These days, the song brings in about $1,200 a month, enough to pay rent, Casey tells me with a Lebowski-esque shrug. “There are other songs I'd like to include,” he said. “But I don’t want to sell out.”
I asked him if he had heard of the Toilet Bowl Cleaners and he said he had heard some of their songs. “I'm not making this up,” he said. “There's another weird guy who sings about poop, puke, and pee. I don't know if you've ever heard of him. His idea was to customize every poop song. Stephen Poop songs , Bob Poop songs, Mary Poop songs. He's got hundreds!”
I told him that both bands were actually the same person.
“Well, I understand,” he said, as if he understood the full extent of what he was facing. “I like mine better, but I'm biased,” he said at last. “I know he knows how to write songs, but I think he's just looking for volume.”
In fact, I knew about Farley's series of songs that combined two of his most successful genres, names and poop, because he was working on a new set when I visited him. He estimated he had already completed about 3,000 names, but there were always new ones.
“This might be a bit of a pain,” he warned, switching on the keyboard and starting the laptop. He put on his headphones, went through his list of names, and got to work. I could hear the soft clicks of the keyboard and his vocals in the silence of the room.
Jamila, ppp-poop/Jamila poop poop poop.
“Local Legend,” like Farley's “All That Jazz,” has a fantasy sequence in which Farley imagines two sides of his personality arguing. One is a serious, heartfelt artist, and the other is a greasy record company executive with unprecedented demands. More poop songs. Of course, this scene can only be a fantasy, and Farley can only play both characters. Because greasy record company executives belong to a lost world. It is a world in which opportunities for art production are greatly reduced, and the work is often corrupted. As well as being the gatekeepers of the company, they also had a clear path to their audience and livelihood. Farley represents both the best and worst of the incentives and opportunities that have been replaced in this world. Indeed, there are few creators in any medium today who wouldn't recognize the anxiety he embodies. That their work still lives or dies at the whims of opaque algorithms that provide endless options to an increasingly distracted public. And if they do not succumb to the demands of these new realities, their jobs, and by extension they, will simply disappear. So, while the experience of watching Farley's work wasn't as painless as promised, it wasn't entirely unfamiliar either.