Nig-Heist-Nig-Heist (1997)

 

Artist: Nig-Heist

Title: Nig-Heist

Label: Drag City

Format: 2CD

Cat: DC30CD

Year of Release: 1997

Country and Year of Edition: US 1997

Sell Price: $29.99 VG+/VG+ 4/2/23 

Discogs Last Sold: 2/7/23 $14.99

Low:$10.00

Median: $26.09

Average: $28.41

High: $41.30

Current low price: $23.75

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 2

Have/Want:  68/80

Where Sold:  Vancouver, BC, Canada

Time it took to sell: 2 years

Where and When  The Fountain Collection

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No

"Walking Down Your Street" is perhaps one of the greatest 7" blasts of all time.  Pan-offensive in the G. G. Allin sort of way.  Something for everyone that takes offense to anything.  It was a regular on my late night radio show in high school.  What teenager could resist lines like "I need a release, I need a release, I want to cum!"   I still can't resist to this day, even past 50.  

The Snort My Load album from 1984 that leads this complete discography off was a lost classic I could never find until this came out.   I never saw it anywhere, even for $50 on a wall somewhere.   When this reissue came out I was able to check off a bucket list item.  It sold before this blog and courtesy of the donated Fountain collection was sold again to write about it.   While not as good as the  single, it is consistently raunchy.   T.L.P. of course stands for Tight Little Pussy.  What do you think it would stand for?  To Love Puppies? Turn Left Please?  Try Leche Patron?  So many possibilities. Not!

The rest doesn't let up.  Even the Velvet Underground cover gets inappropriately raunchified into "If She Ever Comes."  You could lecture a class about  every -ism in the book and you'd be right on all counts.  "Love In Your Mouth"? "Woman Drivah?"  It get a bit long, particularly with the hour plus live second CD in the set.  You never need to hear another second of this band after getting through the whole thing.  The adversarial stage banter however is a big part of the story.  

There is a term flying around called "Cringe Comedy" that I learned about recently.  Some asshole is gonna call this "Cringe Punk" so they can continue to enjoy it in politically isolated company, whatever pole you choose.  More likely they would just ban it.  Art and corporate never really occupied the same lane, did it?  Perhaps one gives the "Nig-Heist Slam" to the other.  You choose which.

Mugger the singer doubled as Black Flag's roadie and one has to take into account that the recently deceased SST engineer Spot was half Black, half Native American and also doubled as the Nig-Heist bass player.  The name itself Steve "Mugger" Corbin revealed in one interview, a Black friend would steal his cigarettes and use the term as he did it every time.  Someone else said it was about their equipment getting ripped off in South Central LA.  Maybe the story got cleaned up for MoMA. 

Why is such base humor featured in the esteemed Museum of Modern Art you may ask?  Well, Black Flag's house artist, Raymond Pettibon, brother of guitarist Greg Ginn, has become known in the art world.  All those depraved flyers that covered my teenage wall and bought for a buck from SST mailorder with captions that viewed the world with a jaundiced eye.  The depravity on this cover depicts sexual activity in the toy chest among a Howdy Doody puppet and a doll.  The one that graced the "Walking Down Your Street" label somehow made the MoMa cut.  

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