Roughly Enforcing Nostalgia, Moshe EP the Plunderphonic Power Pop Band of Chicago

Moby-Dick
  (1:30)[ 11/10/99]
   Based on the novel by Herman Melville.
  MP3
  Liner Notes

Call me Ish- Mael, ‘cause Mapple preached on that day, “Your nature’s In oppo- sition with God’s way.” Met Starbuck, Queequeg, Stubb: All dead by a few Chapters la- ter, the Sign Of Jonah knew.
Can’t find the whale, But sooner eat kale Then renege our boast That we’d see Dick roast In our blubber pails.	(We can’t find the whale; We swore to sail; We drank a toast to Moby’s trail.)
Pip sank in- To madness; Fleece preached to the sharks; Enderby’s Skipper showed Where Dick left his mark, Once bitten. The Great White Charged our ship, raising cain. Ahab, caught By the neck, Got drug down the drain.
We found the whale; We tried and failed. I’m the one left to speak From the pulpit’s beak On how life’s so frail . . . Braille!	(We found the whale; All’s left afloat are the nails; Melville’s metaphors even translate to . . )

Samples chosen in “Moby-Dick” were largely water-related, lyrically or sonically: “Surf Wax America” was netted for the former, “Talkin’ ‘Bout A Home” was harvested for the latter, and “Underwater” was a fine mingling of both. As additional texture, we plunged in drones of Humpback Whales singing; since each song is unique yet repeated identically yearly, it seemed the perfect choice to rub flippers with our loop-based piece.

When asked about Melville’s Moby-Dick, time and again you’re likely to hear people make mention of the rather exhaustive (and sometimes exhausting) interlude chapters on the whaling profession that are in the deep of the larger narrative. So, in that spirit, we decided to dive in headlong and adopt a purely informative approach to the visuals, which are a clear goof on VH1’s popular music video series Pop-Up Video. Even the little cartoon factoid bubbles that bob around the perimeter end up befitting the overall maritime theme. With the music torpedoing its own series of messages through the mildly-recognizable samples, the overall piece’s presentation reaches nearly the same level of information overload that Melville’s enormous novel did.

Midnight Oil – “Underwater”
The Flaming Lips – “Waitin’ For A Superman”
Chris Isaak – “Talkin’ ‘Bout A Home” & “Speak Of The Devil”
Dream Syndicate – “Now I Ride Alone”
Weezer – “Surf Wax America”
National Geographic documentary video
Humpback Whales songs
Leonard Nimoy – Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home
Self-sampled – finger snaps, percussion & vox