Maggots: The Essay
The Plasmatics'
unappreciated masterpiece.
Cars blown up on stage; nice tunes and chord progressions; strong rhythms; exciting guitar
work; generous views of Ms Williams' rather attractive figure ... is that the legacy of
the Plasmatics? Superficially, yes. But look deeper ... and another picture begins to
emerge. The clues exist in the earlier albums. Amongst the sexual imagery and rock and
roll structures is a consistent message, a message that all is not well with society. And
it isn't just the usual complaints of rebellious teenagers; there is a deeper and a darker
view of structural malaise.
The earlier
recordings prepare the listener for Maggots. Its title - Maggots: The Record - implies
that it has a counterpart. A film, probably, or maybe a book or radio play. Its structure
is consistent with this implication. Much of the record is dialogue, spoken by actors. The
overall feeling is that of a 1950s science fiction B-movie, in which an external force
threatens the future of civilisation. But unlike its earlier counterparts, Maggots deals
with something far more disturbing - it seems to he some internal force, within people
themselves, that is the danger rather than invaders from another star. Initially the
threat appears to be external. Maggots, of ever increasing size, are causing mayhem as
they devour the unfortunate city inhabitants.
At first the Plasmatics give us hope that these creatures
might be defeated; after all, the cast includes a scientist and his assistant, in good
B-movie fashion. Won't the scientist and his assistant turn the tale of cataclysmic
disaster into a romance part way through, declaring their love for each other and going on
together to save civilisation? Not this time. The first verse of the first song predicts
what is to come. "I'm inside your DNA, you can't make me go away". And in the
next song are the words "We've lived in your cells for millions of years, we thank
you for the ride". 
But what exactly are the maggots? The spoken words suggest some evil race of creatures mutating in the sewers beneath the city. But maggots do not breed maggots in nature; there is an intermediary stage, the fly. Whether maggots exist in nature to create flies, or flies to create maggots, is an interesting biological question. But in the context of "Maggots - The Record" are there flies and if so where are they? There are repeated references in the songs to the maggots being inside the humans, so it might be that it is the humans that are, in a sense, the flies who are creating the maggots. This leads on to a fascinating aspect of the album. The acted part describes factual events, whilst the songs give explanations as to why those events are occurring. Wendy's vocals are not always easy to interpret, but the words of the songs are included on the inner sleeve in full. This is clearly to give the listener every apparent opportunity to decipher the message within the album. The acted part, and the songs, taken individually, are of no use; both must be considered together. This combination of two different artistic styles in one work has echoes of William Blake's illustrated poems.
It is also noticeable that the songs in Maggots are rather tuneless and brutal. At first sight this is because they are songs supposedly sung by maggots. But this is perhaps a rather simplistic explanation, for the maggots are revealed in the words of the songs to be highly advanced, for example "We're Albert Einstein". Few bands would record an album of songs that deliberately have no melody, but the Plasmatics did. The lack of melody forces the listener to focus on the words, and not the notes. Maggots has some similarities to "Requiem', which was recorded in America by the English rock pioneer Arthur Brown in 1982, five years earlier. Brown's work focussed on the destruction of civilisation by a nuclear war, and made use of a radio commentator in the same way that Maggots makes use of TV personnel. Neither record is known outside a very small audience. Of the two, Maggots is by far the most uncompromising and most pessimistic despite Requiem dealing with total - rather than partial - destruction of humanity.
At the time that Maggots was recorded, Aids was
becoming a very major problem. On the inner sleeve Maggots promotes the message "Sex
is serious. Use condoms". Could Maggots really be about Aids?
Maggots clearly reflects a developed view of something; the question remains as to what that something is. Despite the occasional destruction of cars on stage, the Plasmatics seem to have a rather traditional view of human values. Their invocation of dark forces is used, as did William Blake, to build part of an overall message. Maggots can he seen in that context as a warning, an alarm bell. This is confirmed by Wendy Williams' subsequent animal welfare work. Maggots is an invitation to the listener, irrespective of religious belief, to sit down and think. If it has a weakness it is simply that it is far too esoteric and unusual to be artistically accepted by a wide audience. Who knows how it will be seen in the future?
