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January, 1997 (Issue # 20)
- The Specialists -
DJ Johnson.................Editor
Wayne Burke................HTML
coLeSLaw...................Graphic Artist
Lauren Marshall............Administrative Assistant
Louise Johnson.............Administrative Assistant and
Keeper Of The Debris
- The Cosmik Writers -
Jim Andrews, Ann Arbor, coLeSLAw, Robert Cummings, Shaun Dale, Phil Dirt,
David Fenigsohn, Alex Gedeon, Keith Gillard, DJ Johnson, Steven Leith,
Steve Marshall, The Platterpuss, Paul Remington, and John Sekerka.
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T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S
EDITOR'S NOTES: Notes from...uh...the editor. Including the names of last
month's 10 lucky CD winners.
THROUGH THE EYES OF UTAH: Ann Arbor Meets Utah Phillips. Ann kicks back with
folk legend U. Utah Phillips for some good conversation about the life
and times of a guitar strummin' story tellin' drum beatin' anarchist.
FULLER UNDERSTANDING: An Interview With Randy Fuller. 30 years after the
murder of Bobby Fuller, brother Randy looks back on their early lives,
their ride on the rock and roll roller coaster, and that terrible day
when it all came crashing down. This is a survivor's story.
THORAZINE ON THORAZINE: Philly is a rockin' town as long as Thorazine is
around! Fresh off the road after touring in support of their first full
length album, Jo-Ann, Dallas, Elliot and Ross held still just long enough
for this conversation.
TAPE HISS (John Sekerka): John treats us to another pair of interviews, this
time stepping into the world of electronic music for conversations with
Kenneth Newby and Steve Roach.
THE UNIFIED WAVE THEORY: Pollo Del Mar guitarist Ferenc Dobronyi takes you
inside a sound, following its evolution from DNA to the turntable.
RECORD REVIEWS: Jazz, punk, classical, garage, Cajun, funk, bluegrass,
electronic, good old fashioned rock and roll and more.
BETWEEN ZERO & ONE (Steven Leith): And now a word from your computer. Is
the Internet doomed to sink under the weight of commercialism? Can a
balance be achieved?
STUFF I NOTICED (DJ Johnson): SSSssso you think you have cast iron balls and
you say you like to live on the edge? Betcha you can't top this month's
Sharp Pointed Stick Award winner!
THE DEBRIS FIELD (Louise Johnson): The ever-expanding cauldron of "stuff"
includes poems, cartoons that change daily, quotes, movie reviews, a
recipe that should make you toss lunch, and a review of a concert vid.
HOW TO FIND US AND SEND US EROTIC E-MAIL: Or... you know... whatever else
you want to say to us. It was just a suggestion, really. More of a
guideline. Well... it's up to you. Don't let me influence you.
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EDITOR'S NOTES
By DJ Johnson
Happy New Year! Just a few quick things to mention. First, Phil Dirt is
taking a month off to get his new website spiffed up. You'll find a link
to it from our main homepage. Go check it out. It's going to be the
ultimate surf page. He'll be back next month.
Cosmik's artist in residence, coLeSLAw, has opened The coLeSLAw Gallery,
which you can also get to from our main homepage. One of his first
"exhibits" is a collection of Cosmik Debris covers that we didn't end
up using for one reason or another. Every month, I get to choose from
a BUNCH of 'em, so there are a lot of great ones that go unseen. Now you
can see them. Be sure to take a look.
One of our interviews this month is with Randy Fuller. Randy is the younger
brother of the late Bobby Fuller, and the bassist of The Bobby Fuller Four.
Their biggest hit, "I Fought The Law," is familiar to just about everybody
in this world. There is an unfortunate and unpleasant legal battle taking
place between Norton Records and Del-Fi Records over the ownership of
certain tapes that Bobby and Randy made before they were famous. We want
to emphasize that we are not taking sides. We are giving away copies of
Del-Fi's release because they were made available to us. We would have
loved to give away five of each, but we weren't able to contact the good
folks at Norton in time. Until all the facts are in and the smoke clears,
we're going to do our best not to form any official opinions. We didn't
ask Randy any questions about the case for legal reasons.
Well, we're a little late for Christmas, but we still have presents for
ten lucky contest winners. Here's the lowdown: Winners of the Curtis
Mayfield CD, New World Order, are Jan Flodell (Norrkoping, Sweden), David
Alfano (Menlo Park, California), George Dobbs (Harrington Park, New Jersey),
Marion Francis O'Shaughnessy (Rockford, Michigan) and Riccardo Lancioni
(Empoli, Italy).
The five winners of Down By Law's latest CD, All Scratched Up, are
Christopher Bryant (Hillsboro, Indiana), Dan Lynch (Bocca Raton, Florida),
Christopher Kakkos (Athens, Greece), Craig L. Marrano (Cranbury, New Jersey),
and Neil Skepper (Whyalla, South Australia). Congrats to all!
REMEMBER, ASCII READERS: You can still enter CD drawings! Just send a
message to moonbaby@serv.net with your name, address, e-mail address,
and phone number, plus the name of the CD you are trying to win. (We
often have more than one contest going at a time, y'see...) This month,
there are two contests.
1) Bobby Fuller Four: Shakedown - The Texas Tapes Revisited (2-CD set).
2) Utah Phillips & Ani DiFranco: The Past Didn't Go Anywhere.
One entry per person per contest, please.
That just about does it. Hope you enjoy our first issue of 1997.
DJ Johnson
Editor
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THROUGH THE EYES OF UTAH
U. Utah Phillips Interviewed by Ann Arbor
I was asked to review the new CD The Past Didn't Go Anywhere by U. Utah
Phillips and Ani DiFranco. I knew Utah's infamous "Moose Turd Pie" song
from his "Good Though" album and I'd listened to the CD he did with Rosalie
Sorrels called "The Long Memory." I knew that he was a folksinger of the
Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie vintage, and I'd heard some of Ani DiFranco's
music as well. I read the liner notes and found out that Ani had wanted to
set Utah's storytelling to music and had done that in "the past didn't go
anywhere." I listened to the CD and was captivated. The stories are very
compelling, filled with many heartfelt feelings and riddled with emotion,
but the music adds another level of emotional intensity. This CD made my
top 5 list for 1996 and here's the interview that adds yet another level
of understanding to the stories shared on the CD.
U. Utah Phillips Interview 11/22/96
1) Bridges (track 1 of The Past Didn't Go Anywhere)
What I do is I collect stories, and songs, and poems.
I seek out the elders and garner stories, and songs, and poems.
Characterized critically as "oh that's that '60s stuff,"
Like someone doing old rock 'n roll would be "that 50's stuff."
This is the '90s you know.
I have a good friend in the East a good singer, and a good folksinger, a good
song collector; who comes and listens to my shows and says, "You sing a lot
about the past, you always sing about the past. You can't live in the past
you know."
And I say to him, "I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the
oldest song you know and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now
the past didn't go anywhere did it? It's right here right now."
I always thought that anybody [who] told me I couldn't live in the past was
trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it would get him in
serious trouble.
No it's not that '50s, '60s, '70s, '90s that whole ideas of decade packages,
things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in
1975, well what's that got to do with decades? No that packaging of time is a
journalistic convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important
events and important ideas. To defy that!
Time is an enormous long river and I'm standing in it just as you're standing
in it. My elders were the tributaries and everything they thought, and every
struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every
song they created and every poem that they laid down, flows down to me. And
if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to seek, and if I take time
to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can
reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this
world.
Bridges. From my time to your time. As my elders from their time to my time.
And we all put into the river and we let it go and it flows away from us,
and away from us. 'Til it no longer has our name, our identity, it has its
own utility, its own use. And people will take what they need to make it part
of their lives.
Bridges.
The past didn't go anywhere. Did it?
Let me tell you a story.
* * *
Cosmik: What is life really like in Nevada City, CA? Are you really part
owner of a New Age bookstore?
Utah: Well Joanna, unfortunately, had to give up her partnership in the
bookstore. It was getting to be way too strenuous. Now we work together.
The thing that really happened here, I was diagnosed with congestive heart
failure which meant that I had to stop touring. I was on a plane an average
of about 120 cities a year for the past 27 years, and that suddenly had to
stop. And that meant that we really had to figure out a different way to
make a living. Which meant her staying home and us setting up a little
office here. Actually what I'm working at now is learning how to put
together and syndicate a radio show. I've always been a great supporter of
public and community radio and that's what I want to do.
Nevada City is a city of about 2700 people. There are perhaps 3 repertory
theatre companies here and 2 working poetry workshops.
Cosmik: Wow. And a men's drumming circle.
Utah: This is a patina of New Age community, here. Every healing discipline
you can imagine. There are so many healers here it makes me sick! Over the
top of a hereditary oligarchy of old mining and logging money, which
really runs the show, although no one wants to admit it. You could come to
Nevada City and say "this is a very progressive, really hip city" with all
the poetry and theatre going on. This [county], Nevada county is the
whitest county in California. It voted more substantially for Bob Dole than
it did for Bill Clinton. And it voted very substantially for Prop 209--
anti-affirmative action. So, you see, if you scratch the New Age surface,
you get down to the same old crud.
That's one of the reasons I think we stay around here is because it is so
interesting. You know, if you're really interested in changing the world
you've gotta pick your battleground. This one at least is beautiful, very
beautiful. The huge cedars, the ancient oaks, and this beautiful old Gold
Rush town that still looks the same, although it caters mainly to tourists
these days.
I think if you're interested in a struggle where it's pretty easy to
decide which side you're on, this would be a pretty good place to do it.
Course, we've struggled wherever we happened to be.
Cosmik: You've lived in Utah, which isn't exactly a bastion of liberalism.
You've lived in Mississippi. You've ridden the rails all over the United
States. You're no stranger to people who think differently than you do.
Utah: Well, I have traveled, bummed a great deal. The difference in Utah,
you know I got along in Utah real well, even though I was raised in the
Jewish community there. My mother wouldn't let us go to the Boy Scouts,
because at that time the Church didn't admit Black people. And most of the
Boy Scout troops were at the LDS or Mormon church wards. That since has
changed. You see the Mormons are scrupulously honest people. Which means
that if you've got a County Commission or a City Council that is almost all
LDS, they'll make up dumb rules but then they'll play by them. So you can
always predict how they'll respond to any provocation. Corruption, is
when the Board of Supervisors or the City Council make up dumb rules and
if you figure out how to get around them, they change them. That's the
definition of corruption. The Mormons were honest, but wrong. And here,
they play the game any way they feel they can get away with it.
Cosmik: I got it. I do want to play the track called "Nevada City, CA;" can
you give us a little more background on it?
Utah: They used to call it "Nirvana Silly," when the hippies first moved up
here. This was a gold mining town. Nevada City was supposed to be the
capital of California. It was one of the oldest gold mining towns. It was
the first city in the state to be electrified because they were using an
Australian electrical process to extract low grade ore. Up into the '50s
the mines were still working... and then all of a sudden that explosion
happened, the summer of love and so on. Let's move back to the land
movement. The mines were closing and collapsing, the mine economy was
failing, and land was really, really cheap. So young hippies moved up here,
set up communes which eventually dissolved into separate plots. Now what
you've got is old hippies, retired miners, loggers, old hippies, and
young countercultural people who are drawn here, I can't quite figure out
why... probably because it's beautiful.
Cosmik: Probably because it is. This story that we're about to hear was told
in what context originally?
Utah: Oh, it was told away from Nevada City, for the purpose of discouraging
people from visiting it...as a satire. I used to do the same thing in
Utah to make up stuff to discourage people... we've got too many people,
too many people... People have better things to do with their time than
come up here and shop for cryin' out loud!
* * *
2) Nevada City, California (track 2 of The Past Didn't Go Anywhere)
At the onset, those of you who may have heard me should probably turn to
those who may have not, and calmly reassure them that this is in fact what
happens when I sit on a stage. Not much more, this is about it. You'll notice
no sudden or dramatic change in either my instrumental or vocal attack, as
it were.
This is nonetheless an American folksong. Did you recognize it as such?
'Course you would. You don't hear 'em much anymore. Don't hear 'em on your AM
radio. Folksingers hardly ever sing 'em that's 'cuz they're boring. Folk
music is boring. Wack fall the die doe ho ye winds high ho, hell that's
boring, but I am a folksinger, this is a folk music organization, you are
ostensibly the folk--n'est ce pas?
That means we own this song together--right? We have thereby incurred
certain social obligations which we will faithfully discharge--right? We're
going to sing this damn song together boring or not...
I'm still in Nevada City, California up there in the Footh-ills of the
Sierra. I call them the "Footh-ills" because it's spelled like that. Oh the
old gold mining town, I've talked to some of you about that. Twenty-seven
hundred people there. One of the '49ers towns. And I also told you about the
only social life in the town being the Books of Harmony New Age bookstore,
where people go down in the evening and channel dolphins and Martians. It's a
New Age chronosynclastic infindibulum or epicenter, as it were, Nevada City,
California. Well I was gone for a bit on one of the trips since I saw you
last, and I got back and my wife had bought the bookstore. So I am now
ostensibly part proprietor of a New Age bookstore in Nevada City, California.
Can you picture that?
And I'm open to all those things. If you live in California you have to be
open, if not they pry you open.
And I read just as much as I can. She's got all the new men's literature in
there. Most of my men friends belong to Robert Bly men's drumming circles. Do
you do that here? Healthy. They're out in the wilderness caterwauling, and
flailing away at those things and dragging their scrotums through the
underbrushes. Healthy I suppose. We swing in the trees, and we steal sheep.
We don't have a drumming league, we have a grooming order. Robert Bly came by
on one of his workshop trips to teach us how to drum. We ate him.
Nevada City, California
Nevada City, California
Nevada City, California
Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Nevada City, California
Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Nevada City, California
Anyone know what I'm talking about? Good!
Do you have any "NARPs" around here? New Age Rural Professionals? Out
cruising the backroads in their old green carryalls with their car stereos
blaring meditation music out into the wilderness. It's a conscious... whole
place lightning struck by the peripatetic ruminations of the Tibetan ruling
class in exile... a lot of Buddhists around there. Nevada City, California.
Meanwhile this very minute ol' Jesse McVeigh the well digger, nobody knows
how old he is, lived in that county all of his life, is sitting at the bar of
the National Hotel, this very minute, looking at the freaks out in the
street, and muttering under his breath, "No matter how New Age you get, Old
Age gonna kick yo ass."
Does anyone know what I'm talking about?
Nevada City, California.
* * *
Cosmik: There it is: Nevada City, California in all its glory. I laughed
myself sick the first time I heard that. The sense of humor and the parody
is wonderful. I loved the vivid images of the men caterwauling, swinging
through the trees, stealing sheep.. .I just thought it was great.
Utah: They do that, you know. Robert Bly's crowd. I love Robert Bly's poetry
and I wish he'd stick to it. That sort of parody comes from talking to
the women around town...who are with men who are going through that Robert
Bly's rites of passage in the drumming circles. [The women around town]
who read Bly's books and say "I don't trust this man!" It's more of the
same old trip. I like to parody Robert Bly. I love the way he does his
poetry. He talks with his hands. He waves his arms and is very animated
with the way he uses his body. I wish he'd stick to poetry. You know in
the old days drummers were salesmen that sold lightning rods from door to
door, maybe he ought to take up that.
Cosmik: Tell us a bit about Korea. I love that story about you in the car
with your son driving up to Maine and he asks you, "Why are you the way
you are? (as most teenagers do to their parents) Why are you so lame? Why
are you so weird?"
Utah: First of all I think that young people, especially little kids, really
like the company of and appreciate adults who exhibit anomalous behavior.
Who will put on a red clown nose at what would be apparently innappropriate
moments.
Cosmik: As long as they're not their parents.
Utah: Just to let them know that there are alternatives to growing up. I
never intended to grow up. I looked at grownups and I said, "they run
banks and fly B-52s, and who wants to do that!" So I decided to grow out,
or over, or under, or through, or by, or anything but up--dammit! Brendan
grew up with that kind of anomalous behavior. I just didn't behave like
other parents. Besides which, I was an older father. Brendan was born
when I was in my 40s.
Being a soldier in Korea in the '50s was one of the great watershed
experiences of my life and it's not one I'm sure I would trade. I saw a
tremendous amount that I would really like to be able to forget. Kind of
like the Vietnam vets. But instead of letting that get me down, it really
radicalized me. It gave me an understanding that the State is a liar and
a butcher and I don't care which state you're talking about. It really
taught me that although I love the country, America, very, very deeply
and I've roamed every inch of it, I'm vastly in love with it. I just can't
stand the government. That experience transformed me into a pacifist and
into an anarchist, and believe me I know what that means.
It's not anything you want to put on your kids. If your experience of it
has been subjective, and your war with the State is subjective, deeply
emotional. It's not something you can put on your kids, like a person
speaking in tongues from the Pentecost is going to raise their kid up to
be this or else. You gotta wait until they ask, you gotta wait until the
opportunity comes up, until the curiosity manifests itself. That's exactly
what happened in the car alongside the road. The curiosity came up and it
opened the door for me to be able to speak to him, for the first time,
you know man to man. I guess that he was 15 when that happened. It was
like a breath of fresh air sweeping through both of our lives. Because I
was able to talk to him about Ammon Hennessy, and why I think and why I
do the things I do.
* * *
3) Korea (track 3 of The Past Didn't Go Anywhere)
"I have just left your fighting sons in Korea. They have met all tests there
and I can report to you without reservation that they are splendid in every
way." Douglas MacArthur
Ever since the kids've been little they've always known that I vanished from
their lives periodically. They never really had any idea of what it is that I
do. What do I do when I'm away? If I don't know why should they? We never
travelled together at all. Since the kid've been little they've always known
that I vanished from their lives periodically They never had any idea of
what it is that I do.
Brendan, the 14 year old, he got to travel with me during the summer. We got
to talk to each other as adults instead of as father and son.
We left Boston, we were headed up to the Left Bank Cafe in Blue Hill, Maine.
Brendan, just above Marblehead turned to me and he asked, "How did you get to
be like that?" It's a fair question. I knew what he meant, but he didn't have
all the language to say exactly what he meant. What he meant to ask was:
"Why is it that you are fundamentally alienated from the entire institutional
structure of society?"
I said, "Well I've never been asked that, you know. Now don't listen to the
radio and don't talk to me for half an hour while I think about it. We drove
and talked, we were on Highway 1, because it was pretty and close to the
water.
[We] got up toward the Maine border and there was a picnic area off to the
side, some picnic tables. It was a bright, clear day. I pulled into their
parking lot, we sat down at the picnic tables. I said, "Sit down I want to
tell you a story, because I've thought about it."
We sat down. I said, "You know I was over in Korea."
And he said, "I've always wondered about that. Did you shoot anybody?"
I said, as honestly as I could, "I don't know. But that's not the story."
"I was up at Kuma-ri Gap by the Imjin River. There were about 75,000 Chinese
soldiers on the other side and they all wanted me out of there, with every
righteous reason you could think of. I had long since figured out that I was
the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time, for the most
specious of reasons. But there I was, my clothing was rotting on my body.
Every exotic mold in the world was attacking my clothing and my person. My
boots had big holes in them from the rot. I wanted to swim in the Imgen River
and get that feeling of death, that feeling of rot off of me. The Chinese
soldiers were on the other side. They were swimming, they were having a
wonderful time. But there was a rule, a regulation against swimming in the
Imjin River. I thought that was foolish. But then a young Korean fellow, a
carpenter who worked with us by the name of Yongsegan, all of his family
had been killed off in the war. He explained it to me, in what English he
had.
When we get married here, the young married couple moves in with the
grandparents. But there's nothing growing, everything's been destroyed.
There's no food. So [when] the first baby is born, the oldest, the old man
goes out with a jug of water and a blanket, and sits on the bank of the Imgen
River and waits to die. He sits there until he dies. When he dies his body
rolls down the bank and will be carried out to sea. We don't want you to swim
in the Imgen River because our elders are floating out to sea.
That's when it began to crumble for me. That's when I ran away, not just from
that. I ran away from the blueprint for self-destruction I had been handed as
a man, for violence in excess, for sexual excess, for racial excess... We
had a commanding officer who said of the GI babies, fathered by GIs and
Korean mothers, that the Korean government wouldn't care for, so they were in
these orphanages... He said, "As sad as that is, someday this will really
help the Korean people because it will raise the intelligence level." That's
what we were dealing with.
Well I ran away. I ran down to Seoul City down toward Ascom, not to the Army.
I ran away to a place called The Korea House. It was Korean civilians
reaching out to GIs to give them some better vision of who they were than
what we were getting up in the divisions. They hid me for 3 weeks. Late one
night, because they didn't have any clothes that would fit me... Late one
night, it was a stormy, stormy night rain falling in sheets, I could go out,
because they figured nobody would see me. We walked through the mud and the
rain. Seoul City was devastated. They took me to a concert at the AWOL
Women's University. [There was] a large auditorium with shell holes in the
ceiling and the rain pouring through the holes. Kleig lights on the stage
hooked up to car batteries. This wasn't the USO. This was the Korean
Students Association. I was the only white person there. The person who they
had invited to sing was Marian Anderson, the great Black operatic soprano who
had been on tour in Japan. There she was singing "Oh Freedom" and "Nobody
Knows the Trouble I've Seen." I watched her through the rain coming through
the ceiling and thought back to Salt Lake. My father, Sid, who ran the
Capitol Theatre. It was a movie house, though it had been an old vaudeville
house and he wanted to bring live performances back to the Capitol. In 1948
he invited Marian Anderson to come and sing there. I remember we went to the
train station to pick her up and took her to the biggest hotel in town, the
Hotel Utah, but they wouldn't let her stay there, because she was Black. And
I remembered my father's humiliation and her humiliation as I saw her singing
there through the rain. And I realized right then, Brendan, that it was all
wrong. That it all had to change and that change had to start with me."
* * *
Utah: It ends by saying "the change had to start with me" and it did.
I got back from Korea on the troop ship Mitchell and I got on the freight
trains and rode for about 2 years. [I was] really so disturbed by what I
had seen and what I had done that I wasn't sure I could live in the
country anymore.
It was Ammon Hennessy at the house for transients and migrants in Salt
Lake City, one of the Catholic worker houses. He quoted Mark Twain to me,
"Loyalty to the country always and loyalty to the government when it
deserves it." Which was a distinction I hadn't been making.
Actually what Ammon taught me was: if a pilot flies over Baghdad and
drops a bomb and wipes out a whole square block with a lot of loss of
life, and someone blows up a building in downtown Oklahoma City, that
there is no moral distinction between them. There is no moral distinction
between state sanctioned violence and unsanctioned violence. If I was to
go to somebody's house and throw an incendiary through the window and set
it on fire, and then shoot the people as they came out, they'd say that I
was criminally insane and they'd lock me up for a long time. Either that
or they'd electrocute me. Exactly the same behavior, precisely the same
behavior is sanctioned by the state, as a soldier can get you a medal or
maybe elected to Congress.
That's what Ammon did for me, he taught me to think, and to really treat
violence as a social addiction especially in this culture. And then to
deal with it like a recovering alchoholic deals with alcohol. He probably
saved my life, because my behavior coming back was pretty angry and pretty
violent. It was as necessary for me to become a Pacifist, as it was
necessary for the alcoholic to give up booze.
Cosmik: So your response to the Korean War was to ride the rails?
Utah: [It] was to sort out my thoughts, to get away from the stink and the
death and to try to cleanse my mind. It didn't work. The only thing that
worked was the old, old formula which seems to have vanished from our
culture. The Dean of Religion at Harvard University brought it up again
in an article lately. The notion of repentance, atonement and forgiveness.
Repentence, in secular terms, I'm not a Christian, repentance means
acknowledging that you really blew it, that you made a dumb choice, and
caused a lot of other people a lot of misery. You were the one 7000 miles
from your home not them, and you went there and cause them a lot of trial.
Atonement means you've got to put it back somehow. You've got to use your
life somehow to make the world a better place, to change the world. Like I
say, the change begins with you. But you gotta somehow put it back.
Through, in my case it was working in the Civil Rights movement, very
briefly in Mississippi in voter registration. It was in the struggle to
recognize mainland China in the '60s. Fairplay for Cuba. And finally,
running for the U.S. Senate in Utah as a Peace candidate in 1968. We took
6000 votes in a campaign against the War in Vietnam. And then of course
there's forgiveness, and forgiveness begins where it started. The change
begins with me, the forgiveness begins with me. When I can begin to
forgive myself for what I have participated in, for what I've been a part
in. And when the people around me open up enough to what I'm doing with
my life, to what I'm singing and what I'm saying to be able to say, "That
did me some good. That helped me over a hard decision. That helped me
over a hard time in my life." Then you've done that. That's what's
happened in your life: repentance, atonement and forgiveness. That seems
to work. I wish that I saw more of that among vets.
I know that there are Vietnam vets who've gone back to Vietnam and worked
with orphanages, and worked with agricultural programs. They've got it,
they've figured it out. Mainly it's overcoming a crippling bitterness, a
crippling anger, a sense of rage, of being outraged yourself that
paralyzes you and prevents you from doing anything from hanging out on
the streets to hanging out in the woods. That rage needs to be transformed
into love and that love needs to be transformed into action. Like Dorothy
Day said, the founder of the Catholic Worker, she described Ammon
Hennessey as "Love in Action." She used Dostoevsky's words: "Love in
action is harsh and dreadful, compared to love in dreams."
Cosmik: You came back from Korea, you rode the rails trying to get it out of
your system, and at some point you met Ammon Hennessey.
Utah: That's right. I came into a railroad yard from Ogden, switched down on
the Western Pacific. I heard there was a house by the railroad yard that
had a lantern hanging in the back, as a beacon. And that they had free
clothes, a clothing barrel and free food and a place to flop. So I found
my way up there, I needed those things. There was this anarchist, pacifist,
Catholic, vegetarian, tax refuser, draft dodger in two World Wars, one
man revolution in America, there to deal with me. He was dealing with all
of us in that place. He was dealing with a lot of violence and a lot of
booze, in a very quiet...I don't know how he did it. He would never call
the cops. He handled everything himself.
Cosmik: Is he still alive?
Utah: No Ammon died in 1970 right after I left Utah, but he continues to
change my life every day that I walk the planet. I think that's another
real important lesson about change. I don't think you can change anybody.
I think we know that as lovers. I think we know that as parents. All we
can do is offer tools and opportunities, and then people will use them or
they won't. Ammon opened up whole new ways of thinking about things and
of acting, that my anger and my own self-doubt had disguised, had
submerged, so that I was able over the years to gradually move to
becoming a whole person.
Cosmik: Here is Utah Phillips' tribute to Ammon Hennessey.
* * *
4) Anarchy (track 4 of The Past Didn't Go Anywhere)
I learned in Korea that I would never again in my life, abdicate to someone
else my right and my ability to decide who the enemy is.
Please forgive me.
I got back from Korea, I was so mad at what I had seen and done. I wasn't
sure I could ever live in the country again. I got on the freight trains up
in Everett north of Seattle and kind of cruised the country for 2 years
making up songs. I was drunk most of the time and forgot most of those. I'd
heard that there was a house in Salt Lake City by the roper yards of the
Denver Rio Grand and Western where there was a clothing barrel and free food.
So I got off the train there. I was headed for Salt Lake anyway. I found
that house right where they said it was. But most of all I found this wiry
old man, 69 years old, tougher 'n nails, heart of gold, a fellow by the name
of Ammon Hennessey. Anybody know that name? Ammon Hennessy?
One of Dorothy Day's people, the Catholic Workers. During the '30s they
started houses of hospitality all over the country there are about 80 of
them now. Ammon Hennessey was one of those. He'd come West to start this
house I'd found called the Joe Hill House of Hospitality. Ammon Hennessy was
a Catholic, anarchist, pacifist, draft dodger of two World Wars, tax refuser,
vegetarian and one-man Revolution in America, I think that about covers it.
He was pure hell. First thing he did, after he got to know me, he said "You
know you love the country. You come in and out of town on these trains
singing songs about different places and beautiful people. You know you love
the country, you just can't stand the government, get it straight! He quoted
Mark Twain to me, "Loyalty to the country always, loyalty to the government
when it deserves it." Get it straight.
It was an essential distinction I had been neglecting. And then he had to
reach out and grapple with the violence but he did that with all the people
around him. The Second World War vets on medical disabilities and all drunked
up. The house was filled with violence which Ammon, as a pacifist dealt
with, every moment, every day of his life.
He said, "You've got to be a pacifist!"
I said, "Why?"
He said, "It'll save your life."
My behavior was very violent then.
I said "What is it?"
He said, "Well I can't give you a book by Ghandi, you wouldn't understand it.
I can't give you lists of rules that if you sign it, you're a pacifist. You
look at it like booze. You know alcoholism will kill somebody, until they
finally get the courage to sit in a circle of people like that and put their
hand up in the air and say 'Hi, my name's Utah I'm an alcoholic.' And then
you can begin to deal with the behavior. And have the people define it for
you, whose lives have been destroyed. It's the same with violence. An
alcoholic, they could be dry for 20 years. They're never going to sit in that
circle and put their hand up and say 'I'm not an alcoholic anymore.' No
they're still going to put their hand up and say 'Hi, my name's Utah I'm an
alcoholic.' It's the same with violence. You've got to be able to put your
hand in the air and acknowledge your capacity for violence, and then deal
with the behavior. And have the people whose lives you've messed with define
that behavior for you. And it's not going to go away. You're going to be
dealing with it every moment, in every situation for the rest of your life."
I said, "Okay, I'll try that."
Ammon said, "It's not enough!"
I said, "Oh."
He said, "You were born a white man in mid-twentieth century industrial
America. You came into the world armed to the teeth with an arsenal of
weapons. The weapons of privilege: racial privilege, sexual privilege,
economic privilege. If you wanna be a pacifist it's not just giving up guns,
and knives, and clubs, and fists, and angry words. But giving up the weapons
of privilege and going into the world completely disarmed. Try that!"
That old man has been gone now about 20 years, and I'm still at it. But I
figure that if there's a worthwhile struggle in my own life, that's probably
the one. Think about it.
I'd always wanted to write a song for that old man. He never wanted one about
him. He was that way, but something mulched up out of his thought. His
anarchist thought. Anarchist in the best sense of the word.
Oh so many times he stood up in front of Federal District Judge Ritter, that
old fart. He'd be picked up for picketing illegally. He never plead innocent
or guilty he plead anarchy.
Ritter'd say "What's an anarchist Hennessey?"
And Ammon would say, "Why an anarchist is any body who doesn't need a cop to
tell him what to do. Kind of a fundamentalist anarchist."
Ritter'd say, "But Ammon you broke the law what about that!"
Ammon would say, "Oh judge, your damn laws, the good people don't need them
and the bad people don't obey them, so what use are they?"
Anarchy.
Anarchy.
Well I lived there for 8 years and I watched him, mainly watched him. And I
discovered watching him that 'anarchy' is not a noun but an adjective. It
describes the tension between moral economy and political authority,
especially in the area of combinations--whether they're going to be
voluntary, or coercive. The most destructive, coercive combinations are
arrived at through force. Like Ammon said, "Force is the weapon of the weak."
Anarchy. Think about it. Anarchy.
Anybody know that name? Ammon Hennessey?
* * *
Cosmik: Very powerful! Ammon Hennessey and Anarchy. So that's how you became
an anarchist.
Utah: That's absolutely right. By the way, I never like to say these things,
to lay these things down and then just let them lie there. I require
responses. People disagree with me, or they agree with me, or they have
something to add to my thinking. I want people to be able to communicate
with me about these ideas. I expect a response, so I'd like to give you my
address: Utah Phillips, P.O. Box 1235 Nevada City, CA 95959. Send me your
thoughts and feelings because it helps me to make decisions about the right
things to do.
Cosmik: If you're not totally opposed to computers, you might enjoy being
on-line.
Utah: Well I do have an e-mail address: utah@nccn.net Some folks in San
Jose have also set up a web page called "Hidden Waters" (http://www.***
It has other diatribes in it.
Cosmik: What do you think Ammon Hennessey would say to today, what's going on
in 1996, here in the United States?
Utah: He would probably say that "the battle rages," that it still is going
on. He would still be convinced that violence is a social addiction. I
think that Ammon also would have grown into the feeling that I possess
very, very strongly, we hear that our society is becoming becoming more
violent, society is becoming more uncaring. I don't believe that. What is
the similarity between Pol Pot and the genocide in Cambodia, and what just
happened in Bosnia, Rwanda and so on. Women aren't doing this. Kids aren't
doing this. Old people aren't doing this. It's young men. We've got a
serious male problem with violence. It's the young man with the gun, I
don't care what side he's on. That's what [makes] the world tremble in
its boots. That's what people in houses worry about, it's the young men
with the guns showing up with all these other agendas to work out. It's
the young men with guns doing it to everybody else. And if we can't deal
with the problem on that fundamental a term, then we can't deal with
sexism in any other terms. That's one of the fronts that you would find
Ammon on: what young men are doing to everybody else.
Cosmik: It sounds quite consistent.
Utah: That's the remarkable thing about Ammon and the Catholic Workers. Since
the 1930's the incredible consistency that's grounded in very deep
feeling of peace and also very deep feelings that human beings are
innately cooperative, like Dr. Leakey said. And this notion that it's dog
eat dog and we've got to be competitive against everybody else, that's
just a bunch of hogwash we've been fed by a bunch of greedy people who
want all our money.
Cosmik: Any parting thoughts?
Utah: Never wear a hat that has more character than you.
Cosmik: I love that line. Where does that come from?
Utah: One of the last hatmakers in North America, Joe Trifonopolis up in
Tacoma. He passed his tools and his trade on to a young apprentice, I'm
glad to say. Joe Trifonopolis passed away. I had the pleasure of buying,
at a used, junk store, a Trifon hat. So I was playing up in Tacoma and I
sought him out in this ancient hat shop. That's what he said as I was
walking out the door with my Trifon hat. "Never wear a hat that has more
character than you."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
FULLER UNDERSTANDING: An Interview With Randy Fuller
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
Interviewing Randy Fuller was a challenge I wasn't at all prepared for. Not
because of Randy, but because of situations that currently surround Randy.
Due to a legal battle between Del-Fi Records and Norton Records over the
ownership of certain reels of 35 year old tape--and specifically due to the
court orders prohibiting discussion of aspects of that case--some subjects
had to be approached from the side roads. And some had to be avoided
altogether. If you're waiting for Randy to say who is right and who is
wrong, forget it. Sorry. Not allowed at this point in time.
Bassist Randy Fuller and his brother, Bobby, were rock and roll heroes in
their hometown of El Paso, Texas in the early 60's. Within a few years,
the Bobby Fuller Four had a national hit on their hands with "I Fought The
Law," and a strong follow-up with "Love's Made A Fool Of You." Suddenly,
it seemed the sky was the limit. With Bobby's intensity, drive and
undeniable talent, the future looked extremely bright.
It all came to an abrupt halt on July 18th, 1966, when Bobby Fuller was
found dead in his car. Bruised, bloody, and soaked with gasoline (some
of which had ended up in his throat), the obvious conclusion was murder.
The obvious conclusion wasn't reached. Despite the presence of a book
of matches next to his body and a gas can on the floor, and despite the
other signs of violence, Bobby's death was ruled a suicide.
For Randy and his family, it was another in a string of terrible tragedies.
Two of his brothers were murdered, and one was killed in a car accident.
His mother was so devastated by Bobby's death that she went into a ten
year slide. Now, 53 year old Randy Fuller's family is all gone. With
Bobby's death, Randy's life was thrown into confusion and turmoil. After
many years of soul searching and learning his own strength, he's able
to stand again on solid ground. But the questions still haunt him. On
a recent installment of Unsolved Mysteries that dealt with Bobby's murder,
Randy asked anyone with information to come forward. There are many
theories about who killed Bobby, and after the letters poured in in
response to the show, there were many more. The oft-mentioned mystery
blonde named Melody was mentioned in the segment, and she came forward
soon after. No, she wasn't involved with a mob figure while she was fooling
around with Bobby, or at least that's what she says now. After talking to
her on the telephone, Randy only has more questions about his brother's
death, and none of the answers he'd hoped for.
Despite having to tiptoe around the legal issues, and despite the sometimes
disturbing subject matter, talking to Randy was very enjoyable. He's a
friendly man: a "good ol' boy" with a great Texas drawl and the down-home
vernacular to go with it. The following conversation took place by phone
early one morning a few days before Christmas. I got so caught up in his
recollections and his way of relating them that I ended up throwing the
"game plan" out the window. Rather than edit the interview to death, I
decided to run it "actual size," with topics coming and going as they
actually did during the conversation. Take notes and you'll be just fine.
* * * *
Cosmik: How did music find its way into the Fuller household?
Randy: Well, my mother and dad loved music. When we were in high school...
or in grade school, actually, or even before that, I can remember my
mother wanting us to take piano lessons and voice lessons and things
like that, you know. When we went into high school, you know, first
Bobby played the trumpet and I played the trombone, and that was all
due to Tommy Dorsey and all that kind of stuff through my parents.
And then when Elvis came out, it just went right down the line... When
you're young and you see someone like Elvis or Buddy Holly, you know,
you want to start playing THOSE kinds of instruments.
Cosmik: Who was the first one to have a guitar?
Randy: Oh, I guess I was. Let's see... that was a long time ago. I got
my first guitar when I was 14 or 15. Somewhere in there. It was a
Country Gentleman. Black Gretch.
Cosmik: Oh, beautiful...
Randy: Yeah, I wish I still had it now.
Cosmik: I'll bet you do!
Randy: Yeah, I got into the guitar first, and then I went to military school.
And when I was in military school, I was across Texas there, almost to
Houston at Allan Military Academy. And my brother, he was a drummer
then, you know. He studied drums. He was going to go to Julliard and
study jazz drums in New York, but he ended up going to North Texas State
instead. During that time, you know, he picked up the guitar himself,
and when I got back from Military school, he was into it pretty good.
Cosmik: So he was already pretty good...
Randy: Well, he put in a lot of hours. I had to march! I didn't have time
to really practice guitar AND go to military school.
Cosmik: How did you end up in military school?
Randy: Well, it was a mutual agreement with my parents to try to get me on
the right track, you know? Living in El Paso, it's easy to get off on
the wrong track.
Cosmik: What is it about El Paso that makes it so easy?
Randy: Well, it's a border town, you know. You live in a border town, you
get a lot of influences from... well... it's all kinds of things. What
do you wanna know? (laughs) Hell, I went to Mexico when I was 14, 15.
Goin' to Juarez, having tequila and cokes for a nickle, you know, gettin'
in a fight in a bar over there... It was pretty crazy.
Cosmik: There was some trouble down in Mexico with you and your half brother,
right?
Randy: Jack. Oh yeah, we went over there and got into a big fight one New
Years. My father told us not to go over there. My cousin had come to
town, and when we all three got together... (laughs) We didn't go over
there to get in no fight or anything, you know, but we went over there
when they told us not to... our parents, you know. "Now be sure y'all
don't go to Mexico," and as soon as we left, that's right where we
went. (Laughs) You know how boys are.
Cosmik: Oh yeah, ya gotta cut loose.
Randy: We went all over that day in Juarez, and ended up in some little ol'
joint way back in the backstreets somewhere. Looked like an old wild
west thing. We got in a fight with that whole club full of 'em. There
were fists flyin' everywhere. It was like an old wild west movie.
Cosmik: How close were you and Jack?
Randy: Oh, we were real close. Just like brothers. He was older, so he was
mostly gone when I got into my teens. He was working, you know? But he
was working in different parts of the country, like New Mexico, drilling
oil wells and things. When he turned around 30, he decided he didn't
want to do that anymore, and he came to El Paso and got an apartment, and
he stayed there until he was murdered. He was going to barber college to
be a barber, he got his degree and was workin' right up the street from
us. And then he met an old boy cuttin' his hair, I believe, and around
there everybody went huntin' all the time, you know? Everybody had a gun.
Jack had a pistol. They decided to go out in the desert and do some
shootin'. Target practicing, rabbit huntin' or something. We used to go
at night a lot with spotlights and sit on the hood of the car, you know?
My brother, you know, he had a son that his wife would never let him see.
They got a divorce, you know? And he met this little boy down in this
apartment where he was stayin' next door, and he bought him some play
money and he put it in his sun visor, and it kind of looked like real
money. And this old boy that went huntin' with him thought that was
real money up there. Thought it was a wad of real money stickin' up
there in his sun visor. And he murdered my brother out there when he
went to set up the target, he started shootin' him. Shot him five times,
once in the back of the head to finish it, and left him out there in a
ditch. There was two or three weeks that we didn't know where he was
at, and finally they caught this old boy in my brother's car. He said
Jack and him went to Juarez and Jack sold it to him. My dad knew he
was lying. They called my dad to come over to Alamaguardo***, New Mexico.
That's close to El Paso. Around that area is where he was murdered.
My dad talked him into confessing.
Cosmik: What became of him?
Randy: He went to prison. I think he spent about twenty years in prison.
He's out walking the streets now, unless he died. From there, I don't
know if he changed his name or what. I've never run across him since.
I'd LIKE to, but I haven't.
Cosmik: You'd have a few things to say to the man?
Randy: Yeah, I have a few things to... They might have to pull me off of him.
But he's probably an old man. I wouldn't have much of a fight. I'm
gettin' up there, but I can still handle myself pretty good, you know,
for an old man.
Cosmik: Well, I saw you on Unsolved Mysteries, and you looked like you could
still take care of yourself in a fight.
Randy: Yeah, I USED to, but I can't anymore. I mean, I can but I can't, you
know? You get them young fellers, you know, they hit too hard. (Laughs)
Cosmik: How old were you when Jack was murdered?
Randy: 17. We were playing our music when that happened.
Cosmik: Were you already pretty serious about the music then?
Randy: Yeah. Yeah, I was married at the time. I got married when I was 17.
First marriage, you know. My dad wanted me to go to Hobbs, New Mexico,
and become a roughneck. He drove me over there, and all I could think
about was playing the bass guitar with Bobby, you know, and goin' to the
music world, but my dad said "well you're a married man now. You've gotta
give that up and go to work." He drove me over there, and I made him cry
because I would not go out on that two foot of snow on that drillin' rig
and work. I turned around and went home, and he sat there cryin' because
I'd embarrassed him in front of all of his friends. To this day, I wish
I had gone ahead and worked, you know? I think I would have been better
off than in the music business, you know?
Cosmik: Was some of that just rebellion?
Randy: Yeah, it was rebellion, and just knowing that Bobby had it made in
El Paso, and I was gonna have to go out there on that two foot of snow
and work my butt off in freezing weather... and I don't know if you've
ever been on a drillin' rig or not...
Cosmik: No.
Randy: That's what my dad did all his life. And all my mother would ever say
is "I hope you boys never work on a drillin' rig like your dad. That is
hard work." But to this day, I look back and I wish I had it. That would
have been better for me, you know?
Cosmik: Are you saying you wish you'd done that instead of the band?
Randy: Well, I can't say I wish didn't... I mean, I wish I had done something
that would have given me a better security in my old age. You know what
I'm sayin'? Music didn't do that. Right now, I gotta worry about not
havin' the... well, NOBODY'S gonna be gettin' Social Security, but I have
to worry about that because I worked music all that time, where a lot of
times you weren't paid that way. You just got the cash. I don't remember
how it was with Del-Fi Records. I can't remember, it's been so long. But
I don't remember if we paid into Social Security or not all that time. But
if not, you know how that works. You get the minimum check. You know,
the oil business is a money-making thing. And my dad had a pretty good
connection in it, you know, he was a superintendent for the El Paso
Natural Gas Company, and he got up there, you know? He worked a lot of
years for the gas company.
Cosmik: So by walking out, you really burned a bridge.
Randy: Yeah, I did. I did, in a way. On the one hand, we have a record
that's well known across the nation and will be a long time... You know,
"I Fought The Law." But on the other hand, I'm sittin' here "well, what
good is it doin' me when Sonny Curtis is makin' all the money on it
because he wrote it?" Fame, well, that's okay, but... what can I say?
Cosmik: So you really gave up security to play in the band. How much were
you and Bobby putting into the band back then, I mean in terms of hours
per day and emotional energy?
Randy: Well, Bobby lived it, you know? I remember when Bobby started playing
guitar, when I got back from military school. He'd spend hours in the
night... just all night long playing the same riffs over and over and
over again and trying to sing like Buddy Holly or whoever he was trying
to imitate at the time. You know, when you first start playing music,
you gotta find you an idol... somebody you admire so you can imitate,
because it doesn't really come that natural, even though you are gifted.
I met a guy that could play Beethoven, just off the street, and he
learned by watching his dad, and he didn't know a damned thing about
music, but he wanted to play rock and roll. And here I can play maybe
four chords on a piano, and he wanted me to TEACH him. I was amazed
at what that guy knew. So you gotta use somebody to get your thing
going. Bobby would spend hours, you know, just hours. I was a little
more... I liked to go out and mess around, you know? I was a little more
rebellious. I would go out, and when I came back in, he'd still be up
practicing by himself. I believe that's how he got so good, you see,
because he spent the time to GET good.
I was considered, at one time, probably the best rock and roll bass player
in Hollywood, you know, when we were working at PJ's, so I spent a lot of
time just learning the bass, because I couldn't compete with him. I
didn't have that kind of patience until later. After he died, I discovered
I had it, you know. A little late, then, though.
Cosmik: Were you able to tell pretty early on that Bobby had it? That he
was going to be something special?
Randy: Well, yeah, everybody knew that Bobby was very talented musically.
Cosmik: So that wasn't a gradual thing, then?
Randy: No. Heck no. When he was little... he played ukulele when he was
a little bitty thing. I guess you could say he was the first one to
play guitar because he played ukulele. He played it well. He did a
little act to entertain my dad's business friends. He'd have Bobby
either play the piano or play the ukulele and put on a little show.
They'd want me to do something, I'd go off and hide in the bedroom. I
was too shy. I'd get so dadgum red and flushed that I couldn't even
think, you know? He would just excel at that, but he couldn't hardly
talk to anybody. It was weird. He could do all those things, but it
really hard for him to talk to you about just everyday life, you know,
like what he was thinkin' and "what do you plan to do" and all this and
that. He was real withdrawn about things like that, but when it came
to gettin' up and entertaining, he could do it. It's funny, you know?
Cosmik: Was this just early on, or was he always like that?
Randy: No, he was like that most of the time. But he could handle business,
you know, he was very good at that. He knew what he wanted, and he went
after it. A lot of people don't have to say a word for you to know what
they mean. That's kind of like the way it was. When you're in our
position... like Bobby had a great talent in electronics and engineering
and producing, and he could have been a great producer. When you're
trying to make it, and you're dealing with someone who's already
controlling that, like Bob Keane, it made it really miserable for Bobby.
Because he had an idea of the way the sound was gonna be, but Bob Keane
did too, and they didn't really agree most of the time on it. And I
didn't agree with Bob Keane, either, on a lot of it, because he'd lose the
bass quality that Bobby always got in our home recordings, you know?
Cosmik: We know Bob and Bobby had their problems. Was Bob Keane difficult
for you to deal with, personally?
Randy: We don't talk much anymore, you know? I didn't trust the guy back then,
to be honest with you. Now I've been told he's changed since those days,
and that may be, but I don't know. I'll have to wait and see. You know,
part of the problem is he tried to get me to sign a contract to give him
fifty percent of all the publishing on all those songs, and you know,
after twenty-something years, you get all that back. It comes back to the
original artist. Well, it's starting to come in now. All those songs are
comin' back to me. I never signed that contract with him. I backed out
of it, and we went 'round and 'round on that, and the thing just read
like he could do anything he wanted to do with any of those songs,
publishing-wise, and if I did anything, I'd be liable for lawsuit. Now
isn't that somethin'?
Cosmik: Geez, that's pretty bad...
Randy: He wants fifty percent of 'em, and he'd control all of it. I couldn't
do nothin'. Everythin' that come in, he'd have to administer. Finally,
I read that contract and I just told him, I said "I'm not gonna sign this
thing, Bob," and we didn't talk for another six months. Now, I'm sure
glad I didn't do that. I just got a letter from Bug Music, and now they're
coming in at a hundred percent, where before I had twenty-five. Less,
maybe. So that's kinda nice, even though I can't really distribute nothin,
it doesn't matter, you know?
Cosmik: And you have at least a few songs that should do well for you, right?
I mean, I would assume "Love Made A Fool Of You" does pretty well.
Randy: "Love Made A Fool Of You" was not written by us.
Cosmik: Oh, was that Sonny Curtis, too?
Randy: Sonny Curtis. We made Sonny Curtis a million bucks, man. And we never
even got so much as a Christmas card from the guy.
Cosmik: Are you serious?
Randy: Uh huh. And you can print that. The only thing we ever got from him
was "well ya oughta use MY version!" HIS version sounded like a bunch of
drunk indians, you know what I mean? I'd just as soon hear somebody whup
a houndog at four in the mornin'! I mean, that's how bad it sounded to me.
Cosmik: I know I'm an oddball for this, but I always liked "Love Made A Fool
Of You" better than "I Fought The Law," especially the recording of it.
Randy: Well, a lot of people did. "I Fought The Law" was a gimmick, you
know...
Cosmik: It's a good song, though.
Randy: Yeah, it's a good song, but the thing about it is, you know, it was
number one in New York City for a while, and you can't beat that. That
was my idea to do that... you know, to release it BECAUSE of New York
City, and that's funny that it went number one in New York.
Cosmik: Over the years, there have been a lot of covers of "I Fought The Law."
From a lot of genres, too. What do you think when you hear those?
Randy: Oh, it's about like hearin' my dogs howling out there.
Cosmik: Really? You never cared for any of them?
Randy: Well, everybody's got their style, but I think that... You hear that?!
(Randy's dogs begin howling up a storm outside.)
Cosmik: Wow! Right on cue! (Laughs)
Randy: They're singin' "I Fought The Law" right NOW! (Laughs) Wasn't that
Blue Cheer? (Laughs) No, I think that once sombody's done a song like
"La Bamba," one that's already established itself as one of the top rock
and roll songs, it's very hard for somebody else to do that song again
and sustain it over the one that was originally done. Sure, they got 'em
out, and they did it... even like Hank Williams Jr. did it, but it's just
not the same. And all those songs, except for Sonny Curtis', they don't
get the airplay. Like the oldies stations play "I Fought The Law" by
Bobby Fuller. If you turn on the oldies, you'll hear it every other day
or so, but you won't hear theirs.
Cosmik: When the band first went to LA and signed with Keane, what was the
relationship like with him?
Randy: Well, he was remodeling the studio when we first signed with him, and
he was really in bad financial shape. He was having a hard go of it at
the time we signed with him. And then Larry Nunes came into the picture,
you know... this outside businessman? He had money, and he backed Bob to
restore the studio, and I guess with a partnership deal of some kind...
I never did really know their partnership deal. All I know is Larry Nunes
became the controller of Bobby Fuller Four, and [he] made promises that
came true, so I know he had a lot of power.
Cosmik: Was he really the shady character that we've all heard he was?
Randy: Well, I don't think of Larry as such a shady character, but... a lot
of people have claimed that he was affiliated with... and PJ's, where we
worked, was affiliated with the mob, you know. That Melody girl that you
might have seen on Unsolved Mysteries, she claims that that was not true.
That he'd had no dealings with the mob. So I don't know. The way she said
it, I think she's lyin', so I don't know. Why would she say that he is?
She's not gonna tell ya. She's not gonna say it. She's gonna claim...
they might've even told her NOT to say it. you know?
Cosmik: Did you get a chance to talk to her?
Randy: Yeah. I talked to her. She says that Larry Nunes was a great guy, he
was a good man, and there was no way he was involved in any of this or that.
But see, I heard otherwise, even way back then. But I don't know.
Cosmik: Is he still alive?
Randy: No, he died. That's the only reason anybody'd say anything, I'd
imagine. But I'm sure he's still got relatives, so I wouldn't say too
much. I sure wouldn't print nothin' negative towards the guy, like he
was a "shady man," or somethin'. That's not where the "shady" thing
come in. All that has been written by people other than me. I just
know what I know, and I know what Bobby told me one time, but he never
mentioned anything about "the mob," you know? But he did mention some
other things. Crooked. I'll put it that way. Crooked.
Cosmik: He mentioned you don't want to cross 'em, huh?
Randy: Well... not really that way, but all I know is... a man picked us up
in Chicago. I don't know the guy's name. I can't remember, because I
was pretty wild back then, I didn't really pay much attention to things
like... I didn't care, you know? But there was an old boy who picked us
up in Chicago at the airport when we flew in there to do a show, and the
guy who picked us up said he was the biggest bigtime man there, and the
cops respected everything he said, and this and that, and I mean, you
could tell that he was a mobster or whatever. He said "I'll show you
how big I am here," and he hollered out across the street at the cops
"come here, you jerk! Come over here," and the guy walked over "yes sir,
Mr. Simoni," or whatever. (Laughs) I don't know the guy's name, I'm just
makin' it up, you know? But that happened. And after all is said and
done, I never really thought anything about anything until I looked back
on things like that.
Cosmik: Was this happening as things were first picking up for the band?
Popularity and all that?
Randy: Oh yeah. The popularity picked up, and then there was this stale
period because of the... I guess you'd call it because of the LSD period,
At the time, psychedelic music was just startin' out and gettin' popular,
and that was killin' the regular old rock. It was takin' over. And the
English and the psychedelic stuff, it was really hard for an American band
at that time--unless they were doin' somethin' weird like LSD and dressin'
up like a bunch of clowns--to do ANYTHING, you know?
Cosmik: Did you like any of the British psychedelia that came around?
Randy: Yeah, I got INTO the psychedelic... I played a lot of psychedelic.
I got into that trend, you know? I got into after my brother died
because I didn't feel like there was much left for me to live for, so
I went all out. Went through the drug thing and everything else, but
I learned real quick that isn't the way to go. All this Maharishi, and
all that, it was just a passing thing, you know? You listen to Beatles
music. Some of their stuff from Seargent Peppers and on down the road,
it just got too damned weird. You know, the old stuff--"Love Me Do" and
all that--that's where it was really at.
(One of Randy's neighbors comes over to borrow a welding torch, so there is
a bit of a delay. When we got back into it, we backtracked a bit.)
Cosmik: How did you guys handle the "sudden success?" I know it wasn't
really sudden, because you worked so hard, but were you prepared for
the amount of attention you got?
Randy: Well, I'll put it this way. I believe there's some strong power
out there somewhere that causes things, like God, you know? You can
say it's God or whatever. But you know, when we started playin' in El
Paso, we started drawing like four and five thousands kids way before
we even knew who The Beatles were. The Beatles wasn't even out yet,
or ANY English group. There was this period when Buddy Holly died, and
Ritchie Valens, and Presley was still goin' pretty good, but music got
kinda in a little stale place there for a ten year period, and we started
playing in that period, just like The Beatles did over there in England.
Just like other bands somewhere else mighta been doin'. But kids were
wanting somethin'. Something was inside of them wanting somethin'. Cause
everywhere we played back when we were Bobby Fuller Four in El Paso--only
we were another name, you know... Fanatics or Frantics or something--we'd
just pack the place, and they loved us. It was just incredible. It
looked like we were gonna be an overnight big thing right there, it was
so incredible.
And then all of a sudden The Beatles come out, and it starts happenin'
for them like it was happenin' for us, just in that Southwest area.
That's what hurts so much, is you think "well, my God, if we'd just been
in the right door at the right time and the right place, we'd of been
The Beatles!" Or there'd a been another band that would'a been The
Beatles other than The Beatles. It was just the world that was ready
for that to happen. A lot of people say "you're full of it," but I mean
I've got pictures that show the crowds we were drawing, and it wasn't a
fluke thing. It was like they were in a frenzy over it. We were just
like one step behind. If we'd of been one step ahead, we'd of been
probably like The Beatles. Now, if you print that, a lot of people are
gonna say "well, he's full of crap," but that's the way I saw it. And
I'm not sayin' it because I'm tryin' to say we're as good as The Beatles
or anything else, but we had a lot of fans that would probably say the
same thing, at that time, you know? Even a paper back there printed
"The world has The Beatles, but El Paso has The Bobby Fuller Four."
The only thing that killed us was the English. I think it would have
come to that if there hadn't been English boom like that. We would have
been something greater than we were. I can actually blame the English
for that... (Laughs) but I don't, really, you know. Can't help the way
things fall.
Cosmik: So you're playing in El Paso to these humungous crowds, and they've
obviously got a lot of pride in the band, you know, the hometown heroes...
Randy: Oh yeah. And it's more or less still that way in some ways there,
you know? It'll always be there. We had a street named after us, you
know?
Cosmik: Oh, really?
Randy: Yeah, there's a Bobby Fuller Drive there, like Lee Trevino and all
that. I even have one of the signs here that the mayor gave me. It's
out on my patio now.
Cosmik: When you left for Los Angeles and you started to, quote, make it,
unquote... was it initially less of a frenzy than what you had at home
in El Paso?
Randy: Well, I'll tell you what. We played at The Rendezvous, where Dick
Dale played, when we first got out here. And there were about a hundred
bands auditioning for the job, and we got the job. We packed that place
bigger than it had ever been packed with Dick Dale. Now, he'll disagree
with ya, but you ask our drummer, Dwayne. He knows that story perfect.
We beat the all time record for the biggest crowd ever had there. And
then PJ's, we broke THEIR record there, drawin' crowds. They used to
line up for a couple blocks in a line to get in there at night to hear
us play. You couldn't move in the place.
At that time, we thought it was just... even WITH The Beatles, you know?
It was gonna go. But then it went into this lull, and I think a lot of
it had to do with Bob Keane and the way he was promoting us and stuff
like that. They were trying to make our music sound too Motowny, you
know? If Bobby woulda been able to do what HE wanted to do... It's not
that you're copying Buddy Holly, see. We had our own style. And Bob...
I don't know if you heard him on that TV program [Unsolved Mysteries] or
not, but that was not true, what he said. They didn't argue about Buddy
Holly stuff. They argued about the sound that Bob was gettin' on our
stuff. He'd lose the bass, he'd put too much echo on it, he'd try to
make it sound like Phil Spector productions. He wanted to make this big
production like The Righteous Brothers, but we were The Bobby Fuller Four,
a simple little band.
Cosmik: And with your style of music, that raw energy and straight forward
approach WAS the sound...
Randy: That was it. We lost control of that, is what happened. And that's
how we got into the still place we were in.
Cosmik: How did you feel when you were watching Unsolved Mysteries and you
saw him saying that?
Randy: I didn't like that, what he said there, because it wasn't accurate,
if you want to know my personal opinion. That'll have to last now,
because every time they rerun that, those remarks are what people will
hear.
Cosmik: I'm assuming you didn't see the entire piece until it ran.
Randy: Right.
Cosmik: And then you see what LOOKS like you're participating with and in
agreement with Bob Keane, just by virtue of the fact that you're in the
same segment. Did you feel kind of duped when you saw the whole thing?
Randy: Well, yeah, more or less. I felt like it was a promotional thing for
him, for money, records... whatever he could get out of it. I don't think
he's doin' it for the sake of my brother, which is what he's trying to
make people think he is [doing]. I think, really, he's interested in
what he can get out of it.
Cosmik: After seeing the whole piece, did you wish you had known what he
said before they interviewed you?
Randy: Well, I would have said somethin' different if I knew what he'd said.
It's very hard to get on there and talk anyway, and I'm sure Bob had a
hard time with it, too, because he didn't have anything to say. If I'd
of known what he said, though, I would have said "well, the reason we
were in a lull is because Bob Keane controlled all the music. My brother
had a lot of talent, and would have been able to get us a sound that was
more suitable for The Bobby Fuller Four, other than Bob gettin' it for
Bob, and that's what they were really fighting about that night." But I
look at it this way: I was more interested in somebody coming forward.
Cosmik: Did the show end up having the effect that you were hoping it would
have? I know they haven't solved it, but Melody came forward...
Randy: Yeah, she came forward and she denied everything, but she told me a
few things I didn't know, so that was good. Because I'd been lookin' at
it the wrong way all these years. I didn't listen to nobody. I was
kinda hard headed. I had my own idea and I stuck to it, and all of a
sudden I realize that my idea might not have been what it was.
Cosmik: What WAS your idea?
Randy: Well, I never really talked to my mother too much about it, because
it was too hard. My wife did, when I wasn't around. And she told me
that my mother said these things... and she didn't tell me until after
Unsolved Mysteries. And then when Melody called, she said the same
thing, so I said "that musta been the way it was." What it was was I
thought Bobby went to a party that night that he died because of the
fact that he told me, the day before it happened, he told me that he was
goin' to a party that night with Melody. This was before I went over
to Boyd Elder's house.
Cosmik: Boyd Elder?
Randy: Boyd Elder. He did The Eagles album cover, One Of These Nights. He's
from El Paso. We were good friends. We spent a lot of time together
because we were a lot alike. I was hanging around with him a lot, and
I didn't like to stay at home too much. He had an art studio, and I used
to go over there and have a few beers, you know. Anyway, Bobby told me
he was goin' to a party that night and there was going to be LSD. I had
experimented with it one time, I'll be honest with you... I had done it
one time in the past and it put me on the worst bummer of my life. I
told Bobby "you don't want nothin' to do that, boy, it's terrible." and
I said "don't do it," and he said, "well, you know, that's where the
music's goin'. Maybe I oughta do it. It'll help us get some stuff goin'
here or somethin'." I said "it don't work that way. This stuff can kill
ya!" It can and it can't, you know? So I says "if you gotta go do it,
let me go with you and watch out for you." He said "all right, I won't
do it. I promise you I won't do it." And I says "if you ever decide, at
least let me go with you so I can be with you," you know?
To this day, that's what I always thought happened: that he must have gone
to that party with her. Then they never knew what happened at that point.
And that's why I always thought that she knew what happened. Then when I
talked to her, she said that party never did come about. She said it was
a week before that, anyway, and I so "no it wasn't either, it was that
day." I remember it just as clear as a bell. It was the only thing I
DID remember. Then my mother said that he was home at 1:00 or 2:00 that
mornin' when somebody called and he left, so he apparently didn't go to
the party. He left 1:00 or 2:00, somethin' like that, early in the
mornin', walked outside, and something happened from there on. He went
downstairs and supposedly the apartment manager saw him, and he had a
beer with him, and he left from there. That's what the apartment manager
said... or that's what I heard. I don't know if it's true or not. But
whoever called him could have [told him] that they were broke down or
out of gas or somethin'. Coulda been Melody, coulda been anybody. And
he mighta gone to help them. Or somebody called to meet him out front...
or ANYTHING, you know? Because at that point, it's a mystery.
We got a lot of things here that people wrote that sound pretty convincing
that whoever wrote these and sent them in know what happened. But there's
a lot of nuts out there, too.
Cosmik: You mean letters you got from people who saw Unsolved Mysteries?
Randy: Yeah, I got a bunch of things they sent in.
Cosmik: What are some of the things these people have said that you think
could be right?
Randy: Well, this one old boy said that this guy named [name deleted for
legal reasons] up in Frisco, or Sacramento or somewhere, owns a construction
company, and he was supposed to be around here at the time Bobby died.
When he gets drunk, he talks too much, and this old boy says he's always
talkin' about how he knows what happened and all that. Then there's one
guy who sent a thing sayin' he was an FBI agent at the time, and that it
was a mob hit. But heck, if you called every one of these people who sent
somethin' in that are nuts... One guy wrote in and said Elvis Presley did
it! (Laughs) Over Cadillacs! So, you know, you can't just go askin' these
guys if they did it, and if you can't get the police to re-open the case,
you're kinda stuck. What am I gonna do? Go up to Sacramento and spend
all the little bit of money I got runnin' these guys down, and for them
to say "no, I didn't do that." So I can't really do much about it, unless
there's one guy that'll just come forward and say "yeah, I did it. I'm
sorry, and here's what happened, and I can prove it." That's what I was
hopin' would happen. That somebody would know somebody that would just
do it. But I don't think that's gonna happen. It doesn't look like it.
Cosmik: Naw. Not when you look at how brutal it was. It doesn't indicate
somebody with a conscience.
Randy: Exactly. There's one of 'em in here that is pretty weird. It says
that some old boy was... his wife was goin' out with Bobby. He says
"there's where the idiot died, right there." The way they're talkin' is
like they know that he did it. And a lot of people thought it might be
because of that. You know, Melody says she was married once before, but
at that time she was separated from her ex husband, and they always thought
whoever she was goin' with in the mob, you know, was the one that did
Bobby in. She denies all that. But I would too, if I was her, wouldn't
you?
Cosmik: Oh yeah.
Randy: So she seemed like she just made it a point to call Unsolved Mysteries
and to call me, or me call her, to get this squared away that that isn't
the way it was. Now, hey, that's kinda funny. All the articles been out
all this time, and you just now, because of Unsolved Mysteries, call me
and tell me this. Kinda weird.
Cosmik: It's really surprising that she came out at all.
Randy: Yeah, it's almost like "hey, I'm gonna get the heat off MY back on
this."
Cosmik: I wonder if there WAS any heat on her back? I mean, she could have
just stayed anonymous.
Randy: They mighta told her to call, and "look, you call and say there was
no affiliation with nothin'!" I dunno. I'm not gonna get in too deep
on it, because it's just too dangerous. She was a call girl, and she was
into a call girl ring. I know that for sure, because she even admitted
that to me. But she said there was no dealings with any kind of mob, but
I'm not so sure about that. I'm really not so sure about that.
Cosmik: Yeah, it sure didn't look like any crime of passion. It looked
pretty brutal. Pretty "gangland."
Randy: Yeah, well... it's pretty hard to say, I mean, you know... When a man
can tell you that he's gonna make you as big as Elvis Presley within a
year, and you go down to the Broadway and you've got posters bigger than
Beatles or Elvis Presley standin' in the mall there at the record counter,
and your posters made out of cardboard with stands behind 'em, and there's
four of 'em standin' there... that's some power there, man! Back then,
when it was really hard to get a record on the air for anybody other than
The Beatles and English bands, he was doin' this for us. Now he had some
power and he had connections. To get us in PJ's?
Cosmik: You're not talking about Keane...
Randy: I'm talking about one of them two. There's was some power there, or
knowledge of who to talk to, anyway. And then Barry White was there,
too, at the time. Then Larry Nunes and Barry White went off after Bob
folded the studio up. They went off and made Barry White. So there's
power there too. You just don't do things like that without a lot of
power. Connections in a lot of cities. Barry White wasn't that great
to be able to make him that quick back then, you know? He's not even
that good lookin' of a man. Big fat dude. Just to put him out there
like that and have him make it big right after Bobby died? Two guys
right in a row. That takes power.
Cosmik: How was the relationship between the rest of the band and Bobby at
the end?
Randy: Oh, well, they were jealous of him. I'll put it bluntly: everybody
was jealous of Bobby, including myself. Couldn't help but be. Anybody
would be, I'd imagine, but not enough to kill him. At least, not me.
As far as Jim and Dalton, I don't know. And I know Dwayne wouldn't hurt
a fly, and he'd been kicked out of the band way before that anyway, and
got used to his own different life, you know? Of course, who knows what
anybody would do. My mother thought maybe Jim Reese mighta had somethin'
to do with it because he was really jealous of Bobby, and he said a lot
of things after Bobby died like if it wasn't for him we'd of never made
it, and all this and that. Which just kinda reinforces that he was
pretty jealous. But it wasn't that way at all. Jim was a good guitar
player, but he wasn't nothin' exceptional. You gotta show people what
you are. You can't just sit back and be a little ol' guitar player, you
gotta get up and DO somethin'. Let somebody else do all of the shit and
then you wanna take credit for it? Forget it!
Cosmik: What did you feel when the police report said it was a suicide?
Randy: Well, none of us really knew what happened. We were all in shock.
Bob Keane stepped up and said "aw, he didn't commit suicide," or somethin'.
The thing is, everybody was in shock. It was really hard for anybody to
care whether it was suicide or anything else. My mother went into a DEEP
shock, you know? My dad was out of town. I was just numb. Who started
workin' on the suicide thing was Bob and Larry Nunes, because apparently
Bob had an insurance policy on him. And I think we did too, but his was
like eight hundred thousand or a million or somethin' like that.
Cosmik: With who as the benefactor?
Randy: With Bob Keane as the benefactor... or Larry Nunes, one of them two
as benefactor. Of course, he'll deny there was any insurance policy, but
I saw it.
Cosmik: I think they already have denied it.
Randy: They denied it?
Cosmik: Yeah. The logic being why would Bob Keane have had to go bankrupt so
shortly after Bobby died if he'd gotten that much money.
Randy: Eight hundred thousand... Who knows? But they owed a lot of money.
They were in debt at the beginning. They did change it to accidental
death by asphyxiation. So if they changed it, and there was a policy,
then somebody got the money. Now, do you know of any record company that
didn't have an insurance policy on their artists?
Cosmik: No, not the successful ones.
Randy: Okay, well, why did they work so hard to get it changed? We didn't,
they did. It was changed. So who knows?
Cosmik: And it doesn't look like the police were too honest...
Randy: Well, they didn't give a damn, is what they did. They didn't even
take fingerprints. I didn't even see them with a fingerprint package out
there.
Cosmik: Well, if what was depicted in the Unsolved Mysteries recreation was
accurate, at least one cop was trying to hide evidence by putting the
gas can in the garbage.
Randy: Yeah, or he didn't care... didn't give a darn.
Cosmik: That seems like something more than just sloppy police work, don't
you think?
Randy: Yeah, that's true, but you know, my uncle went down there and was
cussing out the Chief of Police or the Sergeant or somethin', and they
told him if he knew what was good for him, he'd better keep his mouth
shut. He was trying to tell them he knew it was murder and they'd better
get on it, and they told him to leave. My dad handled it the best
he could, God bless him. He had a rough time of it. There was not much
we could do. And Keane and Larry, you know, they even hired a private
investigator to see what they could find out. Now, whether it was a
cover-up to do that or to take the heat off them, I don't know. But it
might have been that they DIDN'T know what happened, and that they
wanted to get that insurance money, and the only way they could get it
was to get a private investigator out there to find out who did it. But
when it was finally changed to the other deal, somebody got some money,
because I know that we had insurance. We used to brag about it. Bobby
even pointed it out one time. The more I think about it, the more I
remember seeing it on that contract... or on that policy.
Cosmik: So it was almost a point of pride, like "look how much I'M worth?"
Randy: Yeah, you know, we'd say "well man, we're not even worth but a hundred
thousand. You're worth a million," you know? Another thing to get
everybody pissed off at each other about. (Laughs)
Cosmik: Sure, more jealousy.
Randy: Yeah, just one more jealous thing.
Cosmik: With all those rumors floating around out there, has there ever been
a time that you've wondered about what Keane knows?
Randy: Oh, I don't think Keane's a murderer. I think if Keane thought he
could make a million bucks, I don't think he'd stop at too many things to
get it out of you. Course, like I said, I've heard he's changed since
then, I dunno. But no, I don't think Bob would kill anybody.
Cosmik: Let's move on now to after Bobby died. What kind of changes did you
go through?
Randy: I had always had problems of my own just being shy and withdrawn, you
know? I had to come out of a shell after Bobby died. I had to work my
way out, because I'd been kind of subdued my whole life. I didn't know
any other way. That's the only thing I can say that anything good came
out of my brother's death, was to open my mind up to where I had a little
more ability to gain knowledge. When you get into such a small place,
it's hard to ever make it in life. You can't work for nobody, you're
always uptight and whatever. I went to an analyst for a while just to
find out what I was about. After Bobby died, I needed a little bit of
therapy, you know? And I come to find out I had as much talent as he
did, I just didn't know how to direct my energy. But I depended on him
to do it, so why should I? (Laughs)
Cosmik: Because he had so much drive?
Randy: Well, sure. He had a drive to make it. He would have been successful
at anything he did because he was given that at a very early age, I believe.
Parents tend to do that to us. One child in every family is always gonna
succeed, it seems like. In most cases. There's always the exceptions.
We had two brothers that really had our family in a bind at the beginning.
My other brother was killed in a car wreck, and that was really hard on
our family. And then Jack was murdered, and then Bobby. You know, all
of that added up to makin' it kind of hard for the baby, and I was the
baby.
Cosmik: How did you deal with all of that tragedy in your family?
Randy: I didn't. I finally just had a breakdown. Once you finally have a
breakdown and rebuild, you're okay, but if you don't ever get that
breakdown, you're gonna be miserable the rest of your life.
Cosmik: How long did it take for that breakdown to come?
Randy: I was twenty eight when that happened. I was twenty two when Bobby
died and twenty eight when that finally came to a head. Thank God it did,
and thank God I knew the people I knew at the time that helped me, or I
wouldn't have made it through it. But I'm here now, and I'm fine. I've
got a good family. My wife, Dale, and I've been through a lot with HER
family. We've lost just about everybody in both our families. My sister
died, and my mother and dad died... all that's left is me, now. She lost
her mother and brother and sister, all at a young age, and had everybody
wiped out within ten years on her side. So we've got her dad and her
brother, they're the only ones left in both our families.
Cosmik: After Bobby's murder, you said everyone was in shock... how long was
it before anyone picked up a guitar again?
Randy: Well, it was just... right away. I went back to El Paso after that.
I drove the car back Bobby died in. With two other people that helped
me get back. We packed everything up and drove it back to El Paso. My
mother was in a condition... she was a waste for ten years, really. I
didn't even hardly know who she was for about ten years, and then she
started coming out of it. But I drove that car back and I was back there
for about a month, and my dad answered the phone and it was Dwayne, and
he said that Bob Keane wanted to put another band together, and he had
a couple of guitar players that I would really like, and that we could
go right back to work at PJ's if I would come back, and I said I don't
want no more to do with it. And then he talked me into it, so I went
back and worked there another two years.
I'll tell ya, I got up there one night singing "I Fought The Law," and
I'd been havin' a few drinks, you know, and I felt something come over
me. I felt like I was singin' in phase with my brother singin'. I
never sang it that well in my life. Ever. And I wasn't that good a
singer anyway, at that time. And probably still, a lot of people don't
think I am now. (Laughs) But I can look back and say that was the
strangest thing that ever happened. Something come over me and it was
like his spirit was in me singin' along with me. I don't know if anybody
else picked up on it, but it sure felt weird to me. It was strange.
Cosmik: Was it a good feeling?
Randy: Yeah, it was a GREAT feeling. I could do no wrong. It was like I
had his voice all of a sudden with mine just like we always had them
together. It was like it was gone, but yet it was still there.
Cosmik: That must have been comforting.
Randy: Well, I don't know about comforting. Nothing back then seemed to be
too comforting. I was pretty miserable then. And then having to deal
with the egos of the other guys in the band... and I was the band leader
all of a sudden, which I'd never been before. Being as insecure as I was,
if anybody in the band had any more drive than I did, they were jumping
in front of me constantly, you know, trying to control. That really made
things miserable for me, because I didn't know how to... That's where
with my brother, like, he did the brains and I did the muscle. When I
finally had to start doing them both, it was hard. It took me a long
time to understand what it was all about. I didn't want nothin' to do
with business men, money, all that crap, you know?
Cosmik: And this went on for about two years?
Randy: Yeah, we was there for a couple of years, and then the guys in the
band started doin' drugs, and it went in kinda different directions.
You know, started doin' LSD, and that screws everybody up. It wasn't
meant to happen anyway, you know, we weren't gonna stay together.
Cosmik: What did you do after it broke up?
Randy: Well, I went and formed another band back in El Paso with some old
boys I always wanted to work with. We came back out again and tried to
play at PJ's, and it didn't work out. We worked there a couple months,
I guess, and then decided it wasn't gonna do it. And then I got married
and... well my wife and me got together, actually. We broke that band
up, and then I started working with just different bands around. I got
into one band called Blue Mountain Eagle, and got a contract with Atlantic
Records. We did an album and it seemed like it was gonna go pretty good.
And you know, it's funny... If you don't get along in a band with the
other musicians, there's no sense in stayin'. Because I was in the band,
I was having headaches, I couldn't get along with these guys. Because it
was a different breed. They was from different parts of the country.
One guy's from Chicago, one guy's from New York, another guy's from
California, and then all the egos that were goin' on... Boy, it was a
mess. Then Ahmet Ertugan [Atlantic Records owner] called me and asked
me if I'd keep writing songs for 'em, because the one they liked the
most on the album was the one I wrote.
Cosmik: Which song was that?
Randy: It was called "Sweet Mama." But anyway, that broke up, and the lead
guitar player, he went with a band called Sweathogs, and they had a number
one record. I went and played country music after that with Billy Webb and
different people around. We got back together and started playing out in
the Pamona area, and all around... Palm Springs, different places. Tryin'
to make a livin', you know? That was about it.
Cosmik: How about now? Do you ever get the urge to jump up on stage?
Randy: Oh, I did that not too long ago down at Spragg Brothers... they did a
tribute to my brother. I went down there to sit in. Billy Webb and
Dwayne went down there. You know, I still can do it, but the thing is I
guess I'm just not like old Mick Jagger or somebody that can be sixty
years old and get up there and act like I'm twenty. I mean, sure, the
music's there and everything if I wanted to do it, but it just don't
seem to fit me right now. Maybe it will later, I don't know. You know,
if somebody told me they were gonna put on a tour across the world, and
they wanted me to get up and mimick my brother's "I Fought The Law," and
play on it, I might consider it. To go out here and jam every night... I'm
out of that. The day for that, for me, is gone.
Cosmik: What are you doing these days?
Randy: Well, I'm a landlord, actually. I'm still doing some music. I write
a little music here and there. I did that one CD with Bob not too long
ago, but I haven't really been working music too much. I just do my own
thing around here with it. I've got half ownership in a tanning salon
out here that's doin' pretty good that my daughter was into. I helped
her finance it. Plus, I've got a couple of rent houses and things like
that. I've been remodeling and rebuilding, you know, like taking an old
house and fix it up, rebuild it, rent it out, and try to get equity in
it.
Cosmik: Well Randy, I really appreciate your time today. I have one more
question, if you don't mind getting philosophical for a moment. When
you look back at everything you lived through, are you still able to
remember good times and enjoy the memories?
Randy: Some, yeah. The thing that I regret the most is not being together
like I am now, to help my brother more--him help me and me help him--to
do better, make the sound better, and everything else. I think my
insecure attitude hurt us a lot. And then again it helped, in some
ways. But I regret that because I think we'd of been even closer. We
was pretty close, you know, but I think that would have helped us to be
even closer, and then maybe things wouldn't have happened the way they
did. I had a lot of good times, but I had a lot of rotten times, too.
We worked really hard to do what we did. Bobby worked extremely hard
to get just the little bit of fame we got, which was a very small
amount, but we did do a little. I just regret the fact that he had the
talent to do a lot more but didn't get a chance to go full blossom to
see what could really be done.
The good times... One of the greatest feelings in the world was hearing
"Let Her Dance" on the radio for the first time. In Hollywood, goin'
down the freeway, and all of a sudden, that started playin'. "Here's
the new hit out by the Bobby Fuller Four." Boy, and I'll tell ya, that's
the greatest feelin' in the world.
Cosmik: Man... top of the world, huh?
Randy: Yeah. Because you know, to get a record on KRLA or KFWB, back in
those days, was almost impossible for an unknown band. When Larry Nunes
said he was gonna do these things for us, we was just kinda laughing
under our jackets a little there, you know? "Sure, he's not gonna do that."
And all of a sudden, he says "You boys listen to the radio at one o'clock
today. Your record's gonna be on there. We're like "sure, Larry." We're
drivin' down the street and it come on... boy... that's a great feelin'.
You see yourself bein' a millionaire. But you never were, you know?
I remember that Bobby had a credit card. We'd never had a credit card
before, and he had a credit card up in New York. And that's one of the
best times I can remember. I said "man, I sure am hungry," because all
we'd been eatin' was like McDonalds burgers and cheap stuff, you know?
He says "come on, we're gonna go eat somethin' good. Don't tell anyone
else," you know... the other guys in the band. And we went into one of
the top restaurants there--I forget the name of it--and he said "order
anything you want." And I ordered a cornish game hen dinner with grapes
on it and everything (laughs), boy. And we talked and had the greatest
time that night. And that was... that was a good feelin', you know?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THORAZINE ON THORAZINE: Philly Punk At 2,000 MPH
Interviewed by DJ Johnson
I'm just ridin' the train.
I'm just ridin' the train.
It won't stop
Won't slow down
Can't get off
And on and on and on now!
That pretty much sums up the feel and pace of Crazy Uncle Paul's Dead
Squirrel Wedding, the first full length album by Philadelphia's punk
powderkeg known as Thorazine. This is not music for people who suffer
from fear of confrontation: disgust, anger, and threat of bodily harm
are the fuel for many of these high voltage pounders. The band--Jo-Ann
Rogan (vocals), Elliot Taylor (guitar), Dallas Cantland (drums) and Ross
Abraham (bass)--fires off these ferocious body shots with muscles flexed.
They ain't fuckin' around.
After listening to the album several dozen times, I had certain expectations:
I figured Jo-Ann would begin the interview by castrating me. Failing that,
I figured she'd just blow my brains out and be done with it. Well, her
lyrics suggest she may not think much of males of the species. So imagine
my surprise when Jo-Ann turned out to be just the opposite of all that.
Shock of shocks! They're all nice people! Shhhhh... don't tell anyone.
Fresh off the road, all four musicians participated in this interview. I
was anxious to hear about their battle with Smith-Kline, the drug company
that tried to force them to change the name of the band. I was doubly
anxious to find out just what the hell the story was behind the title and
cover of Crazy Uncle Paul's Dead Squirrel Wedding. And I wanted to find out
how Ross got a bass sound that caused my inner ear to implode, even with
the stereo on "mute!" Yup, I had a LOT of really annoying questions, and
they didn't shoot me once. So I wrote it all down, and here it is.
* * * *
Cosmik: In "Antiquated Male," you sound very dangerous. In fact, in
a LOT of songs, you sound very dangerous! But talking to you is a shocker
because you seem so nice. Is the anger real, and are you able to get most
of it out through singing?
Jo-Ann: I spent my early 20's extremely depressed, suicidal, with low self
esteem because of abuse in my childhood, and growing up a fat kid. I had
no outlet for all this anger and was directing it at myself. Joining
Thorazine gave me a place for the misguided anger. My life has changed
a lot. Being able to put all my anger out onstage and in rehearsal I have
had very few suicidal thoughts in the last few years. I've actually become
almost well adjusted without Prozac! PUNK ROCK SAVED MY LIFE ALLELUIAH!
Cosmik: Because your music is so angry and tense most of the time, I would
imagine you just couldn't do it if you were in too cheerful a mood. What
kinds of things do you do to get ready for a show... to get in the mood?
Jo-Ann: Hmmmmm... Not much. The music starts and the anger and aggression
kick in automatically.
Cosmik: During lulls when the band isn't gigging or practicing for a while,
do you feel the pressure and frustration building up?
Jo-Ann: Yes. Elliott went into a research medical study before the tour for
two weeks to make some extra cash. I started losing it toward the end.
Ross and I kept meeting in the kitchen and grumbled to each other constantly.
It's rare for us not to rehearse a couple times a week, so I am usually ok.
Ross: I don't know about pressure, but I really start jonesin'. I start
getting very anxious. If it were up to me we'd rehearse everyday, but
with our separate schedules we are only able to rehearse three days a
week.
Cosmik: Do some people make assumptions that you might rip 'em up and keep
their distance?
Dallas: You don't know the half of it! These damned scaredy-cat kids today
keep a 10 foot distance between them and the stage. It was cool at first,
but we want fans, not underlings!
Jo-Ann: Sometimes Dallas gets some nasty e-mails about how I have a set
of testicles under my dress! Actually the whole band looks a bit
intimidating when we are all together, which is a good thing because
clubs rarely gyp us on our pay!
Cosmik: Do you respond to that kind of e-mail? Any good "scared the crap
out of the guy" stories?
Dallas: I usually stay away from it anymore because when I meet 'em in
person, they're half my size and age, and I despise bullies. The
funniest one was a couple summers back. This one kid talked all this
smack online, and when he saw us in person, he went to Jo-Ann to find
out which one was Dallas. Jo pointed me out and he went "Tell him I'm
sorry, 'cause I ain't goin over there!"
Cosmik: Do you see a lot of surprised faces in the crowds? People who had
no idea what the band looked like? Most tough sounding bands don't look
so tough in person, y'know...
Dallas: YES! So many bands today aren�t what they think they are. Punk rock
today is divided new-school and old-school. I could go on and on with a
list of bands from each camp, but I think you�ve got the picture. Here�s
a little piece of info I wonder if Jo told ya. Ruffhouse Records had a
rep at one of our shows without our knowing it. A friend of ours who
recognized him asked him what he thought. "Their musicianship is
superb, but they don�t have "the look" and I can�t do anything with �em."
Jo-Ann is the baby of us at 30 years old. We�re not "the beautiful people"
from Melrose Place" or something. You�re looking at real, everyday people
when you stare into these faces. Most adults 25 years and up look at us
and remember when bands looked like us all the time. We were "the look."
Now that everybody looks like non-threatening skinny wimps still wet
behind the ears, WE SCARE THE SHIT outta most kids that show expecting
another band that looks like Offspring. We were called "greasy, sleazy,
sweaty people who play nasty music" in one article. This is generally how
kids see us. We must be threatening in some way, shape or form, because
we�ve never been stiffed on our money. Even in clubs notorious for it.
There was one night here in Philly where the management had to tell us
that we generated no cash and when I was being filled in, they called the
bouncer over. He was shuffling his feet and rubbing the back of his neck
nervously instead of me!
Ross: People are scared to come close to the stage when we are playing for
fear we will kick 'em in the head. People are intimidated. I have gotten
the comment that we look like mean bikers.
Cosmik: How did you get hooked up with Dionysus/Hell Yeah?
Jo-Ann: We sent out some demo's to labels I thought had cool ads. I never
called after the tapes. Lee Josephs sent us a letter and put our 7 inch,
Coffee, Tea, or Thorazine, out. We toured four times off that little 7
inch, so while we were in LA on tour he recorded Crazy Uncle Paul's
Squirrel Wedding. We will be recording our 2nd LP in March.
Cosmik: What's the story on the lawsuit by the drug company? Is that for
real?
Jo-Ann: Yes it is. We got a a 'cease using our name' letter from Smith
Kline about 2 years ago. Dallas hit the net with the news, then all hell
broke loose. A local entertainment paper wrote about it first. Then the
daily papers picked it up and sent it over the Associated Press wire.
ABC news radio picked it up, then TV news. We wound up in magazines like
Newsweek, New Republic, and Playboy. Because of the press we had lawyers
offering free counsel, which was cool because we could not afford a
good lawyer. The press actually helped a lot because they portrayed us as
the poor punk rockers that the big giant corporation was picking on.
Smith Kline threatened us but never pursued the suit because we became
more trouble than they wanted to deal with! At this point, they've never
pursued the suit so the longer we have the name the less they can do
about it. The little guy sometimes can win!
Cosmik: That kind of makes you heroes. We all dream of beating the big guys
at their own games. Do you get many people coming up to you at your gigs
wanting to talk about that?
Jo-Ann: They used to all the time, but it pops up less and less. It is cool
to beat the big guy, but I don't want to be known as "that band that got
sued" forever.
Ross: It happened and it is over.
Cosmik: Ever think about writing an "in your face, Smith Kline" song?
Jo-Ann: Sure, you got lyrics?
Cosmik: None that wouldn't end your career in a big freakin' hurry. That's
why I don't get the big bucks. So who is Crazy Uncle Paul, and what's
the story behind that cool structure you named your album after?
Jo-Ann: Ok here is the tale... One nippy fall night, Ross, Dallas, and I
went to a party. Elliott was working at his soundman job, as usual. It
was a very boring party. A guy walks up and says, "wanna see somethin'
weird?" We immediately say to him, "what can you shock us with?" He
had some Polaroid shots of the squirrels. Our first question was "how
did you get them to stand still?" He proceeded with the story.
Greg Baker was born and raised in rural Gettysburg, PA. His great uncle
Paul, who died in 1967, was an avid squirrel hunter. He came up with the
weird idea to stuff them. His wife, Aunt Ruth, sewed the costumes on by
hand! I kid you not! They modeled the wedding scene after the church
they attended, going as far as using the remnants of the carpet that
was in the church. If you look very closely at the photos, there is one
seat empty. Uncle Paul died before the last seat was filled! We saw
this and had to have it for our album cover, which was as of that moment
unrecorded.
We set off to LA and recorded. We returned after the long tour and
recording session to find Greg MIA. We hunted him down and went to his
father's house in Gettysburg to shoot the wedding. We set off on a snowy
morning to Gettysburg. We arrived and Greg proclaimed that his father hated
everyone and stay out of his way. While Nadine and Adina (photographers)
were setting up, we met Greg's Dad. He was so great to us. He showed us
his whole collection of Civil War guns and has invited us to come out
again to go shooting. He offered up all the tasty tidbits on the Wedding
and made us coffee! The Baker family had one request. They would like
to donate the Dead Squirrel Wedding to a museum that would restore and
display all 74 creatures. If anyone wants to get in contact with the
Bakers, they should write to us. (c/o Hell Yeah Records, PO box 1975,
Burbank CA 91507.) The end.
Cosmik: Wow, that's an amazing story! How do you follow that? What�s the
next cover going to be?
Dallas: We all ride motorcycles and there�s a song from a band I was in long
ago called "Vicious Cycle." We�re gonna do the tune and it�ll probably
end up as the cover of our next album. The photo will be us sitting on
our bikes.
Cosmik: So tell us... who are some of the bands that had no influence on
you whatsoever? The ones you hated and rebelled against, the ones you
just found laughable... because I think I hear no Cher influence...
Jo-Ann: Whitney Houston, The woman who did Hey Mickey in the 80's Toni Basil,
William Shatner (Kirk sings!!), Boyz to Men (fellow Philadelphians), Bon
Jovi and other of his kind, Silver Bush, Smashing Pilots...you know all the
alternative good music out now.
Cosmik: Elliot, how about you? The lack of Buck Dharma influence in your
guitar playing is obvious, of course, but there's something else not
there that I just can't seem to put my finger on...
Elliot: First of all, who the fuck is Buck Dharma? Was he hanging out with
Joey, Johnny,and Dee-Dee back in the day? But seriously, Joe Satriani
and Steve Vai I ain't, thank God! I wish I had some Angus Young though.
Bangin' out the bar chords with a few cheap licks is my thing.
Cosmik: Who's out there playing these days that y'all actually listen to and
like?
ROSS: There are some good local Philly bands that I go see. Other than that,
everyone wants to sound like Offspring. That is why I am stuck in the
70's.
Elliot: Ramones, Pegboy, Motorhead, Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Los
Straightjackets, Fear, AntiSeen, Blanks 77... Our Philly favorites are
Dr. Bob's Nightmare, The Stuntmen, Limecell, and Flag of Democracy.
Cosmik: Where all did you go on the tour last month?
Jo-Ann: We went to Morgantown West Virginia, Rochester New York, Cincinnati,
Detroit, Iowa City, Denver, Boulder, Salt Lake City, Reno, Chico,
Berkeley, Oceanside, Los Angeles, Albuquerque, El Paso, San Antonio,
Austin, New Orleans, Pensacola, Birmingham, Tallahassee, Tampa, Miami,
Savanna, Knoxville, and Roanoke. It was a great tour!
Cosmik: Any good war stories from this tour?
Ross: This tour we just returned from was kinda rough for me. Four days
before we were to leave, I crashed on my motorcycle and broke my shoulder
blade. The first two weeks were really rough. I had the bass strapped
up really high 'cause I couldn't lower my arm, I usually play with my
bass around my ankles. I just ate Percs every night and tried to stand
as still as possible 'cause the slightest movement left or right was
sheer agony. By the time we got to LA, I had the bass down to my knees,
and I almost had full movement of my arm. Everybody was telling me all of
these exercises to strengthen my shoulder, but I never had to do them.
Playing bass every night was therapy enough. I recommend that if anyone
breaks their shoulder, don't listen to the doctor. GO ON TOUR!
Cosmik: What I want to know is how the hell did you play Thorazine music
on Percodan? That shit zaps me out and makes me go slo-mo.
Ross: Throughout the day I would take aspirin cause I am not into that constant
fog feeling. When it came time to play I would use the live energy to
get me through the show. At the end of the set I'd be toast, that's when
the Percs came in handy.
Cosmik: Were you able to get your usual sound and play like you usually play?
Seems like playing with a busted wing would make it pretty hard to stick
to your technique...
Ross: No. I had to break everything down to the basic minimum, the root
changes and maybe a fill if I was able. I usually play with a hard
machine gun attack close to the bridge.
Cosmik: Speaking of sound, what's your setup like? It sounds like you're
really pumping the wattage.
Ross: I use an Ampeg SVT pro III. It has an all tube pre-amp and it kicks
out 450 watts. After checking out different cabinets I went with Mesa
Boogie stacks. It knocks down small buildings, so I'm happy.
Cosmik: Elliot, what kind of equipment combinations do you use to get your
sound? 'Cuz it's a kick ass sound!
Elliot: I use a Carvin Halfstack, which I bought from the band Shelter, it
even has "SHRED ZINE" still painted on it!!! I use the clean channel.
For distortion I use a Boss turbo Distortion, with a switch pedal to
switch between regular distortion and turbo distortion for leads. I
also use a Cry baby wah-wah once in a blue moon. I play a Gibson SG
standard and a Ibenez 540 XT Custom.
Cosmik: Are you able to get your sound pretty consistent between live and
the studio?
Elliot: My sound is always the same although I think I sound different
live from the recording. I feel it is fatter and louder live. It seems
that recording analog does my sound justice. The LP, which was recorded
and mastered analog, sounds closest to live. When converted to digital
CD, it loses a lot of beef and midrange.
Cosmik: That's interesting, because I thought you were playing a Fender
guitar, and I only have the CD version of Uncle Paul. It still sounds
good, but maybe just a bit more brittle than I'd expect from an SG. Have
you tried to counteract what digital takes away?
Elliot: I think that is something the engineer has to do. If I was the
engineer I would of kept more of the low and mid range. The reason it
sounds like a Fender is because you hear more of the high end. There
is nothing I can do to counteract the digital transition. All I can do
is make my amp sound as good as possible and hope for the best.
Cosmik: Do you all record as hot as you can without blowing up the sound
board?
Dallas: You know it!!!
Cosmik: Dallas just looks like he doesn't even need to be miked to get a
major sound.
Dallas: Actually, because I play with a traditional grip and don't stomp
through pedals, I do need to be mic'ed. Though apparently, I'm an easy
set-up and soundmen love my minimalist approach.
Cosmik: Elliot?
Elliot: Again, that is something the engineer is in charge of. If it were me
recording us, yeah, I would make the recording as HOT as possible without
distorting.
Cosmik: What is the typical Thorazine crowd like? IS there a typical
Thorazine crowd?
Jo-Ann: No, actually there is not. It is funny. We appeal to many people who
typically don't come out to punk shows. We have people from the Society
for Creative Acronisms, office workers, drunk punks, Dungeons and Dragons
type gamers, and on and on. We always seem to draw a very mixed crowd in
Philly.
Cosmik: So many bands say there is no real punk scene anywhere anymore, but
at the same time, there seem to be pockets here and there. Is there a
punk scene in Philly now?
Jo-Ann: Exactly like you said. Pockets. The scene here is very fragmented.
If you play a bar, the all age kids hate you. If you play an all age
club, all the bar people hate you. The drinking laws are very fucked up
here. You cannot step foot in a bar till you are 21. We have a couple
bands like Dr. Bobs Nightmare, the Stuntmen, Flag of Democracy, and
Limecell that we always seem to play with here.
Ross: There is a scene in Philly, but it is made up of cliques. I despise
the whole idea of scenesters and cliques, so I tend to stay in the
background of the Philly scene avoiding the cliques as much as possible.
Cosmik: Do you get into it, as far as going out and seeing other bands at
clubs and hanging out?
Ross: I like to go out and see a lot of different bands. As soon as they are
done playing I like to hang out at the danky old man's bar and play pool.
Jo-Ann: Well, Elliott and I work in bars and clubs, so we see so many bands
every week that if we do get a day off we don't go out to see live music.
Elliott sees 16 bands a week!
Dallas: I don't drink, so there is really no reason to be in a bar and the
all age kids just piss me off. Occasionally, if a band is recommended
or they are friends, I go out.
Elliott: I am a soundman at Upstairs at Nick's, a club here in Philly.
I see more bands than Valentino had women. We have a punk scene as well
as other stuff, too. We rarely just go out to see bands because I work
at the club and I play myself. Everyone needs a day away from live music
sometimes.
Jo-Ann: Ross is actually the biggest show goer of the group. He usually
shows up where Elliott and I are working.
Cosmik: What do y'all do for entertainment in Philly when you're not playing?
Elliott: Computer games are cool. I have recently gotten into an old flight
simulator called F-29 Retaliator. I like to read sci fi novels and
Stephen King. I love to ride my motorcycle. Everyone in the band has
one and we ride around town together quite often, when it's warm.
Cosmik: Ever go on any long road trips on the bikes or go to any rallies?
Dallas: I've found that the guys in this town aren't into long trips.
They'd rather go from bar to bar picking up chicks and getting drunk.
Elliot: Jo-Ann and I often go on long trips... when it is warm of course.
Jo-Ann: We usually wind up riding in town together. This past summer was
Ross' first summer riding, so we didn't go too far all together. Out of
all of us, Dal is the most active in the motorcycle world. This summer
we were supposed to be on tour but it got bumped to the fall, so Elliott
and I did a lot of riding. It was a BLAST!
Cosmik: How about you guys? What else do you do for kicks?
Dallas: I am very active in the martial arts, war games and computers.
Jo-Ann: On my day off, the last place I want to be is a bar. I am into my
computer, reading... I also am the one in the band who does most of the
organizing it takes to go on the road, which I use to help other band who
want to tour.
Cosmik: Did you find anything resembling a "scene" while you were touring?
Jo-Ann: I am not sure. We feel we are never anywhere for a long enough
period of time to give a proper judgment. While on the road, you come
to town, play and leave. The judgment would carry no weight.
Cosmik: You and Elliot live together and work together. We know what that
did to Stevie and Lindsay, right? How hard is it to make a relationship
like that work? Ever want to kill each other?
Jo-Ann: Sure, I guess so, but we are very close friends as well as lovers.
Even though Elliott is my lover, he wears many hats. For example, I
react differently to Elliott "Band Member" than I would Elliott "Lover"
or Elliott "Co-worker." If we are fighting in our personal life, we have
to sometimes put that aside to rehearse or work, then later we can pick
up where we left off.
Elliott: It's not easy sometimes, but we work things out. We have been
together and doing this for 3 1/2 years, and we are doing good. We have
our fights but we work them out fine.
Cosmik: Before we finish this, I want to ask about the new songs. What are
they like? Would they fit on Uncle Paul, or is this going to be a big
departure?
Dallas: NO!
Jo-Ann: I feel that some of the songs on Uncle Paul's were written when we
first got together and we have grown some since then. The feeling will
probably be the same, but I will let you know, since all the songs are
not written yet.
Elliot: It will still be Thorazine, hard, fast and loud. I think I am too
close to put my finger on the differences between the old and the new.
Cosmik: When you're writing new material, do you ever pull back a little
and say "shit, this one's TOO mean!" You know, songs about sharks and
castration and that sort of thing? Because I'd love to know what is too
mean for Thorazine.
Jo-Ann: I think the only topic too mean are the ones that offend one of us
personally... Other than that, all is fair game!
Dallas: We're not into the whole shock-value thingy, but nothing so far has
too over the top. I don't wanna rag on cripples or something though. I
personally don't do anti-God songs.
Ross: If I saw a news headline that read "DIVER DICKLESS FROM SHARK ATTACK,"
I'd write a song about that.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
TAPE HISS
By John Sekerka
[The following interviews are transcribed from John Sekerka's radio show,
Tape Hiss, which runs on CHUO FM in Ottawa, Canada. Each month, Cosmik
Debris will present a pair of Tape Hiss interviews. This month, we're
proud to present interviews with Kenneth Newby and Steve Roach.]
* * *
K E N N E T H N E W B Y
Teacher, musician, computer programmer and family man, Kenneth Newby
searches to marry acoustic and electroacoustic musics, bringing traditional
forms together with the latest technologies. His latest work is a
collaboration with Stephen Kent and Steve Roach on the superb Halcyon Days
project.
JOHN: Why is your record called Halcyon Days?
KENNETH: It came about in a backwards way. We were talking about when would
be a good time to make this recording. It turned out the best time was
right around the winter solstice: December 21st. It looked as if we'd be
spending a couple of weeks in Steve Roach's studio in Tucson, Arizona. I
made the connection to the Halcyon Days which are reputed to be the two
weeks around the winter solstice, and I sent a fax saying that it was an
auspicious time to do a creative project. We kind of left it at that
until we had finished the music. We were sitting around, trying to
decide what to call it, and Steve recalled my comment on the fax. We
felt that it fit the spirit of the music.
JOHN: Did all of the recording take place in Steve Roach's studio?
KENNETH: Pretty much. We spent eleven intensive days recording and mixing
there, though we brought a little of the material with us. I had written
computer programs to generate some textures and rhythms.
JOHN: Were you at all affected by the atmosphere, working in the desert?
KENNETH: It's a really nice environment. The back of Steve's house opens out
on to the desert. I was quite struck by it, never having experienced the
American desert before. We took advantage of plugging into the environment
and I'm sure it came through in the music to a degree.
JOHN: Who played what?
KENNETH: Stephen Kent played didgeridoo, Steve Roach and myself pretty well
split the engineering and electroacoustic sound generation duties. Steve
also played didgeridoo on two of the pieces.
JOHN: You mentioned computer programs. How much of the record is electronically
generated and how much involves live playing?
KENNETH: All of the wind instruments - there are a couple of Indonesian
flutes that I play throughout. Those parts were played live. It's actually
a nice balance of the acoustic and electroacoustic sounds. Even the
electronic sounds are largely rendered from recordings of acoustic sounds,
so even the electronic textures have a richness about them that comes
from starting with an acoustic source.
JOHN: Doesn't it seem strange to have a state of the art electronic studio
with an ancient didgeridoo?
KENNETH: That's what I'm used to doing. The last twelve years I've spent
studying traditional Gamalean music, so I like the balance of plugging in
to some kind of traditional music or instrument technique when you're
working with computers and digital editing systems, and all of that very
abstract form of music making.
JOHN: Do you write software for your music?
KENNETH: Yeah I do. Most recently I've been working with Macintosh computers
and a music programming language called Max, which allows you to write
logorithmic structures which generate music. A lot of people use sequencers
with computers which I tend to find less satisfying because you end up
with a fixed kind of music. Whereas Max allows you to build in a certain
amount of variation and it keeps it feeling alive during the developmental
process of the composition, so it can surprise you a little bit. Within
certain constraints it's allowed to make decisions and variations. It's
a relationship with the technology that I like to maintain. I don't have
to live within its restrictions too much.
JOHN: How do you avoid programming total chaos?
KENNETH: That's where the challenge comes in: conceptualizing ways of
controlling the output. You have to filter out absolute randomness to
give it some guidance. There are different strategies for constraint so
that it's not just pure entropy.
JOHN: Your students must love you. Where is it that you teach?
KENNETH: I occasionally teach at Simon Fraser University (British Columbia).
These days I'm teaching a Gamalean music course.
JOHN: How did you come to study in places like Java and Bali?
KENNETH: In 1984 I went to Paris to read a paper on computer music work I'd
been developing. The plan was to visit Italy, but this was October and it
was quite chilly. We'd been thinking of perhaps visiting India and by
chance we walked by a travel agent and there was an incredibly cheap
ticket to Singapore available. From Singapore we ventured on to Indonesia
whose culture I've had an interest in. We discovered that it was quite
easy to find a god music teacher, and high quality musicians were willing
to spend time with novices like ourselves. So we took a few lessons, got
inspired and decided to return. We went back in about nine month s and
spent about half a year living in Bali. Just digging in, studying music
and dance. That started an on-going relationship.
JOHN: Do you find it hard to adapt to such a different culture? It's almost
like time travel.
KENNETH: You know, the problem is really in coming back to Canada. I think
culture shock only occurs if you spend a short time. If you spend long
enough, you start to learn the language, your body language changes,
there's parts of yourself that come through differently than they would
in English. The real problem occurs on coming home and realizing how
different things are here. I think it's a wonderful thing to engage in a
culture other than your own. You can grow a lot.
JOHN: What is your connection with Steve Roach and the San Francisco scene?
KENNETH: My connection with Steve grew out of a phone relationship where he
called me up out of the blue about a project I did called 'Ecology of Souls'.
I had been listening to his music for a while, so we formed this
long-distance relationship. One thing led to another which resulted in
Halcyon Days, which was facilitated by the fact that Fathom Records, one
of the companies we both work with, is based in San Francisco. There's
also the City of Tribes label which handles the Trance Mission ensemble
releases. There seems to be a nexus for this kind of music.
JOHN: When you introduce yourself, are you a teacher, a musician, a producer
or a programmer?
KENNETH: A jack of all trades I guess. I find myself in the unenviable
position of trying to live by my wits as a musician, and that means a
certain amount of teaching, a certain amount of working with technology,
playing in a Gamalean orchestra, writing music for a CD Rom project.
There's a long list.
JOHN: I found a 1984 Mondo 2000 article attributed to Kenneth Newby. Is
that you?
KENNETH: That's me. I was an assistant editor for a couple of years.
JOHN: How did that come about?
KENNETH: Through a collaborator friend who was working for Mondo when I first
moved down to San Francisco. We were really hard up for cash and it was
an opportunity to get a visa while we were doing our music projects. At
first I was transcribing interviews and that led to other things. I stuck
it out for a couple of years. There were internal problems and it
bottomed out, though I'm pleased to see they're back on track now.
JOHN: Mondo 2000 has always been a pretty cutting edge, subversive publication.
How does that fit in with your ideals?
KENNETH: I'm a pretty non-conformist person at heart. I've always appreciated
that Mondo 2000 were happy to challenge the status quo. They had a certain
technocratic point of view which, ultimately, I didn't agree with. They
have an editorial viewpoint that somehow we'll leave our bodies through
some type of technology. I have questions about that.
JOHN: Back to your music, is there a goal you have in mind?
KENNETH: A number of things. One of them is this marriage of the acoustic
and electroacoustic. I'm trying to integrate a number of my interests,
like traditional music, and using technological tools available now in
the late 20th century, to be able to work some of that out, and create
alternative forms of music. I would like people to inhabit the music and
have a deep relationship with it. It's called 'deep listening'; something
that'll invite you to a new level.
JOHN: How do you answer critics who dismiss your music as ambient, without
substance, fluff?
KENNETH: If that's how they feel, they're welcome to their response. I have
no issue with that. If they're using a category like ambient and attaching
some pejorative value, then I would have to question that. These are
issues of music that have been unfolding in the 20th century for quite
some time, and there's quite a venerable lineage of people who have been
dealing with these issues. I think that is indicative of a closed mind.
...tape hiss
* * *
S T E V E R O A C H
Tracked down in his new digs in Tucson Arizona, ambient studio whiz,
continuing in the long line of electronic pioneers like Klaus Schultze,
reclusive sound scaper Steve Roach talks of seclusion, magnificent voids and
the artistic quest.
JOHN: Are you near a desert?
STEVE: I'm in the desert. That's why I moved here. It was my dream to have a
studio in this environment where you can see for many miles in many
directions, and the source of feelings that come about from being in this
place. That's where a lot of my music comes from.
JOHN: Are you on the edge of town?
STEVE: Tucson is about half a million, but I'm outside on the city limits
where everything starts to turn into pure desert. Unfortunately
civilization is coming in on me, so I'm already looking at the next place,
which is about an hour and a half out of town, and at this point, gives me
enough of a safety buffer for the next fifty years or so. I really crave
this solitary feeling. I can hole up here with my wife for a couple of
weeks, and work without distraction. It's absolutely vital for the music
that I'm creating.
JOHN: What exactly is it about the desert that draws you?
STEVE: The place is so quiet that all you can hear is your heart beating, the
functions of your body and your thoughts racing around like a little
hamster in a cage. Over time you get more and more comfortable with that
deep silence. Creatively, the place that I arrive to in my consciousness
when I'm in this kind of physical environment. I can create that kind of
silence and solitude in a sound proof studio, but it has no comparison to
when you're sitting on a mesa and can see for seventy miles. Yet there's
an inverted sense of quiet that is powerful and profound. Hopefully the
music that I create portrays the places I go. Beyond that it becomes kind
of a moot point of trying to describe it in words. That's why I chose
music as a medium, as opposed to being a writer or a visual artist.
JOHN: I recall a review in which the writer said she put your tape on while
driving in the desert, and only then did it make perfect sense. Is that
the ideal listening experience: to match the environment?
STEVE: It's one of the high points to experience the music at. From the
feedback I get, people feel it in their own environment in different ways.
Hopefully the creative act continues as people find new ways of having
sound in their lives. It's not necessarily about having music; it's more
about creating an hour of sound sanctuary or sculpture. The work is
becoming more dimensional, textural and more related to a sense of
location--not specific. Music without vocals offers an open end for the
creative imagination to work with. I do have a lot of artists that use my
music to create a kind of opening.
JOHN: Do you dabble in other art forms?
STEVE: I paint a bit. I learned a style while in central Australia. An
aboriginal dot painting style. The Dream Circle has my painting on the
cover.
JOHN: Are you a hermit, or do you have contact with the outer world?
STEVE: Good question. It may sound like it. For stretches of time, that's
certainly the case because of my work. The longer time without distraction,
the purer the piece becomes. It's an interesting juxtaposition these days
to try and keep that sense of boundary around you. I have all the modern
conveniences for communication--fax, phone, email--I'm certainly no
stranger to travel. I love meeting other people, cultures, countries, and
all of that has fed my music. But typically when I'm home, I'm pretty
solitary. Though I am touring this summer.
JOHN: What kind of a process is it to recreate live, what you've accomplished
in the studio?
STEVE: What I aim to present live is an extension of the recorded music, that
is an unfolding, unconscious to conscious emerging of sounds that you're
looking for some kind of identification with. Ultimately I try to present
a thoroughly focused hour and a half; almost like getting in a vehicle and
going from one place to another. It's a pretty vast amount of terrain that
I cover musically. I do that with heavy pre-produced sections of rhythmic
ideas that have appeared on the recordings, and there's a fairly complex
level of live performance and playback samples, rhythm loops and creating
real time layers. It's a very interesting process to witness if everything's
working in the right groove. It's like witnessing a collective dream
because the music flows continuously.
JOHN: Do you improvise live?
STEVE: Definitely. There are recognizable elements from the recordings which
are sonically gene spliced in concert. I can make spontaneous decisions
about these combinations, and on top of that I can jump in with a
didgeridoo or different types of percussion. It's a combination of being
on the edge with the improvising spirit and having a fairly structured
road map.
JOHN: Is your music for background listening, or do you require full
attention from the listener?
STEVE: Like all music, low volume has a different effect. A lot of people
underestimate the power, especially with non-rhythmic music, not playing
it at fuller volume and engaging with it. Especially folks who are new to
it, for whatever reason, are timid about turning up the volume.
JOHN: I've been playing The Magnificent Void around the house. People don't
realize it's on. It sneaks up on them until it reaches a sonic boiling
point, often driving them crazy. Is it a compliment that you can elicit
such a strong reaction?
STEVE: Well it tells me something about the person. You hear that with any
kind of music from opera to country to punk. You're going to find music
that people won't jive with. People either love or hate my music.
JOHN: I think your music can really get to a person emotionally. Even if it
is a negative reaction, at least it's a reaction.
STEVE: I absolutely agree. I've witnessed that experience. I'll put it on and
see what happens. The Void is fairly dark and shadowed harmonically in
passages. And the fact that there's no melody or rhythm, already
disqualifies quite a few people from entering into it. I'm not doing this
for acceptance. It's an inner need, a hunger. It needs to be expressed.
Some people play The Void all day and night. They get it. A lot of people
don't, and that's fine too.
JOHN: Are you recording constantly?
STEVE: It's pretty much my life: this addiction to sound. It's when the
spirit moves me, and that is quite often. I might take a week off to let
my ears re-align.
JOHN: With technology a big part of your music, do you think you would have
been a musician if you were born a couple of hundred years ago?
STEVE: I'm sure I would have been a heretic of some sort--persecuted for
doing something over the top.
...tape hiss
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
THE UNIFIED WAVE THEORY: Evolution and the Evolution of Surf Music
By Ferenc Dobronyi
A baby cries. The mother cradles the child and whispers "Ssshhh" into its
ear. A most basic and loving act, calming the child. The baby hears the
"Ssshhh" sound and is reminded of the pulsing flow of the amniotic fluid it
was surrounded in while still safe in the uterus. It is a call to the code
written deep in all human DNA, to the tiny little reptilian portion of the
brain that still remembers the primordial ocean that we all emerged from
billions of years ago. Amniotic fluid has the same chemical saline solution
as that of ocean water. In essence we all emerge from the water, in a genetic
evolutionary sense as well as the immediate human birthing reality.
The "Ssshhh" sound is white noise. The same sound as the crashing of waves on
the beach, and the same sound used in noise generators to relax people to
sleep. It is also the sound of information, the pure digital transmission of
a modem line transferring data in its most fundamental form. White noise is
the sound of every possible audible frequency being played at once. The full
frequency sound can engulf your reality and mask out all of the other sounds
around you. White noise, not coincidentally, is the sound produced by a
reverberation unit to give a false feeling of space.
In 1961 at small clubs in Southern California, bands like The Belaires,
and Dick Dale, were developing a new form of pop music. It was indebted to
many other instrumental styles that came before, and through that synergy a
new sound was made.
The heart of this sound was a driving beat and guitars drenched in reverb.
Leo Fender had just come out with his first outboard reverb tanks for guitar,
and the bands were really testing the units to the limit. The surfers who
attended the shows said that the reverb sounded like waves, and people began
to call this new sound "Surf Music." The sound now had a name, and the local
L.A. musicians and teenage fans jumped on the surf music bandwagon.
But what about the surfers? What had they heard as they stood in front of the
stage listening to the Belaires and Dale? A surfer sits alone in the water
waiting for a wave. A swell comes, he paddles, racing to keep in front of the
wave, as it sucks him up the face. He stands as the wave now crests over him
and he is in the "Green Room." Total visual focus and concentration on the
hole at the end of the tube. The only sound heard: the beating heart inside
his body and the wash circulating around him, and that rhythm and sound
together is the essence of surf music.
Surf music rode its own wave of popularity, producing a few national and
dozens of regional L.A. hits, and influencing the American teen agenda to
some degree. Record companies were quick to jump on the latest trend and do
the big media push that only they can do. Surf bands sprang up coast to coast
in the U.S. and internationally. One of the most popular surf bands were The
Astronauts from Denver, Colorado, proving that you don't need water to make
surf. (Conversely, it could be said that we carry the surf around inside of
us all the time.)
The surf sound was easy to achieve because you could buy Fender equipment at
any music store. You didn't need a lead singer and the music was easy to
play.
Compositionally, surf music set itself apart from rock in many ways. From its
earliest appearance, a precedence was set that the songs did not have to
follow the standard rock'n'roll/blues/boogie woogie I/IV/V chord progression
(Dick Dale's Misirlou being based on a Greek scale while The Belaires' Mr.
Moto is modal). The arrangements tend more toward the drama of Broadway songs
and the aural augmentation of film scores. Being instrumental, the songs lend
themselves to sound bites, studio effects and experimentation. And, having no
vocal, the great focus was on melody and the emotive ability of the guitar.
As the guitar became the featured instrument, technique and improvisation
surely came to be an important part of the musician's vocabulary and would
lead to the guitar's revolution as the instrument of choice.
Dick Dale will tell you that he taught Jimi Hendrix all that he knew about
playing the guitar. While this is improbable, surf music's emphasis on the
electric guitar had a definite influence on the rise in popularity of that
instrument.
It is generally agreed that surf music was a peculiar phenomenon whose
popularity ended with the arrival of The Beatles and The Vietnam War. Some
bandmembers were called to serve in Vietnam, breaking up the bands altogether.
The Beatles, of course, changed everything stylistically and musically. The
girls didn't want to listen to guitar instrumentals, they wanted cute singers
and love songs, so most surf bands adapted and evolved in that direction. As
they progressed musically, they would go on to be some of the key players in
folk-rock, psychedelia and the many other sub-genres of rock'n'roll. By 1965,
just four years after its invention, surf music had disappeared from the
musical map, but not our consciousness.
During the summer of 1962, my DNA was being written, influenced and encoded
by a variety of factors including genetics, my mother's diet, and the zietgiest
that was the era's then current reality construct. As an adult, I have
my father's hairline, crave ice cream and have an inexplicable taste for
sea-foam green and Ford Fairlanes.
In 1971, I was eight years old and lying on a box-spring mattress, my
ear pressed to the fabric. My foot was at the other end of the mattress
kicking it. The sound traveled the length of the bed, but to my great
amusement, continued long after the impact of my foot. I turned my mouth
toward the mattress and shouted, then quickly listened as my voice
reverberated through the springs. I spent hours listening to the far away
echoes, imagining I was in some great cave.
In 1978, I was in High School and listening only to punk rock. Johnny
Thunder's album "So Alone" had a cover of some old instrumental song called
Pipeline. I was just learning how to play guitar, so (like half the kids in
America) this was one of the first songs I learned to play. Then I heard the
original version of Pipeline in the movie "The Warriors," and that reverb
sound really knocked me out. I couldn't find the original version of Pipeline
at the record store, so I went to the public library and found one of those
cheesy compilation records that had a surfer's lingo dictionary and a dozen
surf classics. My musical horizons were now expanding, and surf music had
become an important part of my life.
1996 now. Classic surf music as a sound may seem dated, but I believe that it
was a first attempt at using technology to create the very modern concept of
virtual reality. The main element of the surf sound is reverb. Dense reverb
that surrounds the listener. A Reverb unit is a fake space generator; a small
box filled with springs that can imitate a room or hall, small or large. When
you listen to someone singing on an album, chances are that they were
recorded in a small studio, in a padded, acoustically designed room. But if
the recording engineer adds reverb, you will hear them singing in the
Metropolitan Opera House, the Grand Canyon or maybe in the shower stall of a
tiled bathroom. Your mind associates the audio input with a mental visual
picture of a space where you have perhaps actually experienced that ambience
for yourself. This effect is especially obvious when you listen through
headphones and with your eyes closed.
When I first heard surf music, I was teleported into a mysterious grey area
that exists somewhere in this reverb. The drums appear to carry the natural
ambience of the room that they were recorded in, perhaps a small studio
setting. But the guitars are other worldly. The guitar might tap a muted note
and the reverb will carry it into never-never land. When the vibrato bar is
used to bend notes, the reverb will add all the possible in between notes
together to produce a disorienting blur. Reverb can meld two separate
instruments into a new sound. All of a sudden you can hear string sections
and horn charts, sirens singing and howling wolves. Where does that new sound
come from? Reverb can be like that primordial ocean for the creation of new
sounds.
With a modern digital reverb, it is possible to set up an endless reverb,
without decay. Feed a note in it and that sound will be regenerated forever.
In a virtual reality, that space might be akin to listening to the sound of a
distant star, or more exactly like time travel. Long after a musician has
played that note, had a cheeseburger, got married and died, his note will
still be playing for anybody who cares to listen.
Back to 1965. Surf music was dead in the water and a major social bifurcation
was upon us. Some endlessly argue cause and effect. Was music and the media
the cause of social upheaval or merely some of the symptoms? It doesn't
matter. A new way of thinking was entering the into the mass consciousness,
whether by experience or osmosis. It has been called a "New Age," but this
always conjures up thoughts of bland music and varietal spirituality. While
these were part of the new consciousness, they are certainly not all of it.
If you think of all time and all actions as objects floating on the ocean
surface, the early sixties were like the eerie calm before the tidal wave.
The crest of the wave was the late sixties. There occurred way too much
political weirdness and spontaneous creativity to say that all the events
were not somehow interconnected. Those who would deny this great change were
left on the beach, to be crushed as the tsunami hit the shore.
1994. Surf music again came back into vogue. Revival bands got a more
serious listen. Many other bands claimed surf music as their roots and
developed a more modern version of the classic sound. Film blockbuster
Pulp Fiction's extremely popular soundtrack was filled with oldie surf music.
In 1990 in San Francisco, a band called The Mermen were playing the clubs. I
saw them at the Paradise Lounge on a double bill with The Phantom Surfers,
probably the last time that ever happened. Since then, The Phantom Surfers
have had several vinyl l.p. and single releases, recorded as if it were still
1961. The songs are short with familiar arrangements and to a future
musicologist, they might be indistinguishable from surf music of the early
sixties.
On another tack, The Mermen's first album was filled with tight, well written
and well recorded songs that can be described as surf music in a traditional
sense. A second release came out, a mix of the traditional style songs and
longer, jam oriented numbers. The effects on the guitar tone went far
beyond reverb into the land of distortion, multiple digital delays and other
sounds. The rhythm section stretched out a bit, exploring beats far outside
the traditional driving surf rhythm. And yet, the sound was still rooted in
surf music.
The Mermen's third CD came out and featured music pieces over nine minutes
in length. The sound was extremely emotional; darkness and light clashing.
It's not surf music, but it's not not surf music either. Something much
larger. The name "Ocean Music" is suggested.
Imagine surf music as the little critter that first wagged its fins and tail
to push it up on dry land. Ocean music is the fish that came to shore, had a
look around and then swam farther back out into the sea.
Conversely, The Phantom Surfers have a strict set of rules about how surf
music should be played and sound. The band must have a two guitar, bass and
drum line-up. Songs must not be over four minutes, preferably two and a half.
The equipment must be vintage Fender guitars and amps.
The Mermen and other progressive surf bands acquire the wrath of the hardcore
traditional surf music crowd. They are decried as being hippies and sullying
the innocence of surf music. But in comparison to The Mermen, these
traditionalist now seem more like nostalgia acts. They have never grown
musically and would seem to put stylistic trappings before their own
development as musicians.
I should be fair and say that there are a great number of current surf bands
who lean more toward the traditional than the progressive, but are infusing
the sound with a modern sensibility, adding new vitality to the vintage
sound.
1996. The state of the Surf? Record companies know that instrumental music is
too esoteric to sell in quantity. It seems that you have to tell the average
listener that "This is a love song" before they get the point, and they
couldn't possibly be imaginative enough to find their own meaning in wordless
music. Remember that the entire music industry is focused on selling
"product" to Jr. High and High school kids, who are the largest music buying
audience by default, only because they aren't yet old enough to buy alcohol
and cars. Musicians play surf or instrumental because there are no words to
express what they are feeling, not because they think that they will sell a
lot of records.
It is a real leap of faith for non-musician music fans to watch all
instrumental music. Having a lead singer gives a typical rock band a focus
for most of the audience. Sure, a lead guitarist will take a solo for one
verse, but then all attention turns back to the singer, and the words that he
sings carry a direct meaning, whereas in all instrumental bands, the music is
the focus. And pure music exists on a non-verbal, emotional plane where it
will have a different meaning for everyone who hears it.
It is not as if surf music will ever again top the music charts, and there
isn't another Beatles on the horizon to kill its current popularity. But surf
music is evolving again, just as it did in 1964. Modern surf musicians can't
deny the influences of the past 30 years, and can't help but to incorporate
those influences into the music they now make. Ocean music is the fulfillment
of all that surf music only hinted at. It brings our own deep connections to
the rhythms and drama of the ocean to the fore.
The surf music phenomenon of the early '60's should not be dismissed as just
another teen fad. It was clearly one of the first signs of the great populist
movement to come. A resurgence in its popularity matches the shift in the
social and environmental consciousness of our times. Surf, and now Ocean
music, carry the primordial sonic envelope of human evolution, written into
our genetic code. The sound is a feedback loop from our deep sub-conscious to
the prevailing zietgiest of this new age.
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Ferenc Dobronyi (fd@cybersun.com) is a freelance graphic designer and a
guitarist with avante-surf band Pollo Del Mar (http://www.pollodelmar.com)
in San Francisco.
Copyright 1996 Ferenc Dobronyi
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BALFA TOUJOURS: Deux Voyages (Rounder)
Reviewed by Shaun Dale
The Balfa Brothers were a benchmark act in Cajun music and Dewey Balfa's
daughter, Christine, carries the torch high in Balfa Toujours (Balfa
Forever). "Deux Voyages" has fine examples of the uptempo dance music,
traditional waltzes and melancholy ballads that typify the genre.
The band is a quartet featuring Balfa on guitar, vocals and triangle,
Dirk Powell on accordion, bass, fiddle and vocals, Kevin Wimmer on lead
fiddle and vocals and drummer/vocalist Mike "Chop" Chopman. With all
members credited as vocalists, it's apparent that many of the cuts
feature the harmonies you expect in Cajun music, but it's Balfour's
voice that is principally featured, and she's a remarkably expressive
singer. The notes include translations of the Acadian French lyrics,
but the mood of each piece is made clear through the tone and timbre of
the vocals.
Uncle Burke Balfa joins the band on ten of the sixteen tracks to add his
masterful touch on the triangle - traditionally the principle percussion
instrument in a Cajun band. The amount of music he draws from a piece
of bent steel is a marvel.
Peter Schwarz contributes a second fiddle on some tracks and Tim O'Brien
makes a couple appearances on mandolin, but most of the guest
appearances are by other members of the Balfa clan, including Tony Balfa
on bass and Nelda Balfa on triangle. Listening to them together makes
me long to have spent some time on the back porches of the Balfa
hometown of Tepatate, Louisiana. When a family can produce the songs
and performances that have now come through generations of Balfas, I
truly hope that there will be "Balfa toujours."
Track List:
Allons A Tepatate * Deux Voyages * J'ai Vu Le Loup, Le Renard Et La
Belette * Chicot Two-Step * La Valse A Canray * Bee De La Manche *
73 Special * Le Canard A Bois Sec * Le Falcon Gris (The Grey Hawk *
La Valse A Grandpere * Jeunes Filles De La Campagne * Galop A Wade Fruge