Times are hard for Seth Putnam. His body slowly recovers from a drug induced coma which reduced him to a wheelchair. His soul can't ever possibly recover from the immense amount of hatred that he's spewed into the world. After ridiculing any and all forms of weakness in others for twenty years, Seth's train has come in: in the most beautifully ironic way possible, Seth is a completely pathetic self-parody.
Seth's drummer Nate is leaving: "Even before Seth's coma, Anal Cunt was already a mere shadow of what it once was. Honestly, Anal cunt should have broken up in 1999. To be even more frank, I think Seth needs a live-in nurse and a bedpan, not a band. By his own hand, Seth has robbed himself of middle age. He went instantly from a 36 year old drug addict to a 90 year old invalid. The spectacle and circus that involved being in Anal Cunt grows tiresome after a while."
If you know of Seth Putnam, it's probably as the vocalist for Anal Cunt, the most offensive band in the history of the world. Boys laugh at their song titles throughout middle school and occasionally listen to their music for short amounts of time. I can't blame them for disposing of AC as soon as they can grow decent facial hair, but they're wrong if they think that moral depravity is all that AC has to offer...it's only the overwhelming majority of what AC has to offer.
Do I hesitate before I place Seth Putnam up there with Iggy and GG as one of the most insane stage presences ever? Only for as long as it takes me to consider whether I mind exaggerating a bit! At any rate, insanity at this level isn't easy to comprehend. It's like wondering how bright the sun is. Anal Cunt in fact nearly became Allin's backing band in the late 80s but lived too far from the legend to actually go through with it. See what Seth was doing on stage durig his salad days circa 1988:
(Four MP3s on the flip side)
I'm also impressed/horrified by the early Breaking The Law 7". Side A features a live set that lasted for about 3 minutes followed by an argument between Seth, the audience and a girl Seth had just hit in the face with a microphone...Seth spent that night in jail. Side B is similar. After only a few minutes of "music", the crowd (including Seth) broke out into a small scale riot. One crowd member sustained a concussion, not to mention a broken jaw. Do I call this 7" nice sound-poetry? I would, but some dude yells "play freebird!" on side B - disqualified! All the gory details to accompany the sounds are available here.
I might also call their 5,643 Song EP a nice conceptual work. But I don't, mostly because Seth is a low brow degenerate. Also, I'm not really sure what conceptual art is. Nonetheless, an impressive and incomprehensible twelve minutes of grinding noise. As if one AC song weren't violent enough, try 16 at once!
Also worthwhile is the Painkiller-indebted Death's Head Quartet record.
A few months before Seth's coma, I played with AC at a dive bar in Clifton, NJ. Because my guitar amp had been stolen a few nights beforehand, I decided to ask Jeff, AC's guitarist, if I could borrow his. After wandering through the most disgusting, dusty, soggy basement imaginable, I found the band sitting on the floor around a bottle of Jack. They happily let me borrow the amp but had reached mean drunk status by their time to play. "Who here hates faggots?" and like questions got no response from the twenty people in the crowd. After a few minutes, Seth said "fuck you all" and stumbled off stage. Guess he's not interested in high art anymore...
Remind me to never hire you as my lawyer.
Posted by: Peter | August 30, 2007 at 09:59 AM
God I hate tiny-dick white boys with guitars.
Posted by: Fatherflot | August 30, 2007 at 11:02 AM
In college, I interned at Anal Cunt's record label. Seth and Tim were in the office a few days prior to a trip I was taking to Boston, where they lived. I ended up inviting them to a party at my friends' house, never thinking they'd actually show up. Well, they did. And they were the life and soul of the party- breakdancing, wearing bunny ears, singing along to Village People deep cuts like "I Wanna Shake Your Hand," while dancing around the room...
Posted by: Listener Therese | August 30, 2007 at 11:07 AM
I wonder why they never got sued for the song "Rich Goyette is Gay"? I knew Rich Goyette, and annoying though he was, I don't think he was gay. Rich was/is a guitarist in Boston who also insisted he played tablas (yeah, sure). Annoying, clueless, pretentious, but probably not gay (well, even if he was gay he probably wouldn't understand what that meant). I remember Rich walking through the Rounder Records warehouse, with Derek & the Dominoes' "Layla" playing over the stereo, and Rich saying "Who is this?". . . "Oh, are they new? Sounds cool." (He wasn't joking).
Like I said, clueless-- I guess that's why he never sued.
Posted by: anonymous | August 30, 2007 at 12:26 PM
@Fatherflot: Just curious, have you actually seen the dicks of the Anal Cunt?
Posted by: Jeffersonic | August 30, 2007 at 01:58 PM
Anal Cunt *not* saying someone is gay in a song is somewhat the equivalent of James Brown not singing in the first person.
Posted by: Brian Turner | August 30, 2007 at 02:09 PM
aol is gay
Posted by: anonymous | August 30, 2007 at 03:17 PM
I think Brian Turner nailed it (no pun intended at all - really). I think I have a very early 7" of theirs that has 88 "songs" on it. I thought it was great, in that hi-concept-brought-low way. I have been slightly perplexed to watch the strange history of the band, which, yes, does include a lot of brief adolescent worship largely due to their willingness to declare everything "gay". So... A drug-abusing asshole knucklehead gets his come-uppance - but proudly declares he's still an asshole. Click the link - being in a coma was just as "gay" as he thought it would be! Fair enough. Are we all set here? All set. So, in all seriousness - is he really gay or just a knucklehead? Honestly it wouldn't change my feelings about anything, I'm just curious.
Posted by: Jason T | August 30, 2007 at 07:53 PM
aren't we supposed to love the ones who try so hard to be hated? isn't that their just punishment? I can't help but admire someone who worked so hard at being completely irredeemable for it's own sake. I think that now that I know that his personal life was so close to his stage persona I can appreciate it more. I used to listen to Anal Cunt in highschool and think "ok these are just some guys trying to be as offensive as humanly possible" but if they might have been actual scumbags in real life. I don't know, that might make them a bit more interesting to listen to.
Posted by: patrick | August 30, 2007 at 10:13 PM
Um...do you have a source for that quote or that Seth is in a wheelchair? The article you linked to contradicts this one. And how can you seriously think they are more offensive than Skrewdriver or any number of real hate bands? They're a joke. Some of the people he wrote songs against were really friends, and he even performed the song "You're in a Coma" after the coma. I don't think Skrewdriver is having a laugh down at the pub with their Jewish friends after a show.
Posted by: jim | August 30, 2007 at 11:50 PM
Jim, thanks for checking for veracity - I like being kept on my toes. Seth was in a wheelchair for a while but can use a walker now. Hence the "his body recovers"... in my article. If you look in the news archive on sethputnam.com, you can find more - on June 16th, 2005 he announced that he had a walker and not a wheelchair anymore.
I heard that Vaginal Jesus (AC spinoff band) got kicked off of Resistance Records when the label found out that the band wasn't actually racist. I also heard that skrewdriver loves puppys and flowers - who knew?
Posted by: Nash Rose | August 31, 2007 at 10:17 PM
Question:
If Anal Cunt wrote a song about you, what would it be called?
Posted by: jeff | September 02, 2007 at 02:11 PM
If they did, whatever it would have been called. I'd probably be simply flattered that posers of their level even knew who I was...
Posted by: The Original Larry | September 04, 2007 at 04:46 PM
I am the current guitarist for Anal Cunt. The number of factual errors in this blog is too high to bother counting, but I just wanted to comment on the so-called quote from ex-drummer Nate Linehan. Where did this quote come from? Anyone that knows him can tell it hardly sounds like his voice. Phrases like "spectacle and circus" and others do not sound like things Nate would say. But if it is real, it's interesting how someone who thinks AC is so lame can't wait to get his hands on video tapes of gigs to watch himself play. 1999 was only the 2nd time Nate quit AC. I believe the most recent quitting was his fifth. He sure can't stay away from the "shadow' that is Anal Cunt.
People who just watched AC for the "spectacle" were faggots. AC is one of the greatest grind/noisecore (whatever you want to call it)bands ever and I am proud to have been a part of it for the past 11 years and look forward to continuing once a replacement for Nate is found. His constant cry-baby complaints will not be missed. If you want to get your ass kicked by the sonic boom that is an AC performance you will not be disappointed.
Oh, and Seth's health is just fine. It took a few gigs for Seth to get his bearings on how much booze he can handle post-coma and still be able to perform but we're all good now. His legs will probably never fully recover but all that matters is his vocals. He is still the best screamer out there and we're still better than your band.
I have no clue who the fuck Nash Rose is but guaranteed no one will ever be writing blogs about him.
Posted by: Josh Martin | September 12, 2007 at 02:58 PM