"Thorax"

Song Title: "Vetter Tom's Knuppel"

Artist: Thorax-Wach

Search Term: "Thorax"

Here is a list of my five greatest loves in the entire world, in no particular order:

(1) My wife

(2) The animals who live with me (well, the dogs and the birds; not the uncatchable cricket who's been hanging out in my bathroom this week)

(3) My non-wife family (parents, brother, cousins, etc.)

(4) Dopey keyboard sounds

(5) My friends/Dance Moms [tie]

So you are well within your rights to raise a skeptical eyebrow as I rave about this shabby dialogue between two German keyboardists, because I can only assume that Thorax-Wach released it in 1980 specifically to commemorate my birth, hoping that one day I would hear it and realize that it was a song composed to cater to my tastes and only my tastes. That is how much I love it. It has a great introduction in which a Casio, another keyboard, and some sort of squishy synth percussion all circle each other warily, almost figuring out how to work together to form a clever polyrhythmic song base, and ultimately never getting there. Instead, "Vetter Tom's Knuppel" retreats and turns into a Residents-style two-index-finger keyboard piece, fumbling to stay on the beat the whole while, with German lyrics muttered in an approximation of Kraftwerk's bigeyed automaton delivery (and multitracked so awkwardly that any hint of mechanical exactitude goes out the window). I'm sure this description makes the song sound like a complete wreck, but I love these noises and the silliness of the whole enterprise. It's no songwriting coup, but its crude celebration of inorganic sound tickles parts of my stony rock-critic's heart that few artists reach.

The human heart doesn't have those parts. Grow up.