Jack’s a Juffalo?! Weird Collabs Get Weirder

“We knew it was a pairing of one of the most respected, loved, you know, hippest artists in the world, meets one of the most hated bands in the world.”
-Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J in Village Voice on collaborating with Jack White for “Leck Mich Im Arsch” 

Jack White has kept plenty busy since The White Stripes pre-maturely ended their final tour in 2007 (recap his last year here), leaving no doubt this past February when his dynamic duo officially called it quits he still had more than a few surprises up his sleeve.  But nobody in their wildest imagination would have predicted an Insane Clown collab involving Mozart.  Listen to it below (and B-side “Mountain Girl” above)…

The Atlantic “The track is basically Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope rapping over Mozart’s “Leck Mich Im Arsch” performed by a rock band. And they rap that Mozart is “respected because he knows art” and that, of course, the composer needs his ass licked.”

http://twitter.com/#!/jakefogelnest/status/105664839132790784

http://twitter.com/#!/stevendrozd/status/105665633269714944

loureedmetallica.com “The musical collaboration between Lou Reed and Metallica, “Lulu,” is coming your way this Fall and this space will be your spot for all things Loutallica(!). We want to start sharing with you just how the “Lulu” project, recorded at HQ just a few short months ago, is coming together… “Lulu” was inspired by German expressionist writer Frank Wedekind’s plays “Earth Spirit” and “Pandora’s Box,” which tell a story of a young abused dancer’s life and relationships and are now collectively known as the “Lulu Plays.” Since their publication in the early 1900’s, the plays have been the inspiration for a silent film (“Pandora’s Box,” 1929), an opera, and countless other creative endeavors. Originally the lyrics and musical landscape were sketched out by Lou for a theatrical production in Berlin, but after coming together with the ‘Tallica boys for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts in New York in 2009 all guilty parties knew they wanted to make more music together. Lou was inspired enough by that performance to recently ask the band to join him in taking his theatrical “Lulu” piece to the next level and so starting in early May of this year we were all camped out recording at HQ studios in Northern California, bringing us to today and ten complete songs.”

http://twitter.com/#!/FutureHeartDay/status/109984444563202048

http://twitter.com/#!/RandallMBrown/status/109988718303133698

http://twitter.com/#!/troubled_doodle/status/109806331325710336

http://twitter.com/#!/Derek_Moalli/status/109992735850774528

http://twitter.com/#!/bytronkopsa/status/110003320587943936

http://twitter.com/#!/csprendergast/status/110013254767616000

http://twitter.com/#!/stevenholmes/status/110021522772606976

http://twitter.com/#!/AnonyWolf/status/109788081946759168

Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J in Village Voice “[Jack White’s people] called us and asked us if we were down with it. And we were like, “Yeah.” Then I talked to him on the phone. And I told him it wouldn’t be a real collabo if we didn’t bring our producer, Mike E. Clark, and our guitarist, Legs Diamond and he’s like, “Bring them through!”

We went to his mansion–his fresh, huge, gated mansion–I’m talking for real, man, a real-deal mansion, you know? An old colonial huge house. The whole thing, all fresh, was white and red. White house with a big, red chimney! You know, White Stripes-style? It was awesome, man. A team working on the yard and stuff… When we went to the gate and he bussed us in, we went to the studio, right when we walked in. It wasn’t like we had a big hour-long talk or anything, and he showed us the house, and introduced us to his kids, and everything–it didn’t happen like that. Right when we got there, it was straight to work. He was like, “Let me show you what I’m fucking with here.” And he queued up the track that he’d been working on. And it was that “Lick My Ass” one, you know… At first, I’m not gonna lie, I was, like, a little bummed out. Okay, now it makes sense, the song’s called “Lick My Ass” so of course, they want ICP on it… Once he explained it to us that it was a Mozart song and Mozart had a sense of humor–some would say a dark sense of humor–and then he’d explain it to us, the way his face lit up when he was talking about it, it got us excited.

I asked him before we went out there, “Why us?” He said, of course, he grew up from Detroit and he’s always been fascinated by us. He said he always finds himself looking at our Web site. And some of it he thinks is genius, and some of it he just doesn’t understand at all. But he was always drawn back to our Web site and always ends up looking at us every couple of months or whatever. We sure as hell didn’t expect a phonecall from him, I’ll tell you that…  When I asked him why, his exact words were that he “could do a song with anybody.” But when he mentions to people that he’s going to do a song with ICP, it has a reaction unlike anybody else. He said he could announce that he’s going to do a song with Megadeth and it wouldn’t have the reaction that ICP has. He’s like, “People can’t believe it.” He’ll be naming all these people he wants to work with, and people are like, “Yeah, that would be cool, that would be awesome.” But once he says ICP, they stop what they’re doing and they’re like, “Are you serious?” And he knew that! He knew that going into it that that would be the reaction of people… We were just gonna be ourselves and do this. I know people think we’re idiots. But we’re proud of what we do–and who we are. And we went in there with that kind of feeling. We’re proud of who we are, we don’t have nothing to be ashamed about… He could’ve done something with so many super-cool stars and it probably wouldn’t have even made a lot of noise. But it would’ve just been like what everybody expected… The one thing that was really interesting? When it came time to film the pictures? We put our make-up on. He put his hat on. You know what I’m saying? He put on his black hat and his black coat and we put on our makeup. We both had our thing… He has to have his black hat everywhere.”

Rolling Stone “It was an improbable match: Lou Reed’s cutting-monotone voice and explicit stories of desire and despair, lashed to Metallica’s apocalyptic charge. It is now a perfect fit. In a recent rapid series of sessions at Metallica’s studio north of San Francisco, the New York king of avant-rock and the world’s bestselling thrash-metal band have recorded a new studio album together that is unlike any either artist has made before.
“I don’t think we’ve ever felt this free,” Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich says, sitting next to Reed on a couch. “There’s nothing that’s totally outside of the boundary for us, nothing that feels like ‘Oh, what happens if we go there?’ The strength of us” – he gestures at Reed – “is it feels like we cannot land on a wrong place.”
“They’re bringing Metallica, with all that power,” Reed confirms. “And because they’re pretty sophisticated, wherever I go, they’re still with me.”
     
Reed and Metallica first played together in October 2009, at the 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concerts in New York. Ulrich, singer-guitarist James Hetfield, guitarist Kirk Hammett and bassist Robert Trujillo backed Reed on two of his classic songs. “We knew from then,” Reed says, “that we were made for each other.” He and the band first planned to cut an album of his older material, “fallen jewels that no one remembered,” as Reed puts it. That changed a week before Reed showed up at Metallica’s studio. He called the band, proposing a record of songs he’d written for Lulu, a theatrical production of stories by the German author Frank Wedekind, directed by Robert Wilson and currently running in Berlin.
     
“Lars and I listened to the stuff,” Hetfield says of Reed’s demos, “and it was like, ‘Wow, this is very different.’ It was scary at first, because the music was so open. But then I thought, ‘This could go anywhere.’ ” Metallica started writing parts built from vocal rhythms and electronic patterns on the demos.
     
Hetfield has one condition. “I told Lou I want to be there when people hear it,” he says, grinning. “I want to see their faces.”