Sopwith Camel, is a barely recalled—but amazing—group from the Summer of Love-era San Francisco, who were the second Bay Area band to be signed to a major label (after Jefferson Airplane) and the first to have a top 40 hit, 1967’s Lovin’ Spoonful-esque (both bands had same producer, Erik Jacobsen) “Hello, Hello.”
If you look at a book of San Francisco rock posters, you’ll see their name show up a lot on bills often above the names of much more famous groups (like the Grateful Dead, who opened for them), and on bills that included Love, Allen Ginsberg and the 13th Floor Elevators, but there’s precious little written about them online. I think they must’ve largely slipped past me because based on the evidence of “Hello, Hello” I probably mentally put them more into the bubblegum pop category, plus with their name, I think I conflated them with the Royal Guardsman, who had novelty songs like “Snoopy vs. The Red Baron” and “It’s Sopwith Camel Time.”
Here they are miming “Hello, Hello” on Dick Clark’s Where The Action Is:
Their first incarnation of Sopwith Camel only lasted about six months. Their debut album was pretty much cobbled together right before they split up—the album sported a sticker asking buyers if they remembered “Hello, Hello”—but Sopwith Camel reformed four years later in 1971 when their music took on a more jazzy/hippie Steely Dan-meets-War-meets-John Sebastian kinda sound.They released one more album in 1972 on Reprise before breaking up again, The Miraculous Hump Returns From the Moon and this is what I want to call your attention to. It’s one of the most amazing overlooked gems of the 1970s. In a decade positively teeming with great “lost” music, it stands out as one of the best “lost” albums.
I realize that I compared them to three different acts above, but really this album, or most of it, at least, isn’t too much like anything else that was going on at that time. And how many bands can you name that were fronted by a guy wielding a soprano sax? None, right? They had a highly original sound. If I was hard pressed to describe their music in words, I’d have to say they sound like what the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers would sound like if they’d have formed a real band. Only Frank Zappa’s Apostrophe can rival it as a soundtrack to reading underground comix of that era. It’s a quirky, fun, sleazy-sounding album. I highly, highly recommend giving it your time.
Taking in elements of FM schmaltz, prog-rock, jazz, showtunes, Krautrock and indian classical music, this is an album that overflows with ideas, but never overwhelms. “Orange Peel” is cooly funk-scented ambient-jazz, “Dancin’ Wizard” is what Incredible String Band might have sounded like if they’d grown up with sunshine rather than rain, while “Coke, Suede and Waterbeds” is as lush and indulgent as the title suggests. However, it’s the last track “Brief Synthoponia” that is most startling. A fantastically stream-lined experimental jam, it manages to cram an awesome breakbeat, sax and synth squalls and some super-skronk hep-cat dynamism into its fifty-three second lifespan. A tiny masterpiece.
If there was just ONE song you’d hope to see performed by these guys on YouTube, it’s The Miraculous Hump‘s opening number, the futuristic and CATCHY AS HELL “Fazon.” I could listen to this on a loop for 24 hours and never get sick of it. Sadly the performance gets abruptly cut off, followed by “Monkeys on the Moon” another song from the album. (There are other versions of this video floating around.)
BONUS clip: Jonathan Wilson and his band covering “Fazon” in 2014
It is during this time of great confusion, that we must make the most of our surroundings in new and creative ways. Come with me, if you will, to a place of great excitement that is aged to perfection. It’s the Utica Club: a hazy and happenin’ spot, tinted by psychedelia and the promise of a far-out future. And all it takes is the crack of a beer.
The straight corporate suits have been trying to earn the respect of one counter-culture revolutionary since they began teaching it in universities. Some of the hippies even fell for it. During the radical late 60’s, just about anyone with long hair and an out-of-sight sense of freedom could pass as a child of this new wave of thinking.
Random beer fact: Utica Club was the first beer that was sold when Prohibition ended in 1933. Imagine how good it must have tasted that night. Which is funny, because online reviews for the cheap lager describe it as tasting like shit. Regardless, they sure knew their demographic. Early ads by the brewery featured the lovable Schultz and Dooley, bumbling beer steins and regional ambassadors to the watery brew. One of company taglines was “We drink all we can - the rest we sell.”
Utica television spot from the 60s
Commercial exploring the emerging beatnik culture
In 1968, something was really happen’ in the American underground and Utica Club really needed the beatniks to think their beer was hip. They hired ad agency Wells, Rich, Greene, Inc, who brilliantly conceived the fantasy of Utica Club - a mythical mod nightclub of kaleidoscopic delight. Think Laugh-In meets the Electric Pussycat Swingers Club from the first Austin Powers. Jingle composer Sascha Burland (know for creating the Nutty Squirrels, notorious Chipmunks rip-off) and Chicago garage rock band The Trolls wrote the soundtrack to this youthful setting, summed up as the “Utica Club Natural Carbonation Band Beer Drinking Song.”
The song was included in a series of television ads that ran throughout upstate New York. It featured partygoers sneaking around the Utica Beer Brewery looking for a taste of the nightlife. Later they would discover that one could only achieve the vibe by twisting open a cold one. Thousands of promotional 45s with the theme song were given away to brewery visitors during the era, as a reminder of where Utica Club can take you.
The back cover to the record described the dreamlike utopia as follows:
There’s nothing totally sane about The Utica Club. Waitresses slide down fireman’s poles. Life-sized paintings come to life. A friendly gorilla’s in charge of the swings. You know the ones that hang from the ceilings. With girls on them.
Hollywood is a weird town. I mean, where to begin with that statement? Perhaps we should just jump to the topic of this post, the 1973 film The Baby, a movie about a mentally incompetent man who lives his life as an adult baby along with his mother and two Stepford Wife-esque sisters. If you’ve never seen this film, just trying to wrap your mind around the idea of watching a movie about a grown man operating at the capacity of a breastfeeding infant (because, yeah, that happens in the film) is probably enough to make you consider your current life choices. However, I bring good news to all you subversive content-loving freaks, The Baby is a strangely well-acted mind-fuck of a film which somehow, despite its putrid pediatric subject matter, received a PG rating upon its release in 1973.
Ted Post’s many directorial credits include classic television series such as The Twilight Zone, Rawhide, and Gunsmoke, and films, including two Clint Eastwood gems, Magnum Force, and Hang ‘Em High. Post’s work earned the director two Emmys and the admiration of his peers. He took the job of directing The Baby after writer Abe Polsky spent a year trying to convince him to do it. The film—a peculiar psychological/horror/thriller, is quite a departure from Post’s tough-guy wheelhouse. What made Post so perfectly suited to direct The Baby was his reputation for not interfering with his actors so they could do what they did best, bringing the characters to life and making the audience believe they are the person they are seeing on screen. Even if that character is an infant trapped inside the body of an adult. So when actor David Mooney (billed as “David Manzy” in the film) got the role of “Baby” in The Baby, he shaved his entire body in order to look like a 21-year-old baby (He was then 32). You’d think someone might have told the poor guy about the smelly miracle that is Nair, but I digress. Here’s Mooney from a 2011 interview where he spoke briefly about his experience filming The Baby:
“One of my most challenging experiences was playing [an impaired] boy… in a movie called The Baby. And that’s now become a cult film. The acting part of that was so difficult because I had to totally de-man-ize myself and become a baby, act like a baby. And I just, I’d always loved babies, so I was around baby cousins and all this, and had held babies and babies sat on my lap and all that, so I was aware of how babies, the innocence they had and the dependability they have on you and how they’re so real because they react to the stimulus that’s given them at the time. So I had to learn all those things and make sure to incorporate that into that role.”
Actor David Mooney as “Baby.”
Shortly after the opening credits, which are shown over a scene with social worker Ann Gentry (played by the Lynda Carter-looking Anjanette Comer) looking over photos of Baby at various stages of his development, it’s clear something is amiss with Baby, and Gentry’s character is going to be the one to find out. This brings us to our dramatic introduction to Mrs. Wadsworth, Baby’s mother, who commands the screen, much like the unsettling forcefulness of a chain-smoking Joan Crawford (think 1964’s Strait-Jacket), or a fired-up Elizabeth Taylor. When Mrs. Wadsworth (played to the hilt by actor Ruth Roman), greets Gentry on the porch of their regal home, it seems abundantly clear the young social worker is in over her head. During her visit, she meets one of Baby’s sisters, the odd, big-haired Germaine, and finally, Baby, who is taking his afternoon nap. So begins Gentry’s role as the family’s new social worker, and things get very, very weird, and very, very sinister quickly. Specifically, there is a scene in The Baby depicting the most unsexy, unsettling catfight in cinematic history. This is a fact.
Another bizarre aspect of the film is the use of real baby sounds instead of baby soundsas mimicked by actor David Mooney. Allegedly, the original audio for the film was of Mooney making adorable baby noises. The Baby‘s soundtrack, scored by Gerald Fried, does its best to invoke, at times, the masterful vibe of Bernard Herrmann (Psycho, Taxi Driver, Citizen Kane) along with some foreboding beatnik-bongo jazz flute jams. Of all the stand-out performances Post got from his actors, it is Mooney’s deep dive into becoming Baby that you will never forget. Since we’ve all got so much time on our collective wash-your-fucking-hands right now, I’m happy to report that it is streaming for free in all its beautifully paced, deranged entirety on Tubi. It was also released on Blu-ray in 2014 by Severin and is well worth owning if you are a collector of physical media, especially oddball films that defy explanation. The trailer, some stills, and movie posters for The Baby follow.
The scene where social worker Ann Gentry first sees Baby asleep in his adult-sized crib.
A now all-too-relatable painting by Gertrude Abercrombie, “Woman in a crumbling cell,” 1949.
By the time she was five, Gertrude Abercrombie had already lived in Austin, Texas (her birthplace), Berlin, Germany, and then Aledo, Illinois. Two short years later, the family of three would finally settle down in Chicago, a place Gertrude would spend the majority of her life.
Though still quite young, Abercrombie developed a keen interest in linguistics during the family’s time in Berlin, where Gertrude had become fluent in German. Additionally, Abercrombie’s parents were part of a traveling opera company, and Gertrude would also develop her musical chops as a vocalist with a penchant for jazz. Her formal education included earning a degree in Romance Languages from the University of Illinois (1925), then later exploring her artistic yearnings with commercial art courses at the School of the Art Institute and a brief stint at American Academy for Art in Chicago. She would then pursue a career in art after finding a job as a department store commercial artist. These endeavors would convince Abercrombie she should focus full time on developing her painting skills, which she did starting in 1932 at the age of 22. One year later, she became a part of the Public Works of Art Project (PWAP). The PWAP was launched during the Great Depression as a way to help support artists by engaging their services to decorate public dwellings. Paid anywhere between $38-$46.50 a week, Abercrombie was one of nearly four thousand artists that collectively created 15,663 pieces of artwork based on images associated with the “American scene” (think Grant Wood’s 1930 painting “American Gothic”). Gertrude was empowered by her inclusion in the PWAP, and this sense of inclusion with her peers would help inspire the young artist to further develop her style.
Success would come reasonably quickly for Abercrombie, and by the early 40s, she was the toast of New York after her first solo show in the city. Gertrude would return to Chicago and hold a show at the Art Institute’s Chicago Room, after which she would be referred to as “the queen of the bohemian artists” and the “Queen of Chicago.” Her solitary style of surrealism often included lonely self-portraits and nocturnal images of cats and owls. A quote attributed to Abercrombie shed some light on the starkly beautiful visions of the artist and how she came to create them:
“I am not interested in complicated things nor in the commonplace, I like to paint simple things that are a little strange. My work comes directly from my inner consciousness, and it must come easily.”
When Abercrombie wasn’t painting, she was busy hanging out with luminaries of the jazz scene like Charlie Parker, Sarah Vaughn, and Sonny Rollins. To say the least, her life was busy, if not chaotic, and she would struggle with vice – like many of her famous friends—specifically alcohol. In contrast to her life, her paintings depict calming, isolating scenes, many of which were conjured from her memories as a child growing up surrounded by the landscape of Aledo, Illinois. As we are all spending a lot more time alone right now, I found Abercrombie’s paintings somewhat comforting and very relatable. I hope you do too.
Well, the Youtuber known as Alt Copperpot5 has done it again, uploading more amazing, previously uncirculated live footage of Nirvana. We told you about two of the other recent times Alt Copperpot5 has premiered such video (see links at the end of this post), and like those clips, the footage is superb.
This Nirvana performance was recorded at the “No More Wars” benefit concert, held on the campus of Evergreen State College, a liberal arts school in Olympia, Washington. Nirvana headlined the event, which took place on January 18th, 1991, not long after the US-led Gulf War began in Kuwait. Before Nirvana played, bassist Krist Novoselic gave an impassioned speech about the war. Dave Grohl is on drums, having replaced Chad Channing in September.
Here’s Paul Kimball of Helltrout, the group that played right before Nirvana that evening:
Evergreen was a very socially conscious environment, sometimes to a fault. But we and other bands were really feeling it. It was an intense moment. Krist Novoselic spoke at length from the stage that night, and though I remember it being less than eloquent, it was definitely right on…The big difference at this one was Dave Grohl. All of sudden what Nirvana had been trying to do finally became undeniable. The songwriting, the time on the road…The fact that Dave could harmonize with Kurt is something that pushed the songwriting way up front, and his drumming—well, c’mon! (from I Found My Friends: The Oral History of Nirvana)
Someone videotaped Nirvana, and a couple of songs (and perhaps even more), including “Breed,” aired on a public access TV program in Olympia. It’s believed that Nirvana’s entire 33-minute concert was captured, but very little has circulated.
A photo from the show. Can you spot the videotaper?
On March 15th, Alt Copperpot5 uploaded a nine-minute collection of clips from Nirvana’s set—partial video of six songs, as well as a portion of Krist’s speech. The recording contains performances of new tunes that were unreleased at that time, including the earliest known live versions of “Territorial Pissings” (with a guitar solo not heard in the familiar studio take) and the unnamed hidden track on Nevermind, a song later titled “Endless, Nameless.” The taper did a nice job, and the footage looks great, appearing to have been sourced from a low generation tape. As Paul Kimball noted, the band sounds incredible.
Here’s the order of the clips:
1. Tuning
2. Krist’s speech
3. Aneurysm
4. Breed
5. Pay to Play (early version of “Stay Away”)
6. School
7. Territorial Pissings
8. Endless, Nameless
As the video comes to an end, Kurt can be seen smashing his guitar to bits with a hammer.
By the time this show happened, Nirvana had made the jump from indie Sub Pop to DGC Records, the major label that would release Nevermind in September. Nearly a year to the day after the “No More Wars” benefit, the record would top the US Billboard album chart.
The first image of the group a purchaser of the ‘Nevermind’ CD sees after opening the package.
A couple more photos of Nirvana from the “No More Wars” gig, then the video:
As a bonus, here’s the full version of “Breed,” taken from the aforementioned public access TV broadcast:
John Peel with his wife Shelia and Mark E. Smith and the Fall at Peel’s 50th birthday bash, 1989. via.
When did everything get so shit? The older I get the more I think Philip Larkin was probably right when he wrote every new generation is just a mere dilution of the last. My gauge is pop culture and pop culture just now is shit, utter shit. Music is at a nadir. And don’t tell me, “Oh, but there’s suuuuuupppppeeerrr new bands out there…” No. There are mainly shit new bands out there who think they’re super.
Like take this morning when some vacuous TV presenter was interviewing a boy band pop star who was being feted like he could walk on water and turn it into wine. The singer (if that’s what he was) had a vocal style like cats being drowned and looked like he’d escaped some bide-a-wee home for the criminally attired. This anodyne safe space presenter was all “super,” “lovely,” “great” and “you’re the best.” Had she ever listened to this no-talents back catalogue? If she had—-God help us!!! I would rather go deaf than listen to that kinda shit. Seriously.
Anyway, this insufferable presenter was the kind who would interview a serial killer with: “And you know I was really a bit scared when I heard about my next guest, but you know what, he’s really super, amazing, just lovely. Now, Sid, you strangle people, don’t you? That’s amazing. And it’s all your own handiwork? Super.”
This is where we are at folks. Maybe coronavirus ain’t so bad after all…
Now kids (in my best Grandpa Simpson voice…), once upon a time, young ‘uns could wake up in the morning and there was such an abundance of great music to pluck like ripe fruits from the tree that we never got out of bed. No, sir. We just lay there, smoking weed and listening to PiL, T.Rex, Bowie, the Specials, Joni Mitchell, Blondie, Radiohead, Throbbing Gristle, Public Enemy, NWA, Kate Bush, Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, the Slits, etc, etc, etc…. Of course, it wasn’t all good. There was NSYNC, the Backstreet Boys, Boyz II Men, the Spice Girls, and New Kids on the Block….so maybe things haven’t changed that much…hmmm?
But then again….Let’s go back to your childhood, childhood… says Vivian Stanshall.
It’s 1989. The legendary Radio One DJ is being given a surprise party to celebrate his 50th birthday and 25-years in broadcasting. The party took place on Peel’s birthday eve Tuesday August 29th, and featured a few of his (then) favorite bands: House of Love, the Wedding Present, and the Fall.
Originally Peel’s other favorite band the Undertones were to reform with Feargal Sharkey on vocals but “sadly had to pull out due to one of the members having a family bereavement.” Thankfully, the House of Love stepped in. If the support bands were good, the headliners the Fall were grrrreat.
John Peel, for those who don’t know, was one of the most important British DJs operating out of the BBC from the 1960s until his untimely death in 2004. Peel curated, introduced, and promoted some of the best new bands during these years like T.Rex, Pink Floyd, Roxy Music, the Faces, Joy Division, the Clash, the Sex Pistols to the Fall, the Smiths, Pulp, Nirvana and the White Stripes and many many more like the A. C. Acoustics, Dept. S. and the Undertones. His influence as a curator of good musical taste has never been equalled.
Now back to the surprise birthday party. The Fall played a selection of past tracks and more recent recordings, together with a cover of the Gene Vincent song “Race with the Devil” as it was one of Peel’s favorite songs.
Track Listing: “Mere Pseud Mag Ed, “I’m Frank,” “Arms Control Poseur,” “Fiery Jack,” “Race with the Devil,” “Carry Bag Man,” and “Mr.Pharmacist.”
John Peel joins the band on stage while the crowd sing “Happy Birthday.” Peel addresses the audience and made his famous quip about his fantasy soccer career:
Think my chances of making the Liverpool side are gone now. Might still be able to get a game at one of those London clubs, though.
You can listen to the whole party here but meantime, here’s the meat and two veg: The Fall.
Mark Wilkinson’s artwork for the cover of Marillion’s 1983 album, “He Knows You Know.”
After leaving art school, Mark Wilkinson found a nine-to-five office job drawing illustrations used for heating and ventilation companies. Realizing this was not exactly what he had in mind for a career, he started freelancing for comic books and magazines catering to fantasy and science fiction fans. This was fine for a while and kept Wilkinson busy while he searched for gigs in the realm of album art. His first would be a concept he executed for an executive at RCA who envisioned the cover art for a 1982 heavy metal compilation called Hot Shower, featuring a Tron-like image of a guy in an asbestos suit and helmet wielding a Stratocaster spewing neon flames. Wilkinson’s next album cover would mark the beginning of a long relationship between the artist and English prog-rock band Marillion to the tune of nineteen of the band’s studio albums, as well as records for the group’s original vocalist Fish.
Wilkinson came by the job after overhearing a conversation about a company called Torchlight and their need for new artistic talent while at a pub in London. He then phoned Torchlight inquiring about work and was invited to come in and meet the art director, who told him the job was creating album artwork for Marillion. In an interview for a Bulgarian Iron Maiden fan site, Wilkinson would call this point in his still-young career as his “big break.” Another turn of good luck for Wilkinson was scoring the job of creating posters for the Monsters of Rock festival held at Castle Donnington. This would lead to requests for his master-airbrush services by mega-metal acts playing the festival, specifically Judas Priest, who the artist has also had a long relationship with. Others would follow, such as the Scorpions, Iron Maiden and Swedish band Europe.
His air-brush work, while most closely associated with the 80s, was inspired by the psychedelic 60s British graphic design duo of Michael English and Nigel Waymouth, known as Hapshash and the Coloured Coat. He also credits underground Zap Comix hero and psychedelic poster artist Rick Griffin with helping guide his artistic style. His work with Iron Maiden would begin after the band decided to give a little makeover to the most famous heavy metal mascot of all time, Eddie (created by Derek Riggs). Iron Maiden’s co-manager Rod Smallwood appreciated Wilkinson’s approach to his images of Eddie as he believed the artist clearly saw that Ed was much more than “just a skull.” His work with Maiden has appeared on various albums and other Maiden merchandise. Wilkinson would return to comics, creating incredible artwork for the Judge Dredd series on several occasions in the 1990s and beyond. In 2000, Wilkinson released the now hard-to-come-by book, Masque: The Graphic World of Mark Wilkinson, Fish and Marillion, a 180-page volume full of color images of his work. You can also purchase prints and more from Wilkinson on his official site.
The death of one form brings forth life in another.
Something was going wrong. It wasn’t just with the band, it seemed to be happening everywhere across the country. The Specials were on tour promoting their second album More Specials. It should have been a happy time. But in every city they visited, every gig they performed the tension, the anger on the streets and in the concert halls was becoming more and more apparent. There was a feeling the country was falling apart.
In 1979, the newly-elected Conservative government gave a promise to “heal” the nation “and sow peace” after the failure of Labour’s policies in 1970s which had given rise to three-day weeks, power cuts, endless strikes, a “winter of discontent,” where the dead were left unburied and the garbage piled-up on city streets. But as soon the Tories were elected, they turned true to form crucifying the poor and helping the rich. They closed down factories, destroyed hope, and created mass unemployment. The promise of a better future and the opportunity to achieve was only intended for a select class.
Jerry Dammers the Specials co-founder, producer, chief song-writer and keyboard player thought the new Prime Minister “Margaret Thatcher had apparently gone mad”:
...she was closing down all the industries, throwing millions of people on the dole. We could actually see it by touring around. You could see that frustration and anger in the audience. In Glasgow, there were these little old ladies on the streets selling all their household goods, their cups and saucers. It was unbelievable. It was clear that something was very, very wrong.
While there was something wrong going on in the country, there was also something very wrong with the Specials. When the band got together to record their next single “Ghost Town” everyone stood “in different parts of this huge room with their equipment, no one talking.” Dammers left the recording twice in tears seeing his hope for the band falling apart.
As fellow bandmate Neville Staple recalled the Specials ended “differences of opinions”:
...some wanting to lead things in one direction, some in another. I guess we were such a mixed bag of personalities, with various skills and talents, we just wanted different things and couldn’t agree enough to stay together.
It was probably the wrong move but Staple took “the bull by the horns and got stuck in and just kept going…[..]..never stopped.”
In the summer of 1981, the Specials released “Ghost Town.” It became the band’s biggest hit spending three weeks at number one in the UK Charts. The song reflected the sense of despair that had spread across the country as riots erupted in London, Liverpool, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds. The country was burning. At the moment of their greatest success, the Specials split.
Staple teamed-up with his fellow bandmates Lynval Golding and Terry Hall. and formed a new band—the Fun Boy Three.
The progressive rock band Seiche was a Chicago trio that existed for a brief period in the late 1970s/early 1980s. Though they weren’t around for long, they did put out an album, a record that’s become highly coveted. Now, decades after it was first pressed, Seiche’s exceptional LP is back.
Seiche consisted of Steve Zahradnik (guitar/vocals), Tom Vess (bass/vocals), and Marc Levinson (drums). The unofficial fourth member was Joe Klinger, their manager/producer, and one of the founders of the band. All had graduated from high school just a year or so prior. The guys in Seiche may have been young, but they were already experienced players, though they were songwriting novices. Encouraged by Klinger, Seiche worked up original material in a Chicago garage, which also served as a hang-out spot for the group.
In the spring of 1981, Seiche went into a local studio to work on an album. Produced and engineered by Klinger, Seiche recorded live, with minimal overdubbing. Everything was recorded during two sessions in April, which were held late at night, when the studio’s rates were cheaper. Mixing was done in a single day.
The plan was to send the LP to radio and clubs, with the hope that it would result in Seiche getting airplay and gigs, while also demonstrating Klinger’s behind-the-board talents. Just 150 copies of album were pressed; 100 came in plain white sleeves, the remaining 50 with cover art by Klinger’s sister. It was titled simply, Demo Press. The group is named after a type of wave, one that appears unexpectantly and in dramatic fashion.
Seiche’s lone album is certainly something special. A blend of dreamy, early Pink Floyd, classic Sabbath riffery, and the pure prog of King Crimson, Demo Press is a dynamic, energetic LP that’s way more alive than your standard prog rock record. It sounds like it came from another era entirely, long before new wave and MTV—which arrived the same year as Demo Press.
On August 3rd, 1981, Seiche played their only show at a Chicago club. The venue served alcohol, so the band members—all still under 21—couldn’t go beyond the rim of the stage. A second gig was booked, but when Levinson found out he couldn’t make it, a disagreement about who would fill in on drums led to the break-up of the band. After less than two years together, Seiche was finished.
Original copies of Demo Press turn up on auction sites from time to time, selling for, at a minimum, several hundred dollars. In 2013, a minty copy with the artwork sold for $1,884.
Thankfully, Jackpot Records has re-released Demo Press on vinyl, making it readily available—and affordable—for the first time. This authorized reissue of the album is sourced from the original tapes, and the vinyl sounds fantastic. The package includes new liner notes with reminiscences from the band members and their manager, along with photos and other archival material. The LP comes with a free download, which contains an exclusive, previously unreleased King Crimson cover.
For Dangerous Minds, Jackpot has uploaded one of the best tracks from the album, the awesome “Evidently Me”:
Julien Nitzberg. Shit-stirrer, rebel director, artist, punk rocker and genius are some titles bestowed on this forward-thinking, back-slapping smart-ass. You might know him from his earliest documentary on Hasil Adkins—lunatic rockabilly one man band-he thought the guy in the radio made the music that way. Hasil sang about beheading his girlfriend so she “can eat no more hot dogs.” At that time he met Adkins’ neighbors the White family, who were the focus of his next documentary, the VHS cult sensation The Dancing Outlaw, about Jesco White, hillbilly clog dancer and Elvis impersonator. If you added up all the views just on YouTube of the different clips of this film alone it adds up into the millions.
Fast forward to 2009, Johnny Knoxville and Nitzberg make the cult hit The Wild and Wonderful Whites of West Virginia. In between these Nitzberg did many other projects Like Mike Judge presents: Tales From the Tour Bus and the controversial The Beastly Bombing operetta, an equal opportunity love/hatefest about, well…the subtitle of the operetta is “A Terrible Tale of Terrorists Tamed by the Tangles of True Love,” if that helps. You can read about it here.
All I knew about For the Love of a Glove going in was Julien’s history and sense of humor and that it was about Michael Jackson. That alone is at least a Godzilla’s worth of possible satiric destruction in the hands of Nitzberg, and that’s putting it mildly! It seems all of MJ’s bad behavior is blamed on aliens that look like glittery gloves who come to take over humanity. Oh did I mention it’s also a musical? And a puppet show? With life-sized puppets? The main one being Donny Osmond, Michael’s mortal enemy? There’s even one of Corey Feldman! And Emmanuel Lewis!!
The show is a non-stop comedy clobbering of the senses, with a very small, very talented cast, great original music, cool effects, etc. Most of the actors play as many as four roles, and being that much of the cast is African American it was odd/funny and visibly uncomfortable (to some) when these actors donned white hoods for the big Ku Klux Klan musical show stopper! But if you know Julien…
In these days of modern mass paranoia and casual racism, over-sensitivity and dumbing down of all things, even I had a flash of looking behind me (as I saw others do) and wondering if this was cool to like, who was getting offended, who was laughing, and right then at that moment I realized I have been way more affected by all this modern bullshit than I thought. We need people like Julien Nitzberg to remind and instill in us that it is not only okay, but quite necessary to think, laugh (at ourselves AND at others) and learn.
I spoke to Julien Nitzberg and cast member Pip Lilly about all of this.
Howie Pyro: Okay so why now? When did the idea come to you & what brought MJ to the top of your creative lunacy?
Julien Nitzberg: The initial idea for this show came to me almost seventeen years ago. I was approached by a major cable TV network to write a Michael Jackson biopic. I’ve been a Michael Jackson fan since I was a little kid and watched the Jackson 5 cartoon on Saturday mornings. I tried to find an interesting way to tell Michael’s story, but the later years were just too bizarre and I couldn’t find a normal way to tell it. How could anyone explain Bubbles the chimp, trying to buy the Elephant Man’s bones or sleepovers with kids. It was all too bizarre. I decided that the only way to tell it was to find a surreal way into the story. I pitched them the idea that all the boys and things in Michael’s life weren’t his choices. Instead his glove was an evil alien trying to take over the world who forced Michael to do all the bizarre things in his life. The alien gave him his talent so Michael was forced into doing things that he was severely embarrassed by.
The execs laughed at this idea but then asked me to do the normal version. I knew it would turn out terribly, so I said no. Over the years my mind kept returning to Michael’s life and finally I decided to write my version of his life as a musical with all original music.
I spent a couple of years researching Michael’s life trying to find the most interesting obscure parts to talk about. I decided to have it focus on his religious upbringing as a Jehovah’s Witness. Jehovah’s Witnesses have a really fucked up attitude toward sexuality. They teach that masturbating can turn you gay because as a man you get used to a man’s hand on your penis and want other mens’ hands on your penis. I thought this was hilarious. How did MJ get raised in the religion and then his most famous dance move winds up being him grabbing his own crotch? I then realized he didn’t do the crotch grab, his alien glove forced him to do it!
I also found out more about his rivalry with Donny Osmond. The Osmonds were clearly patterned to be the white version of the Jackson 5. Five brothers singing, dressing similarly. It was creepy. The Osmonds first big hit was “One Bad Apple.” It sounded so much like the Jackson 5 that Michael’s mom thought it was the Jackson 5 when she heard it on the radio.
The Osmonds clearly ripped off the Jackson 5 and what was worse they were Mormons which at the time taught that all black people were cursed with the “Mark of Cain” and were not allowed in their temples. They even taught that if you were black and converted to Mormonism you could go to Heaven but would be a servant to white people in Heaven. It’s some of the most fucked up religious shit you can dream of. They also taught that at the end of days when Christ returns all black people will have the curse of the “Mark of Cain” removed and turn white. Of course, Michael did this in his life so that became a big part of the story. We even have a song that Donny sings to Michael called “What a Delight When You Turn White.”
I felt like now was a great time to do the show. Everyone is talking about how our country has been ruined by fucked up racist and homophobic religions. We deal with one of the clearest cases of cultural appropriation that ever existed - people who belonged to an openly racist church going out and trying to sound like the biggest black music act of the day. It all felt like things that are in our country’s cultural conversation right now.
For those who don’t know you or your sense of humor…there’s quite a few things that many different types of people would/could find offensive…do you think this is a help or a hindrance to the success of the play?
Julien Nitzberg: I have no idea. I love super offensive humor. I was raised on John Waters, Mel Brooks, the Ramones, Dead Kennedys, Tom Lehrer and Monty Python and think those influences pervade For the Love of a Glove. I hope our culture has matured enough that people can enjoy my fucked-up punk rock humor. And who wants to see a non-offensive Michael Jackson musical?
In the play most of the cast is African American and all the cast members play multiple roles. The Ku Klux Klan musical number was hysterical (and obviously not pro KKK) but was it odd to ask the African American actors to don KKK hoods?
Pip Lilly: I think donning the hoods is hysterical. I never felt weird about it. I’m an actor and it’s a costume. Plus, I have the power here. Just wearing it is a radical act that would have gotten me killed 70 years ago. Also, real talk, the Klan deserves to be besmirched and clowned over and over again. Julien does a great job of setting up the racial issues that were the foundation of 1960s black folks.
Julien Nitzberg: Since the Jackson 5 were from Gary, Indiana, I did a lot of research into the history of Indiana. I discovered that in the 1920’s, one third of the white citizens of Indiana belonged to the KKK. The KKK in Indiana had 250,000 fucking members! How crazy is that? 250,000 KKK members just in Indiana! I decided we needed a song about that called “What Is It About Indiana?” Most people think of Indiana being part of the North so that shows how fucking racist, anti-Semitic, anti-immigrant and crazy our country’s always been. I wondered how that would have affected people growing up there so I thought we needed a song about that, contextualizing the fucked up state where the Jackson 5 grew up. It’s a very Mel Brooks number with dancing KKK members. I feel like if you laugh at horrible people you make them into a joke and take away their power. The show only has ten actors. Eight are black and two are white so we ended up needing some of the black actors to play KKK members. I asked the actors if they were comfortable with it and they all laughed. They thought it was hilarious. It was a lot like when Mel Brooks plays a Nazi. You feel a certain power over the oppressors putting their clothes on and mocking them. We had the actors strolling in laughing saying “I finally joined the KKK.” Cris Judd, our choreographer, gave the KKK members in the song all these Bob Fosse-style dance moves so it’s extra ridiculous. They are always rubbing their robes sensually, like it’s a big turn on.
It’s really funny yet disturbing. But it lets the audience know early on this show is going to dive deep into American racism but by laughing at the horribleness of our history we are stealing their power.
My mom was a Holocaust survivor. I lived as a kid in Austria where I went to 5th and 6th grade and got called “a dirty Jew” by one kid there. There was swastika graffiti everywhere in Vienna. For me as a kid discovering Mel Brooks and seeing The Producers was life changing. Instead of being scared of Nazis, it was much more fun to laugh at them. This comic attitude is what I tried to bring to this show with the KKK. I don’t think there is anything that would piss off KKK members more than knowing we have black people wearing their robes, dancing like they are in a Fosse musical.
Any other major influences?
Julien Nitzberg: Another big influence was the Rutles. When I was looking for clever musical parodies to inspire the project there was only one that really stood the test of time and that was Eric Idle’s genius Beatles parody All You Need is Cash starring the Rutles. My two favorite bands as a kid were the Beatles and the Jackson 5. I saw the Rutles movie when it debuted on TV and immediately went and bought the record. In the years since, I almost never listen to the Beatles. But oddly, I still listen to the Rutles record all the time and love them more than the Beatles. When my composing team—Nicole Morier, Drew Erickson and Max Townsley—started working together, we spent a ton of time listening to the Rutles. The Rutles’ songs were as good as the Beatles. They are great pop songs. I wanted our show to do the same thing. I didn’t want the songs to sound like musical theater songs. Nicole said she wanted the songs to sound like they were lost R&B/soul music classics that never got discovered at that time. The composers worked really hard to get that right feel of the times and I think they did it majestically.
Weirdly, a good friend of mine Rita D’Albert (who created Lucha Vavoom) is friends with Eric Idle and I met him at her birthday party. He’d heard of the musical from Rita. He came up to me and said he had a new title idea for the show. I asked him what it was. He dryly said “Rhapsody in a Minor.” I looked at him totally confused and then suddenly I got the joke. It was embarrassing how long it took me. What a genius!
So you’re at this point—and this could be more than enough for what you were going for—and then you introduce a mirror image villain!! So now MJ has aliens and uptight white nerds grinding away at him! What brought the Osmonds up and were you worried Donny might upstage Michael?
Julien Nitzberg: As a kid, I was a giant Jackson 5 fan and every time I heard “One Bad Apple” I was always confused thinking “This sounds too much like a Jackson 5 song.” If you google it, you’ll even see that many people thought it was a Jackson 5 song. So when I started writing the show, I decided to research this. I soon discovered that the Osmonds were consciously created as the white equivalent to the Jackson 5. They were five brothers like the Jackson 5. They’d been a barber shop quartet who sang minstrel songs and then later were the blandest band ever to appear on the Andy Williams show. Suddenly they start sounding like the Jackson 5 and doing Motown songs. They start dancing like the Jackson 5. It’s extra fucked because they belong to a church that teaches the most racist ideology and won’t let black people into their temples. Then I discovered that their transition to being Jackson 5 imitators happened just after they toured opening for Pat Boone! Fuck, that showed me what exactly was happening. In the show we call the process of a white artist ripping off a black artist “Pat Booning” and that’s what they did.
For the more conspiracy-minded, people should note that Mike Curb was involved in the Osmonds’ career producing records by Donny. Mike Curb was a producer who was super right wing and got elected Lieutenant Governor of California with the support of his mentor Ronald Reagan. He’d dated Karen Carpenter. At one point, he was head of MGM records and kicked the Velvet Underground off the label because he considered them too pro-drugs. It would make sense that a right winger would push back against any great black artist by helping create a pale white imitation.
Let’s discuss the second act.
Julien Nitzberg: The second act has Michael as a grown-up. Then he discovers that Berry Gordy has signed Pat Boone. Then Michael and his glove have sex for the first time. Then he gets inspired by that to write “Beat It” and record Thriller. The glove suggests that Michael should be a reverse Pat Boone and play with Toto and Eddie Van Halen.
Then he can’t take feeding the gloves anymore. He invites kids over for a sleepover party. He doesn’t like it and it ends up going on a date with Brooke Shields. His glove gets jealous and starts grabbing his crotch on TV. They have a fight. The gloves decide to kill Michael. The plan is thwarted. The glove gets burnt trying to kill himself so Michael has to masturbate with the audience to save his life. The glove and Michael realize they are in love.
The second act has demented fantasy, but also a ton of history. People don’t realize that Michael only became as big as he did because CBS Records blackmailed MTV into showing Michael’s videos. MTV did not show “Urban Music.” That of course was just a euphemism for any music by black artists. They didn’t want to show “Beat It.” CBS told MTV they wouldn’t let them show any videos by Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel or the Rolling Stones if they didn’t show Michael’s videos. It’s a really shocking take on how American racism was still awful in the 1980’s.
And so how’s the reaction been (In a literal sense)? Not live, but reviews. Misunderstandings from simple minded types that can’t get past the sight of seeing a hood stuck on a black person by a white guy etc…
Pip Lilly: My friends like the show. They seem to love the music, the comedy, and the spectacle. People are genuinely entertained, which can only help people appreciate the satire.
Julien Nitzberg: All our write ups have been great. The reaction has been great. We’ve had nights where it was all UCLA students who had not grown up with Michael Jackson. They were gasping and laughing the whole time. Despite the rumors about millennials being easily offended, the people who seemed most offended were in their 30s and 40s. But it’s been 95% positive and 5% super disgusted which I think is a great ratio.
Great news! For the Love of a Glove has now been extended until the end of March! Get tickets and info here.
