Joseph White – The Wagging Craze – Original Cast Recording

released on digital & campaign buttons December 10th, 2021

Written, Recorded, Performed, and Produced by Joseph White
Mixed and Mastered by Ithaca

What if LBJ’s legislative success was due to his ability to bring together Washington’s elite, get them naked, and talk about their emotions? What if Nixon’s crimes arose because of his lifelong shame about his physique? Joseph White asks these questions and more in his fourth Gold Bolus release, The Wagging Craze – Original Cast Recording.

The Wagging Craze originated as a one-man theatrical production performed by White, and has been given a full studio makeover, resulting in this “original cast recording” album. Mixing complex miniature pop songs, intricate sound design, and alliterative voice overs, White reimagines the political world of the mid 60s to the early 70s if men like J. Edgar Hoover, Lyndon Johnson, Henry Kissinger, and Richard Nixon had had venues to explore their bodies and understand their feelings.

Building off of recent audio editing and underscoring for Gelsey Bell’s Cairns (NYTimes Best of 2020), 2018’s Christmas EP Toyland, and 2016’s full-length concept album Boomwaggle, The Wagging Craze ups the ante on every creative level, establishing Joseph White as a foremost voice in experimental song, storytelling, and sound production. 

The Wagging Craze is framed as the results of a FOIL search and begins in the mid-60s with FBI reports of “wagging sessions” at Midwestern universities. J. Edger & his boys are disgusted by naked young men finding inner comfort through “an elaborate system of pulleys and levers”, and bring the matter to President Johnson. LBJ thinks these young men are onto something, and undergoes a spiritual awakening through wagging. He passes major legislation through the help of bipartisan wagging sessions, only to push it too far and end up bitter and alone, his only remaining allies a soulless crew of wagging robots.

Once a new administration comes to town in 1969, social climber Henry Kissinger sees wagging as his way into the upper echelons of the Beltway, and starts greasing his way to the top. But old Dick Nixon isn’t as carefree and sensual as Henry, and his own dark, bitter wagging takes over, setting the tone for his downfall.

Like White’s previous Gold Bolus release Boomwaggle, The Wagging Craze takes existing absurdities in the US political landscape to a hedonistic extreme in a critique of the patriarchal power players who control our lives. White imagines what might have been if male potentates and plebeians alike could accept themselves as they are and establish a new kind of gentle brotherhood.

These stories are told through a range of musical approaches. Short songs emerge throughout the album that are full of complex chordal structures, catchy hooks, and tightly constructed lyrics. White created the sonic landscape for The Wagging Craze with deft orchestration through time-stretched MIDI samples, and the use of the studio as an instrumental palette. Basslines rumble and strut, while glockenspiel samples slice and prod with tiny pinpricks of effervescent pleasure. This album reimagines White’s live performance and recalibrates it for the studio – inspired by lavish 1970s concept albums and electronic tape music. It is intended for intimate listening with headphones or a top shelf speaker system.

The Wagging Craze material was workshopped at Brooklyn venue JACK, through the Fresh Ground Pepper’s BRB residency, and ultimately premiered at Ars Nova’s 2019 ANTFest. It has since been performanced at the Kyoto International Performing Arts Festival, Ars Nova’s One Night Stand, and venues throughout the Northeast. The piece will have its European premiere in May of 2022 at the Prague Fringe Festival.