Speaking of Last Rights, I bought the record when I was in high school. I remember my Aunt Dottie gave me several Coconuts Record Store gift tokens that equalled quite a bit of $$ - might have been 3 $20 tokens. I bought 4 CD's - this was like '93. I came away with Slayer - Decade of Aggression, Pink Floyd - Piper at the Gates of Dawn, Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger (the SOMMS version), and Skinny Puppy - Last Rights. The other three albums were based on me already liking or at least having heard the groups before - the Skinny Puppy was based on A) the weird industrial Kid Matt Debore in high school who was a year older than me telling me that if I liked Pretty Hate Machine, the keyboards in Skinny Puppy would, "Make you feel like you're god" and B) the cover by I, Braineater:
The Skinny Puppy record scared me. To this day it still scares me, and that my friends, if rare. Usually something catches you offguard or unaware but you acclimate to it. That's only partially true of this record. I may have gotten to know it, gotten to love it, but I still sleep with one eye open around it. And for that I LOVE it.
One thing that always fascinated me about Last Rights was the tracks are numbered 1-9 and then 11. In the Liner notes there's a seemingly casual caption that states/asks, "Track 10 is Missing?". For years I assumed the track was somehow hidden on the album. This was the age of hidden tracks and backwards tracks; tracks hidden after hidden tracks and 12 minutes of crickets to get to the final track, so I just assumed... Remember there was both the They Might Be Giants album and the Course of Empire album that had hidden tracks before the first track on the album. You had to - if I'm remembering this correctly - pause the first track and then search backwards to get to the hidden track. Freakin' crazy!!!
Anyway, the internet is of course great for solving all these little mysteries, but it also robs us of the enigmas of those long gone pre-instant information eras. So here then, at last, is track 10. And here is the explanation, if you choose to read it. It's not that cool.
