Kit Ream - All That I Am

I've not said I'm better and I've not said I'm worse but I have an idea concerning the universe

- Kit Ream

There are times when I believe words have outlived their usefulness, that the disconnect between essence and word has grown to the extent that the latter only subverts the integrity of the former. Language has become an obstruction, an instrument of suppression and containment. Upon it we apply the thick coating of gold leaf; it beguiles us with its illusion of riches but we dare not strip the surface bare for fear of the coarse construct found beneath. Instead we elevate and seek the empty comforts of mere eloquence; thus the efficient charms of the silver tongued seductress, the flamed utterance of the demagogue, the sly fawning patter of the salesman, whatever it is that people find so engaging about Christopher Hitchens. Out there beyond the syllable is sound, but a true sound we cannot yet form. Somewhere around the 1"52 mark of Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly I believe Kit Ream comes as close as any man (with the possible exception of Iggy Pop on Funhouse) has to this next evolutionary advance...

And it sounds something like this:

UHHH ah jah ai uh ooo uh chi chai chuh chu chi is!!!

The story of All That I Am was chronicled in appropriately unsubstantiated fashion by Jello Biafra in the book Incredibly Strange Music Vol. II:

The most deranged 'rich person do-it-yourself' album is All That I Am by KIT REAM, heir to the Nabisco cookie fortune. According to someone who knew him, he dropped tons of acid in the '60's and wound up in a mental hospital where he spent six months staring at his own reflection in a mirror. Eventually the acid wore off, he was deemed "cured" and let loose in society, whereupon he decided to become a guru and make a record.

Scuttlebutt on the internet suggests that Kit later forswore his meds, killed a man on his father's yacht and eventually retired to the suburbs of San Diego. It's a shame that a man may have died for Kit's art, but what an art it is. Seventies lounge-funk collides with mystical poetry, putrid come-ons, boogaloo blues, free jazz, hallucinatory incantation and the sound of your dad, drunk on Pina Coladas, dancing shirtless at your uncle's backyard luau. None of this is quite 'pulled off' in the traditional sense, making Kit Ream the essence of Outsider Art; the joy is all in the awkward collisions, the tension between the aspirations of the artist and his inability to express them 'eloquently' using the accepted language of the art form.

And he's nuts.

Some highlights:

• The bubbling cauldron of Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly with its pastel electric piano, insistent flute, roiling congas and loopy drumming gives Kit a platform for some insane glossolalia and sexual preaching. The band is actually really smoking on this and the stereo-panning effects on the drums are great. I also confess a sick weakness for soft electric pianos, perhaps a result of growing up near an AM radio in the seventies.

• Wines is a free-form drunken stumble with retarded drumming like Animal from the Muppets gone jazzbo. The lyrics tell a loose tale of a devotee of Bacchus named Jason Slash while the horns get freaky and a couple of Kit's groupies coo and purr from the sidelines.

• Cool Water, on which Kit lays out entirely, is sung by one of the aforementioned ladies and is unabashedly lovely in its simplicity. Devendra Barnhart, Joanna Newsom or some other denizen of the 'freak folk' communes should cover this.

• Funk heads into War territory with some great horn lines and a loosely double-tracked Kit sounding like a leisure suited swinger possessed by the Holy Spirit, spitting out leering poetry about girls on the sand, trouts and stout, sea urchin's crowns and burps.

• Everything else is just completely fucked, and it's not a gentle tender fuck; more like a soul baring "let's revisit our childhood traumas via bizarre fetishes" fuck. But you like it.

It's easy to make fun of this record but it's absolutely great in its idiosyncratically personal way and I don't think your Springsteen or Tom Petty records, for all their accomplishments, can quite reach the same outer limits.

It's also a ridiculously rare record that sells for kazillions of dollars. I found mine by chance in the 99cent rack of a local store and have cherished it ever since. However, if you're lucky it's still available for download here.

Or you can just check out this mp3 of Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly.

The full Kit Ream story needs to be told. Kit, if you're out there drop me a line.