5. Bongwater – The Power Of Pussy
I was introduced to this when I was at high school and this friend of mine, who is still one of my best friends, who was living in this group punk squatter house, and introduced me to this record by Bongwater. Bongwater were this band that were made up of this New York performance artist Ann Magnuson and a guitar player named Kramer, and I think there’s five Bongwater records but The Power of Pussy is their masterpiece and the whole thing is like this epic folky psychedelic journey with loads of samples and soundscapes and all these characters and monologues that go on top of them. Some of them are songs, but then some are these spoken word pieces over these really trippy songs and they’re very funny. What’s so cool about it is that it’s so legit, it truly is this trippy psychedelic folk but she’s hilarious on top of it. It’s funny but when I met Ana Matronic from Scissor Sisters, Ann Magnuson is her idol and we both really bonded over this album and I definitely feel like they were a huge inspiration for what Ana did in Scissor Sisters and something I really love very much. If you really want to hear something amazing from this album you should check out ‘Folk Song’ and it’s fucking hilarious, it’s so good and it never gets old and I think it’s epic. Unfortunately I think they had not a great break-up, and one of their albums, Double Bummer, is hard to find, but The Power of Pussy, I think, is a masterpiece.
