Dear Sirs, your Deluxe Smile (Order# 9900) has finally arrived.

Just like you ordered. We at King Industries are very sorry it took us thirty years to fill your order.

We do realize that you placed your order in 1980 after hearing the Talking Heads’ remarkable album Remain in Light. We also realize that you contacted us again in 1987 after hearing Prince’s Sign “O” the Times, and then once again after hearing Nirvana’s Nevermind in 1991. And yes, we are quite aware that you again contacted our New York office in 2000 to curse our souls and berate us for not fulfilling your initial order after hearing Outkast’s classic Stankonia. 

But your order required us to find songs written in an entire new musical genre, to discover a new sound— an adventurous band that wrote songs that were an amalgamation of the disparate things you loved— punk and funk, soul and rock, hip hop and everything in between. And to put it simply, with the rise and then demise of corporate radio and video culture, as well as the corresponding decline in artistic integrity, it has been quite difficult to find anything remotely original that doesn’t sound like it was manufactured by a gang of sexy mannequins, produced merely to score a deodorant commercial, to rape a pre-existing musical legacy or to kill society’s belief that the future exists.

But lo and behold—Dear Sirs!—we at King Industries are happy to announce that we have finally found the listening experience you have been craving and imagining for the last 25 years of your life. A liberating musical world called “haunted funk n’ roll” created by a duo named Deep Cotton. Deep Cotton consists of two musical renegades— Nate Wonder and Chuck Lightning—that seem bent on proving that there is only one rule: break the rules. Their suite Runaway Radio is like listening to thunder rumble on a summer day for the very first time. Upon hearing this music, you know that a storm is coming. A powerful tempest that will wash away the barriers in the few record stores left, a tsnami that will wash away the artifice of music marketing slogans and constrictive categories, as well as the soulless pop world of shock for shock’s sake. 

Dear noble customer,

listen for yourself! As soon as the guitars come thrashing out out of the Deep Cotton anthem “Runaway Radio” your hands curl into fists, your feet begin stomping and you rush forward to grab the last two hundred items you’ve bought to burn them! You kick your monitor and press delete on every song you’ve stolen and every song you’ve bought until your computer screams and crashes and just can’t it take anymore! Yes suddenly you realize that you have been lost in a wilderness of very bad music for a very long time, and you are finally finding your way home again. And that’s not to mention the funknasty vampire love song “Fork n Knife”! A song that hits you like a stake in the heart….

Dear Sirs, let me put it plainly: Chuck Lightning’s voice is an upturned finger to 
all the nonsense most call art in America, and in its jagged tones you can hear Richard Hell, George Clinton, and David Byrne having a long deep conversation about the end of the world. In contrast, Nate Wonder’s soulful voice and avant-pop sensibilities find their inspiration in pop radio, in sunshine, in Henry Mancini, in Rachimanoff, in Motown— as well as the dark boom of hip hop and the unheralded innovation of soul rebels such as Shuggie Otis, Arthur Lee, and Cody Chesnutt. 

Dear Sirs, for thirty years you have been waiting so I won’t take the liberty to bore you with the sordid details of the group’s origin, the meaning of the group’s intriguing name, or countless other things that don’t matter—The only thing you rightfully care about now is the music.

So please without further ado, press play, enjoy your Deluxe Smile (order #9900) and at long last, welcome to the wondrous world of Deep Cotton…. 

William James Williamson II
Director of Customer Service
King Industries

wondaland

Popular tracks