10. Foetus – Hole
Out of all these people Jim Thirwell stands out a mile. I first saw in him in 1983 with Soft Cell, covering ‘Ghostrider’. He was introduced as Clint Ruin, and I’d go around asking ‘have you got the new Clint Ruin record?’ and nobody knew what I was talking about. Then I saw him on The Tube as Foetus and found out he was loads of other people too, but he was always the ultimate one-man-band. I found that so inspirational, if this guy can make all this music then I don’t fucking need anybody else. That was the point when I thought I need to do this on my own, because Jim Thirwell had proved it. Hole, which I bought from Vinyl Dreams on the Oasis market, has absurdist humour, these tracks put together in this sound collage way that nobody has done before or since. You could say it was influenced by The Residents, but I couldn’t trace his lineage. He co-wrote ‘Wings Off Flies’, one of my favourite Bad Seeds songs, and I wish he’d done more with them. The Foetus I love is this Foetus, one man in front of a reel-to-reel doing what he does. No-one could keep up with him and he remains my hero.
