York tickers/No longer in a slump." Trump's name is just being used to represent random eighties detritus; the fact that he's still gruesomely relevant doesn't shower anyone with glory. Anyway, great opener.

"I Want to Be in a Metal Band"

Here's Axl, ludicrously singing this plaintive ballad: "I want to be in a metal band/Please may I sing for you?/Sing of kings, of dreams and illusions/Sing to bring a light to this confusion." Meanwhile, the refrain from "Good Evening, Guitar Center" kicks in and threatens to drown him out. There really is a strong sense of place here.

"LA Alleluia"

As it starts, the narrator intones "Yeah--you hear that? You know what that means? It means it's time for the obligatory bad broadway street scene." Not gonna lie: I find that sort of fourth-wall-breaking a little cringey. But! The song's still great, as Axl sort of stumbles around in a daze, meeting demi-monde-type people and learning about the scene.

"Duran Duran"

Now we see a bit of how the sausage is made, as some random A&R guy wants his underlings to find a band that can replicated the success of...well, obviously. This may be the most irresistibly catchy song in the entire piece, and it features some great patter-song lyrics. Let's just quote a whole verse; it should be noted that the homophobic language is absolutely period-accurate and nothing more; no one can doubt Prieboy's woke credentials:

Oh,

Super new pooferty

Tea baggy faggotty

Byron and Shellity piratey fantasy

Stuck in the seventies and in the Regency

Rock and roll’s wickedly

Nagely pageantry

Folle de rolle’s filagreed fiddle-dee-deities

Lady Di’s Serious Moonlight bimbo-ities

Givenchy-Gucci-Armani-Flash-Dancery

MTV’s fey and twee billowy bourgeousie

Nancy boy fancy boy Roland and Yamaha

Synthesized sophistry

Duran

That's a fuckin' mouthful, but I love the hell out of the artistry.  Plenty of references that, if they aren't already archaic, certainly will be soon, but hey, there's also a lot of that in Gilbert's libreti, so what the hey.  I also think it's super-impressive that in spite of  few if any of the performers here being trained singers, they really do kill it.

Also, sidebar (I don't care if this is self-indulgent): the song mentions a number of popular bands at the time, and there was one of them that I'd never even heard of, Haysi Fantayzee, so I looked them up, and saw that there first hit was called "John Wayne Is Big Leggy," which...well, let singer Jeremy Healy explain it:

It was an allegory for treatment of which the white settlers used, but on the Native American Indians. However, I wrote it like John Wayne having anal sex with a squaw. I thought this was hilarious!

Um.  Okay.  I feel like I'm getting extremely mixed signals here, but you do you...I guess.

"Yes, That Is My Name"

Fast forward a few years. GnR is now a thing (there are quite a few interstices in the narrative), and Axl is explaining his name, again in that plaintive ballad-y way ("Like an axle I'm metal but like the rose petal/I shatter whenever it rains"). It's fine, it's fun, it's funny, but I do have to allow that it's basically the same joke as "I Want to Be in a Metal Band."

"I-Z-Z-Y"

This is what I mean when I talk about songs that seem like such narrative outliers that it's hard to imagine this having been arranged in advance. This is about how Axl's bandmate Jeff Isbell chose his stage name (here with the help of the Muses), and that is ALL it is about! It rocks pretty hard, and it's a lot of fun. Here's a nugget I got from his wikipedia page: "Despite his aversion to school, Stradlin graduated in 1980 with a D average, the only original member of Guns N' Roses with a high school diploma." Okay!

"Heavy Metal Stripper Chicks"

A fairly self-explanatory title, I'd say. This is a theme we see a number of times on the album: women supporting their feckless wanna-be-musician boyfriends through sex work. Short song, but it chugs along nicely.

"We Can Do What We Want"

Okay, this is probably destined to be the most-remembered song here, because it's strong medicine: an absolutely savage swipe at music-biz misogyny, as three male record executives plot on how to usurp GnR from their manager, Vicky Harrison (as she's referred; actual name Vicky Hamilton, and her wikipedia page doesn't exactly make it clear whether or how she was actually screwed over, but there seems little doubt that the broader point holds). It starts by dropping a C-bomb and it's all downhill from there. I saw an interview where Prieboy said that women in the music industry reported feeling a shock of recognition, and I can believe it. It's one of those circumstances where you're conflicted, 'cause damn, the music's so catchy, but the words are, really, so awful. I mean, I suppose I'm not THAT conflicted; I do love the song.  Compare it to, yes, The Mikado: "The Criminal Cried As He Dropped Him Down" is an incredibly gruesome song, but presented in a comic idiom.  Contradiction: You Can Live With It.™

Also, dang; in a previous version of WTWL (not the one here), one of the execs was played by none other than Paul F. Tompkins. Has he ever talked about the experience? I'd love to hear from him.

"White Trash Wins Lotto"

Yeehaw! A good' ol hoedown as sundry midwestern kids, inspired by GnR and the metal scene in general, are moving to LA. Great song. Here's one part that, while a small thing, is also a great character moment: "I'll walk in them companies, hot'n'slick'n'sure/I'll say 'Davy Geffen where the fuck you want my signature, sir?'" That 'sir' at the end throws the scansion slightly off, but that's the point: dude's attempting this display of bravado, but at the last second, his natural midwestern diffidence kicks in and he can't help appending that extra word.

"Mansion Full of Pussy and Drugs"

Another rather self-explanatory title. Here, naturally, we have Axl's sybaritic existence reaching its apotheosis, with a rather standard message: "Well we can't find love so we spend and spend in a mansion full of pussy and drugs." But also, this weird moment of something like optimism:

You’ll find it is impossible,

(Well possible but difficult)

Impossibly difficult to find true love

In a mansion full of pussy and drugs

Hey, "Impossibly difficult" is approximately an infinity percent increase over "impossible," so we're doing okay!

"At the Throne of the Lizard King"

This and the next three songs form what's called the "Graveyard Sequence," taking place in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, where Jim Morrison is buried. As we know, his grave is desecrated as hell by "Eurotrash kids, hippies, vagrants, college student and goths," who like to vandalize and do drugs and have sex on it. Extremely dignified. At any rate, this first track is just scene-setting. Well, I can say "just" all I want, but it's one of my favorite tracks here, as the kids sing a sort of mass (after their own fashion) for Morrison.

"Rise, Rose, Rise"

Axl's here because he's turned twenty-seven and he's not sure whether he's going to die like Morrison et al or what. The kids find him at the cemetery generally fucked up. Excited to see him, they start nonsensically chanting "Mr. Mojo Rising,*" which serves as an incantation to summon the spirit of Jim Morrison, who urges Rose to come with him to the beyond and gain rock and roll immortality. Real "Don and Commendatore" energy, and it's legit dramatic. What more can be said?

*Yes, I know it's supposed to be "Mr. Mojo Risin'," an anagram of "Jim Morrison," but they're definitely saying "rising" when you listen to them.

"The Rockin' Dead"

Axl is hesitating to choose death, so Morrison summons the spirits of everyone who's died in a rock-and-roll fashion. The booklet says that the purpose of this is "to convince Axl that all rock rebellion is futile. It simply enriches and empowers your opponents: the Corporate Old Boys' Club." This really doesn't come across in the song itself (and I'll talk more about this IMO somewhat muddled theme anon), but whatever; it's quite the litany.

"Incantation"

This is short; just a minute and a half, as the rockin' dead that Morrison do indeed rise up.

"The Old Boys' Club"

The climax of the musical, as choruses of wraiths try to convince Axl that his continued existence is futile. And look, it IS hella cool and dramatic. It's kind of weird though, because I'm listening to this and it's so overwhelmingly awesome, and then I find myself asking, okay, but what are you even ON about? I'm afraid I'm not quite picking up what Prieboy is laying down here. Let me explain.

So in terms of artistic success, it's common for people to talk about talent vs. luck. You may be super-talented, but without some luck, you're unlikely to get anywhere. And likewise, super-lucky people need...well, you can probably think of exceptions to that. But regardless, that's not what Prieboy is doing. "Did you really think it was a matter of talent, dedication, and good luck?" I mean...yes? I kind of did? No no, says Prieboy: "did you think you didn't need the Old Boys' Club?" But surely most people would consider getting in with the Old Boys' Club as a subsection of "luck?" Look at "Duran Duran:" if the A&R people are looking for a new Duran-Duran-esque band to sign, they find one that has the sound and look they want and think will sell, they sign it, promote it, and it's successful...how did that band not get super lucky? Obviously people do make compromises and sell out and all that kind of stuff, but I dunno; I'm just not seeing this dichotomy. I want to reiterate, though, that it's still an awesome song.

"Meeting the Stones"

Axl's bandmates find him and bring him back to LA. They're opening for the Rolling Stones, who want to meet him! Hurrah! Axl is met at their sanctum by the Stones' "handmaidens," who give him deportment tips for encountering these godlike figures. I have to admit, this is my least favorite song on the album. "They'll be shorter than you thought they'd be" is funny (as is "'And omni-potent!' 'The word is "omnipotent,"'" and BOY was it hard to sort out those parentheses), but I don't find the music that compelling, and I'm a little confused as to what purpose this is serving. It has to be convincing Axl to live again--which I suppose they do with their god-like presence? I dunno; I don't quite find it dramatically satisfying. And we never actually meet Mick and Keith themselves, for the record.

"Finale"

Some years later, GnR is on a downward swing, poor record sales, firing bandmates, and like that (this was all written and recorded before Chinese Democracy became a running joke, remember). The press is trying to get Axl to tell them what's next for him, so, having decided against the tragic early death route, he decides he's going to engineer "a big fucking comeback." It concludes with a hearty chorus of "fuck off and die," which I suppose is the most rock'n'roll way to go.  There's something weirdly triumphant about this, and I like how it eschews stereotypes.

So there you have it. White Trash Wins Lotto, after all these years.  I do wish there was video of this--there are moments when the audience is clearly cheering or laughing at something they're witnessing onstage--but what kind of gratitude is that? It's a miracle that it exists at all, and it is more than good enough. And did I mention that you can download it from Prieboy's website for FREE? It wouldn't have been feasible to pay all the performers, so he did the noble thing and declined to charge for it (although it's also available on itunes, if you fancy paying ten dollars for no reason, so I don't know who's getting THAT money). Though his oft-cynical songs make one think he's probably kinda prickly, I dunno, from everything he's written and that one interview I saw he seems like a pretty chill dude. So, thanks for the memories!