Wesley Willis - Song Style and Structure

Song Style and Structure

The Wesley Willis Fiasco songs were essentially punk rock songs with Willis howling his obscene, absurd rants as lyrics. Some called it exploitation; others dubbed it "savant-garde." The Wesley Willis Fiasco recorded at least three cover songs: Thin Lizzy's "Jailbreak", Pure Prairie League's "Amie", and Duran Duran's "Girls on Film", the last of which was recorded for a 1997 Duran Duran tribute album. Another song by the Wesley Willis Fiasco, "The Bar Is Closed", recreates a section of Rush's "Tom Sawyer"; the song "Casper the Homosexual Friendly Ghost" does the same with Van Halen's "Jamie's Cryin'".

After the Fiasco broke up, Willis's popularity increased markedly. As a solo artist, Willis created more than 50 albums, each with over 20 tracks, full of bizarre, tense, and often obscene rants about crime, fast food, cultural trends, bus routes, violent confrontations with superheroes, commands for his "demons" to engage in bestiality (in The Daddy of Rock 'N' Roll, Willis explained that these songs (e.g. "Drink a Camel's Cum, Suck a Cheetah's Dick") would "gross out" the demons enough to leave him alone), and praise for his favorite actors, friends (both platonic and romantic), politicians, and hip-hop and rock artists. Songs about rock artists were usually confined to describing a show performed by the band that Willis had attended or opened for, recycling key phrases such as "The crowd roared like a lion," "A lot of people met the band," "The band got down like a Magikist," and the opening couplet "This band played the / About people were at the show," as well as uses of the phrases "rock show" and "jam session" in conjunction with "the (rock) show was..." or stating that the existence of one of these within the show "was awesome" or "whipped a(n) 's ass". Many songs end with the phrase "Rock over London, rock on, Chicago," followed by a product slogan, such as "Polaroid. See what develops."

Willis's keyboard of choice was the Technics KN series. Willis would obsessively trade in one KN model for the newest ones on the market during the time when he was making the most money (after his break-up with The Wesley Willis Fiasco). The KN1200 was the keyboard he was currently using, according to a Howard Stern interview.