Edie Sedgwick is not the Edie Sedgwick. Edie Sedgwick is Justin Moyer doing everything you hear and see on this disc. This includes wearing a wig, some makeup, and a spangled black dress. (The press materials say that Moyer has actually undergone a "gender transformation," but given that Moyer, in jeans, t-shirt, and 5-o'clock shadow, is still a member of Supersystem, let's file that fib under Cheeky Hyperbole.) Edie Sedgwick, once upon a time, was Moyer (on bass) and Ryan Hicks (on drums) jamming econo. In both cases, Edie Sedgwick performed songs in a disco-punk fashion named after and concerning celebrities.
Moyer's press release claims he does this because "the world is tired of both meaning and its absence," so they create "substantial song[s] about the substanceless (sic) celebrity." To that end, Edie blesses listeners with empty slogans like, "When Martin Sheen is President/ I love living in the USA", and "Relapse, recovery!" (from "Robert Downey Jr.", of course). "Lucy Liu" features Moyer chirping "Girl power!" and "Bullshit!" in front of a spastic Nintendo soundtrack, while "Michael J. Fox" makes like Liquid Liquid while riffing on the near-incest of Back to the Future ("She's in my room/ She knows my moves/ She knows what's hers is mine").
While Edie claims to be avoiding any meaningful political statement, but there are two tracks about the Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger. "I" is a rinky-dink dirge, bemoaning the sad life of a cyborg ("All the time I've spent in fields of fire/ No one to hear my cry"). "II", on the other hand, offers quick-hitting rhetoric regarding Ahnuld's rise to power ("The girlie-men keep us apprised/ Of the alpha-male's meteoric rise"), and then ends with a party-people roof-raising shout-out to areas of California en fuego ("San Diego...there's a fire burning/ Angelinos...there's a fire burning"). These tracks, in addition to "Martin Sheen" (drawing a straight line from Apocalypse Now to "The West Wing"), and "Tim Robbins" ("Does the left have a fist?"), undercut the post-post-modern fat-free shenanigans Edie and/or Moyer are trying to have and eat. Even the album title (cribbed from the lyrics to "Haley Joel Osment") carries some heft, if you're willing to muse on the nature of the celebrity/fan relationship.
To Edie's credit, there are also flights of fancy like the minute-long Big Black homage to Pump Up The Volume, the role call of Colonial Marines in "Sigourney Weaver", and the reinvention of Molly Ringwald as a biological weapon, that belie any attempts to arrive at anything remotely approaching significance. Also to Edie's credit, the focus is more on the katzenjammin' Fruity Loops swing than the loopy rhetoric s/he offers. Even if the subjects of the song don't offer much substance, there's plenty of musical meat on the bone. Though, to be totally honest, when "Martin Sheen" comes on, I realize that I wouldn't mind living in a USA where Jed Bartlett was president. But I digress. As does Edie Sedgwick. And thank God for that.
