#fag machine

Thought to have been lost until today, the music video for the title track of Oli Spleen's 2013 debut album is now ten years old.

Join Oli and friends at Brighton's Hope & Ruin on February 10th 2023 to celebrate his 45th birthday as well as ten years as a solo artist and twenty years since the creation of his first band The Flesh Happening.

As I mentioned I’m going to post a song a day from the new HIV / AIDS themed album “Night Sweats & Fever Dreams” in the order they appear on the album with a little explanation as to the song’s background and who I wrote it with.

The album will get its general release on June 1st but is currently available as a preview on Bandcamp.

This song was one of the less developed tracks from my 2013 debut album “Fag Machine”. The songs on that album were worked out with a producer François Carle of the group “Super Preachers” and had never been performed live with a band.

When in 2017 a friend, Adrian Claude asked if I would form a band with him, I suggested that we learn some tracks from my debut album as a starting point to see how they worked with a band. That band “Spleen” really needed a keyboardist / synth player to do those songs justice and in 2018 Tristram Arnold joined the band on synths. Screwed Love became one of the songs that blossomed under Spleen’s reworking and subsequently became a staple of our set.

Subject wise, it could have been a good fit for my 2019 album “Gaslight Illuminations” as it was written about a relationship where the two people play games to get one over on the other. I was the bottom in a sadomasochistic relationship when I wrote it and was in love with a person who used violence and dominance to control me; often getting turned-on by my distress.

2019’s Gaslight Illuminations got a fair bit of attention and, as some of the gigs I was being offered didn’t cater to a full band; I formed a three-piece orchestral group with keyboardist Tris and Bela Emerson on cello, this band was called “The Gaslight Illuminati” and I planned to record them when I had some spare studio time.

Bela couldn’t make the recording sessions though, so Tris came into the studio and Liz and Forbes filled in the other parts. Tris’s beautiful reworkings of Screwed Love and Kamikaze ended up on this album. Tris also played on a few from the covers album “Flowers for Foot Foot” these included Daniel Johnston’s “Story of an Artist”, The Shaggs’ “My Pal Foot Foot” and Janis Ian’s “Stars” which didn’t make the album but was released to my patrons as an exclusive track.

When klezmer musician Merlin Shepherd came into the studio to record the clarinet for “Funeral Dirge” from Flowers for Foot Foot he also added some claranet reed noises to Screwed Love which contributed an eery ambiance to the track.

Lyrics:

Show my mercy

I never meant you any harm

My heart is broken

And you’ve twisted both my arms

You were my mirror

There was so much you made me see

Now I see clearer

How you reflect the bad in me

In turn I’ll take all I can take

And I will twist all things around

I’ll test your limits till you break

And I will kick you when you’re down

Is this true love

This screwed love

Is this true love

This screwed love

Please forgive me

I never meant to cause you harm

My heart is open

Now that you’ve broken both my arms

You know I miss you

In your absence I grow sick

That's 'cause I need you

Just like a junkie needs a fix

In turn you’ll take all you can take

And you will twist all things around

You’ll test my limits till you break me

Then rape me when I’m down

Is this true love

This screwed love

Is this true love

This screwed love

Please excuse me

I didn’t mean to make a fuss

I know I chose this

I must’ve known that soon enough

I would feel trapped here

In the confines of your cage

But I chose this

I submitted to your rage

Yes In truth I asked for all this

And I mapped out my own fate

To be the vent for all your anger

All your hunger, all your hate

So I thank you, I thank you for

The moments that you gave

For making me your lover

And your brother, and your slave

In this screwed love

This screwed love

Is this true love

This screwed love

Is this true love

This screwed love

Is this true love

This screwed love

Vocals: Oli Spleen

Piano: Tris Arnold

Violin: Liz Carey

Clarinet reed: Merlin Shepherd

Programming, Synths: Forbes Coleman

Originally conceived by Oli Spleen and Karl Off

Recorded at AudioBeach Studios, Brighton & Hove

PRISSYLIPS performing recently at Fag Machine in Brighton.

Here is a link to a video of that gig - the sound quality is dreadful but the lighting is sent from Heaven.