charles douglas - track by track # 4 slowly wasted

SLOWLY WASTED:

“Slowly Wasted” is the only song on the record that I played almost all the instruments on. I recorded it early in the morning. Moe Tucker hadn’t turned up yet, but the song was ready to be recorded. So I think I used a drum loop and later Moe added some percussion. I wrote the song when I was 16. In fact, a very primitive version turns up on a 7” single I recorded in high school. It’s about being at a party and seeing a hot girl and then being too scared to talk to her, so then you just go and get drunk and get high. At some point between recording and mixing, Kurt Ralske added a lot of horns and keyboards to it, which made it sound nice and smooth. Siobhan Duffy from God is my Co-Pilot sang on it too. Siobhan was quite attractive and she was dating Gira from the Swans. I showed Siobhan a drawing I’d done of Grimace from McDonalds in the bathtub with her. To her credit, she thought it was so insane that it was funny. I know that my guitarist Manish Kalvakota thought she was attractive too, and so did Kurt Ralske. And so did Bobby McCain and Terry Tolkin from No.6 and Elektra Records, who funded the album. In hindsight, Siobhan reminds me of Greta Gerwig, the American actress. Again, if I ran a film studio, I’d cast Siobhan and Greta as feuding sisters who have to run a fast food restaurant together. They could fight over the franchise, and Siobhan would have a secret nervous breakdown and start spicing the meat with LSD. The movie could have lots of cat fights in it, perhaps. With a score by Glenn Branca and Justin Bieber.