New Music Weekly

The Imperial Orgy Debut Is Most Talked About Indie CD Of The Last Year

LOS ANGELES (Top40 Charts/ Imperial Orgy Official Website/ www.theimperialorgy.com) - Caeser Pink & The Imperial Orgy's debut CD Gospel Hymns For Agnostic & Atheists has stirred up a wave of controversy and in the process become the most talked about CD of the twelve months since it's initial release.

The buzz building around the group has been spearheaded by a slew of press coverage that is rare, if not unprecedented, for an independently released CD. The coverage reached fever pitch this week when an article written by Janelle Eastridge for the Mustang Daily newspaper in San Luis Obispo, California was picked up for national syndication placing it in countless college newspapers across the U.S.

The buzz began when college radio stations began banning the CD for being too controversial for airplay. This quickly set into motion a debate about the censorship practices of college media. While Jenna Strom of the Spinnaker newspaper deemed the group 'downright sacrilegious,' Sally Calcara of the Northern Iowan newspaper defended the band, "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."

Other writers such as Raveen Battee of the Los Angeles Loyolan described The Imperial Orgy's music as, 'ingenious and creative, striving to push the envelope to another dimension.'

Although the Gospel Hymns CD is the band's first release, the group has a long history of activity in the New York underground. Besides their regular live performances The Imperial Orgy has presented street theater protests in front of the New York Stock exchange, created their own 12 episode TV series that has been broadcast across the U.S. and Europe, and held the legendary Imperial Orgy Erotic Masquerade Ball at Webster Hall in the East Village.

Excerpt from Apology 10/28/94

10/28/94

I have finished my work at Filmspace and it is my last day in State College. Finally I will be free to begin my new life in New York City.

But everything is wrong. It seems that given two possible outcomes for any situation the negative one is always the one that happens. It has worked out that way so many times it defies the laws of chance. I am starting to wonder what I have done to deserve this run of bad luck. Questions that I thought I came to terms with years ago haunt me anew. The existence of morality? Good and Evil? Fate and determination? Past lives? All of these questions cloud my confused mind.

The recent weeks I have been in a dream state. A walking malaise. I have very little human contact. I work on editing the film on pharmacology during the night when no one is around. I work a few hours then pass out for a nap on the black leather couch in the back of the editing room. On and off, working and sleeping throughout the night, then I vacate before morning comes and the rest of the workers arrive.

For days I have been trying to seek help. Psychological help. Spiritual help. Any lind of help. Finally the darkness becomes too intense. I pick up the phone in the editing room and begin calling desperately, reaching out for anyone. Psychiatrists won’t speak to me because I have no money or insurance. I have called priests, preachers, gurus…yet I only reach answering machines or people who think I am crazy for actually asking metaphysical questions, for really thinking about the issues they are supposed to make their life’s work. Finally in desperation I call the suicide hotline. A recorded voice answers the phone, “This is the Pennsylvania suicide hotline. Many people consider suicide for a variety of reasons. If you are considering suicide here are a few things you should consider…”

An answering machine at the suicide hotline? I hang up the phone. It is laughable. Like a scene from a B grade movie. Gathering my strength I make the final dub of the edited film and lay down to sleep. This moment is the meridian between my new and old life and yet I find myself thinking of suicide.

The following morning I leave State college to begin my new life. I plan to visit Sasha on the way to New York. Our last evening together was both horrible and wonderful. The previous weekend I came to New York to audition for an off-Broadway show called the Blue Man Group. That evening Sasha and I were given free tickets to the show. As part of the audition we were assigned the task of going into the basement of the theater and talking into plastic tubes, the other ends of which emerged under the seats of the theater. We sere supposed to ad lib surreal conversations with the audience members who were waiting for the show to begin.

Once the show began we had a great time. We laughed and held each other throughout the performance. Afterward we went to a club where people slow danced to Latin music.

After our evening, as I drove back to her parent’s home she stripped naked as I drove. She said, “I want you inside of me.”

I slid my finger inside of her warm vagina as she masturbated. In the green haze from the dashboard lights I looked down over her lovely body. Her long hair flowing over my legs. The expression of passion on he face. Soon she shook with orgasm. As I watched her I was overcome with feelings of love. A love so deep and so intense that it shook me to the core. After her orgasm she began to cry quietly as her head rested on my lap.

“I’m so confused. Why do I have to be a woman? I feel like such an ugly person,” she said.

Her tears soon gave way to sobs, “I just don’t wanna lose my mother, I don’t wanna lose my mother..” she repeated between sobs. “I pray every night I’ll get in a car wreck and end it all.”

We pulled up in front of her parent’s upper middle class mansion. The neighborhood looked cold and sterile. We sat in front of the house and I held in her in my arms while she pulled herself together. She asked that we don’t speak for two weeks so that she has some time to regain her emotional balance.

She begged me to stay the night at her parent’s house so they don’t think there’s anything wrong between us. I refused and began the four hour drive back to State College with the night’s events weighing heavily on my mind.

After not speaking to her for a week, yesterday I got a message at Filmspace that her back was broken in a car accident. She is laid up in a brace, but can still move about a bit. When we spoke on the phone I said, “Do me a favor, don’t prey for anymore car wrecks.”

She was silent for a second. “I didn’t say that,” she replied indignantly. When I insisted that she did, she became hysterical. “I can’t talk to you anymore,” she blurted our and the phone line went dead.

On the drive to New York it is a warm and sunny autumn day. The nice weather help to protect my spirit from the hopelessness I feel inside.

When I arrive at Sasha’s house on the way to New York she lies in her bed propped up against the wall. A metal brace holds her from head to hips. Her hair is still matted against her forehead with dried blood. It is a ghastly site. Her beauty trapped in that mechanical metal contraption that looks like some kind of torture device.

She tells me it’s over. She needs a break from the pressure of the relationship so she can focus on healing.

I am broken, dead inside, but I feel so exhausted by the months of drama that I simply feel to beaten to protest. I bend down and kiss her hand reverently and say goodbye, never to enter her home again.

As the New York City skyline comes into view I realize it is the first day of my new life and I am homeless, jobless, for all practical purposes The Imperial Orgy is broken up. I feel humiliated. I have lost face to all. And most of all; I am taken by deep feelings of hopelessness that I have never known before.

As night falls and the chill of autumn begins to sting my skin, out of desperation I call Samantha. She and Dave Surreal are sharing and large apartment on Staten Island. I explain my desperate situation to her. As she chats cheerfully on the phone a P.J. Harvey song blares in the background. “You’re not rid of me, you’re not rid of me,” Harvey’s angry voice warns amid the distorted guitars. Is this a message? I am so confused that I can’t tell reality from superstition any longer. Samantha invites me to come and sleep on their basement floor. With nowhere else to turn I accept.

When I arrive at their house all is dark. Samantha greets me at the door wearing a green silk kimono. Inside at the dark house she hugs me and I realize she is naked under the now open kimono. With her leading the way we fall into a frenzied fuck on the hard living room floor.

My mind is so confused that this event feels like simply one more drama in a stream that takes me in its current. My body, as well as my soul have surrendered to the torrent of life. I am a whore to the amoral desires of fate and destiny. I have no will to fight it anymore.

Samantha is eager to please and uses her skills with a willful sense of purpose. She takes me in her mouth and rubs her lithe frame over my body. Finally she crawls atop me, my back pinned against the hard wooden floor. It seems she is eager to please, but in fact this is her moment of triumph. After all is said and done, she has vanquished her rival and conquered her pray. As I collapse after ejaculation her triumph is complete. I dissolve into nothingness, small like a raped widow or an abused child. She feels strong and contented.

As we thrashed about on the floor the one thing I couldn’t do is kiss her on the mouth. That is the one thing that would be too much of a lie for my soul to bear. It is my one oasis of purity that I won’t defile. Once I have known a kiss of deep, pure love, I just can’t pretend anymore. It is impossible. It is the one part of myself that protect as all else is surrendered to the cruel world that has taken me.

It is too later to fix a bed for me in the basement, so we fall sleep in her bed. I lay on my side looking out into the darkness of the unfamiliar room. Samantha lies behind me, her arm and leg draped over me. I feel a sense of smothered security. I feel like an errant child who went out into the world to find his dream and came back to mother with his tail between his legs. I feel grateful for her help in this hour of need, but I also feel disgraced and humiliated. I resent the price I will pay for accepting this help. Little do I know how this night will color my entire future for years to come.

Iggy Pop & The Stooges at the United Palace Theater.

Iggy Pop & The Stooges at the United Palace Theater.

I went to the Stooges show with a bit of trepidation. My first concern was about how out of control the audience might become. Beyond that I always preferred Iggy’s Berlin era solo work to the less musically-sophisticated music produced by the Stooges. In the end I went just to experience the concert for their historical value as godfathers of punk.

The concert was way way uptown at the United Palace Theater on 175th street. The audience was an odd mix of young hipsters and middle-aged rockers, many with young children in tow.

The night started with an OK set by a girl trio called Sistas In The Pit who played Hendrix psychedelia meets punk. When the stooges took the stage the volume was so overwhelming that the next morning my ears are still ringing. Their music was the most primitive sound I have ever heard. The music was pure aggression. Iggy skipped around the stage with a knock-kneed gait. Often breaking into spastic go-go girl moves. His body was lean and hard, dressed only in a dropping pair of faded blue jeans.

Throughout the night Iggy’s stage performance was the most interesting thing about the show as he poured bottles of water and beer over his own head, crawled on top of amplifiers, and dove into the audience. Halfway through the show he invited the crowd onto the stage, causing total chaos as hundreds of fans mobbed him as a lone security guard struggled to keep him safe.

The band was tight, although the guitar and bass players stayed pinned up against their amps, seemingly only interested in staying out of Iggy’s way. During the final third of the concert the bass, drum and guitar lineup was implemented by the addition of a sex player. Unfortunately by that late hour the sound became so loud that it washed over one like an incomprehensible roar.

I was surprised by how little of the material I actually knew. Beyond a few classics like I Wanna Be Your Dog, 1969, No Fun, and TV Eye, the song selection was alien to me. Much of it might have come from the band’s new album. One song from that release which repeated the inane refrain, “My idea of fun, is killing everyone.”

When all is said and done, although I appreciate the Stooges role in rock history, it’s still Iggy which makes the band anything more than a million other punks bands. And when it comes to Iggy, I would prefer to have a little Lust For Life mixed in with my Search And Destroy.

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Anoushka Shankar

Although I’ve listened to a lot of recorded Indian music over the years, except for the sitar players who sit in the window of the Indian restaurants on 6th Avenue, I have never seen an Indian music concert before this week when I went to see Anoushka Shankar perform at the Laguardia Performing Arts Center in Queens, NY.

Anoushka is the daughter of famed Sitar player Ravi Shankar, and began learning the complex instrument at age eight. By age fifteen she was recording with family friend George Harrison and made her solo debut as a recording artist soon after.

Her group consisted of a tabla player, a flutist, a trap drummer, an electric bass, a pianist, and another stringed instrument that I still haven’t figured out what it is. The show began with a couple pieces in the traditional Indian classical style.

As a musician, when I listen to music I am used to being able to understand the music structurally. With the Indian music, although I could understand the melodies and rhythms I couldn’t make any sense of the structures. To my ears it sounded as if it just flowed organically, but I believe there actually are complex structures guiding it that my ears could not recognize.

As the performance progressed Anoushka added more modern elements into the music. Bringing in the drum kit and the electric bass, and even some electronic sounds and rhythms provided by the pianist with a computer by her side.

One piece she explained was written with a Spanish composer and fused flamenco style piano with classical Indian music. Another crowd pleaser featured a technique called mouth percussion during which the percussionist and the flute player sang drum parts. It was very fast and very frenetic, and the complexity and energy made it very exciting to listen to.

For the final piece the musicians each took a solo section, a tradition that is very familiar to Western listeners. The musicians were all excellent, and Anoushka’s abilities were very impressive. The sitar is an instrument that is capable of making a wide variety of sounds simultaneously, and the speed and control with which she manipulated the unwieldy looking contraption was a bit dazzling. The only thing that seemed odd about the piece was that after each solo the music would come to a complete stop, and then the entire group would begin again in unison until the next solo began. In Western music the rhythm would always continue and the soloists would normally play their solos over top of the rhythm and the music would never come to a stop.

Between each song the musicians stopped to tune up their instruments. Before they began again Anoushka would pick up a small microphone and introduce the next song. Here demeanor was always gentle and always grateful for the audience’s approval.

The Mustang Daily

The Mustang Daily
by Janelle Eastridge
- April 5, 2007

Caesar Pink banned from college radio

With the phrase "Gospel Hymns for Agnostics and Atheists" as the name of their debut album, it's not too much of a stretch to see how Caesar Pink and the Imperial Orgy (another so-called shockingly immoral name) is already shrouded in controversy.

But, that's OK: after all, the band's no stranger to controversy. In the past, the New York City-based band has had shows cancelled due to terrorist threats from radical religious groups, their Web site has been banned from its Web hosting company for being "an insult to God" and women's studies classes have debated how they present gender issues.

Though they may be virtually unknown on Cal Poly's campus, other universities and press outlets across the nation have deemed the band's music too controversial for the airwaves, and have even, in some cases, banned the songs from receiving any playtime.

College campuses from Washington, Delaware, New York and Georgia, to name a few, have vaguely labeled the music as "too controversial," "too political" and "anti-religion." Clearly, this isn't just an issue of the Bible Belt or religious extremists taking the reins on college campuses. Or maybe it is -but that's another issue.

"The music's good, the singing's good, the production's good, but we can't put it on the air," said Tamara Postles, music director for WDTS radio station in Georgetown, Del.

"I refuse to play that kind of sacrilegious music on my radio station. It is ungodly, unethical and just done to strike up the heartstrings of those who respect God and religion," said Adam Bagri, general manager of WEXP at La Salle University in Philadelphia, Penn.

Just as their music is an easygoing yet bold mixture of style, not really fitting into one specific genre, it seems the band itself has a unique mixture of counterculture ideas and unflinchingly powerful statements.

"To place the CD in context, although The Imperial Orgy's music usually consists of an "anything goes" mix of old-school punk, psychedelic funk and experimental art rock, the 'Gospel Hymns' CD spotlights a different slice of the group's creative pie The four songs are united by the use of blues and gospel lyrics to create a modern form of gospel music that does not promote any sect or religion, but expresses a more universal spiritual message," according to a recent press release from the band's label.

This is perhaps best represented in the CD's first song, "The Amazing Tenacity of Job & His Brethren." Lead singer Caesar Pink soulfully sings "cum-bye-yay lord(s)" as gospel singers back him up.

Yes, Pink does make some expected "controversial" religious statements, singing "There's nothin' you can count on/and nothin' comes for free/the devil speaks with a child's tongue/and if you believe in those na've dreams/his work will be complete."

But these lyrics (and more) are not entirely what Postles, Bagri and others would have us believe.

The idea isn't that religion is some big, bad monster out to devour people's minds. In fact, there's nothing that, from these lyrics at least, would even suggest such a thing. But rather the idea is that evil is accomplished when dreams and ideas are held na'vely.

Sure, there are numerous religious references in both the lyrics and the style of the music, but, like the band points out, these songs are not written to promote an agenda either for or against religion.

The CD also contains no foul language and no references to sex, drugs or violence.

For now, it seems as though a truly rare band with so much creativity is being turned away, not for the music they play, but rather for the initial, glance-at-the-cover message they portray.

As Pink said, "I think it all has to do with the CD's title. When people hear the word 'atheist' they seem to go insane. What bothers me is that they don't seem to listen to the music or read the lyrics, but because these stations get it into their heads that the CD reflects a different religious belief than their own, they are banning us from the airwaves."

And that is a sad, but telling, thing.

The so-called Sounds Of Satan - South Florida Oracle

The Co-called Sounds Of Satan

Welcome to college. Most of you have made it this far by thinking for yourselves, but some colleges don't think you can handle "sacreligious" music. Apparently you can handle homework and paying bills, but once exposed to music that contradicts any sort of orthodox religious lifestyle, you're a goner.

Caeser Pink and the Imperial Orgy's Gospel Hymns for Agnostics and Atheists has not only received negative commentary from religious groups, but its CD has been banned from many college radio stations for sacrilegious and ungodly messages. One listen could make a person a bit unnerved to think that certain people have the sort of power to decide what the masses should and should not hear.

In order to understand how these claims could be made about Caeser Pink and the Imperial Orgy, the CD and band need to be thoroughly inspected.

First of all, the music is not the cause of the censorship. While it's not exactly a Top 40 album, it's something you would expect to hear on 88.5 WMNF, Tampa's local community radio station. It's an easy rock sound with funk undertones.

Furthermore, dissection of the lyrics revealed nothing. Hardly blasphemous, the lyrics promote faith and freedom of thought, with no God-bashing in sight. It's practically *NSYNC compared to some of Marilyn Manson's music. Some of the scrutinized lyrics include: "We preach what we lack / we curse what we sow," and, "let the sinless pray for redemption / let the hopeless dream of tomorrows / let it wash over you." These are pathetic attempts at claiming an anti-God or anti-religion stance. If anything, these promote strength in faith and attempt to speak the truth about people in general (the classic "practice what you preach" idiom comes to mind).

Further exploration turned up the root of the problem: Lead singer Caeser Pink is a self-proclaimed "guru of Pagan pan-sexuality." To briefly digress, pagan means outside of the world's religions, and pan-sexuality means of no sexual orientation and open to any and all types of people. Also, the Imperial Orgy has been promoting sexual freedom and exploration since the early '90s.

So it seems the devil is in the details. These radio stations are not banning the band's music because of the message, but because of the unscrupulous lifestyles of both Caeser Pink and the Imperial Orgy.

In response to all of this, Caeser Pink posted in an online blog: "This trend towards censoring expression is disturbing. For an artist, if you don't have access to the media, you have no voice with which to reach people. It's a sign of the conformist spirit that has taken America. It's odd because these days, you can be as outrageous as you want when it comes to sex and violence and no one gets too excited, but ideas are what tend to get censored. If you dare to suggest that people should think for themselves and not blindly accept the dictates of church and state, that is when people get nervous and try to shut you up. Rock music has become so safe and vacuous that young Americans have forgotten that music is an art-form with which to express ideas, and that there was a time when rock music was a conduit for social change."

Regardless of whether you like the music or agree with the message, there should not be a censor placed on music based on personal discrimination. College students are old enough and mature enough to separate entertainment from reality or make their own realistic connections therein. If we still hear Michael Jackson on the radio after repeated sexual offense allegations, Snoop Dogg after several drug charges or Eminem after allegations of wife-beating - all lyrics aside - then this little indie band should not be undergoing so much scrutiny. The point is to make your own decisions, so see what they're all about for yourself: Caesarpink.com or Imperialorgymusic.com.