TITLE: "I Feel Insane
ARTIST: Daisy Chainsaw
ALBUM: Eleventeen
RELEASE DATE: October, 1992
1992 was an interesting year for me. It started off rosily enough. I was employed at LIFE Magazine as an editorial assistant. While I wasn't officially on staff, it seemed like a steady gig with a promising future. I was also freelancing on the side for a variety of music mags and accruing a series of regular bylines, writing about long-since forgotten bands like Lush, Ultra Vivid Scene, the Venus Beads, the Pale Saints, Thin White Rope, The Wolfgang Press, Tad etc. etc. At first, I was immensely content. By day, I was working at an established journalistic institution. By night, I was seeing amazing new bands at a host of different venues around NYC. Come Summertime, I found myself naively ensnared in a spur-of-the-moment office romance that seemed as promising as my day-job itself. She worked in another department that had little-to-no connection to my own -- what could possibly go wrong?
But inevitably -- and in relatively very short order -- it did go wrong, and in a big way. By the Autumn of that year, I was a nervous, obsessed wreck, moping drearily into our suddenly very claustrophobic office every day in constant dread of running into that girl who'd brusquely dumped me and wondering how and why it had all gone wrong. Adding insult to injury, there was big trouble brewing at the magazine. Ad sales were down and storied legacy aside, the magazine was failing. By the end of the year, I'd be jobless and utterly miserable.
As if by divine providence during this period of emotional unrest, a compact disc arrived on my desk one day titled Eleventeen by a seemingly cartoony British outfit by the name of Daisy Chainsaw. I'd heard a track of theirs some months earlier courtesy of some indie compilation, and warmed to their loose, sloppy sound (imagine Babes in Toyland or -- dare I suggest them -- Hole, but with a more satisfying guitar sound and way better tunes). Daisy Chainsaw were fronted by one Katie Jane Garside, a young lady whose vocal range careened between birdlike chirps, breathy whispers, slurping wheezes and disquietingly anguished howls. While assuming the role of the dramatically distressed protagonist as a singer is assuredly nothing new, Garside brought something truly genuine to her performance. Never was this more accurate than on the opening cut of this album, the aptly-titled "I Feel Insane."
Taking its cues from the rulebook-immolating insouciance of vintage Punk Rock, "I Feel Insane" only tenuously adheres to conventional structure, loosely providing a riff-based arrangement for Garside to rant along with. Apart from that incessantly repeated guitar riff -- barring the odd, disjointed melodic meandering -- the song is anchored by an underpinning rhythm that is comprised by a brilliantly moronic one-note bassline. ONE NOTE! Hell, I could even play it.
The playing is suitably feral, but it's Katie Jane Garside herself who makes the track so unforgettable for me. Again, while assuming the role of the maniac is indeed a rock cliche, Garside sounds quite palpably unhinged on this song, exhorting into the microphone at certain moments with striking volatility. Put simply, it is an exorcism. It legitimately sounds as if the performance is really taking something out of her. Katie is bleeding, writhing and suffering for this song, and the end result is nothing short of blinding catharsis.
Immediately upon discovering it, I played "I Feel Insane" with worrying regularity. There was something about the primal, visceral unease of the song that made me feel a little less alone every time Garside hit those glass-shattering banshee notes. There was some other music at the time which fit the same bill (notably the Broken e.p. by Nine Inch Nails, "No Christmas" by the Wedding Present, "Screamager" by Therapy and a couple of other songs about relationships gone putridly wrong), but nothing gave me that satisfying brass-knuckles knock against the jaw sensation the way Daisy Chainsaw did.
Somewhat fittingly, the band itself imploded after Garside's fragile sense of well-being disolved under the weight of sudden notoriety, purportedly sequestering herself away to nurse her wounds. She wouldn't appear until a decade or so later, fronting a new band I've sadly yet to hear named Queen Adreena. I'm not sure I want to hear her new music, though. I'd prefer to remember Katie Jane Garside as forever perched on the crumbling precipice of sanity.
Fifteen years later, the concerns which were driving me to distraction in the latter part of 1992 seem hopelessly trivial and needlessly histrionic. I've gone onto lead a very happy life and am ridiculously privileged to be doing the things I'm doing. I am grateful for every day I have with my family and my friends, and while my job has its moments of pressure, I have absolutely no right to complain. But when I am feeling those moments wherein it seems like the world is dead set on constricting my skull until it cracks in two, there is nothing that cleanses my mental palette like "I Feel Insane" by Daisy Chainsaw. Play it loud, and bask in its sublimely untethered rage.
Here's a little item that made me choke on my iced coffee this morning. Evidently, they're recalling all packages of Veggie Booty from the shelves. I wouldn't give much of a good goddamn if it wasn't for the fact that my kids wolf the stuff like it's going outta style. I find Veggie Booty to be fairly vile to begin with (I'm more of a Smart Puffs man, me), but now with the extra bonus of salmonella contamination, there's more of a reason than ever before to shun the sickly greenish foodstuff. 
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