During and after the Seattle WTO riots, you may have noticed the sinister dearth of coverage the main media outlets allotted to the events. If you paid attention to the little that was aired, or if you sought the news out elsewhere, you would have also noticed that just about everybody-- from indifferent Joe Blow on the street, to the international business titans in attendance, as well the ever-present morass of punditry-- everybody was able to arrive at a happy accord on one point. Namely, that the amorphous thing vaguely referred to as "the radical left" is too directionless, clamorous, adolescent, and by implication, idealistic to ever succeed in communicating a unified agenda. The same basic critique is consistently lobbed at the academic radical left, for more or less the same reason: it isn't possible to reconcile and combine so many different voices of dissent into one philosophically tenable stance.
You could make a strong case, if you were a heartless and cynical bastard, that the Nation of Ulysses is founded on that very argument, and that their entire body of work is a merciless satire on those million voices of dissent. It wouldn't be a difficult stretch. A tour of the inserts from their first two full length albums, Plays Pretty for Baby and 13-Point Program to Destroy America, is a dizzying, and often hysterically funny tour through a semiotic cyclone of influences and signs that are only loosely bound by the theme of resistance.
First, the eye candy. The Nation of Ulysses' beautifully designed graphics pay direct homage to the poster design and photomontage of Stalin-commissioned artist Alexander Rodchenko and his wife Stepanovna. The design and iconography of '50s/'60s America also figure heavily, with pictures of post-War appliances and the mail-order back section of a Boys' Life magazine.
But as sharply executed as the visuals are, it's in the accompanying texts that the group's performance really shines, and the Nation takes shape. References to worldwide anti-imperialist, anti-colonialist, and anti-capitalist resistances are everywhere-- among the groups the band alludes and claims brotherhood to are the Maoist Shining Path from Peru, the New People's Army of the Philippines, Islamic Jihad, and Lebanon's Hezbollah. What would a righteous revolution be without a divine mandate?
Don't worry, there's plenty of religion here, too, from the man who would go on to gospel yeah-yeah. To complement the schizoid-preacher's delivery of frontman Ian Svenonius (who adopts El Gato as his saucy nom de guerre), the CD librettos invoke the idea of religious ecstasy through privation, urging Nationals to stave off sleep by whatever means. Never ones to eschew paradox, though, they turn right around and proclaim their vampirism.
The general tableau here is, of course, a depiction of destruction as a means to creation and reinvention. In one of the band's funnier moments, they shower praise on Menudo for its built-in mechanism of eternal youth, and in an extravagant gesture of self-preservation, declare their own ages fixed at a perpetual 18.
Mining the schematics of German expressionism, the tanned, acne-free skin and robust health of the masses are frowned upon as symptoms of moral decay and stupidity. And so, to ensure healthy moral rectitude, a cosa nostra-style code of conduct is strictly enforced ("A kid who tells on another kid's a dead kid"). Because the individual is posited as a capitalist metaphor, the Nation of Ulysses requires that everyone be Nationalized, wear dapper Fashionista uniforms, and undergo a procedure for fingerprint effacement.
Holding the destruction of everything corrupt as their end goal, even the Norse Armageddon myth of Ragnarok is used as a way to prefigure the final showdown between the Nation ("of Ulysses must prevail!") and the consumerist bloat of our sleepwalking philistine Society. For added effect, this entire mess is heavily soaked with the language of espionage, subterfuge, sabotage, paranoia, and overthrow.
But is this a satire on the Left? Hilariously cruel as that would be, I prefer to think that, at least in the spirit of the venture, that's not the case. Judging from Svenonius' work in the Make-Up, and his writings outside of his music, their body of work seems relatively irony-free. And no, I would not like to buy a bridge from you, thanks.
The Embassy Tapes, as implied by its name, is a collection of four-track tape recordings captured during practices and performances at the rehearsal space lovingly referred to by the Nation of Ulysses as "The Embassy." Recorded in September of 1992, it finds the group at the end of its rope, mere weeks before dissolving. It's unfortunate that this will be seen as the coda to the Nation's short but bright-burning career. The truth is, this record just doesn't stand up to the rest of their work.
As always, the packaging and text are wonderful, but the music offers little to enjoy, aside from a couple of old favorites (alternate versions of "Shakedown" and "P-Power," and "Last Train to Cool"). From the most instantly quotable D.C. band ever ("Membership: as few as five, possibly hundreds"), and from the voice that performed one of the swiftest, most blasphemous, and brutal acts of musical patricide ever ("I'm not talking about a Beatles song, written a hundred years before I was born"), I would have hoped for something more from their last chapter. More violence, maybe.
Nevertheless, The Embassy Tapes is interesting in that it hints at what would have been had the Nation of Ulysses continued. "Hex-Proof" indicates the group may have veered off in a more controlled direction, losing the saxophone and reining in the guitar noise a little. Even flashes of rockabilly appear on tracks like "R.O.T.T.E.N," "Outline for Hangout," and "Gimme Disaster." So, for the expatriate, this disc will no doubt be mandatory. Those who missed the last train to cool back in the day are strongly advised to purchase the first two albums before taking this one on.
