The Northern Iowan

Caesar Pink and the Imperial Orgy

Sally Calcara
NI Lifestyles Writer

Throughout history, music has been a source of revolutionary ideas and an expression of modern thought—Caesar Pink and the Imperial Orgy is no exception. Bringing about widespread controversy, the band’s 2005 album, “Gospel Hymns for Agnostics and Atheists,” opposes organized religion and western conventionalism with four anthems of similarly paradoxical titles and lyrics accompanying multiple genres of creative sound.

Born into the once-dubbed “all-American” city of Lewistown, Pennsylvania, Caesar Pink grew up at a time when his town began facing a spiritual deviation from the religious, conservative right toward a whirlwind of drugs and violence that led many of its inhabitants to self-destruction in the 1970s.

As if the spiral of a devastated environment were not enough to drastically shape the perceptions of a young man, Pink followed generations of men with varying spiritual experiences and hallucinations, which was sure to leave a mark on his initial thoughts about spirituality and society. He felt oppressed as a social misfit in an extremist community and flew into a frenzy of sex, drugs and alcohol by his late teens as he began his music career with his garage band “Friction” in a first attempt to affect social change.

Seized by a supernatural revelation, Caesar Pink spent the next few years living in contemplation and poverty until he struck it rich from a government lottery, after which he began another twister of trouble with the law and drugs and women that eventually landed him in a state of what Pink himself calls a spiritual death. Now at ground zero, he stumbled across a book by R.D. Lang that suggested his mental breakdown might actually be a sort of spiritual transformation.

Caesar Pink now resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he writes music reflecting his anti-religious, nihilistic views on life as well as thoughts on pan-sexuality and political and social change.

The first song titled “The Amazing Tenacity of Job and His Brethren” has a “gospel” rock style infused with industrial guitar riffs. Pink satirically touches on the persistent strains of the church and the apparent hypocrisy of Christian people.

“We preach what we lack, we curse what we sow, and people are the opposite of what they show,” the band sings in chorus, pointing to the unresolved efforts of the church, preaching a righteousness that it cannot attain, condemning pleasures as sinful acts and claiming a purity of character to which it doesn’t adhere.

The song establishes a foundation of atheism and reveals the ideals that follow from a worldview absent of God with lines such as “there’s no second chances, and no one forgives,” and mocking religious sentiment in “we say hail Mary’s till we’re sore, Satan’s got a handgun and no one’s keeping score.”

The second song on the album, “In Praise of Shadows,” Pink literally praises the darkness of not knowing and rocks to the nonexistence of religious and moral ideals. He points to these things as merely figments of the imagination. He preaches dismal ideas, but uses undoubtedly poignant imagery. For example, Pink says that “destiny is a crossword puzzle written on a chain link fence” and “compassion is a parable spoken by a tongueless monk.”

He suggests a comfort in the ambiguities of the agnostic life, singing in reprise, “lay down, lay down, rest your head, what is, it shall be.”

The tropical reggae feel of “So It Is” shows the versatility of the group members, and in “Our Happy Endings,” the fourth hymn on the album, Pink introduces a slower, blues tempo with a touch of western twang.

In the latter and final hymn, Pink pokes fun at fairy tale dreams of a rosy life and points to the daily ins and outs of the average blue collar worker as a happy enough ending.

“These are our happy endings, it’s the best we can do,” he sings. “Always thought that smile on your face was a lie. I see trailer parks and roadside diners, my feet are tired, but I keep movin’ on.”

The off-kilter impression of Caesar Pink is joined by his band, composed of six other musicians with a similar knack for creating new religious and sexual doctrine to catchy melodies and funky guitar riffs. The group often faces controversy and opposition from Christian, feminist and political groups who occasionally boycott their shows or demand cancellation.

INSight magazine said that Caesar Pink and the Imperial Orgy would make “even Marilyn Manson” scratch his head. Rush Limbaugh called his work anti-establishment propaganda. The Daily Collegian called the band “a blazing beacon of originality” giving “hope to those searching for real rock and roll.”

Whatever the group might be labeled, their message is definitely not for the narrow-minded. Even Caesar Pink’s website bears the warning: “We respectfully request that people who do not have an open mind do not enter this site.