Since forming a few years back, Will Wood and the Tapeworms have established themselves as one of the more exploratory, exciting and enigmatic live acts in the tri-state. Led by the titular Wood, the group pings wildly from one idea to the next mixing all of the theatrical and musical impulses of Les Claypool, Tim Burton, Gogol Bordello and Hedwig and the Angry Inch.
Now, WWATT are releasing The Real, a live album featuring new, experimental arrangements with a 9-piece big band recorded at sold out shows in 2017. To celebrate, we had Wood break it all down for us, as only he can, track by track.
Stream Will Wood and the Tapeworms’ The Real [LIVE] below and snag your copy of it here.
1. SELF-
Curtains up.
2. 10-4 6-up 5-oh Copout (Pro/Con)
Repeatedly slamming your head against the wall of the drunk tank is as effective as sensory deprivation or lysergide in producing an altered state of consciousness worth exploring. The seemingly mystical implications of the visions that can follow a vodka/marijuana/head trauma concussion can be overwhelming. Tightrope walking a sobriety test along a thin blue line, soaked in flashes of red white and blue, and floating through your own subconscious – you find yourself one with those monsters that have you caged up like an animal. Zookeepers with fur. We’re the same thing – and I don’t blame them – put me away. You know?
3. Cotard’s Solution [Kill Me?]
Mr. Cotard was a pharmacist who used to come into the deli I worked at in High School every day and get a whitefish sandwich with onion. One day he stopped showing up. Read in the papers weeks later that he had been found decaying in his living room. Worms in his eye sockets. His pugs had started eating his feet. Apparently he had a brain aneurysm while reading Vonnegut in his favorite chair. It’s funny, we had talked about his late wife’s diabetes one time, and how a shot of insulin in a non-diabetic body would kill in minutes flat. So it goes.
4. R.I.P. DR. EMOTO.
I’m not entirely convinced that Dr. Masaru Emoto is a doctor at all. My old psychiatrist wasn’t – so why should this new-age bottled water salesman be? Elkhart Tolle fans would gobble his designer molecules up. I’m not convinced you can bottle happiness. I should know, I’m two years sober.
5. Where Do You Get Off?
You ever meet somebody so beautiful it pissed you off? Like, who the fuck are you?
6. aikido
I wrote this song in high school and told several different people it was about them. When they found out they concluded I was trying to play them. Thing is, I was in love with all of them.
7. TRACK TITLE OMITTED AT REQUEST OF ATTORNEY
TRACK BREAKDOWN OMITTED AT REQUEST OF ATTORNEY
8. Front Street
LSD, ethanol, isopropyl, molly, a girl named Molly, blossoming personality disorders, and countless times vomiting over the fire escape – all of ‘em mixed into the jungle juice. Walk of shame? More like a parade of shame, with the way the Animal Houses in the bowels of Binghamton were churning out regrets. I want to say they swallowed people up and spit them out – but they weren’t spit out. No, we were all digested and passed like cheap buffet sushi rolls down on Front Street. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XeIIbd8-zac
9. Bob Zmuda v. James Carrey
I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you, I trusted you.
10. Wasting Away Again in BuPROpionVille
Lamotrigine works. Wellbutrin works. Topamax works. Clonazepam works. Vybriid works. Sertraline works. I just don’t want them to.
11. Hand Me my [X], I’m [Y]!
Any self-respecting addict will tell you rock bottom is just where you stop digging. Whether its booze, heroin, sex, food, nicotine, cutting, or sucking on lemons. Sometimes you climb out, sometimes it’s too deep and you fall into the earth’s mantel. Sometimes you discover the remains a lost Mayan city petrified in a pyroclastic flow. Usually you find some worms. I love worms.
12. Mike
I’ve recently developed some serious word processing issues. It’s better than the manic episodes, messianic delusions, and generally frowned-upon shit I used to pull before I got my shit together, packed it up, and began the healing/repenting process. So a little trouble putting sentences together is worth the coconut parsley nope gotta ceiling fan, goodnight.
13. The First Step
God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know when to shut the fuck up.
14. (20) 12
I don’t do drugs, they’ve already done me. My blood was a controlled substance, I was illegal, I could spit in your eye and you’d start seeing shit. Probation officers started testing people’s piss for my piss. Every mystic visionary guru creep had the same idea – the return of quetzocoatl was upon us in some way or another, so I was living like there was no tomorrow. But tomorrow came and I lost my yesterday.
15. Mr. Capgras
No, no, no. Never. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaHqllQasDU
16. Chemical Overreaction/Compound Fracture
You ever get way out there? Where madness and wisdom become two sides of the same coin – and calling heads or tails is all you can do to keep yourself from eating the world whole? Where the map ends and sea monsters with a thousand hydra heads drag you into the upside down? Where you can look God in the face and tell him he’s doing it all wrong? Where all reason and rationale becomes so meaningless and useless in the face of the size of this stupid universe than you can no longer abide it? Me neither.
17. Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fibrodysplasia_ossificans_progressiva
18. -iSH
Curtains close.
19. Love Me, Normally (Solo, online exclusive)
I don’t care if you’re gonezo. If you’re a wolf in formal sheepskin. If you’re dead from the neck up, neck down, a zombie, a vampire, or just plain gross. I see you trying to claw your way up the side of the bell curve and sliding back down every time you think you might hit the top. Stop that. Stick out like a sore middle finger. No matter how fucking lonely, you’re not alone. Much love to all of you – especially those of you who feel you don’t deserve it.
20. Black Box Warrant
Draw a line in the sand where it ends and you begin, but the tide rolls in, so who knows? Oh well. Have fun playing prophylactic wack-a-mole with the symptoms of being alive. There’s a cure for it all now – a painless procedure with a low failure rate, but very few patients live through it. Yeah, you’re scared of healing. I get it.
21. Millie Rolls a 7
Get those fucking kids out of hollywood you fucking cannibals. You killed my daughter.
