Dial P
for Pussy
Galore:
Part Two



Click here
for part one





***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** ***** *****

Combining garage rock rhythms with bursts of noise,
New York's own Pussy Galore were taking no musical
prisoners–from song titles to album titles to damag-
ed song structures, they were all about attitude.
-- I Heart Noise

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"Why," I asked Jon about Pussy Galore's latest release, "if the full
title is Dial 'M' for Motherfucker, does it read Dial 'M' on the cov-
ers and spines of all three configurations? What's up with that?"

Apparently, this wasn't censorship in action on the part of Car-
oline, their record label, or some other party, as I suspected, but
something the group planned so that "Tower would stock it."

For the free-speech adher-
ents out there: the word does
appear on the LP and CD la-
bels and is only missing from
the cassette version due to
a duplication error.

While I understand Jon's
concern regarding sales, I've always regarded Pussy Galore
as one of the least compromising rock acts around. I mean, this
is the same crew who titled a 1987 collection Groovy Hate Fuck
and an '88 EP Sugarshit Sharp (big Michelle Shocked fans...?).
It can't get much more profane than that, but perhaps the re-
sulting flack led them to hedge their bets this time around.

Incidentally, Big Black released Songs About Fucking around the
same time the Leaving Trains issued Fuck, and both albums seem-
ed to do well on the independent charts, so I'm not sure that Pus-
sy Galore needs to tread quite so lightly, but I could be wrong...

I asked Jon if they'd gotten much feedback from feminists, since
some women take offense to their very name, even if Agent 007
got there first. Jon says they haven't received much of a negative
response, and sounded a little surprised by that. "Do you think a
response if necessary if a woman says she finds your work degra-
ding?" I wondered. Jon said it depended on whether or not she
was familiar with his work; in which case, yes. If not, then no.

Click here for part three



Endnote: Images from Musical Family Tree and the All Music Guide.