Rendered Pimpless

Here’s a song I had as little to do with as I could. It was our Rico DeBool/Slash Brannon number. I think Slash wrote the words himself. I sang along with it and played guitar that owed more to indifference than soul. Back in the day, I liked this song, then I started to dislike it and I never really knew why. Now I listen to that blistering bass line and I love that much of it. Many people consider this piece Jambox’s finest moment.

She earned herself a loveless life
She worked so hard with her painless lies
She was rendered pimpless
She got so ripped

Rendered pimpless rendered loveless
Rendered lifeless in her eyes
Rendered stiffless instead of gripless,
Rendered a mess, she thought I tripped!

The morning bolts truth in paradise
The lady fried as I told her she lied
She was blitzed in shitsville
She got so lipped

Blitzed in pimpless, witless, loveless
Her fires just cinders, she’s paralyzed
Rendered stiffless instead of gripless
Rendered a mess, she thought I tripped!

Way back in the late seventies Jambox had a whole pimps and ho’s world going that was making me increasingly uncomfortable. At first it was shocking and funny, and also ghetto, which we knew we were. Slash in particular had a strange success with girls who liked to be treated with a certain indifference that was close to contempt at times. This success emboldened him.

He delighted in calling girls bitches and ho’s, and god forgive me, I’m sure I did it sometimes, too. But I doubt that it was something I ever liked much, even though who knows how much you can lie to yourself over thirty years later? I remember it was a cheap giggle to me that never came easily to my lips. From ho’s to pimps is an easy leap, so he came to this song. Nowadays such casual misogyny is commonplace in hip hop, but back then you’d never hear such crap except in secret party tapes and Redd Foxx records.

All I did on this cut is sing dreadfully off key and play some frenetic lead guitar. I also did the vocal arrangements, such as they were. Rico wrote the song and played it with monster abandon. I kind of like the music. I thought it was a creative and unusual bass line, especially for the seventies, when most bass lines weren’t nearly this punk.

I was also blinded by my uncritical love and admiration of Slash Brannon, of course. His poetry never failed to thrill me, even when it was degrading to women. Rendered stiffless! Blitzed in shitsville!