John Wood and Cass King could very well be the kinkiest couple on the planet. The openly bisexual husband and wife team dubbed The Wet Spots slip into Australia in a couple of weeks.
In their home country of Canada and across the USA, The Wet Spots have divided critics. Comments range from “sophisticated showmanship” to “utterly without substance”. Blaming people’s ‘squeamishness’ around issues of sex and sexuality, the comedy couple wear such comments as a badge. John Wood even suggests The Wet Spots’ raunchy material doesn’t go far enough.
“Perhaps they'd prefer a death metal song about felching,” he says provocatively.
You get the feeling he and King are penning a song around felching (extreme anal/oral play) as we speak.
It’ safe to say there are few subjects out of bounds for this act. Songs in their armoury include Do You Like It (“you smell nice and your groovy and we both like porn movies – but there’s one thing I should ask – do you take it in the ass?”) and Sweaty and Stinky (“and covered in lube.”). There’s even a bossa nova-inspired ditty around bisexuality with the hook, “he wonders what it’s like to kiss a guy”.
But The Wet Spots are not only about smut. There’s also a very sound reasoning behind their shtick. Wood says that while many of the old taboos are fading, there is still a sense that having a significant sexual element in your entertainment is somehow "lowbrow”.
“In music and films, people are comfortable seeing graphic depictions of violence, drug use and verbal abuse but the moment two people in a mainstream movie are about to have sex – fade to black,” he says. “In a drinking song, you'll hear exactly how wasted the person got and how they woke up in the alley. But in a sexual song, the tendency is to hide behind double entendre. We aim to write elegant songs which say exactly what they mean when it comes to sex.”
So how do the authorities react to their material? King says while they seem to slide under the censor’s radar there has been a “chilling effect” in the media.
“For example, people being afraid to run an advertisement with our song Wherever you're going, I'd like to come because of the lyric. People being afraid to air us on TV because people might complain,” she says. “Most of the time we don't even use any four-letter words, our language is pretty clean... we go to great lengths to come off as a class act.”
ChillOut Festival
Palais, Daylesford, Friday March 7
Carnival Day, March 9
Details: www.chilloutfestival.com.au
