Story Behind the Song
By spring's arrival I had finally convinced Beijing's best underground art-rock troupe, Tongue, that they should be on my compilation. This was no small feat since the members of Tongue were famously aloof and deadly serious about music. They were a unique presence on the Beijing scene for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that they hailed from the western province of Xinjiang, home to the Uighur people -- Central Asian Muslims who speak a derivative of Turkish and whose culture more closely resembles that of the Middle East than Han China.
The band members were all children of Hans relocated to Xinjiang following the Communist liberation in 1949. As such they had grown up surrounded by a foreign musical culture that emphasized syncopated polyrhythms and complex tunings. This lay in stark contrast to the stilted martial and operatic sensitivities of traditional and revolutionary era Chinese music. The Uighur influence on Tongue was obvious in the vivid sonic counterpoint that its six members boiled down from their daily improvisation sessions. Layered over the band's technicolor audioscapes were the guttural musings of front man Wu Tun, who grunted out stream-of-consciousness hallucinations, invoking the morally decrepit world of Lu Xun and the weird circus of William S. Burroughs. No other band in Beijing approached music-making with such sophistication, or boasted a full complement of members with the inimitable character and skill to realize their imaginative visions.
In 2003, Tongue are still plugging away in Beijing and hoping that recent contacts with the European music industry will grant them a way out of the predicament faced by most Chinese bands: piracy and poverty. For the time being, Tongue remain a regular fixture on the Beijing scene.
Lyrics
TONGUE / The Painter
This request is not even a little extreme.
The meat grinder is in operation now,
With one eye open and the other shut,
Climbs onto the grandly blueprinted toilet,
And in another’s bed catches a louse.
Shiny coins and the national emblem looking in all directions,
Slide out from under the shadow of the sun.
The Shangfang Dagger and The Jade Seal,
Comfort the spermatozoa on the road.
Carnivores brokenhearted eating vegetables,
Happily lifting steel reinforcement bars.
Toys madly cranked-out over endless nights,
Are all now totally inspected.
He figures these things,
These things,
Are all that he deserves.
Long ago the hats and masks were plucked off.
Long ago the experience and lessons were forgotten.
Different wounds require comrades working hard together.
These days one hand is pulling-up the pants,
While the other hand is strangling the necks.
You are masturbating in front of an old man with no origin,
Clinging on to Buddha’s foot as the riptide washes out.
A sideshow of episodic eras of coherence.
A shame nothing is really ready yet and just slides down the flagpole,
But by teaching through faulty example, you live on in the people’s hearts.
Better to just admit that you yourself at that time were too small to meet any specific demands.
Looking back on it with one eye you slouch over.
In the end it can’t hold back,
And simperingly pulls itself out,
And sprays a stylish ejaculate at us.
Let us stride ahead towards the things of simple humanity.
It painted the young girls’ dresses.
It painted the young guys’ Mao suits.
It painted the old mens’ bifocals.
It painted the old ladies’ pincushions.
It painted our youth.
It painted our spirit.
It painted our rhythm.
It painted our life.
It painted our devotion.
It painted our style.
It painted our crimes.
It painted our everything.
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