The Groove Music Life

The look on Jack White

From the You Couldn’t Make This Shit Up If You Smoked Enough Weed To Make Cypress Hill Look Straight-Edge Department:

This just in: Jack White and The Insane Clown Posse have something else in common besides being from Detroit and running unpredictable independent record labels.

Both Third Man Records (White’s label) and Psychopathic Records (ICP’s label) just released news of this otherwise unlikely collaboration that gets even more unlikely given the musical content of the A-side. Thus sayeth the press release:

In the grand tradition of peanut butter meeting Iggy’s chest or Bing Crosby getting down with David Bowie, Third Man Records is ecstatic to present the latest in a long-line of unexpected musical pairings…Insane Clown Posse and Mozart.

Back in ’82, ahem, 1782, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart wrote a piece that’s been left out of the spotlight ever since. The title of the piece is “Leck Mich Im Arsch” or literally translated to English as “Lick me in the arse.” Understandably this piece has figuratively been swept under the rug. So who better to give this piece it’s due respect than the wildly successful, much misunderstood, and divisive Southwest Detroit rappers Insane Clown Posse?

With fellow Southwest Detroit-born Jack White at the production helm and musical backing by Nashville’s very own Jeff the Brotherhood, this 2011 version of “Leck Mich Im Arsch” marries Mozart’s melody (and lyrics sung in operatic German) with ICP’s poignant lyrical addition in English and Jeff the B’s monster-riffs, letting the whole thing tie together in the most beautiful of ways.

(The full press release can be read at either label’s websites.)

I’m a big fan of whatever Jack White does to begin with, and while I would never use the title of “Juggalo” or “ninja” (endearments more suited to more devoted fans of the self-proclaimed Wicked Clowns) I am an ICP fan as well. Even if I could have seen such a collaboration coming, I wouldn’t have thought that they’d base said collaboration on something from one of the most revered classical composers in history. And I’ve loved classical music since my grandfather introduced it to me as a young boy, which makes this even more appealing to me – and also adds another notch to the “Things I Thought Only The Contents Of My Record and CD Collection Had In Common” column in my book. Leave it to Jack White to dig up one of the bawdy party songs that Mozart was known to have written for his own and his friends’s amusement and give it such a hilarious and eminently listenable interpretation. The question here is not, “What the fuck is Jack White thinking?” (as said almost ad infinitum in indie rock circles mere minutes removed from the announcement) but “How the fuck did he come up with such a hilariously crazy idea?”. Trust me, it’s not meant to be taken seriously, but that’s most likely the idea here:

Insane Clown Posse – Leck Mich Im Arsch by Third Man Records

Even the trailer Third Man released in advance of the single is fucking hilarious:

The single – part of Third Man’s ongoing “Blue Series” of one-off singles – comes out in limited edition vinyl through Third Man’s website on September 13th, with iTunes being the hook-up for the turntable-challenged. No advance orders being taken yet as of this writing, but keep checking both places.