Discovery is not always an endeavor of looking to the future. Time is modeled in such that it can sometimes allow us to look into the past or the future with the same clarity, like a reflecting pool. So whether you’re looking left or looking right, you’re bound to find things to see--depending on what you’re looking for. Something new? Something different? Or, as a music lover, are you merely looking for something that follows a kind of continuum? Buddy Holly to Beatles to Nick Lowe to Nik Armstrong? Who is to say that anything happening NOW is really modern? Especially since modernity really only refers to one specific type of art. So what exactly are you looking for…? These are all ideas that came to mind while speaking with Sean O’Hagan about his latest record Beet, Maize & Corn (Drag City, 2003). If you think that I’m talking about something old here, then start the introduction over.

What you probably should know is that Sean O’Hagan has been for fifteen years the heart and soul of the High Llamas, and before that a member of Microdisney. Sean has survived the classifications of alternative-, lounge-, retro-, orchestral-, indie-, electro-, international-, and pop-rock. He has been dubbed things, and he likes dub. But none of that has really lasted. There are fans that thrill in seeing where Sean is going to out-out them next. Then there are others that only know him as well as the last review they read. Meanwhile Sean, with his thick reddish-blond hair and kind, weathered face is somewhere; following his muse through haunted hallways of time.

Scram: Perhaps when you listen to some Jazz music there’s an oddness that you perceive—
Sean O’Hagan: Yes.
Scram: --that you want to bring into Pop music?
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah absolutely, and there were artists in the sixties and to some extent in the seventies who did that, to a certain extent. In the seventies it all gets a bit confused. There were in the sixties artists like the Free Design, the Fifth Dimension, people like that who did the fantastic little moves and changes and just you go oh that’s fantastic and it’s working in within the genre of Pop music and you go, God they’ve really reached out there.
Scram: Was it more rooted though in aspiring towards beauty or towards sophistication?
Sean O’Hagan: Beauty, I think.
Scram: Earlier you were talking about jazz harmony…
Sean O’Hagan: And ‘jazz harmony’ is a phrase that my friends who have been to music college use. When I was doing Gideon Gaye, I never would have used that phrase. I only use it know because I’ve realized that it’s kind of a cliché of language that people can pick up on. I interrupted you, I’m sorry.
Scram: That’s quite alright. You were talking about jazz harmony and Brian Wilson. When he was a teenager in 1962 or 1963, he was at a record store in a listening booth and he picked up the Four Freshman. And he thought, this is the new sound of music.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: My impression of that is that here’s a guy who’s basically living in a bubble, and no criticism towards him, but here’s a guy that doesn’t know that all of this Jazz has been happening in New York for the past ten years and he’s saying that this is the new sound.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: Basically what I’m trying to say is that something that is new to you isn’t always new to somebody else.
Sean O’Hagan: I freely admit that and its kind of an interesting experience that you’ve described there. As I said to you before, I didn’t have a Classical education--as a kid, it was something that you avoided, I would have thought it was a posh thing, it’s for certain kind of people. That it had nothing to do with the way I was brought up. I was brought up in this very much sort of, you know, Beatles, Monkees, blah, blah, blah…
Scram: Mmm hmm. Now are you Irish?
Sean O’Hagan: My family are Irish, and I lived there for a number of years. Yeah and you know now, now, here I am in my early 40s, you know, I heard in the last three years Delius for the first time.
Scram: Who’s this?
Sean O’Hagan: Delius---he’s a British composer.
Scram: Don’t know him.
Sean O’Hagan: Oh! Oh, astonishing stuff, it’s just like—and it was weird. He was playing music in 1900 which I was trying—I’ve been looking, when I was making Beet, Maize & Corn, I was trying to find that music, you know?
Scram: Mm hmm.
Sean O’Hagan: It’s a very strange mixture of kind of the European school of the late 1800s and Spiritual music—American Spiritual music--the kind of music that became the Blues. Literally, the Spiritual music from the plantations.
Scram: Spirituals?
Sean O’Hagan: He was a strange guy, he left England in the 1860s and worked in an orangery in Georgia.
Scram: I see.
Sean O’Hagan: And he heard Spiritual music. And instead of going down the route that maybe Stephen Foster did, he actually went back to Europe, studied at Leipzig, and started writing symphonic music that maybe had the flavor of Spiritualism. To me that’s amazing!
Scram: What I hear from--and that’s a remarkable story--what I hear from that is that there’s kind of a cross-pollinization that happens with a figure like that, and in the modern world, in the age of information, it’s harder and harder to find. That’s something that you might be saying in the chorus of the lead-off track from Snowbug…
Sean O’Hagan: “Bach Ze.”
Scram: Right, “There must be something worth seeking out.”
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: And you know there’s also a track on the new album, Beet, Maize & Corn, I don’t exactly remember the track, but the sentiment is somewhat similar, where you say, “does somebody else know this? Does somebody else feel the same way? We need to be looking for something new.”
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah, that’s “Rotary Hop.” You’re right, but the trick with lyrics for me is to create a story, and out of that you can extract little nuggets like that that where you think, “oh great, that’s actually true!” And the Snowbug example (“Bach Ze”), was “there must be something”… you know…God, I’ve forgot the lyrics, they’ve slipped me! God, I sing it all the bloody time, but that chorus is about, we’ll it’s about how there must be something out there to find, and there is. But, it’s also about how Johnson--and I don’t know if you realize this, and God I hope I’m correct in this--but Lyndon Johnson, brought the space program to Texas because basically there was a political move to bring it down there instead of to New Mexico, or wherever, And uh, he had this kind of whole scenario where he was like ‘there’s something out there, and we’re gonna find it, and it’s gonna—and in those days Texas wasn’t Bush’s Texas, you know, it was a poor Texas--and it was we’re gonna bring something of the future to Texas. And I just thought it was a great story, but it was very much--you’re right—it managed to create a situation where you were actually talking about space travel and sort of looking for something that might be out there. And “Rotary Hop” is about Beefheart. It’s just about Captain Beefheart, how he sat himself up in the desert and he was always looking for new people to play with, and new places to go to. Because he could never settle anywhere because he had a certain madness within him and within his music.
Scram: And even the title of the song, “Bach Ze,” is itself kind of similar to this Delius idea. Guy from the 1900s, European school, goes to work in an orange plantation Georgia, and you know, hears Spirituals in a new way—hears them for what they bring intellectually to the big picture of music.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah
Scram: I kind of see it as, when I listen to your music, you’re kind of a conduit living in the age of information. You’re able to listen to Bach fugues, or music influenced by Bach fugues, and harpsichord music, and basically music that is free of tonal center and kind of flows and is kind of dulcet sounding. And then you’ve got Ze, is that how you pronounce it, Tom “Zee?”
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: Who’s this kind of fringe Brazilian figure.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: And you’re kind of this person who’s able to say, “Well I think this is beautiful, and I think this is beautiful.” And I’m not necessarily saying that you marry the two elements.
Sean O’Hagan: Well, I did. You’re quite exactly spot on, that’s exactly what I did. It was just like when I was writing that song, you know, the kind of sedate feel of the nylon string was for me sort of like Bach’s music for the guitar, and the slight oddness of the chords, on the chorus where there’s just like these chromatic chords, it very much reminded me of Tom Ze, I was into Tom Ze at the time, it’s as simple as that, and I don’t need to--
Scram: Right!
Sean O’Hagan: And you’re spot on—it’s self explanatory to an extent, obviously to you but not to most people they’re like—where did you get that from?
Scram: There is a certain kind of canon feel to a lot of High Llamas songs, where you kind of find yourself coming full circle, , such is the nature of Pop music and the journey of the song is kind of introspective and moody. You’re not always very sure where your footing is. You know what I’m saying?
Sean O’Hagan: Absolutely yeah, yeah—well, you’ve got a choice in a lot of music. You can give people a situation where they’re gonna know what is going to happen—and most successful Pop music is successful just because of that very thing, because people know exactly what’s gonna come around and they’re waiting for it and here it comes and thrust a fist in the air and there you go. Or you can go, well you think that’s coming around the corner, well it’s not, it’s this. But then it does revert to the Pop music format somewhat in that you’ve got that unpredictability for maybe 8 bars, but that 8 bars, you know, is gonna happen as the second verse, and so you’ve familiarized yourself with that slight, unsure footing, as you’ve put it, and that’s an odd experience, it’s a sort of unfamiliar thing that’s become familiar very quickly, and it’s sort of like getting people used to sort of altered musical conditions…. A lot of the brass on the new record was very much informed by Carla Bley.
Scram: Huh. Interesting that you mention that, I keep hearing that name.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah, She’s fantastic, just like her husband Paul, she’s just a great compositional Jazz arranger. She was influenced by Charlie Mingus and Kurt Weill, and she really made these records in 1968, 1969, the finest of which I think is called Escalator Over The Hill. It’s just that lovely loose brass, and this is very indulgent as well, it’s got that loose brass as well, I really love that, I really just wanted to capture that on Beet, Maize & Corn. I’ve been totally into it for the last couple of years. You know, there is a certain familiarity to everything from Gideon Gaye right up to Buzzle Bee, if you think, and for me Gideon Gaye, Hawaii, and Cold and Bouncy were all connected. There was a certain way of working that carried through very crudely from Gideon Gaye and I had perfected it by Cold and Bouncy. I stopped that, and I sort of jumped to another horse on Snowbug--that was the sort of loose feel and that was when the Brazilian influences came in. That carried through to Buzzle Bee, and on Beet, Maize & Corn, the big thing I wanted to do, the Big Big thing was to not reference--apart from Carla Bley who’s from the seventies--was to not reference the sixties or the seventies in any big way. Because you know, it’s still the cool thing to reference in music, whether it’s Beck, Tortoise or Matmos, referencing a little bit of the sixties but then, they’re very much cutting edge sort of digital electronics.
Scram: Mm.
Sean O’Hagan: And it’s, well one week it’s Serge Gainsbourg, and the next week it’s going to be um, you know, Tim Hardin.
Scram: It’s what you’re talking about--the Record Collector mentality of creating music.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah, it’s Other Music, it’s people who love Other Music--well I love Other Music-- but you know, it’s that kind of thing which everyone in the states seems to refer to. And I just wanted to say, how are you going to make a different record? And the two things were: don’t reference those decades the way that everyone else is, so I said I’m going to reference 1958, 1959, and that really lovely odd little period of American music. And the other thing I’m going to reference is where the root of Jazz, as it is used in Pop music comes from, and that’s Ravel, Delius, and they informed Gershwin and Cole Porter. But I wasn’t going to go Gershwin and Cole Porter, I was going to go one beyond Gershwin and Cole Porter, go back fifty years. Where did they get it from?
Scram: I haven’t really picked up on so much of what you’re talking about, the ‘58/59 US period--
Sean O’Hagan: OK, it’s “Leaf and Lime,” it’s on “The Click and the Fizz”--
Scram: Okay, that’s a great song.
Sean O’Hagan: Strings, how those strings just kind of wander in and out of each other, it’s the reverb on those strings, on “Leaf and Lime,” that kind of dreamy beat box feel without a beat box, that’s very much in Bob Lind style—Bob Lind, who was just making music in 1959--and it’s a few of the sort of little moves with the arrangement.
Scram: The chromatic coming out of the chorus.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah, just the ones that the guys in the fifties used to produce—everything was kind of--
Scram: Syrupy.
Sean O’Hagan: There was kind of an unnaturalness about it. I mean, if you listen to Doo Wop, Jesus, that is just the strangest music that you can listen to, It’s stranger than anything Hendrix ever did, The strangest Doo Wop is absolutely out there—and there was an unnaturalness about it. And it was all happening in the fifties. And when the sixties came along, everybody said, because they’d discovered feedback and fuzz-boxes, they thought they’d cracked the universe open. And they hadn’t cracked the universe open. You had to go back one decade, and these street corner singers were doing more unusual things. Go back two decades and Charles Ives was writing, you know, balmy, balmy music.
Scram: I know exactly what you’re talking about, and I think in your presskit that you mention Moondog. I don’t want to make too much of a departure but I remember when I first became familiar with Moondog--it was canticles that he had recorded, a series of rounds—and I thought, these are very brilliant and these drums are amazing, and it was all very modern. Modern because it fit my perception of what was “modern.”
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: Because I think that when you go on a musical journey listening to stuff, your next big thing is what’s the next-big-thing for you. And it’s what’s modern for you—you know what I’m saying?
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah.
Scram: Because if you discover Kurt Weill, that’s gonna be really modern for you at that time—or if you discover Moondog at the right time, or Beefheart--
Sean O’Hagan: And that’s a good thing isn’t it—you’re saying that’s a good thing?
Scram: Yeah.
Sean O’Hagan: It’s like I was saying, I didn’t have a Classical upbringing. I heard Stravinsky and the “Rites of Spring” at school and I was forced to listen and I thought, Jesus Christ, this guy. And I’m not very big into the Germans, Mozart or Hayden, whatever. And Beethoven used to bore the pants off of me until somebody said you’ve gotta listen to his string quartets, to his trios--and they’re absolutely crazy, they’re wonderful things. And Classical musicians, when you’re doing recording strings, you interact with these people who’ve been to music college, and they’re you know they know it all. And when you talk excitedly about something they’re completely familiar with, I think they’re looking at you slightly pitifully, or “yeah, so, didn’t you know?” And the answer is no, I didn’t know. And so, it’s something that’s fresh and exciting that you can use, and you can use it.
Scram: Well, you see it through the eyes of a child.
Sean O’Hagan: Yeah, exactly.
Scram: You see, and I think a lot of what art means to me is clearing away the perceptions of the world. I look at something and I say, I think it’s beautiful, and it could be a book that maybe somebody else thinks is trite, and you say, well I see a lot of beauty in this book, and that’s a very personal thing.
Sean O’Hagan: And it’s—the result is that it inspires you, and you actually go out and do something quite unusual because of it. That means that something good has happened. There’s been a good interaction.

This interview originally appeared in Scram #15

Brute Force Speaks! An Interview with Stephen Friedland by Michael Lucas

When presented with the contact information for Mr. Stephen Friedland by Scram editrix and amateur gumshoe Kim Cooper, I was somewhat daunted. Would the story behind the Brute Force legend (as captured on the Columbia LP Confections of Love, an album which has fascinated me for upwards of a quarter of a century) be worthy of the superhuman notions I'd developed around this enigmatic creation?

When I finally worked up the gumption to face the challenge, I was relieved to find that not only were the missing portions of the Brute Force saga anything but prosaic, but that Mr. Friedland was himself an extraordinary individual and extremely gracious to boot.

Brute's appearance at the Scramarama was, for me, a special highlight in an already stellar lineup. I don't feel that my life would have been complete without witnessing his awe-inspiring performance, which exceeded all expectations.

I could blather on indefinitely, but let's get to the main event instead. Ladies and gentlemen... Mr. Stephen Friedland... Brute Force!

SCRAM: What was your involvement in the music world prior to Confections of Love?
BRUTE: When I was 24 I had a girlfriend, Bunny. Her father was Rock and Roll Hall of Fame drummer Billy Gussak, who played with Bill Haley. Billy had a piano in his house and took a liking to my songs. We collaborated on "My Teenage Castle (Is Tumblin' Down)." Billy introduced me to record producers Hugo and Luigi at RCA. They recorded "My Teenage Castle" with Little Peggy March. They had also worked on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh)" with the Tokens, and they turned me onto them. I went to the Tokens' office and played a few songs; they hired me as a songwriter and soon I joined their group, and became a Token.

SCRAM: This was after "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" and the hot rod album?
BRUTE: Yes, 1965. I was about twenty-five years old at the time.

SCRAM: You also wrote the classic "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On (In My Mind But Me)," which was recorded by the Chiffons. My editrix promised to flay me alive if I didn't get the scoop on that song.
BRUTE: What is a thought? Where does a thought come from? How does a person feel about their thoughts? About secrets? These are some of the questions which might prompt an understanding of "Nobody Knows What's Goin' On (In My Mind But Me)." Texturally, it's a love song: a person loves another person, to everyone's disapproval, and because of societal pressure (who knows: parental, peer group, cultural), everybody says, "Give it up." But what do they know? This leads the person to realize that, "Nobody knows what's goin' on in my mind but me," a flat out declaration of independence, of individuality and of privacy of one's thoughts. Freedom of thought. The song is very concerned with this larger issue of privacy of one's thoughts, and to that extent is courageous in this day of Big Brother. There is a point, however, which the song doesn't explore: the point when not expressing one's thoughts can be an unhealthy thing to do and all the energy, whatever it is, just keeps building up and can become too much to bear for the "thinker of thought." Secrecy is a subtextual element in the song. Keeping secrets, obviously, is a must when nobody else knows what's going on in one's mind. As a songwriter at that time I was exploring the workings of the human mind and, through a lovestory lyric, expressing my own feelings about love--interracial love perhaps--and the invasion of one's mind by friends, family or government. The melody, I remember, during its creation, as being especially entrancing in the chorus, almost hypnotic in its repetition, enhanced by the lyrics, floating over the chord pattern, which are concerned with the mind. The mind singing about the mind. The song was produced by the Tokens while I was a member of the group. It was a chart record, which was very exciting, and I still receive royalties. Years later, I recorded "Nobody Knows" as the b side for the Apple single "King of Fuh." I produced this with the Tokens: the cellophane wrapper from a box of Kool cigarettes, which I was chain smoking at that time, was used to produce a sound effect while I played piano. My rendition was very much more agitated and frenetic than the Chiffons' rendition. I haven't seen any of the Chiffons since that time, except on TV ads for compilation CDs, but I feel very lucky to have known them and to have had our paths cross and come out with a hit. And if you want to know any more, all I can say is..."Nobody knows what's goin' on in my mind but me." But you can always ask!

SCRAM: Was your split from the Tokens an amicable one?
BRUTE: Yes. We were still friends. They produced the second Brute Force album--

SCRAM: A second Brute Force album exists?!?
BRUTE: Yes, Extemporaneous.

SCRAM: Whoa, whoa. I've heard extremely vague rumors about a second LP, but since I could never find any real evidence of it, I thought that it was just someone's confusion of Brute Force with the Brute Force Steel Band.
BRUTE: No, produced by the Tokens in 1969 on BT Puppy Records, which was run by the Tokens and their manager at the time. It's a piano/voice and spoken word recording made at Olmstead Recording Studios in N.Y. City with approximately forty people in attendance. It's called Extemporaneous because many of the songs I sing when I perform are extemporaneous. The format of the album I planned in advance: I then added a lot as we went along. It was an electric evening during which everyone had lots of fun.

SCRAM: It's an extremely difficult record to find.
BRUTE: Yes, it was distributed in a limited manner. I've actually included it in the new version of my Tour de Brute Force CD. [Which is recommended in the strongest manner possible as an essential addition to any music lover's library, and also serves as an excellent introduction to Brute, if needed. -ML]

SCRAM: Were the songs similar to those on Confections of Love?
BRUTE: It was in what I'd term the Brute Force genre, "Heavy Funny" songs." Peace songs. Comedy songs. Spiritual songs.

SCRAM: Now, back to Confections.
BRUTE: That was made shortly after leaving the Tokens. It took about three months to record, as I recall.

SCRAM: The Brute Force persona seems to combine qualities of beat poet, suave romantic crooner, and holy fool trapped in a world not of his making. Did the character of Brute Force arise out of the songs which you happened to compose for the album, or were the songs written with Brute Force in mind?
BRUTE: The characters that you mention have appeared, Zeliglike, from time to time. If a songwriter becomes anything during the writing of songs, it is another degree of being a songwriter. This is the way I put it:

A FEATHER FELL, A TALE TO TELL.
A TALE TO TELL, A FEATHER FELL.

Here we have two ways to understand the phenomenon which is presented to us, to decipher half the truth...(We, the living, alas, can understand but half of what this reality is.)... Seeing the feather fall we can describe it in any of the ways available. Both descriptions are secondary to the phenomenon anyway, the seeing of the real feather, and the mental seeing of the feather, as one would write a story. One may be called fact. One may be called fiction. Take your pick. This is the fulcrum upon which the media matrix see-saws, back and forth, creating a delerium of confusion, of artsy, slick, award-winning confusion: blistering the eyes with impossible editing not meant to be understood by the eyes; puncturing the eardrums with commercials spoken too quickly for the ears to understand; ripping off the public's face with in-your-face moviescreen egomanical sex/sport/violence/playgames.
Now... the naming of the person, the ego who describes a truth or a fiction, compounds the illusion of communication and description. Should I have only been called Stephen Friedland, perhaps the whole trip would have been different. But the pseudonym was perceived as false by anyone and everyone, although people go along with the projection of the ego, for they themselves have an ego trip and are basically kind to accept Brute Force. However, my work and the appreciation of my person would have been initially appreciated in a more serious manner... young, Jewish songwriter. "Brute Force" incorrectly avoided that.

SCRAM: Many of the songs on Confections have a certain subversive quality, especially in the way you make social commentary through playing with cliché and convention.
BRUTE: Well, look at the liner notes. It's heavy stuff, although comedically spiced. "Mistress Peace sleeps with soldiers" might be considered a bit subversive, although my political view of the world is decidedly spaced out: observing space and understanding that conflicts on Earth are always in relation to the phenomenon of the Space Mission, the colonization of the Solar System and the creation of earth as a supply station for the Space Mission.

SCRAM: I'd like to get your impression of the individual songs, if I might. "In Jim's Garage."
BRUTE: Secrecy of younglove from their parents. "He may be greasy and dirty, but that's just the mark of his honesty" says it for Jim and I hope most of the blue-collar class.

SCRAM: "The Sad, Sad World of Mothers and Fathers."
BRUTE: Still applies to the gap between parents and their children, and the lack of communication between spouses who'd rather watch TV than find out what's happening with their daughter in a car outside with... him! I guess if the daughter was loved at home she wouldn't be in such a... position.

SCRAM: "Tierra del Fuego."
BRUTE: Love song, Latino, transcultural, fun with words.

SCRAM: "No Olympian Height."
BRUTE: Straight-ahead lovesong, extolling the lover, "Do what you will, I am yours." This was a poem written about a girlfriend, Abby. The line in the song about Grecian urns is a reference to "Ode On A Grecian Urn" by John Keats, in which we read:

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.
That is all ye know on Earth,
And all ye need to know."

SCRAM: "Cuddly."
SCRAM: Dixielandish lovesong. Everyone, well almost everyone, likes to get cuddly with their love-mate. Singing of the lyrics, "Baby, dey don't make 'em like dat any more" was inspired by the great Jimmy Durante.

SCRAM: "To Sit on a Sandwich."
BRUTE: Absurdity of the world: we might as well go sit on a sandwich in our "advanced civilization." This song contains perhaps the most onerous pun of the last half of the 20th century: "Prepares for the wurst."

SCRAM: Brute's Circus Metaphor."
BRUTE: Love lost, the characters metaphorically played by circus characters.

SCRAM: "Brute's Party."
BRUTE: A sarcastic description of the boredom of parties.

SCRAM: "As Long as my Song Lives."
BRUTE: Our Art survives us. Long after I am gone
Will Friedlandishemusik live on and on.
So would it be with a love, with a friend
that knowledge of them need never end
should they be remembered in song
as words and melody play e'erlong,
and as long as your craft gives
then too my song in your work lives.

Long after the creator passes, the song lives on, and who does the song immortalize? The lover. See, it's as long as my song lives, which is forever, for a song is inanimate and not as frail as our flesh. A song doesn't die. It is embodied in a device, etched in marble, written on a page, a CD UFO zooming into the unknown to be enjoyed by a new generation.

SCRAM: "Tapeworm of Love."
BRUTE: I wrote "Tapeworm of Love" while I was still in high school. It was an authentic fifties song with piano triplets. When I played it for John Simon at Columbia he liked the lyrics very much, but felt that the fifties feel was not in sync with the year we were recording, 1967. Nostalgia for the fifties had not yet occurred, so I wrote another melody. I endeavored to bring the intensity of the whole metaphor of the internal gnawing and adventurous biting of the tapeworm inside the gut through the use of the sitar and an ancient Indian raga played on marimba. The song is a paradigm of Brute Force absurdism. Yet, a love song...

SCRAM: "Making Faces At Each Other."
BRUTE: Here's a new face I've just learned, it's called "making you happy baby" and is pretty self-explanatory. Making someone happy is wonderful. It's giving. To give. This song is pointing to the ability of people to respond to their genuine inner feelings rather than responding to the outer image, the face. "Love is the most beautiful thing on the face of the Earth. I wanna make the face of Love..."

SCRAM: Was it difficult getting such an unusual album released?
BRUTE: It wasn't difficult getting Confections released. Columbia released a lot, and what stuck to the wall they went with. My stuff was just too ahead of its time.

SCRAM: There were no problems from upstairs?
BRUTE: Sitting at a conference table with the executives was, as I remember it, uncomfortable, because they played some songs and I was sitting there, in this conference room at a big oval table, and I was probably high on amphetamines. I would know how to speak with them today. Exactly what to say.

SCRAM: But there wasn't any resistance to your lyrics, as being too "cerebral" or "intellectual?"
BRUTE: There was resistance and the album was ahead of its time. Now the story is changing. A trans-generational reality, occuring. There is a nine-piece band in Birmingham, England, Misty's Big Adventure, personnel averaging 23 years old, playing "Tapeworm Of Love" and "Hello" from Extemporaneous (email grandmastergareth@hotmail.com). At Scramarama, I met BF fans of all ages. Advertisements for BF are attracting fans from all over the world to write to Brute's Force, the Brute Force fan club, at brutesforce@aol.com, in order to obtain BF music. The buzz is exciting and facing the situation, becoming less anonymous, has combated the resistance. Kind of a guerilla in the war of consciousness.

SCRAM: Any comments about the poetry on the back cover?
BRUTE: Yes, the couplet, "Mother Nature washes our genes, in her worn out washing machine." When I looked at the back cover, I wondered why the next two lines were omitted. It's really a quatrain which continues, "They're hung up on the line to dry, by that old grouch, Father Time." It would have made sense in the context of the album: you know, Mother, Father... lovesongs.

SCRAM: Are there any other Brute Force recordings besides Confections of Love and Extemporaneous?
BRUTE: At Columbia, I recorded a song I wrote in Russian and English titled "Hello Moscow," a big band/ rock fusion. The session was catered, like a party, and attended by many invited guests, Leonard Cohen among them. The thread of the message was, "Hello Moscow, how are you doin'?" This was in 1967, the Cold War was in effect. In July 1968, with my lifelong friend Ben Schlossberg, I participated in an expedition to swim the Bering Strait from Alaska to Siberia. We made it half way to the Diomede Islands. It was documented in Life magazine, 9/20/68. The song itself, as was the expedition, is a natural extension of my weltanschauung. We live on a sundrop.

"There is one borderline, really, and that's the edge of Earth: that roundness, that fullness, that mountained and vallied, water filled edge of Earth upon which we all live."
(Copyright 1969 Stephen Friedland)

I make Pledge of Allegiance to the Planet plaques. I burn into redwood the words:

I pledge allegiance to my planet.
And to the universe,
all around and within me.
One Spirit indivisible.
With Eternity for all.
(Copyright 1980 Stephen Friedland)

The synthesis of business relations and trade treaties is the modern day approximation of planetary nationality, what the military-industrial complex/media-matrix calls "globalism."

SCRAM: And you recorded a single for Apple Records. How did that come about?
BRUTE: I had a girlfriend, Joanna. We were both at Monmouth College (now University) in West Long Branch, NJ. Around 1965, I moved to NYC. Joanna also moved to NYC, and by that time had met and hooked up with Tom Dawes. He was a member of the Cyrkle, who toured with the Beatles in the mid sixties, and were managed by Nat Weiss, a friend of Brian Epstein. I wrote a poem which turned into the lyrics, then composed a melody around 1967. Through Joanna I met her then-husband, Tom. Tom and I got to be friends and he said some good words about me to John Simon, who had been recording the Cyrkle for Columbia. I went to Columbia, played some songs live for John and that led to the, I, Brute Force, Confections of Love album. When I recorded "King of Fuh," late '68, I got the idea to bring a tape to him and see if he could get it to Nat and, who knows, maybe the Beatles. Well, that's just what happened. A 1/4" mix of the multitrack session of "King of Fuh," recorded at Olmstead Recording Studios, was given to Tom. He brought it to Nat, who, I have learned, played it for George Harrison. George thought it was great, and he added strings from the London Philharmonic and kicked up the drums a bit. They released Apple 8 in May 1969, but Capitol/EMI censored it.

SCRAM: Why?
BRUTE: Basically, language taboo. It was a very nice song about the land of Fuh, which was ruled by a benevolent King. Since he was the King of Fuh, he was also known as the Fuh King.

SCRAM: Ah, I see.
BRUTE: The latest twist is that Ken Mansfield, in The Beatles, the Bible and Bodega Bay, makes it clear that John Lennon also had a hand in championing the record and pushing for its release in the U.S.A. Incidentally, "King of Fuh" has been added to the censored song database of the First Amendment Project at Vanderbilt University in Nashville. Writer and software developer Antonio Caroselli, in Italy, is currently writing my biography, and a detailed account of the Apple experience will be included.

SCRAM: With what sort of projects are you currently involved?
BRUTE: To take my music around the world. To write songs and record them. To manufacture state of the art formats of my music and performances. To advertise and sell these products, and to stay centered amidst all the conditions: WORK, FAMILY, FRIENDS, MONEY, SURVIVAL, SEX, FEAR, WAR.

SCRAM: What is your act like these days?
BRUTE: I perform an off the wall, non-traditional musical variety act. Songs, jokes, props, characterizations and improvisational songwriting, and philosophic exhortations. Additionally, I perform my straight music, lovesongs, spiritual songs, along with pure melody, playing keyboard, and guitar."

SCRAM: Where can we catch your act?
BRUTE: I play comedy clubs and music venues nationally. Visit http://www.brutesforce.com/

It is possible to see me,
Look, at night into the sky,
see there the farther shore.
When you wake
to start the day
again a vision forward draws
you on to see me.
A need to go on.
A drive to pursue.
All that and so much more
within the orbs of your eyes
shall who I am filter through.
Think not this is fame driven.
Nor quest for moment's adulation.
For you shall see me everywhere
And not the censors of Capitol.
Nor the censors of EMI
shall stop
the "proclamation of Truth is Fearless."

This article originally appeared in Scram #15

A Night of Musical Board Games by your host, Vern Stoltz

There are many sad things one notices about the world as it moves further along the path of technical progress. Sure, CDs may sound clearer and be less vulnerable to scratches, but one loses the pleasure of holding a beautifully designed record cover in one's hands. Likewise, the evolution of computer gaming has allowed for incredibly realistic scenes to appear on a video screen, but at the expense of the visually appealing board game box. Many people have forgotten or never experienced the joy that comes with opening a box to discover a world of plastic pieces, dice, spinners, cards, multicolored play money, and best of all, the board that opens to display an exciting design.

Recently I gathered six friends to re-create that era where music and board games met in pop culture heaven. The goal: to play four long-deleted music-themed board games to see if they were still enjoyable today. This was not a scientific experiment, as the increased level of alcohol infusion through the evening may have resulted in biased results.

The Players:
1. Abigail: a collector of old advice books, and the personality behind the Miss Abigail advice column for the London Times. Miss Abigail’s Time Warp Advice website can be found at http://www.missabigail.com/
2. Ani: a painter, artist, and dedicated thrifter, newly relocated to Buffalo, NY
3. Jeff: the writer behind the often funny Wit Memo website http://www.geocities.com/~witmemo/
4. Jen: a school teacher in the Washington, D.C. area
5. Ray: a magician in his spare time, residing in Washington, D.C.
6. Suzanne: wife of Jeff (they met at a screening of the documentary I Created Lancelot Link)
7. Vern: collects old vinyl LPs and board games, and sometimes even plays with them

The Games:

1957—Name That Tune

This game was a form of musical bingo. Each player received a card with columns headed with the letters M-U-S-I-C, and a small pile of red wooden markers. These looked suspiciously like those red tablets they used to hand out in grade school—the ones you chewed, after which everyone laughed at the kid who had the reddest teeth (and the worst brushing habits)

The Name That Tune game came with a record album, containing the voice of George DeWitt, host of the television show. Mr. DeWitt would announce a certain letter/number combination (eg. S/42), and then an organist played a five-second segment of an unnamed musical selection. If the title of the song was on your MUSIC card, you placed one of the red markers on the appropriate square. Should you achieve five in a row, you've won and must yell out “Stop the Music!”

This 1957 edition of the game included no rock and roll songs. Instead the game centered around selections like "National Emblem March," "American Patrol," "The Merry Widow Waltz," and the "Triumphal March (from Aïda)." Soon after placing the needle on the record, I became concerned that the disk would play out to the finish without anyone being able to identify five songs in a row.

Fortunately, two things prevented this. The first was the large number of standards that are still well known today—"Row, Row, Row Your Boat," "Battle Hymn of the Republic," "Yes We have No Bananas," and "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" (aka the alphabet song). The other element speeding play was the irresistible urge of my guests to yell out song titles once they recognized them. You might never have heard "Sweet Rose O Grady" before in your life, but having the player next to you yell out its name permitted you to mark it on your own MUSIC card.

The game was much more enjoyable than I had envisioned. And the record, though comprised of cheesy organ music, was actually quite fast paced.

Name That Tune Player Comments:

Jeff: B+ A great game—if you were born in 1930. A lot of fun… great to "break the ice" at a party.

Suzanne: We’re gonna party like its 1949!!

Abigail: I won!! I won!!! And I didn’t even cheat too much!!

Jen: ‘A’ grade. I was inspired to shout out the names of the tunes and sing along with the rapid tempos. We are concerned about the red dye on our hands from the tokens

1967—The Monkees Game

This was a more traditional game, the type where one spins an arrow, then moves that number of spaces forward. The winner is the first person who advances through a path of musical notes to reach the Monkees car. Although the cover of the box is quite impressive, with its images of the Monkees in their souped-up wagon, the game-board is a bit disappointing. The four Monkee markers looked too much alike, and they were out of proportion with the tiny musical notes on the gameboard.

Recognizing that just spinning and moving ahead would be boring, the game designers introduced a little plastic guitar with a rubber band for strings. When a player landed on a whole note, he had to pick up the guitar and start strumming and singing the “Hey Hey, We’re the Monkees” theme song. Each time the verse was completed, that team could advance eight additional music notes, until either it was their turn again or some other team landed on a whole note, snatched the toy guitar, and started singing.

As an observer, it was quite amusing to see the players singing, and I enjoyed the fast action as the guitar was rapidly passed from one set of hands to another. For the participating players though, the experience was less satisfying.

The Monkees Comments

Ani: Monkees suck. Gameboard lacks aesthetic qualities. The notes are too close together.. This is like school. I was no good in music class

Abigail: C-, too humiliating and confusing. Thank God it sped up at the end and was over faster.

Jen: D. Evil!!! It was stressful and panicky when singing.

Jeff :C+. Just move by spinning with some awkward, embarrassing, and pointless FORCED SINGING! Big disagreement, over whether having to sing, or getting to sing, is good or bad. I think this game was rushed to market without sufficient R & D, to take advantage of the Monkee craze.

Suzanne: B, exciting, but utterly trivial.

Ray: I was told there wouldn’t be any singing.

1971—The Partridge Family Game

This was another "racetrack" game, where one shook the dice and moved ahead, with the winner being the first to reach the Partridge Family bus. For added excitement, one could land on a Partridge square and draw a card. These cards were quite amazing, with each having a bit of Partridge trivia that appeared to have no relevance to the instructions it gave. Some examples:

Laurie has a great curiosity about everything—Move back 2 spaces
Chris has a great appetite for pancakes—Move ahead 3 spaces
Laurie belongs to the "Now" generation—Lose one turn
Danny has gone off zipping on his bike—Move ahead 4 spaces
‘Danny enjoys eerie horror movies—Lose one turn

There were four markers in this game, representing Keith, Laurie, Danny, and "Mom." Chris and Tracy were not represented, nor was Rueben, the group's manager. There was a brief pre-start skirmish, as most players wanted to be Danny.

The game itself went relatively quickly, as one only had to travel a path of 61 squares while using two dice. Mom started this game with a huge lead, but Keith, with an exact role of 11, ended up reaching the bus ahead of everyone else. Overall, this game was the one geared to the youngest target audience, with several players noting the similarity to Candyland. It was very simple, yet oddly enjoyable, perhaps because of the cheerful, early '70s graphic design.

The Partridge Family Comments

Ani: Better than the Monkees

Jen: I like making fun of the characters—each has led such a colorful post-Partridge life

Abigail: B+. Cards were entertaining, even though they made no sense. Helps to listen to "I Think I Love You" and dream of Keith. So cheap that they only used one photo for box, board, and pieces

1973—K-Tel Super Star Game

Yes, K-Tel actually produced a board game in addition to all those budget compilation records that were heavily advertised on television. This game was unique among the four played, as it was the only one to address the role of business in the music world. The goal of Name That Tune was to identify five songs in a row. The Monkees and Partridge Family games required you to race along the path and become the first to reach your vehicle. The goal of the K-Tel Super Star Game was to amass a fortune by game's end.

This was the only game to come with play money, unfortunately of an inferior quality, without any fake famous people on the bills. The game was very similar to the popular Game of Life. Players progress along the track, and follow the directions of whatever square they landed on. One has the option of buying insurance (for protection from stolen musical equipment), and instead of collecting money via regular paydays, one earns increasing dollar amounts by passing special concert squares.

By purchasing a record company, player have the option of releasing singles and LPs into the marketplace. When this happened, one went to the stereo and placed the needle onto a special multi-tracked 45 RPM record. The record would then announce either "It’s a Hit," "It’s a Flop," or "Break Even." If the result was a hit record, the player would collect a special miniature plastic record token—perhaps the coolest thing about this game—which was redeemable for more play money when you reached the end of the track.

But even with the introduction of cool golden records, this K-Tel game bored everyone stiff. The game track, although very brightly colored, was 153 squares long, and took forever to traverse—especially since the game came with only a single dice. The instructions on each square were boring, simply instructing the player to collect or pay money. Even playing the hit-predicting 45, which should have been entertaining, ended up feeling quite anti-climatic.

Sample instructions on the board game and the various "Fortune" cards:

Pay motel bill $100
Bootleg album, lose $10,000 in sales
Swindled by phony guru, pay $10,000
Sell life story to teen magazine, get $1,000
That’s a no-no, pay $30,000

Near the end of the game is a square that says "You’re chosen musician of the year—Congratulations," and oddly enough, there's no mention of monetary reward at all. Perhaps that was what was wrong with this game. With the constant focus on money, it felt like you should have a calculator nearby to keep track of your financial status. You'd think a game based on rock 'n roll would have been interesting, but the lack of famous rock celebrities, or even fictitious characters, meant that the emphasis was on money, money, and money.

In an ill-fated attempt to increase the excitement level, I went down to the basement and brought up an old color organ project made in junior high electronics class. But even those swirling colors from the '70s were unable to excite the players. This game was so boring that everyone decided to quit before even making it through the outermost ring of the track.

K-Tel Super Star Comments

Ani: Records are cool; K-Tel game drools

Jeff: This game promises to go on as long as Monopoly, or Risk. Much too ambitious for its own good, or ours. Cries out for two dice, instead of the one it comes with, to PICK UP THE PACE.

Suzanne: B+, a bit long, but engaging, like Life for deadheads.

Jen: Too many rules for a simple concept. Too long and tedious. Much like Monopoly. Yawn. The accompanying record sucks and is pointless. Just wanted it to end

Summary:

Oddly enough, everyone agreed that the oldest game, Name That Tune, was the most enjoyable. A bit of research showed that this was a very popular game in the late '50s, and a second edition was created with a new record.

The Partridge Family and Monkees games were fun, but this seemed partly due to the joy of having people sitting around a brightly colored board-game, conversing and interacting. Half the attraction of these games is the pop culture fascination with musical celebrities. The K-Tel game, lacking the celebrity aspect, was much less interesting.

Overall though, everyone agreed that board games are still entertaining, especially when played with a bunch of fun people. Most importantly, almost all boardgames can be played late at night, under candle light, during the next power outage. Your computer might be dead, but as long as at least two members of the Partridge Family are able to travel around the board, there will be hope in the world.

Book Review: All For A Few Perfect Waves, The Audacious Life And Legend Of Rebel Surfer Miki Dora

David Rensin, 2008, HarperCollins, ISBN 978-0-06-077331-1

-

Very well then, the short review is “Get this book and read it,” ok?

The short review with a little bit extra tossed in is “Get this book and read it, and while reading it, try to keep the transcendent meanings of ‘good & evil’ always in mind, and watch in amazement as they morph from one thing to another, and even trade places with each other, shrouded underneath a nimbus of time and circumstance.”

Ok, that’s enough right there for those of you with dull sensibilities, sound-bite sized attention spans, or dogmatic world views that cannot admit to the existence of equally valid alternatives, other than your own constricted visions. You probably won’t read the book anyway, and even if you do, you’ll find a way to take the wrong message away from it after you’re done. You may go now, you are dismissed.

Now, as for the rest of you, now that we’ve gotten rid of the idiots, let us perhaps see if we can examine things in somewhat greater detail, shall we?

Ants reap all the benefits of life in the colony, and succeed mightily as a result and have taken over the world, but in the end they must always remain ants.

Edward Abbey did not think very highly of ants, however. Go read Desert Solitaire sometime. Might just do you some good. You never know.

Dora shared many of Abbey’s approaches, although I’m none too sure that either curmudgeon would have approved of the other. But I could be very wrong here, since I do not really know wherefore I speak.

Dora seems to have approved of very little, actually.

And he was a lying thief with a spiteful mean streak, too. A real small-timer. A bum. A failure.

And yet…

And yet again…

He somehow rose above it all to truly ethereal heights where few have trodden, aside from a very few saints and madmen.

And this of course is both the problem and the solution, all at the same time.

Surfing is so overburdened with counterintuitiveness and self-contradiction, that it would seem that it could not stand another log to be thrown on to that fire, lest the entirety of it self-immolate and disappear in a cloud of smoke, leaving a bitter residue of ashes behind in the mouths of those who would seek to understand it.

Dora seems to have thrown the entire forest into the blaze, and yet he got away with it somehow.

His story is allegory, and it enfolds and encloses no end of substories and branching paths that lead off into the murk with nary a street sign to show the way.

Some of these places are pretty nasty, but others seem to shine from within by their own ghostly light.

This review is already turning into the worst sort of bullshit.

Considering the subject matter, could we have expected otherwise?

Probably not.

I’ve been long convinced that there is a book the likes of which few have been written, lurking within the Dora cloud. A book that could use this impossibly fertile ground to nurture and coax from the black and fecal substrate, a grand tale that examines the core issues of what it really means to be human being.

I’m not quite convinced that this is the book, but I may be wrong. Right or wrong, this book is a thunderclap of a good effort, and may even provide the launching pad for an as yet unknown or unborn Shakespeare to really sink their teeth into things and extract that which needs to be extracted and distill it into a Worthy Thing.

And, as with its subject matter, it presents one face even as it hides other faces in plain sight.

It’s easy enough to let this one pass through your fingers as a mere recounting of things that were, things that were said, and things that were done, and no more.

But there’s a lot more than that going on underneath the surface, for those with the time, patience, and eyes to see any of it.

Up on the surface of things, this one is drop-dead simple: A tale of the man’s life, from start to finish, as told by those who were around at any given time, as well as the occasional cryptic snatch of prose from the man himself, with a few black & white photographs tossed in for good measure.

Easy, yes?

Of course it is.

And yet…

And yet again…

Patterns self-assemble and evanesce with their own sentience, as the story minds its own business, plodding forward in time.

Dora took the measure of those and that, all around him, and found nearly all of it wanting.

At which point he very reasonably decided to keep his own counsel, and veer off on a path of his own choosing, opportunistic, never permitting anything or anyone to dictate terms to him.

Except for the waves.

The waves dictated his entire life, and he was content to everlastingly dance to their tune.

But the ways of waves and men run counter to each other, and following one will cause grave problems with the other.

Dora had no doubt whatsoever as to which one was worthy. Which one was real. Which one was the Right Way.

And blast and damn any and all who might seek to interfere.

Which is the entire nub of the matter, in similar fashion as a single molecule of DNA is the nub of each of us, one and all.

Much flows from this deceptively simple premise.

Dora, perhaps more than anyone ever has, and perhaps ever will, in a world of proliferating security cameras, biometrics, secret databases, and jackboots, took this disarmingly simple premise to its furthest logical conclusion, paid dearly for it, and yet never looked back and never reconsidered his choice, once it had been made. Despite the Gordian knot of falsehood that he partook of, surrounded himself with, and promulgated, he remained true in the most adamantine definition of the word true that can be imagined.

All of this is woven into the heart of this book, at sub-basement level, and illuminates all that happens within it.

David Rensin presumes his readers to have sufficient intelligence to work things out for themselves, and mercifully assembles the tale with a feather-light hand. The story itself can do its own talking thank you very much, and it’s a breath of fresh air to encounter a writer who has tackled such a profound subject and yet dispenses with the pedantic, the didactic, the morality tale and the fable, and instead simply lets things speak for themselves.

Like I said before: “Get this book and read it,” ok?

Gary Fields was gracious enough to create this pitch for a future Scram cover, not realizing the print magazine is on indefinite hiatus. The design was too nifty not to share, so here 'tis.

Go visit Gary's blog to see more of his work.

Nick Tosches, Photo by Michelle Talich

The first work of Nick Tosches’s that I ever read was just this last year. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. How could I be in my late thirties and never had read anything by Tosches? Scram readers are an erudite bunch when it comes to all things rock-’n’roll, so you’ve all probably been fans since his early Creem days, and have no doubt read his books like Hellfire: The Jerry Lewis Story. For the completely pop culture set, you will recognize Tosches from his work as a Contributing Editor at Vanity Fair, where his stories have included the meticulously researched origins of a screen saver, “Autumn and the Plot Against Me: The Mysterious Origins of a Windows Desktop Image.”

How did it all begin? I was at the Strand Bookstore searching through the medical section, as I’m currently going to technical school at Bellevue Hospital, when I saw a darkly stylish silhouette on the cover of a book called King of the Jews. I noticed the author was Nick Tosches and remembered the author’s name being mentioned by bassist and Dictators founder, Andy Shernoff. After spending my summer vacation reading this uniquely styled biography of Arnold Rothstein, I was hooked. The work delved deeply into subjects ranging from the preternaturally magickal beings known in Judaism as the Elohim, to several translations of Caesar’s famous expression as he crossed the rubicon, “The Die is Cast.” These may seem like tangential elements of style, but when you examine Rothstein, the Godfather of the Jewish mafia, then you should pray for a whole lot of angels ready to answer your call for help, and a shit load of luck because “the fix” is definitely in.

Afterward, I sought Nick out as a “friend” on MySpace and happily found he had a page. However, at the time it was being managed by a “fan” instead of the man himself. One night after some Jesus Juice I wrote a nice little nasty message (my favorite kind) to this fan, accusing him of masquerading as Tosches and being a fraud. The next morning I got a reply indicating I should pay more attention and look a little closer. Turns out the man himself had recently taken over control of the page, and so began my true friendship with St. Nick.

Deciding to work my way backwards through his catalog I then tackled In the Hand of Dante. This novel is a Great Work, and on Tosches’s MySpace page you can hear an audio clip of Johnny Depp reading from the first chapter. Shortly thereafter Nick posted a blog seeking someone to help out with his MySpace page in exchange for “all the beer you can drink.” I won the prize, and a day or two later found myself in his Tribeca apartment listening to “That Smell” by Lynyrd Skynrd and talking about everything from the slogan above the entrance to Auschwitz to the Gnostic Gospels. I brought along a copy of The Bellevue Literary Review as an offering, and left with, as he called it, a “bum-sized bottle” of scotch whiskey.

So now, after hoarding my favorite pen-pal for almost a year, it occurred to me that before either he or I get hit by cement truck (or a bicycle messenger), that you faithful Scram readers deserve a little Q & A. So here we go…

Sports

MB: The first book of yours I read was King of the Jews, about Arnold Rothstein, which featured the heady days of horseracing at Saratoga and the infamous “fixing” of the World Series. How can good-hearted sports gamblers get a fair shake if so many of these games/races may be fixed, and what sports do you get satisfaction from watching?

NT: Chariot races were probably fixed. It’s just another aspect that needs to be factored into gambling when the bet goes down. It’s sometimes intrinsic to the aleatory process. Mathematicians talk about the stochastic nature of gambling, the random-probability distributions or patterns inherent in it. But it’s not always a stochastic helix. For the gambler it can be a double helix, a double stochastic helix: the random-probability-pattern helix and the helix of the fix, which cancels out the other helix for the very, very few who are aware of it, but which only compounds the stochastic quandary for the vaster many, the outside-dope gamblers. It’s as they say, “fair” is where the hicks go to see the pigs race.

I sometimes get satisfaction from watching professional football, both the NFL and soccer, and sometimes from watching a good horse-race.

Drugs

MB: Is sobriety the new drug? My relatives take presciption drugs like oxycontin and percoset. Am I an idiot for not shaving a few pills off the top? What gives you satisfaction?

NT: If you define sobriety as a state of calm and clarity, I don’t see too many people out there who are sober. The world’s on speed. I’m not necessarily talking about meth. Sure, there are people out there shooting, snorting, and popping speed, washing it down with Red Bull or whatever. But even those who aren’t seem to be spun out on some sort of culturally and cerebrally induced adrenalin overload. All these people jittering blindly down the street jabbering into cellphones. If a drunken, drug-addicted fool gets off the booze and the shit, he or she is still a fool, a sober fool maybe, but still a fool.

No, you’re not a fool for not shaving a few of those pills off the top. Though, even if you didn’t put them down your own gullet, you could probably make a few bucks off them.

Through the years I have been called both an alcoholic and a drug-abuser by various characters, both doctors and people who didn’t try to pick up members of the target sex by sticking stethoscopes in their breast pockets like foulards. Whatever. The truth is I get the most satisfaction from being clear and lucid—what I’ve defined as sober—and alcohol and hard drugs can never be a part of that. Never. But I also derive satisfaction from getting fucked-up, wading in oblivion, getting drunk and maybe snorting a little smack every once in a while, maybe a few times a year. There’s a price to pay for that, however, and I’m not talking in terms of dollars but in terms of physical and psychic after-effects. Calm and clarity are free, and if you can lead yourself to them, they in turn lead to further freedom, true freedom. I also enjoy one or two glasses of good wine now and then, a glass or two of really good wine, which doesn’t interfere with the calm and the clarity. Cheval Blanc. Margaux. Haut-Brion. If you want to get in my good graces, give me a bottle of any of those. I enjoy reefer sometimes, but I smoke it only very rarely. Lately my favorite cocktail, taken in solitude when circumstances grant me some time to relax, is a glass of cold milk and a Valium. My favorite drug is opium—real opium, good opium—but you can’t get it, not in this part of the world. So, yeah, I get my greatest satisfaction from calm and clarity, which, like opium, are hard to come by.

Nick Tosches with Opium Master Chiang

Music

MB: What music gives you satisfaction from listening to these days?

NT: I listen to Bach cello suites. Only his cello suites. The rest of his shit: fuck it. A little Arvo Part. A lot of rock ’n’ roll, mostly old stuff. I’ve got a playlist of sixty-five of my favorite rock-’n’-roll songs, Nick’s Picks, on my computer. Another playlist of thirty-five Stones songs. Another of twenty-six Dylan songs. I listen to whatever I want to hear at any given moment, whatever the breezes lead me to, whatever the demons demand.

Influences

MB: Who are your literary influences? Can you touch on your relationships with other journalists as well, e.g. Hunter Thompson, Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer.

NT: My literary influences are, off the top of my head and in no particular order, Hesiod, Sappho, Christopher Marlowe, Ezra Pound, William Faulkner, Charles Olson, and God knows who else.

I never really knew Hunter.

Lester was a lost soul. If he wasn’t such a pain in the ass, I would have felt more sorry for him than I did. De mortuis nil nisi bonum…

Richard is one of the most brilliant characters around. We haven’t spoken much in the last few years, but that’s only because he now lives far away and I’ve become increasingly telephonophobic. Whether we talk or not, he’s still like a brother to me, and I love him. We went through a lot together: the best of it, the worst of it, and everything in between.

Politics

MB: You like Obama, but don’t you think that in the down and dirty world of politics that a two-faced hypocrite like Hillary Clinton is the best one to handle the snakes of Washington considering she is one? Which socio-political philosophy gives you the most satisfaction?

NT: “Like” is maybe too strong a word, but, yeah, O.K., let’s go with it. That said, I like Obama only because I so dislike the other two lying assholes. We need some new lying-asshole blood. Not that it will do much good: this country’s had it. But, speaking of old songs, don’t start me talking. And no, Hillary Clinton is not my hypocrite of choice. She is indeed one of the snakes, but she will not “handle” them in any way that is beneficial to anyone but her and them. But people are so fucking stupid that the whole situation is hopeless. Working-class flotskies in the sticks actually believe she’s on their side, one of them. I don’t know who should be shot first, her or them. Fuck it.

Personal

MB: I originally believed your name was pronounced TOE-sches until we met and learned it is pronounced TAH-sches. What is the origin of your name?

NT: The name is Italian, with distant roots in ancient Albania, across the Adriatic from Puglia, the only place in the world—in particular the village of Casalvecchio di Puglia—where my family name is common. My grandfather came to New York from that village in the late nineteenth century. In Italy the name is pronounced TAH-skes, because in Italian “ch” is a “k” sound. Here, though, yeah, it sort of rhymes with “washes,” or with the last two syllables of “galoshes.” That’s how I’ve always pronounced it, anyway. Some people who have known me for thirty years still fuck it up. I think I would sell more books if I had a more easily pronounceable name.

Sex

MB: The Pope was recently here and briefly apologized for the pedophile debacle. Recently 400+ children were taken from a religious compound in Texas under suspicion of sexual abuse. From Babylon to Boston humans don’t ever seem able to get enough satisfaction from sex to just call it a day. Can you talk about what satisfaction you’ve derived from sex and about humanity’s inability to get sexual satisfaction?

NT: Fuck the pope and fuck the rest of humanity. I have derived great and beautiful satisfaction from sex in my life. Lately, I’m getting old, and there’s not so much of it in my days or nights. My prick has moods of it own and goes on strike whenever it wants. And I’ve tired of the obligatory conversational preludes, and grown sort of jaded with the whole routine. These days, I’d rather have sex with a pretty girl’s legs, and even then only if the legs are exceptional, rather than the usual stuff. As the spirit of Aphrodite once whispered to me: gams are the one true god.

I wrote a song called “I’m in Love with Your Knees.” I remember unsettling some girl one night, telling her over dinner, “I prefer not to make love to the whole woman.” Sometimes I have more fun fucking with people than fucking them.

The other day I collided with a messenger in Times Square because we had both turned to stare at the same pair of legs while continuing to walk across the street.

Nick Tosches, Photo by Gardabelle.

Health

What kinds of food and what beverages do you get satisfaction from consuming?

NT: Any food that tastes good and doesn’t make me feel bad afterward. No: simply any food that tastes good. Water is my favorite drink, then wine, the wine I was talking about before. I derive the most satisfaction from pork. I cook pork better than anybody else in the world. Pork beats all meat. I like a good steak. All sorts of fish. Everything. I’m an omnivore. You have to eat the flesh of your lessers.

Life

MB: George Carlin once said the meaning of life was Plastic. Robert Anton Wilson said that the meaning of life was for the Universe to be able and see itself. What is your belief or beliefs about the meaning of life? What is the meaning of life and where/how/when do you get the most satisfaction out of life?

Nick Tosches, Coney Island, Photo by Frank Fortunato.

NT: It is human arrogance to feel that there can be any great depth of meaning in something as finite and fleeting as life. But if they’re into this shit, I would suggest that people look to the original teachings of Ch’an Buddhism, and, maybe even more so, to those lines in the Gospel of Thomas: “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” When we figure out what this “what” is, we’re there, we’re free.

As to where, how, and when I get the most satisfaction out of life, man, the list is too long. When I’m right with it, it’s right with me. Sitting on the couch with a smoke and a cup of coffee. Lost in a storm in an unknown distant land. Loving. Being loved. Sitting on a busted fucking bench watching a bunch of stupid fucking pigeons. Colliding with that guy in Times Square the other day and ending up laughing. Walking down the street, seeing the sky subtly change. Feeling the immense blessing, the great gift, of every fucking breath. Pork chops with sauteed onions and potatoes. Everything. When I’m right, it’s right. To wait for it to work the other way around is a sucker’s racket.

Psyched Out: The Technicolor Web’s Online Sound Revolution

by Tony Sclafani

What is it about the psychedelic music of the 1960s that continues to intrigue new generations of people?

Maybe it’s because psychedelic music was a genre where almost anything went, and all possibilities seemed endless. Artists under the spell of psychedelia seemed blissfully unaware of commercial conventions, and were the first rockers to make full use of extra-long songs, nonsensical lyrics, massive distortion and sound effects.

Another reason for psychedelic music’s appeal is that it allows you to “travel with your mind,” as the Seeds put it on their psych-rock opus “Future.” During the psychedelic era, artists created their own little worlds for listeners to explore. Formula love lyrics gave way to songs about everything from jolly little dwarves to 30-year-olds who still played with toys.

Psychedelic music essentially offers a vision of a make-believe world that often seems a heck of a lot more fun than the real one. In the Psychedelic World, cyclists whiz by on white bicycles at midnight, you can hear the grass grow and the skies change from orange to marmalade (some women even have marmalade hair!).

No other music delved into the fantastic like psychedelia, and the genre couldn't be less timely. The trend in lyrics today (especially in the country and rap genres) is to reflect goings on in the real world, not to create an idiosyncratic fantasyland. How can today’s teens get any escape from the often-harsh real world if even their music fails to provide that? True, there are video games, but their dog-eat-dog ethos is reflective of real-world strife. If you were looking for escape circa 1967, all you had to do was turn on the black light, stare at your day-glo posters and groove to the sounds of Clear Light or The Blues Magoos. Voila! A new world. Like, why go out at all?

Laugh at psychedelic music if you will. But it’s instructive to remember that when artists of any post-1960s era have looked to make big statements and take their careers to a new level, it’s psychedelia they usually tap into, for instance Prince’s “Around the World in a Day,” Robert Fripp’s “Exposure” and Madonna’s “Like a Prayer” and "Beautiful Stranger" (directly referencing Love's "She Comes in Colors").

Psychedelic music is crawling all over the media landscape again these days, since this summer marks the 40^th anniversary of the Summer of Love and the Monterey International Pop Festival. And while it’s hard sometimes to know exactly where to start to get into this music (Blossomtoes? Ultimate Spinach?), there is a 24/7 source for psychedelic sounds, thanks to Internet radio.

The Technicolor Web of Sound (www.techwebsound.com) is an online station that serves up a non-stop selection of songs of vintage psychedelic origin. The station, which is powered by Shoutcast streaming technology, is run by Wisconsin native and music buff Paul Moews. Moews, whose name is pronounced as “maze,” was doing Internet radio back before most people even knew what it was.

“I started the station around 2000,” says Moews by cell phone while commuting to his job as an electrical engineer. “with one or two listeners max on a dial-up modem. I was excited when I’d get over three people listening at a time. Now I’ve got hundreds on there.”

Moews’ site stands out not just because of his micro-niche focus, but because his station has a Web site that provides details on the artists he plays (most Shoutcast Internet stations don’t have Web sites, much less intricately-designed ones). There are no disc jockeys, except when the station broadcasts a programmed show called “The Pop Shoppe,” put together by Oregon disc jockey Gregarious. What Moews has done is created a lengthy playlist that intersperses obscure tracks with vintage radio commercials.

“The playlist has been manually designed,” Moews explains. “There’s no randomness to it. It’s such a long playlist that when even I listen a lot of the time I still won’t remember what song is coming up next. One of the keys to its success, I think, is the transitions between the songs, and having the ads in there. If you were to do a random playlist, the ads wouldn’t work at all -- you wouldn’t have good transitions. With the ads, you need to have three or four in a row to mimic an original or authentic FM station
broadcast.”

What can you expect to hear on The Technicolor Web of Sound? Here’s a sampling of the Web site’s “most recent tracks played” list as of June 19, 10:30 a.m.: John’s Children’s “Desdemona,” Pink Floyd’s “Arnold Layne,” Bear’s “So Loose and So Slow,” Stone Country’s “Life Stands Daring Me,” Ill Wind’s “People of The Night,” Steppenwolf’s “The Ostrich,” The Charlatans’ “32-20,” Cosmic Brotherhood’s “Sunshine World,” Painted Faces’ “Black Hearted Susan,” Neon Pearl’s “Forever” and a Jefferson Airplane Levis Ad done by Spencer Dryden.

Moews’ music choices sometimes fall beyond the boundaries of psychedelia, which waters down the station’s appeal (for example, why is Led Zeppelin played at all?). But for the most part, most of what he plays is unheard anywhere else, especially on terrestrial radio stations. Even Satellite Radio is starting to shy away from potentially uncommercial formulas. Moews says he’s able to earn enough money to keep the station running free from any commercial considerations. If there’s anyone Moews takes his musical cues from, it’s his listeners.

“I gradually ended up getting a fan base that started sending me more and more music,” Moews notes. “My audience actually exposed me to a good percentage of what I play now. Plus, bands contacted me as well. I’ve received CDs from various bands, and not just obscure ones, some of the mid-level bands. And that’s exposed me to some music I probably would not have been exposed to if I didn’t have the station.”

Moews says he gets listeners as young as 16 who e-mail him and say “I love your station!” Moews himself also missed the first flowering of psychedelia, having been born in 1968.

“I wasn’t there, but I still like the music,” he says. “I’ve liked that type of music since I was in grade school -- I heard it from a buddy that lived a couple of doors down from me who had a lot of older brothers (with psychedelic albums).”

As for the issue of the proposed royalty rate hike for Internet radio stations (set to take place July 15, 2007), Moews says he’s “riding it out to see what happens.” As countless news outlets have reported, there is still a chance Congress could step in and prevent the US Copyright Royalty Board from making Internet radio stations have to pay more in royalty fees (including retroactive fees) to the collection entity SoundExchange.

“It’s a shame that when internet radio stations … introduce thousands of people to music they have never heard before and actually generate more record sales, that the Record Industry still wants to charge us even more for our efforts,” Moews writes via e-mail when asked about the royalty situation. “It almost seems that they’re trying to suppress certain types of music.”

The Technicolor Web of Sound also helped spawn another radio station that’s probably its only competitor in terms of Web radio programming.

That station is called Beyond the Beat Generation (www.beyondthebeatgeneration.com) and it plays an array of 1960s garage bands so obscure they makes Moews’ playlist look like the Billboard top ten. It also has an exhaustive Web site with artist interviews, photos and even videos.

“I helped (Hans Kesteloo) set up that station,” Moews says. “He’s from Germany and he’s an avid collector. In fact he turned me onto some stuff.”

Like the Technicolor Web of Sound, Beyond the Beat Generation’s site has a rotating “song history” listing. On the Technicolor site, you can click on the name of the artist in the song history and get a biography. On the Beat Generation site, the song history listing tells you the label, serial number and release year for each record and also tells the hometown of the artist. And you thought you were obsessive about records.

Here’s a segment of the Beyond the Beat Generation’s playlist as of June 20, 2:37 p.m.: Jarvo Runga’s “Long Walk Home,” Phyllis Brown’s “Dead,” The Syndicate of Sound’s “Get Outta My Life,” The K Otics’ “Double Shot,” The Dawn 5’s “A Necessary Evil,” The Yardleys’ “Your Love” and Moving Sidewalks’ “Stay Away.”

If you don’t want to be relegated to listening to all this music on your computer speakers, you can send the audio signal to your stereo via a $20 device called the Dynex®-Portable Wireless FM Transmitter (which you can order online at Best Buy). For serious music fans, all of the above technology has pretty much made commercial radio stations irrelevant.

You can also take the MP3 streams from both these stations, dump them into your Winamp player, toggle between them, and never hear a familiar 1960s song for hours on end. It’s, like, a total alternate reality, man.

One of last year’s nicest surprises was a deluxe double-CD reissue of Absolute Grey’s 1985 debut album, Greenhouse. Absolute Grey was a four-piece from Rochester, a small city in upstate New York known mostly for its colleges and Eastman Kodak’s world headquarters. The Greenhouse reissue collects the original LP’s eight tracks and adds a bonus disc of live material. What's fascinating is how dated it sounds now. I don’t mean this in a negative way. Some LPs are timeless; they could have been recorded any time in the past forty years and sounded fresh and new. Other albums end up date-stamped--you can tell exactly when they were recorded and what their probable influences were. Listening to Greenhouse, it's easy to guess Absolute Grey's influences: R.E.M., Dream Syndicate, Sandy Denny-era Fairport Convention, perhaps a little Bay Area '60s psychedelia. In other words, the typical things smart kids from small college towns were listening to in the mid-1980s. The guitar tones are jangly, and lead singer Beth Brown has clearly been influenced by Michael Stipe's early moaning vocals. Many bands of the time had the same influences, but precious few took them out of the realm of imitation. Absolute Grey were one of those few. Rather than sounding embarrassingly derivative, Greenhouse sounds like a welcome dispatch from an earlier era.

The live tracks add a new dimension as well. Songs that were moody and pensive on record take on a much more raucous, discordant tone. They don’t sound like psych-pop avatars at all in person, but rather excited kids playing rock music for local friends and fans. It’s also nice to hear so many songs that previously existed on demos if at all.

Greenhouse remains Absolute Grey’s most celebrated release. The band continued on for a few more years, releasing the What Remains LP and Painted Post EP on Midnight and Sand Down The Moon LP for the Greek label Di-Di. The former members are now scattered between the East and West coasts. However, it looks like their story’s not done yet. Three of the former band members (minus guitarist Matt Kitchen) are planning to record new material under the Absolute Grey moniker. There are also plans afoot to issue Sand Down The Moon domestically.

Vocalist Beth Brown, drummer Pat Thomas, and bassist Mitch Rasor were kind enough to answer some questions about their early days. I have been wanting to do this interview for almost twenty years, when I first fell in love with Greenhouse via college radio…

Scram: Let's get the basics out of the way first. How did the four of you get together?

Beth Brown: We were from Pittsford, one of the nicer, more sheltered suburbs of Rochester. I had been in a new wave band right out of high school in 1979 called Hit & Run. We did originals and some covers: Blondie, Patti Smith, the Cars, Tom Petty and Talking Heads. We did some recording, and one of our songs was chosen to be on a Homegrown record. Homegrown was a radio show on rock station WCMF in Rochester, which interviewed and promoted local bands. We played a record release party and were introduced to all the "cool" musicians from the city. Nobody knew who we were, but when we played all eyes were on us and we got a really good reception. Hit & Run only lasted a year. Some of the guys went off to college.

A few years later, I was living at my parents' house when I met Matt and Mitch. I came home one night from working at the record store, and my younger brother was playing Dungeons and Dragons with a bunch of guys. Matt and Mitch were among them and I thought they were really cool right off the bat. They were in a band called the Cads (what a great name) with Matt's older brother, Will. They were doing their own material and although they weren't that great, there was something so artistic and intriguing about them. They knew I had been a singer in a band, and we decided to start playing together. They were seven years younger than me, but I didn't care in the least. We tried out a few drummers and that's when we found Pat.

Pat Thomas: Matt, Mitch and Beth had already been doing a bit of rehearsing when I met them. They had one original song. I saw an ad that Beth had put up in the record store where she worked. At the very least I thought I'd check out what Beth was all about, as I'd noticed her strutting through the record store.

Mitch Rasor: We made these stupid arty posters and put them around the city. They showed a frog playing lily pads and we said we were looking for a lily pad player. Some of the lily pad players we auditioned before Pat were truly bad. Pat came in with these tight mod striped London pants and a very 1970s porn star mustache. It was love at first sight.

Pat: My memory of that first rehearsal was that Beth was high-strung and intense, Matt was kinda shy yet friendly at the same time and Mitch had a certain charming confidence. For whatever reason I was into making music with these three people, even though they had no real songs yet.

Scram: I didn't know until reading the Greenhouse liner notes that Matt and Mitch were so young. What was it like being in a professional band at that age? What did your parents/classmates think of the project?

Mitch: My parents were completely supportive. We practiced in their basement; they came to many shows. My mother and I had a ritual of going out to lunch downtown and buying a new set of Rotosound bass strings the day before every gig. The band was the antithesis of the conformity, geographic isolation and intellectual frostbite of high school. Because of the band, most my friends were older, more educated and better medicated. People in school were not aware of the band; it was a different world based in the city compared to the suburbs. Ironically, after the freedom of the band, the travel, attention and camaraderie, I found my first year at Oberlin to be restrictive and confining, even though it was a place of incredible musical experimentation, politics and intense friendships.

Scram: Pat,where are you from originally, and when did you hit town? What was your musical background prior to the move? Did you have designs on forming a band in Rochester?

Pat: Like Beth, I was a few years older than Matt and Mitch. I grew up in Corning, NY, and moved to Rochester in June 1982 to work at Kodak. Before Absolute Grey, I was in many garage and cover bands. I'd also written and recorded some of my own songs, which had a strong Lou Reed/Bob Dylan vibe. When I first moved to Rochester, I was actually searching for a prog-rock band to join. I wanted something more along the lines of early King Crimson and Brian Eno. My taste has always been all over the map, but just before I hooked up with Absolute Grey, I'd gotten a bit tired of prog and really started getting into the Dream Syndicate as they reminded me of my big faves, the Velvet Underground.

Scram: Please describe the Rochester music scene of the time. It sounds like a friendly, close-knit scene. Did touring bands make it through town often? Did you have a supportive radio station or club scene? A good record store?

Mitch: I look back on the scene with some nostalgia because in hindsight, Absolute Grey was very hip in one area code. The scene was a close group of bands, friends and weirdoes brought together by the music. Rochester did not have real artistic depth, but it was an important stop on the national tour circuit between Cleveland/Chicago and New York.

Pat: There was a great record store, the Record Archive, where Beth worked. They stocked a lot of indie-rock, etc. (Now the store is kinda lame.) There were two great college radio stations, WITR and WRUR. A club called Scorgies, where we often played, had tons of great touring bands--Dream Syndicate, Long Ryders, Rain Parade, dBs, the Neats, Love Tractor, Let's Active, Lyres, the Three O'clock, Game Theory, Alex Chilton, True West. We often opened up for these bands and/or hung out with them. Most of the local bands were cool to hang with; we had a special relationship with Invisible Party. They made one hard-to-find seven-inch single, but later split into two separate bands called Lotus STP and the Ferrets.

Beth: The Replacements graced the Rochester stage with their presence several times.

Mitch: Rochester was not Los Angeles, but in our isolation we created something cool, which in some ways makes it actually more meaningful and culturally critical. Our critical mass was always about to unravel. It was more like fending off extinction than trying on a lifestyle for size. I prefer the edge of things.

Scram: Did you feel naive or isolated in Rochester?

Pat: I felt very isolated. I knew in my heart that if the band was based in New York or Boston, we'd have gotten much more press, a better record deal, etc. This is why I begged the others to do more touring. We did a few mini-tours, but everyone (well, at least Matt and Mitch) had other things they wanted to do with their time.

Mitch: I did not feel as naive then as I do now. I thought we could do anything. That is the attitude you have to have. Listening back through our veil of influences I can hear the naïveté, but we were 15, 16, 17 years old, and most kids at this age can't even masturbate properly. As I like to say, we somehow rose above all the opportunities handed to us in life to make meaningful music.

Scram: How soon after forming did you start recording? At what point did you feel ready to make an album?

Mitch: This question is really for Pat. He brought both musicianship and professionalism to the band.

Pat: The basic time line goes amazingly quickly. Band forms in October 1983 with no songs. In January 1984, we play our first shows with all original material; in April 1984 we record our first demo tape in a home studio; in July 1984 we record Greenhouse. In December 1984, Greenhouse is released. Pretty amazing when I look back on it. I guess it was all that youthful energy.

Mitch: I cannot see how we could have recorded and proceeded more quickly than we did. We really saw ourselves as musicians at varying degrees of the tortured artist scale. Pat was probably the most tortured, but also the most professionally ambitious. It was almost as if Matt and I couldn't be bothered with commerce. That was naive, but then again I was living at home, my father was an executive, I belonged to not one but three tennis clubs. I mean, why would I have to think about commerce in practical terms? I could master my serve and volley game and compose music.

Pat: It was the members of [local band] Personal Effects who suggested we make a record. I think they were talking about a single, and I quickly decided that wasn't good enough--I wanted a whole LP! I tracked down a decent studio run by Dave Anderson, raised some money and we went for it. We didn't have any idea exactly what were doing in that studio and Dave knew just a bit more than us. Somehow it worked.

Scram: How did the songwriting process work? Did everyone bring in songs, or were you more into jamming?

Beth: Mitch did the majority of writing and introduced a lot of ideas and we would build upon them. I wrote the melodies and lyrics. Mitch wrote a lot of lyrics, too.

Pat: Beth and Mitch were a good songwriting team. We were all a good support to that.

Mitch: Each song was a bit different, but to my recollection I wrote most songs on the guitar and bass and Beth and I split the lyrics. Of course, the same songs or ideas could have been a total disaster if Pat and Matt did not flesh them out through hours of rehearsals. The songs are not that unique, but Beth brought real feeling to them. She made the band in many ways.

Pat: Early on, both Matt and Mitch seemed to come forward with song ideas, but after awhile, Matt brought less ideas to the table and Mitch brought more. The key thing, as I remember, was the whole band worked on the arrangements of the songs and whipped them into shape. It was rare that someone would walk in with the whole song totally mapped out from start to finish. We didn't jam much, but we certainly jammed on actual song ideas and structures to finalize the song arrangement.

Scram: Were you trying to emulate a specific sound or approach? Who did you feel your peers were?

Beth: As a singer I was not trying to sound like anybody else, but I'm sure we alI had our influences. Our peers were local bands like Invisible Party and Personal Effects.

Pat: When the band started, none of us had really heard the Paisley Underground bands. We didn’t map out a sound in advance; we just plugged in and started playing. As time went on, we seemed to discover bands that we felt sounded similar to us. People would point out bands that they thought we sounded like, from the Jefferson Airplane to Echo and the Bunnymen to various Paisley Undergrounders. I think R.E.M. was a strong influence on us all. I certainly felt we had something in common with other East Coast bands such as Dumptruck or Salem 66, but mostly I looked towards the West: Dream Syndicate, Rain Parade, True West, Clay Allison and others. I was pleased when I found out that 28th Day were listening a lot to Greenhouse as they started developing their own sound and songs.

Mitch: I don't think we were trying to emulate any bands in specific, besides maybe churning through secondary source influences like Chronic Town, Heaven Up Here, Entertainment! and Seventeen Seconds. We knew we had something that was ours. The bass had a melody role along the lines of Joy Division/New Order, rather than holding the bottom with the kick drum. The guitar often sounded like Echo and the Bunnymen. Thank god Pat and Beth had better taste in music and introduced us to Fairport Convention, Big Star and Suicide. I remember Pat doing this solo Suicide type thing at a 24-dance marathon, of all things, and people were dropping like flies.

Scram: Please describe the sessions at Saxon Recording.

Pat: Saxon was a friendly goofy guy named Dave Anderson several years older than us, with an 8-track reel to reel, half way decent equipment, located on the third story (the attic) of a large old house. He and we learned as we went along. He was easy to work with and cheap, so other bands like Invisible Party started going there. Without Saxon, I'd say probably less records would have happened--I certainly don't remember any other local studio trying to get our business. In many ways, our April 1984 demo tape and our final album, Sand Down The Moon, sound the most like Absolute Grey did live, as they were recorded by my pal Bill Groome in his kitchen and living room in Corning, NY with fairly crude equipment (in comparison to the slightly better pro equipment at Saxon). Bill had more of an ear for what we were trying to do, I think, than Dave did.

Mitch: We had no idea what we were doing in the studio, and our "greatness" got lost somewhere between the mics, the mixing board and the compressor of the month. Sometimes I wish a young Jim Dickinson or Joe Boyd was running a studio in Rochester when we were around. Not only would the albums sound better today, but I can imagine our songwriting, as influenced by the recording process, would have been more fine-tuned. Not to be rude, but I think the recording process was an unrecording of our sound. I don't mean stripped down and direct in the style of Steve Albini, but that when we walked into the studio the band was left at the door.

Scram: What made you decide to re-release Greenhouse? What was it like going through the old live and studio tapes?

Beth: This is a pet project that Pat did on his own. He's the Keeper of the Absolute Grey Flame.

Pat: Now that we live in all digital world, I felt that if Greenhouse wasn't put out on CD, there would become a time when it wouldn't really exist at all, as if it never happened. I remember something John Lennon said about when he heard a Beatles song on the radio: he said it brought him back that session, who was doing what and who said what, just like a time machine back to the actual recording session. It was little bit like that going back to the original reel to reel multi-track tapes of Greenhouse. I'd never done that before, and here I was hearing us talk between songs from 20 years ago. I was hoping to find some outtakes. I knew that there weren't any unreleased songs, but I was surprised to find no other versions of the same songs. For example, we did record a version of “Memory Of You” in the studio during the Greenhouse recording, but it wasn't on the master reel. I also found out that we slowed down the tape down when Beth overdubbed her vocals and for the mixing. In other words, we recorded some of the songs very fast in tempo in the studio (probably because we were nervous) and we must have realized later that the tempo was too fast for Beth to sing on top of it. The live stuff was interesting, as again I hadn't listened to it in years, but I for one was very happy with the overall sound quality and performance.

Beth: I think when you're in the studio you have a tendency to try to play everything perfectly, so that's your focus. When we played live it was all about excitement and energy and putting on a good show. You can hear the difference.

Mitch: Thankfully there are live recordings of the band, but to this day I believe live shows and studio recording are very different playing and listening experiences and should be kept that way. The studio is a totally controlled environment, and it is a pretense to think otherwise. In the end, I wish there were better studio recordings of us with less of the direct acoustic guitar sound and more full bass tones… but as I listen to the remastered Greenhouse right now, the recordings were not complete failures.

Pat: Frankly, when we went in to record Greenhouse we had no idea what we were doing from a studio or production point of view, nor did some of the people recording us. I think performance-wise we were successful, soundwise we were not. I remember spending hours trying to capture our live electric guitar sound in the studio; we tried about a dozen different amps and guitars and none of us were ever satisfied. We felt that Greenhouse didn't really sound like "us"--and "us," at that point, was our live show. I remember many Rochester fans being disappointed by the sound of Greenhouse because they knew what we really sounded like live. But outside of Rochester it didn't matter.

Scram: How come there are so many early live tracks that were left unrecorded? How come gems like "Watching Waiting" and "Candy Canes" never made it to official release?

Mitch: I can specifically remember my Spanish teacher (who also played some keyboards on Greenhouse) asking me why "Candy Canes" was not on Greenhouse. I said it was too stupid and obvious. We thought the songs had to be long and minimal, like "Notes." To a certain extent, we were right. “Watching Waiting” was our first real song, and I think we were sick of it by the time we got around to recording the first record. Also, if I remember, we recorded "Watching Waiting" and "Candy Canes" on our first cassette/demo tape release and we simply wanted to record the latest songs for the first album.

Scram: Give me your memories of the live version of "Getting Me Down." Beth sounds drunk; true?

Beth: I was often drunk at shows, but so was the audience. It will be a new experience to play out with my new band without imbibing first. I don't know what I'll do with my nerves.

Mitch: We were not notorious drunks by any means, but I do remember a show when we were so drunk we kept making mistakes. Finally I dropped my bass and started spray-painting it. I then announced that people could get their money back at the door. Quite a few did.

Scram: Who was Pet Casket, referenced at the end of “Getting Me Down?”

Pat: Alex Chilton hadn't toured for many years, or least hadn't come through our neck of the woods… it was a couple of months before Feudalist Tarts. In the meantime, the legend of Big Star had grown, so we (a couple of the bands in Rochester, mainly Absolute Grey and Invisible Party) were all super eager to open for Chilton at Scorgies. We decided the only fair thing to do was to form a one-time-only supergroup with members of both bands, plus Bob Martin from Personal Effects. That way we could all be Chilton’s opening act! Instead of playing our own songs we mainly played covers: Velvet Underground, Beatles, etc.

Scram: Absolute Grey seems to have had a relationship with Dream Syndicate; you covered "Tell Me When It's Over" live, and Steve Wynn has fond memories of you. When did that begin, and how long-lasting was it?

Mitch: Pat was the Steve Wynn connection, although we all loved Dream Syndicate. One of my favorite concerts of all time was a Dream Syndicate show at Scorgies. At the end of the set, the owner jumped up on stage and yelled "open bar," and there was this tidal wave of people to the back of the room. Then the band started playing encores. Last week I was eating dinner with the band New Year, and bragging to Chris Brokaw that I saw and knew Steve before he played with him as part of Come. Chris quickly put me in my place and said that he met Steve in 1983. But I have fond memories of being backstage with Steve, smoking pot and studying for a test the next day. I don't think he remembers anyone in the band but Pat.

Pat: Early on, like a lot of people, I really got hooked on Days of Wine and Roses and sought Steve out. He saw a like-minded soul and welcomed me into his life, giving me his home phone number and really supporting my own projects, such as the solo recordings that I did outside of Absolute Grey. When Steve broke up the Syndicate, that relationship continued with Steve playing on some of my own songs and recordings. We did some shows together in the US and Europe. Most recently, I produced two Dream Syndicate reissues for Rykodisc--digging thru old tapes (I hold a good chunk of the Dream Syndicate tape archives), writing liner notes and picking unreleased songs. Currently I'm co-producing a Best of Steve Wynn solo CD.

Scram: How much touring did you do outside of Rochester?

Pat: In April 1985, we played CBGBs. In July 1985, we went to Albany, New Haven and Boston. In August 1985, we went to Toronto. We did a few other adventures such as Hamilton College and Buffalo. In August 1987, we did Albany, New York and New Haven.

Mitch: I wish we had done a full European and US tour at the time. Maybe a road show with the Dream Syndicate and Rain Parade.

Scram: What were local shows like? What kind of crowds came to see you?

Beth: We had a lot of fans. It was a huge party scene. There were a lot of local bands and we would go to each other's shows and meet a lot of people. A lot of kids from Matt and Mitch's high school would come and see us.

Pat: We'd draw a couple of hundred people easily, mostly between the ages of 16 and 22. We got a lot of local airplay. Then when the drinking age went from 18 to 21, it made it hard for those 21 and under kids to sneak into shows. Scorgies went of business because of that change.

Mitch: The live shows were special events: entertaining, visual, loud and memorable. Two filmmakers/photographers were quasi-band members, which was Pat's nod to Andy Warhol's Factory. We created events. We played in all-white modernist galleries with films projected on every surface. We played in crowded, wonderfully disgusting college living rooms with beer everywhere. We even did a guerilla-style acoustic tour of Rochester laundromats.

Beth: When we had our first record release party there was a blizzard. It was snowing hard with no sign of stopping. I was so worried that no one would venture out to see us, but when we walked into the club it was totally packed!

Scram: After Greenhouse came out, you signed with Midnight Records, at the time more of a garage label. How did that come about? How do you feel about the way they promoted/distributed you?

Beth: I had only met J.D. Martignon one time when Pat and I visited Midnight Records in NYC. He looked like a real creep and didn't say two words to me. Sure enough, as soon as he had my number, a drunk J.D. called me one day and made several inane and inept passes at me over the phone. I think he thought I was gonna jump up and hop a flight to NY to go sleep with him so he'd actually do some work promoting our record on his small-time, crummy label. What a sleazebag. Being on Midnight was a huge mistake. We could have put the record out ourselves and Pat would have promoted it in spades compared to what J.D. did. Midnight ruined our momentum.

Pat: I think Beth's story says it all. Again, it was me networking, this time with the wrong guy, but sadly J.D. was the only one who showed any real interest in signing us.

Mitch: As a business venture it was a fiasco, but at that age and even today there is a certain caché in being signed to a label, no matter how small. Truth is we did a better job promoting ourselves, holding marketing package parties and letting Pat use his phone at Kodak to call anyone who would listen.

Scram: After Midnight, you signed with Di-Di, a Greek label. How did that come about? (I don't remember ever seeing those records in a US store!)

Pat: Somehow the Greeks liked us freaks. Absolute Grey was popular in the Greek underground from the beginning, due to some crazed fanzine editor. So, this fanzine guy hooked me up with his Greek pals, for better or worse. Mostly worse, as the label in Greece was... I don't what it was, but it was something, I can tell you.

Scram: In fact, it sometimes seems like Absolute Grey was better-known in parts of Europe than in your own country. Did that bother you, or perhaps amuse you?

Pat: We had support in England via Acid Tapes releases and Bucketful Of Brains magazine reviews, then there was the Greek thing. We seemed to get airplay in France, got reviewed in Italy.

Mitch: We were thrilled, but always wanted or thought we deserved more. The fact that we were better known and respected in Europe is good dinner conversation more than anything. I was in London a couple of months ago for meetings and it did not hurt that the day before there was a review of the Greenhouse reissue in the London Sunday Times!

Scram: You released an album and an EP under the Absolute Grey name. Painted Post, however, is as a two-piece. What happened with the band between What Remains and Painted Post? Was it a "breakup" per se? How did you reconcile for the last album, Sand Down The Moon?

Pat: When the band started, Matt and Mitch were both in high school. As What Remains was being made, they graduated and began making plans to go off to college. Beth and I begged, pleaded for them to delay college for just one year to see if we could make a go of it as a band, do some touring, trying to keep the whole thing rolling. They refused--no surprise, really, from Matt, as his heart was never 100 percent into the band, but without Mitch we didn't have a band. Mitch was young and headstrong, and felt that going to college was where he wanted to be. So, in my mind, the band was pretty much over. I had left Kodak and had no reason to stay in Rochester without doing the band. When Mitch got to Oberlin, he sort of freaked out and realized how much the band meant to him. He asked me if I'd stay and wait in Rochester for him, doing the band during the summer and school breaks. I had no desire to wait for Mitch to come home for the holidays--plus, as I explained to him, touring schedules and chances to grow don't fit around school breaks. What if we got offered a tour for the following week after school started again? So I split for Copenhagen for a year of reading Kerouac and William Burroughs, hanging out in Danish cafes, and developing my own songwriting.

What Remains came out in spring 1986 while I was in Denmark. I received an official letter from "the band" (now down to Beth and Mitch) telling me that Matt had quit and I was being kicked out, and that the $1,000 that was sitting in the band's joint bank account was being kept by Mitch and Beth to fund the band's future. That was the part that pissed me off the most, as I should have received a check for $250 with my kiss-off letter. Ironically, Mitch now said that he was ready to tour. But he and Beth never found anyone they were satisfied with--and the band played no shows without Matt or me.

Beth: Painted Post was a Mitch/Beth project. Mitch and I kept in touch when he was going to Oberlin. We made the record one summer when he was home from school in Rochester. I'm not sure where Matt was but I think he was out of town, too, and not available. We happened to all be in town when we made Sand Down the Moon, but it was after we had officially broken up. It was like a short-term reunion album.

Mitch: Basically, Beth and I were the two songwriters from the band and we stuck it out for a while through the mail and then made a record. An overlooked record, fortunately.

Pat: When I got to back to Rochester in early 1987, heads had cooled out a bit and Beth asked me if I could handle playing some percussion; she and Mitch wanted to play acoustic shows to support Painted Post. When Matt heard I was back, he seemed eager to rejoin. The next thing we knew, we were back together for one long summer of 1987, a short tour, writing more songs (or I should say, learning songs that Mitch had already written and a few bits from Beth as well), and to record what I think is our best album (besides Greenhouse), which is called Sand Down The Moon.

Mitch: I wrote the Sand Down the Moon songs during my sophomore year and the following summer we somehow got back together to play. Again, Pat has the complete annotated transcripts. It was a great time. We played some drunk shows that summer after a tour promoter screwed us and then at some point I mixed the album in the town of Painted Post, NY, of all places. I think this record gets closer to what we were like as a band. Not because I mixed it, but because Bill Groome recorded it.

Pat: By this time, we knew what we wanted from a recording. Beth was kinda pissy the whole summer as she knew it was the last go-around, but other than Matt and Mitch getting on my nerves from time to time (and me on theirs), I enjoyed myself for the final fling.

Scram: When did the band break up for good? What circumstances precipitated it? What regrets, if any, remained? Are there any unrecorded/unreleased songs from that time?

Beth: The band's demise came when it was time for Matt and Mitch to go to college. The band was just something for them to do in high school, but it meant a lot more to me and Pat and we wanted it to continue. We should have agreed to take a long hiatus to do some living and then gotten back together so we had new, fresh ideas to put on the table. I think we had a good chemistry as a band and wrote naturally and easily together. I would have been very interested to regroup, but the others showed no interest. Everyone lives in a different state, two in the east and two in the west, so we can't easily get together.

Pat: In my mind, the band broke up for good at the tail end of August 1987. We drove in two cars coming back from a short tour--Mitch and me in one car, Matt and Beth in the other. When we arrived back in Rochester, Matt and Beth had already gone their separate ways. I never saw Matt and Beth for many years after that. I dropped Mitch off at his house, and didn't see him in the flesh for awhile either. Mitch and I kept in contact, however, and either argued about old bullshit and tried to torture each other or discussed our own separate music careers. I always respected Mitch as a musician, and I helped get a few of his solo CDs released in Europe. The one thing that the Greenhouse reissue has done has allowed Mitch and me to really drop the old shit and get together again as both friends and artists.

Mitch: It is sort of a blur, but I think Pat started making his own music and found a life in that and I also think he moved out west and got things rolling with his Heyday Records label. I then proceeded to start recording my own records. They did well, and now Pat and I have active lives as musicians (mine has been inactive while raising twin girls the last three years, but I will record with a new band this winter). I also went on to graduate school and got into the arts, and there is only so much time. Pat and I still play music everyday and Beth is working on new material. I could see us making a CD EP, but only if it was about now.

Pat: I think Mitch realized how much the band meant to me when I surprised him with the new Greenhouse by sending him a few. I didn't tell him in advance what I was doing. The CD also showed us how little Matt really cares about his past. He's not bitter, it's just not important to him, nor does he play guitar anymore.

Scram: Pat, you moved to San Francisco and formed Heyday. (A belated thanks for releasing Barbara Manning’s Lately I Keep Scissors, by the way.) Where did life take the rest of you after the band--not just musically, but otherwise?

Pat: Just wanted to say I'm working on a Barbara Manning Scissors box set. There's a ton of out-takes, demos and live material from the Scissors time period.

Beth: I went to art school in Boston. I had a child in 1995 and opened an artists' cooperative gallery in the Berkshires, Mass. I had a renewed interest in music in 2000 and started playing guitar and writing songs. I'm now pursuing doing a studio project and forming a band.

Mitch: I have a studio and house in Maine and a studio and apartment in Basel, Switzerland. Not Williamsburg and London. There is something liberating being outside of what everyone thinks is important. I mean, people in my town wear trucker caps with absolutely no sense of irony and I am grateful.

Scram: Perhaps the biggest news is that Absolute Grey has reformed to record new material! How is that coming along?

Pat: Well, it's a two-step process. The first step is that Mitch and I are going to remix Sand Down The Moon and release it on CD, probably under the title of For Some Reason. In my mind, this is like a new album, as pretty much no one outside of Greece has ever heard it. Secondly, Beth has written a batch of songs that I think would be really good with Mitch coming in and helping her finish them off. Beth and Mitch haven't really spoken much in the past couple of years, so there's a getting to know each other again process going on, which as I write is moving along nicely. Not because we don't want him, but Matt won't be involved in any new recordings (his choice, not ours). It's a safe bet that Chris Brokaw would be playing guitar, which is totally fine by me.

Scram: Beth, I read that you're planning to release some solo songs. Please elaborate, and let us know where we can find them.

Beth: I'm living in Ithaca, NY right now, but I plan to move to Rochester in the spring of 2005. I'm working with some musicians there who are old friends and I will be recording my album with Dave at Saxon. It will probably sound quite different from Absolute Grey. My voice still sounds good after all these years, possibly even better because of my life's experience. The album will be most, if not all, my own material.

Scram: In the 15-odd years since Absolute Grey broke up, there's always been a small groundswell of interest in what you did. Have you had experiences with people tracking you down or approaching you about the band?

Pat: I often don't think we made much of an impact, and then I'll get surprised. A Google search will show a few bands being compared to us, which is cool. One funny experience was in the early 1990s was watching this English indie-folk duo Evergreen Dazed play in San Francisco. I heard a song that seemed oddly familiar; it took me a few minutes to realize they were covering a song from Painted Post. As Byron says in his liner notes, because we never over-hyped, we never wore out our welcome in people's minds. I certainly was honored that well-known music critics like Byron Coley and Jim DeRogatis still felt Absolute Grey worthy of their time and attention in 2003 to write liner notes.

Beth: There are still people in Rochester who are fans, so I'm looking forward to playing there. I'm sure I'll have a lot of support.

Mitch: Pat has more connections with people interested in Absolute Grey. He was the most notable member.

Beth: As I said, Pat is the official keeper of the flame. He keeps our memory going.

Mitch: Pat is much more involved with music. My life is consumed with running my urban design/landscape architecture studios (www.mrld.net), teaching, showing my work, writing, raising my daughters and working on a new record every couple years. It is interesting to note the current wave of indie-folk artists would not have been heard through the din of post-rock a couple years ago. I hope now that people are more aware of other music, Absolute Grey might get some more attention. And for me, the music I keep making is just an expansion of the music I wrote with Absolute Grey. I have not really changed styles or instrumentation. I hope the songs are better. My daily life with music and musicians is still very satisfying and recent tours have been fun. I enjoy the process more now than in Absolute Grey because most of the pretense is gone and it is just about making music.

(This interview originally appeared in Scram #20)

Lost Amusement Parks
by Chas Glynn

When I was quite young, I went with my folks to Playland at the Beach, a San Francisco amusement park that was about to be torn down. Researching it now, I realize that the oldest I could have been would have been was seven. Even as a child, though, I had a sense that I was visiting something that was ending, something that belonged to another era. Having an architect dad may have helped—many family trips revolved around visits to historic structures that were on the verge of demolition. When we visited Playland, it was winter, rainy, and the Wild Mouse and most of the other outdoor rides had already been decommissioned. The indoor fun house, however, was still open for business. One entered the fun house through a door topped with a giant clown (looking back this may explain my lifelong clown obsession). Even in its dotage, though, the fun house was... fun. There was a big wooden slide (which I think may be the one on the cover of the Cowsills' album) a vast tunnel which rotated as you attempted to walk through it, and the house of mirrors. I remember my dad grumbling about the state the place had fallen into—the slide was slow because hadn't been waxed to a high sheen, the panes of glass in the house of mirrors were covered in dust and countless fingerprints. I was enthralled. Shortly after our visit, Playland was torn down and condos built in its place. Across Ocean Boulevard, the Camera Obscura remains as one of the few leftovers of this urban seaside amusement park, although the part service, loath to be burdened with a decaying relic perched on an unstable cliff, continually threatens to tear it down. As with many people, amusement parks left a strong impression on my young mind. And having the site of these memories disappear leaves a certain nostalgic sadness. My own experience inspired me to look into other amusement parks that have come and gone. In tribute to these lost places, here are some amusement parks and attractions that live on only in memory, as well as one magical individual's visions of what a park should be.

I first read of The World of Sid & Marty Krofft amusement park in Dynamite magazine, which had an article on the then-planned park, and featured a breathless description of a unique new ride in which one sat inside a giant silver ball as it careened through an enormous pinball machine. Hearing nothing more of it in ensuing years, I assumed it was a pipe dream, but I later found out that it had opened and operated, although for less than a year. Located in Atlanta’s Omni International complex, TWOS&MK opened in 1976. This was an indoor park—more of an amusement mall than a traditional park. Visitors boarded a giant escalator which carried them to the top of the six-story complex, where they entered through a gateway composed of a pair of enormous, balloon-wielding mimes. Guests then passed into the Kroffts’ personal fantasy world. In addition to the pinball ride, there was a 60-ton "Crystal Carousel" which floated, hovercraft-like, on a cushion of air. Most familiar was a re-creation of Lidsville, from the psychedelic Krofft TV series of the same name, where visitors were invited to "celebrate amid giant hats." A short trip down a simulated mine shaft conveyed visitors to the "Living Island Adventure," where they could view a pageant starring characters from the H.R. Pufnstuf series.

The park, intrinsically tied to several popular television series, could have been a success, but various factors caused it to fail. It faced many problems—the pinball ride caused a number of injuries, and kept breaking down. Indeed, most of the attractions were built from scratch and faced frequent mechanical problems. And the summer of ’76 proved to be a bad time for tourism. High gas prices, coupled with relentless Bicentennial boosterism (which created the impression that popular tourist spots would be packed with celebrators) meant that many stayed at home that year. And then, too, the Kroffts' vision was just a little… odd. While the warped and vaguely disturbing aesthetic of their TV shows meant that they would long stick in the minds of kids growing up in the '70s, it didn’t necessarily play well with parents taking their kids out for a day of fun. What was amusingly weird for a half-hour on Saturday morning became a bit unnerving when one had to spend a day stuck among it in a windowless complex.

Strange as The World of Sid & Marty Krofft was, it paled in comparison the transcendental meditation-themed amusement park long planned by Doug Henning. TM combined Eastern mysticism and pop-spirituality to become a fad in the '70s, but it’s hard to conceive of it as natural fit for the hurdy-gurdy world of the amusement park. Magician Doug Henning thought differently, though. In 1987, he put his career on hold to begin the creation of Maharishi Veda Land—a theme park to be built in his native Canada, close to Niagara Falls (with a planned sister park in India) which was devoted to Vedic wisdom and enlightenment. In a press release he stated: "We are taking Maharishi's knowledge and then structuring it into entertaining and magical exhibits, rides, and films. There will be boat rides through an ancient Vedic civilization where everyone lives in perfect harmony with natural law. In this exhibit we see enlightened men flying through the air, making objects materialize and vanish at will. We will be able to walk through the Courtyard of Maya where everything we see is an illusion that fades away at a second glance." Doug used his illusionist skills to design such features as piles of money and jewels that disappeared as people grabbed for them, levitating buildings, and boulders metamorphisizing into people. Featured attractions were to be the Magic Flying Chariot Ride (which took visitors on a Monsanto-inner-space-like journey into the atomic structure of a rose), the Corridor of Time (in which parkgoers went on a trip from the birth to the death of the universe), and the Seven Steps to Enlightenment (a series of tiered pavilions which were designed to lead the visitor toward full consciousness). Henning boasted that "one time through and you will never see the world the same way again." Doug Henning died in February 2000, but he earmarked much of his fortune to ensure that work would continue on his beloved amusement park. However, despite over a decade of planning, Maharishi Veda Land seems still to exist largely on paper. Only time will tell if tourists of the future will flock to this park to mix spiritual enlightenment with their thrills and spills.

Less odd, but still very much a personal vision, was one man’s attempt to recreate the mythical world of Oz. Atop North Carolina's Beech Mountain (a popular winter resort), Grover Robbins enlisted the help of designer Jack Pentes to construct the Land of Oz theme park in 1970. Eschewing traditional rides, it endeavored to give visitors the experience of visiting L. Frank Baum's literary creation. Beginning in a Kansas farm (which featured a petting zoo), visitors went through a simulated tornado and embarked on a walk down a yellow brick road into a place adorned with colorful Styrofoam scenery and dancing, costumed characters. One could visit the Cowardly Lion's cave, peer into the handcrafted Scarecrow's house, or take a Wizardly ride in a hot-air balloon. Unfortunately, the remote location made travel to the park an ordeal of twisting mountain roads, and the area was prone to frequent flash thunderstorms, which sent visitors scurrying for shelter. Park employees soon adapted, and would kick off their shoes so as not to slip on the yellow brick road, which became treacherously slick when wet. In 1975, a fire swept through the park, destroying many of the attractions as well as the original dress worn by Judy Garland in the film version of The Wizard of Oz, on display courtesy of Oz-ibila collector Debbie Reynolds. What remained of the park was kept in operation for several more years, growing increasingly more vandalized and decrepit, until it finally closed in 1980. Occasional reunions of park employees and Oz fans take place among the ruins, and Dorothy’s house has been incorporated into the nearby Emerald Mountain vacation development, but this Oz now largely exists only in memory.

Disneyland, of course, is in no danger of disappearing, but many parts of it have faded away. Over the years, rides and attractions are updated, subtly or radically altered, or removed altogether. Tom Sawyer's Island initially featured a fishing pier, with rods provided by the park, but this was closed very shortly after the park’s opening. It quickly became evident that the successful anglers would be burdened with an unwieldy dead fish for the rest of their visit, and many were abandoned in trashcans or lockers. The nearby Swiss Family Treehouse experienced a more recent renovation. Following the release of one of Disney’s animated Tarzan movies, the attraction was renamed Tarzan's Treehouse, with revamped signage and various modification to the set dressing. In an odd oversight, however, Swiss polka music still plays on speakers hidden throughout the treehouse.

Those who visited Disneyland in the '70s and '80s may recall a rather dated version of the future presented by Tomorrowland. Gone now is the Submarine Voyage. Disneyland once had the third largest submarine fleet in the world, after the US and Soviet navies, although Disney’s could only go a few feet underwater. Despite the continued popularity of this ride, it was eliminated in the ’98 revamp of Tomorrowland. Gone too, is Monsanto's Adventure Through Inner Space. Visitors would board buggies and be "miniaturized" to travel through the world of atoms and molecules. (A former girlfriend of mine, as a child, broke her leg hopping from car to car on this ride and entered the hallowed ranks of those who have been injured on amusement park rides.) Also gone is the rather dated House of the Future, which offered such marvels as plastic furniture and a microwave oven. One missing attraction that may not ring a bell except for hardcore Disney fanatics is Captain EO. This large-screen 3D multimedia presentation opened in 1986 and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola, produced by George Lucas, and starred Michael Jackson as a space explorer who transforms an evil planet through the power of pop music. In 1997, it quietly closed and was replaced by the "Honey, I Shrunk the Audience" 3D movie.

Tomorrowland has been fully overhauled, and now attempts to present a vision of the future from a millennial standpoint. Rapidly advancing technology, however, makes today’s gee-whiz gadget commonplace within a few years. Also, the future seems much less a magical wonderland than it did in the mid-20th century. Some of Tomorrowland’s appeal may well have been that it took visitors to an antiquated, but much more appealing, vision of the future. Touchingly, the original Tomorrowland is commemorated in a mural visible over the revamped Tomorrowland.

While Disneyland looms large in shared memory, many have their own personal memories of more obscure amusements past. Mike Lavella, publisher of Gearhead magazine, recalled White Swan Park in his native Pennsylvania. Distinguished by its swan-themed rides, it closed after a number of accidents and fatalities marred its reputation. The country-themed Opryland amusement park is no more, replaced by a more lucrative mall. And while there were many Luna Parks, the one located smack-dab in the middle of Manhattan is viewed by many to be the first modern American amusement park. Featuring landscaping, neoclassical architecture and permanent installations of rides and attractions, it strived for a more tasteful environment than the typical tawdry carnival environment of the day. Present-day park operators could well learn a thing from this industry pioneer.

I'll close with another personal memory, not of a vanished park, but a vanished ride. The Cave Train at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk wasn't thrilling or state of the art—in fact it was worn at the edges by the time I visited the Boardwalk in the mid-'80s. One rode a miniature train through a stalactite and stalagmite-laden tunnel of sprayed stucco, featuring smoke-spewing volcanoes, black light illumination, and fanciful cave scenes of dinosaurs and cavemen in odd, humorous situations, It was obviously built some decades before, and I always got the impression that it was the product of one person's odd vision. I couldn't ever ride it without thinking of the Cramps' song "Caveman." It's gone now, replaced by some prefab spin-n-puke ride, and I feel the Boardwalk is the poorer for it.

Researching this article, I became aware of the vast number of lost amusement parks, and the weight of memory that they have for so many people. While it would be impossible to catalog them all, I hope that those who read this will remember amusement parks from their past, and perhaps seek out decaying attractions remaining in their communities.

(originally published in Scram #14)

Rock Gods & Famous Monsters

Gary Lucas interviewed by Michael Bloom

On Friday March 23^rd, guitar virtuoso Gary Lucas brings his band Gods & Monsters, including Jerry Harrison on keyboards, to Safari Sam's in Hollywood. I only become aware of Lucas back in January while attending a book release on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, for Steven Lee Beeber's The Heebie-Jeebies at CBGB’s: A Secret History of Jewish Punk. Gary was on a panel with Beeber, punk auteur Legs McNeil (Please Kill Me) and writer/professor Vivien Goldman (The Book of Exodus). Lucas mentioned his love of Famous Monsters magazine on the one hand, and his nuevo soundtrack for the 1920 silent film classic The Golem. Since the panel was about Jewish punk, my question concerning Richard Meltzer's influence on the era sparked his interest. When I got home and went to his website, garylucas.com, I discovered the immense latitude of this artist, and realized Scram readers would enjoy a full-length interview. Little did I know it would include stories about his experiences with everyone from Lester Bangs to Aleister Crowley. Here it is.

Gary Lucas with Yale Marching Band 1972, Photo by Jeff Johnson

You studied at Yale. Did you major in music?

Actually I studied English literature at Yale: Shakespeare, Chaucer, Victorian novels, stuff like that. I took one music theory course there for exactly one class, before quitting: when the professor played a recording of what is essentially the pop schmaltz tune "Love is Blue" (derived from a portion of Prokofiev's "Lt. Kije Suite," which is what he actually played), and asked us to write out the chords and bassline by ear, I knew a formal study of Music there certainly wasn't for me--especially when one keyboard virtuoso jumped up front of the class, sat down at the piano, and proceeded to play it back perfectly to the class, by ear...I can read and write music okay, but prefer not to....it gets in the way for me, and I generally don't need to for what I like to do with it...as Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet) used to say: "Music is just black ants crawling across white paper..."

Captain Beefheart was one of your musical influences, and you later became his friend and bandmate. What specifically about Beefheart's music 'inspired' you?

I think the moment I became "possessed" was when I really listened to Trout Mask Replica a couple times...and having first drawn a blank on it outside the obvious spoken-wordjazz of "The Dust Blows Forward" and "Orange Claw Hammer," couldn't really get a handle on it. But gradually the structural beauty and sheer awesome "overwhelming technique" on display sank in, probably around my third listen to "Ella Guru", which was the closest thing to a "pop song" with a hook I could readily grab onto...and I was smitten. This was after my initial sheer bewilderment/first acquaintance with the $1.98 cut- out of Strictly Personal which was just too grungy sounding to my ears after the surface prettiness of polished studio psychedelia like Sgt. Pepper, Traffic, "Good Vibrations," Van Dyke Parks' Song Cycle and other classics of the era I was enjoying...just sounded kinda amateurish and muddled on my first coupla listens, so I filed it away quickly, not to replay it till after cracking the code to Trout Mask. After that everything by Beefheart was sheer gravy, especially Safe as Milk and Lick My Decals Off, Baby, which I inhaled next (at the same time!) up there in New Haven in 1971...

You were a musician and "writer", as well as Radio Station Manager at Yale. Can you talk about the early rock criticism that may have also influenced you...Lester Bangs, Richard Meltzer and/or others? Did you ever get to meet these early pioneers? Any experiences you can share?

Actually, I was the Music Director at WYBC, Yale's radio station, following in the footsteps of Mitch Kapor (early computer geek/visionary who invented the Lotus Spreadsheet and promptly retired at an obscenely young age)...and yep, I wrote music criticism while still in high school for Cogito, the Nottingham High underground paper, which was banned from being sold on the school premises by the reactionary administration. I remember reviewing Jeff Beck's Truth and the Incredible String Band's Hangman's Beautiful Daughter albums for them...later at Yale I wrote for the Yale Daily News about Family, an English band I loved, and also wrote for Zoo World, a tabloid-sized newspaper rock mag out of Florida trying to take on Rolling Stone, a few articles/ reviews about Beefheart, about my experiences playing electric guitar with the Yale Symphony Orchestra in Vienna in '73 performing Leonard Bernstein's "Mass," a review of King Crimson's Lark's Tongue in Aspic, said review of which was reprinted in the booklet accompanying their Young Person's Guide to King Crimson and is the only negative review in there!

 My favorite music writers of my youth were definitely Sandy Pearlman and Richard Meltzer, they really blew my teenage mind with their outrageous and hilariously abstruse over-intellectualized analysis of what is essentially something as basic as the air one breathes (what music really is, or rather, its primary constituent). Richard was definitely much more tongue in cheek, Sandy more formally clinical in his approach, but together they represented a new NYC Jewish-intellectual driven (piss)take on what was hitherto considered to be, basically, packaged goods one consumed without too much thought beyond the fanboy enthusiastic gush of Crawdaddy editor Paul Williams (who I also liked, don't get me wrong)...Lester, when he appeared on the scene, I instantly pegged as a sub-Meltzer derivative/disciple, but he quickly took up the cudgels on behalf of the music the Man can't bust sincerely and with much brio,  and exponentially expanded in stature, in my eyes, when Richard and Sandy more or less bagged it from the diurnal (diurinal?) grind of reviewing-- Richard evolving into a general across the board cultural pundit once he got bored with what he saw as an essentially played-out medium (rockaroll) by the mid-'70s, Sandy morphing into a hip and witty lyricist/producer/Svengali for the Blue Öyster Cult and later the Dictators (Richard of course was along for the occasional lyrical ride with him). Those two were the best, in my book, and still remain so in the Golden Age of Rockwrite (Nick Tosches is up there too, there were a few more I dug also like John Mendelsohn...

I encountered both Richard and Sandy personally at different times, on different occasions--strangely enough, never together at the same time-- Richard first, when he came up to Yale in my sophomore year there for some stoopid symposium on rock criticism (or something like that). We bonded and I later crashed at his pad on Perry Street (actually right down the street here in the West Village where I've lived for about 30 years now) a couple times when I'd come down to NYC for some r and r, he and his girlfriend at the time Roni Hoffman were always gracious that way in letting me stay at their place. I remember him keeping small dead animals in aspic (well, Jello) in his fridge as part of his overall avant- aesthetic, and a squawking nastyass parrot that, uncaged,  used to flap and fly all around their apartment and occasionally excrete multicoloured, multitudinous parrot shit which streamed down a large mirror he had propped up against one wall in his front parlor and congealed into long colorful bas-relief Crayola-like streaks and strips on that mirror...their tv was on constantly, and the toilet didn't flush too good there...

Sandy I met at the first (and only) Rock Writers of the World Convention in Memphis in '73, basically a gigantic freebie gig for every dissolute no-account rock critic who could muster some kind of critical rep to get themselves on the Stax Records invite list. This was also where I first met Lester-- Sandy blew into Memphis one night there on the heels of some BÖC gig somewhere in the general vicinity and we had cheeseburgers and talked to the wee hours. He impressed me mightily with his intellectual acumen and world-historical overview, totally brilliant and slightly crackpot conspiracy theories on everything under the sun and then some, I liked him a lot...both were as intellectually challenging/intriguing to chat with as reading their writings..

Lester later became a friend when I moved to NYC, and my best tale about Lester is when I had him and a bunch of folks like John Morthland over to listen to a first pressing of Beefheart's Doc at the Radar Station album which I was helping to promote as Don V.V.'s erstwhile manager/guitarist--after hearing me perform my solo tour de force "Flavor Bud Living" on side two, Lester asked benignly: "So, which part were you playing, Gary, the top or the bottom?" "That was all me, Lester, in real time," I replied...confounding the ear of the great Lester Bangs was one of the best testimonials I ever received to my guitar playing.

Jeff Buckley was a member of the earliest version of Gods & Monsters. You also co-wrote a few songs with him on his album Grace. Can you talk a little about your experience writing with him?

Jeff Buckley with Gary Lucas, 1992, photo by Chris Buck

Sure, it was profoundly easy, in a way...much easier than a line by line thrash-out with another collaborator-- I would first come up with fully realized instrumental compositions ...motifs, chord structures, rhythms intact, all there...mail them or play them directly to Jeff...he'd go away, sometimes for months, usually just weeks...and damned if he didn't always come back with PERFECT lyrics and a PERFECT melody line that sinuously entwined/enshrined itself inSIDE the matrix of my instrumental, for all time...only once or twice did he offer any modification at all to the basic underlying music, such as asking me to repeat one section of "Mojo Pin" to stretch it out to double verse length because he had more lyrics that he wanted to fit in that section...and he added a vocalese section over the bridge to "Grace" when he came to ultimately record it for his one and only official Columbia studio album (which, incidentally, was named the #1 Modern Rock Album in Mojo last year, their criterion being any album released since they began publication in '92...  Number One, my honeys-- over Radiohead, U2, Dylan, Bright Eyes, Arcade Fire, Outkast --over any other artist/album you might care to name...and yep, I co-wrote 2 songs on that album, the title track and the opening track--actually I wrote about a dozen songs with Jeff Buckley--and five of them still haven't officially been released...several of them as good, if not better, than those hits of his that I'm known for...

Jerry Harrison produced the latest Gods & Monsters album Coming Clean and appears with you in your upcoming show in LA. Can you talk about what it is like to work with him?

Jerry's a cool customer, very diligent, a bit of a technocrat-- and a good guy to have in your corner, another renegade Ivy Leaguer (he and my bass player Ernie Brooks were roommates at Harvard before joining the Modern Lovers)--he has a way with sound I totally respect...also a way with a keyboard that treats the sounds he produces more like sonic architecture than music per se..

How many different instruments do you know how to play? What do you think about "odd" instruments like the theremin? Are there other "extraordinary" instruments you know about?

Basically I can play the guitar really well... and also several different brass instruments not so well (my primary brass instrument was French horn, which I was more or less forced into playing having scored a perfect score on a musical aptitude test that our fascist band leader had all the kids take in order to winnow out those with enough inclination to fill the ranks of the school band and orchestra...French horn was hard enough, as if you look at a photo of me closely it will become apparent that I barely have enough upper lip for a really good embouchure! I can also play a little trumpet, baritone horn, Euphonium...also bass, a bit of rudimentary piano, harmonica, percussion, vibes...you know, if I had some of these instruments lying around my place and had lots of free time I could get much more proficient on many of them I'm sure, as I have a really good ear and am naturally "musical" by nature...but due to lack of space and general boredom with the rote mechanics of "practicing" I choose/chose not too, would much rather read, for instance...or waste hours on the computer...the guitar pretty much says it all for me, a virtual orchestra at your fingertips.

Theremin--I actually had a brainiac/certifiable genius friend attempt to build one for me in high school after getting fired up to possess one after reading about Lothar and the Hand People in the pages of Hit Parader (the ur-Crawdaddy, and the only music mag worth reading before that , and later, Rolling Stone, in the mid-'60s...at once both laughable and fantastically "wrong" lyrics throughout its pages, which was the primary reason most people bought it for!...but actually, for me, it boasted spot-on reportage of early progressive/psychedelic weirdness a'sproutin' in the music biz courtesy of editor/writers Don Paulsen and Jim Delehant....anyway this genius friend (a Harvard boy, natch) never got my theremin really working, it basically squawked and made uncontrollable rude noises, waving your hands in front of the antennae basically made the cacophony worse (this mad scientist is now an ordained minister and high mucky-muck in the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church--he was actually married in a mass Moonie wedding ceremony at Madison Square Garden in the mid-'70s).

Extraordinary instruments--Percy Grainger, whose music I like alot and have covered in the past (a solo guitar arrangement of "Children's March" a/k/a "Over the Hills and Far Away", on my compilation album Operators Are Standing By) reportedly invented an electronic gizmo in the '50s which produced sliding glissando tones--which sounds like a proto-theremin to me...

Your side project the Golem is quite interesting. The Golem, or a humunculus, is a creature born out of the mythology of Jewish mysticism; and is steeped in both kabbalistic and alchemical traditions. Do you have any interests in these areas of magick? Do you have much knowledge of Aleister Crowley, and other mystics who have influenced musicians such as Jimmy Page and Carlos Santana? Are there any mystics you think are worth exploring?

Gary Lucas plays his live score to The Golem at 2003 Venice Biennalle, photo by Riccardo Schwamenthal

Yep, I have read a bit of Gershon Scholem and a smattering of the classic texts, but find them pretty unreadably dense and, well, boring, to tell you the truth--as I do alot of overtly religious texts of any persusaion...I'm sure Madonna and Britney and Paris know alot more about Kaballa hthan I do!...I'm interested in the concept but in a much more culturally curious way, rather than as an actual practitioner--the way I heard it, Kabbalah was an area of Jewish philosophy reserved for elderly tzadik-types who could only be entrusted or could only handle the discipline of studying it thoughtfully after years of preparation (that's what my brother the Orthodox rabbinical student told me anyway)...not something for the casual browsing bourgeoisie...but hey if watered-down Kabbalah ushers in an era of world peace, I'm all for it...alchemy too-- yes I like looking at alchemical art and reading stories about Paracelsus and such,and have perused texts in the past-- but not to the point of obsession...Crowley of course I find fascinating, having read several biographies, piqued by Colin Wilson's classic account in his book The Occult...I loved Crowley's Diary of a Drug Fiend which I read coming down from acid in Taipei after fireworks and a wild motorcycle ride the night of the actual Bicentennial...I certainly am aware of Jimmy Page's interest in Crowley regalia/property. This could have further propelled me to investigate him as I used to dig Jimmy Page alot as a player/producer/composer (I've been called "the anti-Page" by Roy Trakin in Hits--hey, I am NOT anti- Jimmy Page!)...

Mystics I like? Wyndham Lewis would have abhorred that appellation—but check out his book The Wild Body, esp. the essay "Inferior Religions;" also his novels Tarr (the original version), The Apes of God, Self Condemned and The Childermass--critical philosophy such as "Time and Western Man," "Men Without Art", and "The Diabolical Principle and the Dithyrambic Spectator"--plays like Enemy of the Stars and The Ideal Giant--magazines like his Blast and The Tyro--and all of his paintings and drawings, which are fucking unbelievably beautiful--and tell me Lewis is not a mystic genius, and a prodigious one, right alongside James Joyce and other seminal 20^th century modernists (Joyce was a peer and a friend of his actually)-- shamefully unsung...Don Van Vliet is another one, for sure, and I have the distinction of turning Don into a rabid Wyndham Lewis fan and partisan...in music, Arthur Russell was pretty damn intuitively on the mystic wavelength...there are very few others...

What is the last really good book you read, and who are some of your favorite authors?

A Terrible Love of War by the Jungian scholar James Hillman--essential reading to make sense of our current precarious teeter-totter on the lip of the abyss... Isaac Bashevis Singer my favorite author, Ulysses my favorite book...I also like Knut Hamsun, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jim Thompson, Phillip K. Dick, Saul Bellow, Lewis of course, Isaac Babel, Apollinaire, Nabokov.... I'm sure I'm leaving some out here...

 
What kind of food and drink do you enjoy?

I love Chinese, Indian, Italian, deli, steak w/ frites--I'm easy—I love sweets and chocolate too much...I don't drink really—but occasionally like to sip liquers (Becherovka, Slivovitz, Amaretto)--my favorite Scotch is Laphroaig (10 years aged smoky single malt)

Gods & Monsters has been around for some time, in many incarnations. You developed the title before the movie with the same name, I presume.

Yep I came up with it from the same source that film derived its title from (the original Bride of Frankenstein,where fruity Ernest Thesiger as Dr. Praetorious toasts maniacal Colin Clive as Dr. Frankenstein with the immortal line: "To a New World of Gods and Monsters!" Used to run it as a sample in our show, right after our little "Ride of the Valkyries" heavy metal fanfare...

Gods and Monsters live at the Bowery Poetry Club 2007, photo by Eva Apple

photos courtesy Gary Lucas