No Filler Music Podcast - Spooktober Rewind: The Undoing of David Wright

Episode Date: October 17, 2023

This episode originally aired October 31st, 2019. On this, the Eve of Hallow's, we're heading to the graveyard with shovels in hand. We bring along a Walkman and Quentin's CD copy of "We Dig With Finger's Crossed" to help set the ambiance for the evening. One of The Undoing of David Wright's only full-length albums, this little known gem from 2005 tells the story of William Burke & William Hare, the infamous 19th century grave robbers of Edinburgh, Scotland. The UoDW was an extremely short-lived post-modern electro-punk band hailing from Denton, Texas circa early 2000s. While attending college at The University of North Texas, these guys made a name for themselves for their Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque vibes, often donning makeup and wearing clothes fashioned out of trash bags. Episode Tracklist: We Dig With Fingers Crossed Cold Meals & Warm Whiskeys Slap Dash Street Trash By The Sign Of The Disceaux This show is part of Pantheon Podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and use the savings to help you move out and have all the cheese you want. Progressive casualty insurance company coverage provided in service by affiliates and third-party insurers. And welcome to No Filler. The music podcast dedicated to sharing the often overlooked hidden gyms that fill the space between the singles

on our favorite record. My name is Quentin. I've got my brother Travis with me as always, and it is Halloween night. And I'm kind of spooked. How about you, dude? Look, man, when you told me to meet you at a graveyard, I had no idea that we were going to be recording an episode. What are we doing at here? Look, just don't ask questions.

Here, just take this fucking shovel, dude. I'll explain later, okay? If we're not digging for tunes, I don't know what we're doing in here. Dude. Did you fucking hear that? No. Did you hear that, dude? What, did what?

Nothing. Just don't worry about it. I think it's all in my head. Okay. Look, okay, so it's Halloween night. We're talking about the undoing of David Wright. Yes. This was like a, I don't know what to classify them under.

They were like a punk rock, like disco, punk band from Denton, Texas. They were very short-lived. I think it's safe to say this is the most obscure band that we've talked about on no filler. Would you agree? That's exactly right. Because the only way I was able to get these songs again was by buying the CD from Amazon

because you can't find these songs online. You can find one of the songs because they're, They did a music video for it. But if you want to hear this album, you have to buy a CD. That's the only way to hear this album. So it was never pressed. You can't find it on Spotify. You can't, you can't stream it.

You can't, there's no, you can't stream it online. You have to own a CD. And I'll explain why we're here in a second. First. Just tell me where to start digging, okay? Shut up. Okay. So

Shut the fuck up, dude. They're gonna fucking hear us. Okay, so this album came out in 2005. It's called We Dig with Fingers Crossed. The song that we introed us in with was the title track on the record. This album

tells a story and it's about two dudes from fucking Edenberg, Scotland, circa early 1800s. We're talking William Burke and William Hare.

Are these based on real people? Yeah. These are grave robbers, body snatchers, if you will. These guys basically provided bodies for this guy named Robert Knox, who was

a professor, who needed bodies for his cadaver work. Because there was a shortage of legal dead bodies for use as cadavers in their early 1800s in Europe. And these guys realized, oh my God, we can make some money doing this. So... Is this for like science testing and stuff like that?

Yeah. Yeah. And there was a lodger at William Hare's house, someone that was living there at the time, who died. they turned to a carpenter to provide a coffin for the burial and then they paid him after he left they opened the coffin and removed the body and they filled the coffin with bark so that it would be the right weight

and then they reselled it and then they went to Knox with this body and he was like oh yeah dude this is perfect and then they got paid $800 and they did this 16 times before they got caught, dude. So, anyways, I don't know about you, but this was a terrible idea. Let's get the fuck out of here.

Let's just play the first track. I'm going to play a little bit more of that song that we played, that we introed us in. This is the title track off the record. It's called We Dig With Fingers Cross. Let's get the fuck out of here, dude. All right, I feel a little bit better. We're back home.

I'm not spooked anymore. At least, right now that we're out, we're safe. I mean, you handed me a shovel and you told me to start digging. Look, man, I just thought we could make a quick buck on Halloween. I see. So we were trying to sell a dead body. I didn't say that. You just hanging out at a graveyard.

Here we go. So undoing a dead. David Wright. Yes. I remember when you showed me these guys, and this was back, way back in the day. And I probably thought you were nuts, man. Well, this is about the time that I started straightening my hair and combing it off to the side to where it covered my right eye. Yes, you were doing, you were, you were doing like a half emo thing. Like, you weren't, I was, you didn't go full email, but you went like, partially email. That's besides, besides the point. But like, look, man, whenever, whenever I would like reflect back and like listen to it later on like man these guys were it it's i'm a sucker for that guitar

player dude and the bass player too man yes yes so let's talk a little bit about these guys okay um okay so this was dinton texas early 2000s so dinton texas is home of uh the university of north texas right that's what it's called the U&T. Our buddy, Josh, who was the third part in our music blog that we ran for a while, he went to U&T and he was the one who got me into these guys because he went to school with these dudes. Like, he knows these guys. Wait, who did?

Josh? Josh, yeah. He knows these dudes. Okay. So it's three guys. And they've all got stage names. It's Liz. Lars Larson, who is the lead singer and songwriter.

He programs all the drum machine parts, and he also provides synth keyboard as well. You've got Shane English on bass, and he is a fucking beast on the bass, dude. And then you've got Aaron A-Train Marshall on guitar. Three dudes. And they sort of dressed in, like, in drag. and like trash bag. They wore like trash bags, right? They wore makeup and they literally

all of their their outfits were made of black you know garbage bags and they would tape it around their bodies to where it would be clothes with fucking masking tape dude.

So you could say they're kind of like you know they're in the shock rock vein. They are Rocky Horror Picture Show Ziggy Star Test, you know? Yeah, and Marilyn Manson. Yeah.

Yeah, it's, shock rock, right? Sure, shock rock. Yeah. So I tried to look up like articles from like local zines and, you know, newspaper articles from around Denton with these guys. They're described as postmodern electropunk. Yeah. I mean, they're, I would definitely.

put them under more punk than metal, you know? Absolutely. I would even put them under the like art rock, like art punk because they have another album after this one that's just straight up like if you don't watch the music videos that they made to go along with this album, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah. These guys were like straight up art nerds. They went to you and T, right?

Right. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I mean, U&T is known for being sort of a music school. Yeah, yeah.

So this album, again, it's called We Dig with Fingers Cross. It came out in 2005. It is a concept album. It tells the story of these two dudes, William Burke and William Hare. And they made money off of corpses that they dug up and provided to this professor named Robert Knox. because Europe had like a shortage of like legal cadavers to use in their studies on human anatomy. You know what I'm man, we all going to make a living somehow, you know? Exactly.

Yeah. So anyways, I didn't realize that about this album. Like, I've, I've been listening to this album for years. I just recently repurchased the CD because I was, it had been probably close. close to 10 years since I heard this album and I missed it so much. And when I found out that I couldn't easily listen to it online, I searched for it online and I found a used CD of it and I bought it. I didn't realize that this told a specific story. So that makes it that much more cool. So what we're going to do for our next song here is we're going to fade out from the end of We Dig with Fingers

crossed and we're going to fade into the next song on the album called Cold Meals and Warm Whiskeys. And fair warning, I suggest you turn down the volume on your earbuds or however it is you're listening to this because cold meals and warm whiskeys is it just right off the bat. It's just fucking loud and intense. Yeah, you sent me this song a couple weeks back and say, hey man, check this out. Dude. And you didn't warn me.

And, dude, my ears were ringing for the next, like, 10 minutes. Yeah, I'm sorry. So, okay, fair warning. Yeah. All right. So here is our next take on. We Dig with Fingers crossed. I love that little segue in the middle, you know, where they're sort of singing in harmony there.

And then it goes right back in it. That's cool. I was well executed. Dude, this album's catchy as fuck. Even with a song like this. And I will say, dude, couldn't have picked a better album to do a bonus episode on Halloween night. Happy Halloween, dude. So the lyrics here, I'm going to jump to the second verse.

He says, he was old, helpless, and passed out cold. Murder is so easy when you're drunk and bold. So we'll sell the body. He'll never be missed. No one cares in a city like this. So that's what these guys did, man. Like, they went on a murder spree and just killed people that they felt like no one would notice when they were gone. And then they sold the bodies to Robert Knox for studies for, like, human anatomy.

That's crazy to me, dude. What a fucking story. Yeah, that's, that's, uh, that's ripped right out of the pages of, uh, uh, Shell Silverstein, dude. Shell Silverstein. I mean, hold on a second. Shell Silverstein. I meant to say Mary Shelley Shelley.

Who is that? The author of Frankenstein, man. What are you? Oh, okay. Yeah, straight up, dude. Shell Silverstein is the same era. The person who wrote. Where the sidewalk ends.

Yeah, where the sidewalk ends. Yeah, dude. He was that whimsical poet. Yes. That would never write something. thing like that. That's right. All right. So, um, we got, we got more tunes to play. We got one more tune. Okay. And we have a, we have a song to play us out. But, um, I just wanted to kind of showcase the talent with these three guys. So I'm going to jump down to track four. This song is called

slap dash street trash. Guitar player. He learned, he learned how to, how to, how to, start finger tapping and he never stopped. But he does it well. He executes it well. Like he does a good job with it. Yeah. But that's his go-to. You know?

Dude, yeah. Aaron Marshall and Shane English, dude, the guitar player and the bass fucking just bring the goods. What do we know about what became of these guys? Like did they start other projects? I don't know what they're doing now, dude. I don't know what they're doing now.

but yeah this is just one of those albums man like for me it's just i just feel lucky that i even know that it exists man uh yeah it's just one of those like hidden gems you know so you did you buy it used on amazon yes i bought it used on amazon man yeah dude i'm telling you it doesn't exist unless you own the cd well yeah you had to have been and didn't in that time period to even think about getting it. Let's just say this right now. And I'm not tooting horns. This is a no-filler exclusive.

That's probably safe to say. We might be the first podcast to ever play this music. And maybe there's a reason for that. Dude, I'm going to say that with confidence. There's no other music podcast right now that is playing the undoing of David Wright, guaranteed. Yeah, you're right. Otherwise, it'd show up in Google somewhere.

somewhere. All right. You think the undoing a David Wright guys, they subscribe to like Google alerts. And when this goes live, they're going to be like, holy fucking chat. Dude,

they're talking about us. I hope so. Somebody found us again. You think that's going to happen? I hope so. Dude, there's some sweet-ass picture of these guys if you Google.

I know, man. We're going to post a ton of photos of these guys on our website. They were trying to bring back like that, that 80s, glam punk, goth punk kind of look. I'm telling you, man, the best way to describe it. Rocky Horror Picture Show, Ziggy Stardust. All right, so let's wrap it up, dude. It's Halloween night. I got candid to give out. I got treats and tricks to do. Exactly. I'm going to fade us out with

another song from this album. This is one of my favorites from the record. And that's it, dude. Happy Halloween. Hey man, this concludes our month of metal. Hell yet, dude, it's been, it's been enlightening. I've enjoyed it, dude. We'll be shouting at you again next week with another full-length episode. This song by the undoing of David Wright is called The Sign of the Disco. And that's going to wrap us up on this, on this day of hallows. On this spooktacular episode.

Yeah. And did you hear that? I'm just kidding. All right. All right. So my name is Quentin. My name is Travis. And y'all take care.

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