When Paranoia Strikes Deep
"Seems I was holding a wrench, momma And then my mind just walked away." Jack Kittel, "Psycho" Jack Kittel's 74 country horror classic is a frightening account of a psychopathic killer told through the deranged mind of the looney himself as he murders his ex-wife and her lover, a boy's puppy, a neighbor's little girl, and finally his own mother—a bloodbath song that would even scare the madness out of Chainsaw's Leatherface.
When Paranoia Strikes Deep
TALKING HEADS
Fear of Music
(Sire)
by Robot A. Hull
"Seems 1 was holding a wrench, momma
And then my mind just walked away."
Jack Kittel, "Psycho"
Jack Kittel's 74 country horror classic is a frightening account of a psychopathic killer told through the deranged mind of the'looney himself as he murders his ex-wife and her lover, a boy's puppy, a neighbor's little girl, and finally his own mother—a bloodbath song that would even scare the madness out of Chainsaw's Leatherface.
On their debut album in 1977, Talking Heads attempted a similar song-narrative with "Psycho Killer" —but with a tongue-in-cheek twist. It's a bright, snappy, almost happy paen to the American mass murderer, a procession (Speck, Whitman, DeSalvo, Corll, Manson) that essentially began when Charles R. Starkweather, age 19, stalked the Nebraskan landscape, killing ten people in eight days in 1958. When the clapalong "Fa-fa-fa" 's jump out of "Psycho Killer," the humor becomes obvious, the stab of the knife only a cool jerk, as if the 1910 Fruitgum army had decided to celebrate the bombing of Hiroshima!