Free Throbbing Gristle's Twenty Jazz Funk Greats (33 1/3) by Drew Daniel Page B

transatlantic slippage at work in which Ruth Gordon’s New Yawk–accented “s” resounds in English ears as a “th.” In the private mythos of TG’s misprision, the two are linked together as twin strands of occult meaning. If Tanith with a “th” named the subject of mind control in
The Devil Rides Out
, Tannis with an “s” names the agent of mind-control in
Rosemary’s Baby
. The root in question is central to the conceit of the film: this seemingly benign good luck charm is in fact “The Devil’s Pepper,” a faintly foul-smellingfungus through which a coven of elderly Satanists in a gothic Manhattan apartment building mark their initiates, and subtly control their victims.
    Rosemary : [looking at circular silver charm bracelet containing herbs] It’s lovely.
    Minnie: The green inside is called tannis root, that’s for good luck.
    Rosemary: [politely] It’s lovely but I can’t accept. . .
    Minnie: You already have, put it on.
    [she puts it on]
    Minnie: Yeah, go on.
    As soon as the necklace closes around Mia Farrow’s pallid WASP neck, Ruth Gordon sighs orgasmically, her eyes bright with triumph. The charm has hit its target. Polanski stages a perfectly ordinary, everyday act of friendship between two newly acquainted neighbors, but beneath the bland surface (perfectly summed up in the buttery yellow sixties living-room décor) lies a psychic battlefield of hostile forces. As Rosemary’s occult research reorients her perspective and we are let in on its arcane significance, the innocuous jewelry becomes a demonic threat, the token of an atavistic pagan secret. The scene crystallizes several key elements of the Throbbing Gristle worldview: what looks like humdrum banality actually contains elements of magical potency, information can act upon an object to transform its meaning and hence its nature, and agents of control are everywhere (though they usually don’t look the part). What makes Roman and Minnie Castevets such singularly convincing people is not their monstrosity but their schtickas the crass and faintly improbable bores-next-door. Subtly manipulating unspoken codes of neighborly decorum and middle-class etiquette in order to pervert and destroy those around them, they perfectly embody the principles of everyday authoritarianism depicted in “Persuasion.”
    Gen: “Tanith” is all me. It was named after my dog.
    Drew: It’s your bass, your vibes, and your violin. I was wondering about that song in the overall context of your bass playing, because it’s such a different approach to the bass than on
Second Annual Report
. Were there any bass soloists that you liked?
    Gen: Yeah, of course: Charlie Mingus. I was very much influenced by Mingus. And Jimi Hendrix. I was determined to approach the bass as Jimi Hendrix had approached the electric guitar: as a sonic church, as an alchemical sacred sound generator. That was one path, and the other path was Charlie Mingus, a cool jazz approach. I mean, that was a deliberately “jazzy” bit of bass playing. I had just got a new bass. It was the one that we put a Roland sticker on, but it wasn’t actually a Roland. You’d have to ask Chris which one it was, it got broken eventually.
    Drew: He set up the Auto-wah that it’s played through?
    Gen: No, no, that’s actually played wah. I ran it through a Morley fuzz wah; I still use it to this day. The Morley fuzz wah for lead guitar, not for a bass, they make both, but I always use the lead guitar one for my bass. And a Roland Space Echo, and a Fuzz Face distortion pedal. It was the same setup for guitar and violin.
    Drew: And what order was your signal chain in?
    Gen: Fuzz face, then Morley fuzz-wah, then Space Echo.
    Gen’s bass is slightly distorted and heavily filtered. The sound heats up, then gets cut from its fuller, bottom-heavy range down into a narrow band of midrange. This trimmer silhouette is rendered almost comic by the boinging impact of the wah pedal closing like a mouth around the