Wesley Willis: Rush Hour

A Music Review by Mighty Doom

            Doom here with his first music review.  In case you’ve been living under a rock or in a convent or that weird building where the Scientologists “do Super Power” for the last ten years and don’t know who Wesley Willis is, here’s the lowdown: he’s an extremely large black man (I’d say around 350 pounds, at a conservative estimate) afflicted with chronic schizophrenia – that means he has no short-term memory and is often tormented by voices he has dubbed Nervewrecker and Heartbreaker.  He also happens to have a record contract.

Having met Wesley personally at a concert at my college in Bennington, VT, and having been repeatedly headbutted by him in the middle of said concert, I can attest to the fact that he is both completely insane and undeniably good-hearted.  Talking to Wesley is like talking to a very sizeable five-year-old.  He likes to draw and he likes to sing, although there are people out there who debate that what Wesley does is music.  Maybe it’d be best described as therapy for an audience.  All the money he makes goes into furthering his musical career, upgrading the synthesizer that is his only instrumental accompaniment and producing his own CDs.  His newest album, released by Alternative Tentacle Records, is titled Rush Hour, and is among his more bizarre work, to say the least.

            Plenty of people say that if you’ve heard one Wesley Willis song, you’ve heard them all.  These people have sticks up their asses and should be tied to chairs and farted upon until they drop the “I’m mature” schtick and admit it’s funny.  I’m not a big fan of “Jesus Christ,” the first song on Rush Hour.  It almost makes sense.  It rhymes, for Christ’s sake.  It just ain’t Wesley.  The rest of the album, however, more than makes up for it, with some instant classic lines like “That’s the sound of the men working on the chain gang.  That really politics me off.  It also kicks me in the ass.  It do.”

            There are some curious themes and discrepancies between songs.  It seems like someone is always either shooting Wesley with a B.B. gun or hitting him with a billy club.  In one song Johnny Rotten beats him with a billy club.  In another song it’s someone named “John Snap.” I’m willing to bet no one has beaten Wesley with a club, except maybe the Chicago police.  There’s a song called “2 x 4” in which Wesley says, “The electric eel shocked the hell out of me.  He also blew me out of the water.  He did, thanks to his ass.” This is immediately followed by another song, this one called “Electric Eel,” in which there’s no mention at all of an electric eel.

            Nearly all the songs on Rush Hour make me laugh my ass off every time I hear them.  You can only go for so long after hearing lyrics like “The triangle car ran off the road.  It fell in the water.  I was running the show.” and “I was riding ninety miles per hour.  I was riding like a hillbilly, thanks to that.” without laughing.  And before anyone out there takes offense and says I’m mocking the poor disabled man, let me tell you something: Wesley Willis doesn’t mind.  He’s just happy that people are listening to his music and having as much fun as he is.