Because I love all of their albums so very much, it’s difficult for me to say which is my favorite Gun Club album—it’s Mother Juno, but just by a hair—and much easier to pick out my favorite Gun Club song. That would be “Walking with the Beast” from The Las Vegas Story.  (“Lupita Screams,” “Death Party” and “The Lie” run close behind.)

“Walking with the Beast” is a motherfucking motherfucker of a song. It grabs you by the throat and and shakes you until you are limp. Patricia Morrison’s rumbling bass, Kid Congo Powers’ feedback-driven power chords, and Terry Graham’s POUNDING drums almost attack the listener. It’s heavier than any heavy metal. For those of you reading this who have never had the pleasure, “Walking with the Beast” is simply the musical equivalent to looking up at the sky and realizing that a violent tornado is about to overtake you.

(I’d have embedded the song here, but YouTube currently lacks even a single upload of the studio version. I direct you then to your favorite streaming service. PLAY IT LOUD.)

When an album starts off that strong, you would think that it’s all downhill from there, but there’s one classic Gun Club winner after another, including two leftfield cover versions. At the start of side two, a skronky snippet of Pharoah Sanders’ “The Creator Was A Master Plan” segues into a plaintiff take on “My Man’s Gone Now,” the widow Serena’s aria from from George Gershwin’s classic opera Porgy and Bess. On paper, that shouldn’t work, but it does, spectacularly so.

I’ve bragged on this blog many times about seeing Gun Club live—one of the best, most exciting live shows I’ve ever seen in a long career of concert going—but what I didn’t realize until recently is that the band that I saw—Morrison, Graham, Kid Congo—didn’t last but a few more shows, when drummer Graham snuck out in the middle of the night and returned to America after discovering he wasn’t going to be paid for the tour. The incarnation of the Gun Club that recorded The Las Vegas Story, that everyone tends to see as the most iconic era of Jeffrey Lee Pierce’s revolving door of a band, lasted but a single year.

I got to see one of my all-time favorite bands, supporting one of my all-time favorite albums, but just by the skin of my teeth. Five days later Graham would leave the band, for the third and final time.

There is a new “super deluxe” release today of The Las Vegas Story on double vinyl and as a two CD set along with a DVD of “home movies” from some American tour dates of 1984 (shot by Terry Graham and his girlfriend) from Blixa Sounds.

I asked The Las Vegas Story‘s producer Jeff Eyrich some questions via email.

How did you get involved with the Gun Club?

I’m from L.A. and was aware of the band from the L.A. scene at that time — from working with (producing) the Plimsouls and the Blasters. I had never seen the Gun Club play live but I knew them by name, maybe heard a track or two on the radio. I got a call from Ron Faire who was a young A&R guy at Chrysalis records and he asked if I’d be interested in producing Gun Club — that he really didn’t understand or ‘get’ their music but that they sold a lot of records overseas. He added that the budget was minimal and that he’d like to get it done in 2 weeks,  start to finish. I was between projects at the time so I met with Jeffrey Lee and Kid Congo to get an idea of what they wanted to do, what the songs were — they played me some stuff on a cassette — I liked what I heard and I was impressed by how serious Jeffrey Lee was about his music, his vision, and how supportive Kid was about helping Jeffrey Lee see his vision through. I sensed that there was somewhat of a ‘risk’ factor involved but I was up for the challenge, especially given the budget and time constraints but I felt we could pull it off.

What was your take on Jeffrey Lee?

Jeffrey Lee was very serious about his music and he had a vision for the record… so much so that I felt that my role as producer on this project was basically to facilitate Jeffrey’s vision — for me to set the stage, make sure everybody was comfortable in the studio (sightlines were very important since this was a live band), that the sounds were happening right away so we could capture the spontaneity of the moment, and to keep things moving forward. We recorded the record at Ocean Way’s studio B. I mention ‘sightlines’ being crucial, as studio B is like two basketball courts side by side separated by a floor-to-ceiling glass wall. I had Terry and Patricia on one side and Jeffrey Lee and Kid Congo on the other. Jeffrey Lee and Kid had their amps turned up real loud.

We had one pre-production rehearsal that was somewhat chaotic but the one thing I took from it was how solid, simple and groovin’ Terry and Patricia were as a rhythm section. I knew from experience that whatever Jeffrey Lee and Kid did on top of that rhythm section we were going to have something that felt great.

What was he like to work with?

I found Jeffrey Lee, and everybody in the band — Terry, Patricia, and Kid Congo — very easy to work with… reasonable, communicative, respectful. No problems… on time… there to work and to make music.

What was the drug situation like in the studio?

I wasn’t aware of any drugs in the studio. The vibe in the studio was really good, the sounds happening (thank you mark ettel) — everything was happening so easily. Any drugs would’ve just fucked that up. That being said… I don’t do drugs and didn’t at that time so maybe I was just oblivious but nobody seemed drunk or stoned to me.

Did everyone realize at the time what a seminal album had been created?

I think that everybody was happy with the result and that everybody hoped for the best for the record — mission accomplished — on time and on budget. Maybe not the kind of record Chrysalis was adept at promoting, unfortunately. After I finished the mastering and turned the record in I was off to the next project — I believe it was T-bone Burnett’s Proof Through the Night— and I lost touch with the band.

But I remember about six months later running into the Gun Club in Paris — they were on tour over there — and they invited me to the show. I went and wound up mixing their sound that night. It was crazy, loud, and primal… but really good.
 

This performance was taped in Newcastle on October 19th, 1984 for ‘The Tube’ and is probably the best video representation of this short-lived classic Gun Club line-up
 

The new “super deluxe” expanded reissue includes a DVD of ‘1984 Home Movie: The Gun Club On The Road’

 
I just read the sad news that the great Irish vocalist Cathal Coughlan has died. The frontman of both Microdisney and Fatima Mansions was 61 and died in the hospital after what was described only as a long illness. He was one of the very finest vocalists of his generation.

I am a really huge fan of his music. Microdisney’s “Mrs. Simpson” is a desert island disc for me, and his unjustly ignored solo record Black River Falls is one of my top favorite albums of all time. (It’s the album I wish Scott Walker had made instead of Tilt. Yes, it’s really that good and you should go stream it now.)

During the course of the past few years, I’d become friendly with Cathal over email. Not that long ago I sent him a copy of Nico and Phillippe Garrel’s film La Cicatrice Intérieure, which he seemed highly amused by. We were planning to meet up in London in late Summer. Now that will never happen. I’m glad I got to tell him how much I love his music.

The world of music has lost a truly great talent. RIP Cathal Coughlan.
 

“Black River Falls”
 

“Payday”
 

“Witches in the Water”
 

“Are You Happy?”
 

“Mrs. Simpson”
 

“Singer’s Hampstead Home”
 

Microdisney on ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ in 1985, doing two of their best songs, “Loftholdingswood” and “Birthday Girl.”

 
The Leeds band Girls at Our Best! were only around for a couple of years in the early 1980s, but they left behind some solid tunes, including one of the finest songs from the post-punk era.

The story of GaOB! begins in 1977, when singer Judy Evans and guitarist James Alan met while attending art school. Alan was in a punk outfit called SOS, which Evans eventually joined. The group morphed into another act, the Butterflies, a purposefully pretty name that was a response to all the negative and/or nasty monikers from the punk period. The Butterflies got some notice and had at least one high profile fan in Sid Vicious, but broke up as the decade was coming to an end.
 

The cover of the first Girls at Our Best! single.

Evans and Alan started Girls at Our Best! simply to document the songs they were writing, but Rough Trade Records heard one of the tracks, and they encouraged the duo to put out a 7-inch. In April 1980, the GaOB! debut, “Getting Nowhere Fast” b/w “Warm Girls,” was released via their own label, Record Records, which was distributed by Rough Trade. “Getting Nowhere Fast” was named NME’s “Single of the Week,” and made the top ten of the UK indie chart, but Girls at Our Best! wasn’t exactly a band; it was still just Evans and Alan. So, with high demand for a second 45, a bassist and a drummer were brought into the fold.
 

 
After their second 7-inch, Girls at Our Best! signed with Happy Birthday Records. The label put out a couple more GaOB! singles, as well as what ended up being the group’s lone full-length, Pleasure, in October 1981 (a pre-fame Thomas Dolby plays synth on the record).

In late ‘81, GaOB! headed to America for a brief tour, which did not go well. Seemingly no one knew about the band—they even had a Spinal Tap-like experience when nobody showed up for a record store appearance—and they grew increasingly tired of each other. Girls at Our Best! called it a day in 1982.
 

 
“Getting Nowhere Fast” is a perfect post-punk song. Possessing a killer, angular guitar riff, and a propulsive bassline, the defiant lyrics speak to the emptiness of capitalism, the passiveness of the masses, and the feeling that your failing life isn’t what you signed up for. After two exhilarating minutes, the number ends in an abrupt, dramatic fashion.
 
Much more, including DM premieres, after the jump…

 
“A report in 2019 revealed that Queen Elizabeth II and her family cost the British people £67 million per year,” says grateful subject Andrew Liles, introducing his elongated version of the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen.” The monarchy is a sweet deal for Britons, since the royals put on the occasional horse show starring Tom Cruise to thank the common people for expending their lives in toil so that their betters may luxuriate among jeweled combs and Sèvres tea services.

Now, Liles has found a musical way to tell the royals “you’re welcome” for the generalized misery that supports their year-round debauch: extending Her Maj’s favorite Pistols choon from a length of about three minutes to 45, one for each year since 1977. In all likelihood, this is the very melody she will be humming this morning while she consumes a year of your wages for breakfast.

Unfortunately, there’s still no future, but on the bright side, there’s a lot more of it!
 

Laibach’s new album ‘Wir sind das Volk (ein Musical aus Deutschland)’

Laibach’s latest project, a musical theater production based on texts by the German playwright Heiner Müller, has been staged in Berlin, Klagenfurt, Ljubljana, Zagreb, and Hamburg. As Laibach’s early work was not enthusiastically greeted by authorities in post-Tito Yugoslavia, so Müller, whose New York Times obituary described him as an “independent Marxist,” was banned for years from the East German stage. Indeed, the director of one of his early plays was rewarded with a trip to the coal mines.

Müller’s association with Laibach dates from 1984, when the group composed music for a Slovenian production of his Quartet. Laibach and Müller met in Berlin the following year, and he suggested that they collaborate; but though he apparently did use Laibach’s music in one of his stage productions, the collaboration did not come to pass before Müller’s death in 1995.

More than twenty years later, prompted by a suggestion from Anja Quickert, the head of the Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft (International Heiner Müller Society), Laibach renewed their collaboration with the dramatist. As Laibach explains its approach to creating Wir sind das Volk in the press release:

We followed Heiner Müller’s own strategy of cutting and rearranging the material, taking his text and putting it into another context, rebooting it with music, in order to drag the audience into it or alienate them from it. Music unlocks the emotions and is therefore a great manipulative tool and a powerful propagandistic weapon. And that’s why a combination of Heiner Müller, who saw theatre as a political institution, and Laibach, can be nothing else but a musical.

Laibach kindly answered a few questions about Wir sind das Volk and related matters by email.
 

Photo by Valter Leban

Speaking in Dresden in 2014, South Korean President Park Geun-hye proclaimed: Wir sind ein Volk! What is the difference between this assertion and Laibach’s Wir sind das Volk?

Laibach: Wir sind das Volk is a more general slogan and Wir sind ein Volk is a more particular one. When East Germans demanded the change of policy and reunification of the two Germanies in 1990, one of the slogans of the protesters at the time was Wir sind das Volk—“We are the people”—which meant that it is the people who will decide, not the authorities. When the wall between the two countries actually started to crumble, the slogan on both sides of the wall quickly changed to Wir sind ein Volk—“We are a people, one people, one nation, one state…” In this spirit, in 2014, South Korean President Park Geun-hye, speaking of the idea of reunification of the two Koreas, proclaimed Wir sind ein Volk!, which, of course, in the context of South and North Korea, means that they are one nation, violently divided in the Korean War and which, in a certain perspective of time, should be again reunited, just like Germany was.

Please tell us about the production of Laibach’s posthumous collaboration with Heiner Müller. Why, for instance, does the album open with the figure of Philoctetes?

Back in 1984 we contributed music for Heiner Müller’s Quartet, a play that was presented at the Slovenian National Theatre in Ljubljana, directed by Slovenian director Eduard Miler. This was at a time when Laibach was officially forbidden in Slovenia and Yugoslavia, and we were grateful to Eduard Miler for being brave enough to include Laibach in this theatrical piece, performed by the national institution. A good year later, in February 1985, we met Heiner Müller by coincidence in Berlin, where we had a concert at some festival, and it turned out that he was very enthusiastic about Laibach and he also proposed that we collaborate on one of his upcoming theatre productions. Unfortunately, that did not happen (in the meantime we were invited by another legendary theatre and artistic director and in fact Heiner Müller’s fierce opponent, Peter Zadek, to work the score for Shakespeare’s Macbeth in 1987—and perform in it—staged at the Deutsche Schauspielhaus in Hamburg), but we were told that Heiner Müller had apparently used some of our music in a theatre production that he worked on. Heiner Müller passed away in 1995 and only a few years ago, in 2019, we finally received an invitation from Mrs. Anja Quickert, the head of Internationale Heiner Müller Gesellschaft (H. M. Society), proposing a project based on Heiner Müller’s texts, to be premiered and performed at the HAU (Hebbel am Ufer) theatre in Berlin. The premiere of Wir sind das Volk—Ein Musical nach Texten von Heiner Müller was held on 8 February 2020 and more shows followed after the pandemic. At this point something like 10,000 people have seen the musical, in spite of the epidemics.
 

The poster for ‘Wir sind das Volk’

Heiner Müller is one of the most prominent post-WWII German playwrights, writers, and intellectuals, and one of the main protagonists who radically practised the denazification of Germany and ruthlessly led German Volk through the purgatory of collective guilt. Our ‘musical’ speaks of this process of denazification, but also about Heiner Müller personally, about his observation of his own life in the postwar reality of this country, divided by the Cold War. He was very fond of German national traumas as well as of the time of German patriotism and this is the topic in most of his writings. The texts and songs for the musical were selected by Anja Quickert, who also was the dramaturge and director of the show. The musical opens with an extract of Müller’s interpretation of the Philoctetes, the tragedy where he dramatizes the state’s predicament as it finds itself adopting inhumane methods in order to achieve a humane future for its citizens. In presenting the state’s point of view, Müller boldly challenges Sophocles (Philoctetes) and Gide (Philoctète), who focus their plays on the individual, not the state. Müller’s radical rewriting of the myth negotiates the question of belonging: exclusion and inclusion in a society that wants to destroy the “other” and destroys itself by tolerating only an ability to function. In the part of the text that we are using in the musical, Müller is actually talking about his own childhood traumas and that is why this text stands at the beginning of the album as well.

We hear so much about populism in politics these days. Who are the people, and what do they want? As Freud might have asked, Was will ein Volk eigentlich?

People are the suppressed majority that occasionally smells the power of victory and then they want it all.

At least one reliable source reports that Russian propaganda is simultaneously insisting that Ukrainians are racially inferior to Russians and denying that Ukrainians have a distinct nationality. If citizenship in the NSK State is not based on language, nationality, ethnicity, or race, what are the criteria?

Possession of at least one Laibach album and a good sense of humor, especially when inferiority and superiority complexes are in question. For all else we are quite flexible.
 

‘Epiphany (Adoration of the Magi)’ by Gottfried Helnwein (via Denver Art Museum)

How does Laibach’s approach to working on theatrical productions (Krst pod Triglavom-Baptism, Macbeth, Also Sprach Zarathustra) differ from its usual working method? Do any principles of Scipion Nasice Sisters Theatre’s work persist in Laibach’s approach?

We approach each project in a completely different way. We don’t have any creative platform or templates to use either for theatrical productions or as ‘usual working method.’ Composing is always different because most of the time we work with a slightly different combination of people, and we therefore adapt to a common operating model. Within the theatre projects it is also important who initiates it, who leads or directs it. For these productions we create the material in communication and collaboration with directors, and we try to adjust to their ideas and their vision of how the music and sound should function, as much as we can. It is true, however, that usually it is best that producers and directors give us a totally free hand for the best results.

Is it possible to express one’s personality in Schlager music or Volkslieder without ruining the performance? For instance, giving voice to the German national character seems to suit Heino so well because he only uses emotions as signs of filial piety. “Folk music” in the US these days, on the other hand, consists almost entirely of people crying about their hurt feelings.

They really do it in pop and rock music too, there is a lot of ‘crying’ and trading in emotions in pop and rock music tradition. In principle we do not see much difference between pop-rock music and Schlager music or Volkslieder in Germany. In the context of the German national character, Heino, who deals with emotions perfectly, as well as Kraftwerk, who actually took a lot of their inspiration from Volkslieder and Schlager music—their versions are not contaminated by emotional hyperinflation. In America, on the other hand, it’s hard to imagine popular music—with the exception of hip hop and rap—without such emotional exploitations… What would Presley, Prince, Bon Jovi, Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Dolly Parton or Taylor Swift (etc., etc.) be without their hurt feelings? 

Singing in 1985, U.S.A. for Africa proclaimed: “We Are the World.” Is Laibach the world, too?

We are Africa and the Universe.
 

 
In July 2019, we told you about the marvelous seventies rock ‘n’ roll band, the Hollywood Stars. The occasion was the emancipation of their shelved 1976 LP recorded at the famed Sound City studio. The album, appropriately titled ‘Sound City,’ is about to be released on vinyl for the first time, so we’re reposting our profile of the group. It’s been lightly edited.

The Hollywood Stars were managed by Kim Fowley, and their songs were recorded by the likes of KISS and Alice Cooper, yet the band wasn’t widely heard in their time. They released one LP, which failed to make an impact, while superior recordings of theirs remained in the can for decades. An exceptional, previously unreleased Hollywood Stars album is about to come out, and Dangerous Minds has the premiere of one of the fabulous never before heard tunes on the disc. We also have a new interview with an original member of the group.

In 1973, mover and shaker, huckster, and jack-of-all-trades, Kim Fowley, had a vision for starting a west coast version of the glam band, the New York Dolls. Fowley quickly assembled a group of Southern California musicians, and the initial lineup of the Hollywood Stars was in place before year’s end.
 

 
The Stars immediately made a splash with their live show, gigging frequently at the legendary Whisky a Go Go. It wasn’t long before they were signed to Columbia/CBS Records. Around this time, Fowley exited as manager. Sessions for their first LP included such strong material as “King of the Night Time World” and “Escape,” but after new A&R at Columbia came in, the album was abandoned, and the band was dropped. The recordings came out nearly 40 years later as Shine Like a Radio: The Great Lost 1974 Album.
 

 
By the end of ’74—just a year after they formed—the Hollywood Stars were no more.
 

 
They did give it another go in 1976, though, with guitarist/main songwriter, Mark Anthony, also now their lead singer. The revived unit were soon in the Sound City studio with producer Neil Merryweather. They then signed with another major label, Arista Records, who wanted them to re-record what they had done at Sound City. Though the band were frustrated, as they had a completed album they were pleased with, they agreed to start from scratch with a different producer. The subsequent sessions didn’t go well, with Mark Anthony overdoing it in the studio. Though the group preferred the Sound City tapes, the Arista recordings were put out in 1977. Anthony soon left for a solo career, with the Stars continuing for a short period before breaking up once again.
 

Album cover for their debut full-length; note the marquee in the background.
 
After 43 years, the Hollywood Stars album produced by Neil Merryweather is being released as Sound City. The band is back, too, with an upcoming show at their old stomping grounds, the Whisky a Go Go.

Dangerous Minds recently interviewed Hollywood Stars drummer, Terry Rae.

When did Kim Fowley pitch the Hollywood Stars concept to you? Were you immediately sold on the idea?:

Terry Rae: The first time Kim pitched me on the idea was at Capitol Records Studios. He came to see the band I was in at the time, the Flamin’ Groovies, recording some demo tracks. I was initially surprised with his Stars pitch because he had been instrumental in getting me together with [founding Groovies guitarist] Cyril Jordan in the first place.

We talked again at the Rainbow Bar & Grill on Sunset. Kim explained his plan and promised to be personally involved in every aspect. What he was laying out began to make sense on a practical level. The Groovies were based out of the Bay Area, so if I was going to fully commit to that band, it would mean moving out of my apartment in Hollywood. I didn’t really have the cash to relocate, and my heart wasn’t in leaving.
 
Much more, after the jump…

 
I am a man of many enthusiasms, and one of the things that I am, for certain, the MOST enthusiastic about is Firesign Theatre, the legendary psychedelic “Beatles of Comedy.” I’ve been a lifelong Firesign Theatre freak, having discovered them at a very young age. Oh yeah, I was totally obsessed with Firesign Theatre. Often called America’s Monty Python, they’re better described as America’s acid-drenched answer to The Goon Show. I’d listen to their albums with headphones on, in the dark, practically memorizing them. Studies have shown that young minds exposed to surrealism develop better critical thinking skills and I can honestly say that my own mind was rewired, permanently, by my extreme Firesign Theatre fandom. My love for them is a part of my very identity.

Having said all this—and I have complained about this before—Firesign Theatre is an extremely difficult thing to try to get other people interested in. The reaction tends to be rather muted in most cases. Fifty-year-old comedy albums and radio shows? The assumption is that it must be something like Fibber McGee and Molly or The Great Gildersleeve. Or that it must be dated.

It’s neither.

The Firesign Theatre created extremely complex “theater of the mind” comedy albums that were—unavoidably for obvious reasons—in the form of radio plays. Their comedy is multi-leveled, chock full of puns and time travel. It’s not dated as it exists in a self-contained, self-referential Firesign universe of their devising. In the same way someone can study James Joyce for a lifetime and never tire of it, Firesign Theatre holds a similar place in my life and in the lives of many others. When you meet a fellow Firehead, you become instant friends. And then you’ll both start slipping Firesign references into your conversations. (For a really amazing look at the now almost forgotten cultural importance of Firesign Theatre during the 60s and 70s, from Ivy League dorm rooms to the foxholes of Vietnam, listen to this NPR show. Trust me, it’s fantastic.)

All of this is a preamble to informing you, dear friend, that there is a major new product available at the Firesign Theater website. Firesign Theatre Live at the Magic Mushroom is a book/DVD rom put together by their archivist and historian, my esteemed pal Taylor Jessen, who deserves a fucking Grammy award for this production, and for all the detective work that he’s undertaken to locate so many long thought lost tapes of the group’s work.

For Firesign fans, THIS IS AN EVENT. Live at the Magic Mushroom collects the fully-scripted plays that the group performed at a Venture Blvd. coffee house which were also broadcast on Peter Bergman’s Radio Free Oz show. These mythical performances have nary been heard in more than 50 years (a few turned up on torrent trackers) and they are a sheer delight. The weekly shows were all written, performed and taped while the group was working on their second release, How Can You Be in Two Places at Once When You’re Not Anywhere at All. You might assume that they were wood shopping material for that album, but this is not the case and there is almost no overlap at all, although they did debut the changing TV channels device used throughout their Don’t Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me The Pliers album during the Magic Mushroom run.

To a Firesign Theatre fanboy like m’self, these plays are absolutely the Holy Grail of Firesignania. They occupy a space just below the classic studio albums and a little bit above the Dear Friends/Let’s Eat radio series. Firesign on radio was always planned out to a certain extent, but most of it was improvised with the Four or Five Crazy Guys sitting at their mikes looking at each other across a table. The Magic Mushroom plays were tightly scripted and so are more of a piece with their record releases. In other words there are hours of some of their very finest material in the offering of Firesign Theatre Live at the Magic Mushroom. The collection comes inside of a full color 48-page paperback book. Includes all eleven of the surviving Magic Mushroom plays, plus original promos and the 10/29/1967 episode of Radio Free Oz (“The Bridey Murphy Come As You Were Halloween Party.”)

I asked fab Taylor Jessen some questions via email.

What are the Magic Mushroom plays?

The Magic Mushroom plays were a dozen or so half-hour radio plays that the Firesign Theatre performed between October 1967 and January 1968 live in front of a club audience at the Magic Mushroom Club on Ventura Blvd., Studio City, simulcast on Peter Bergman’s radio show Radio Free Oz on KRLA-AM, Los Angeles. The subject matter of the plays ranged from Arthurian adventures to sword-and-sandal epics to Mexican jungle adventures to an ERPI Classroom Films movie of the 1950s to a pirate musical to a Sherlock Holmes parody to a proto-Dwarf channel-surfing epic.

Were the Magic Mushroom plays, in fact, “lost”?

With the exception of “Exorcism in Your Daily Life” and “The Séance”, not only were they all lost, they still are. No masters exist for any shows but those two. There was a collection of open reel tapes documenting the complete Radio Free Oz from the beginning of the Magic Mushroom Play era in October 1967 to the end of January 1968, and every one of the reels with the plays on them was ripped off by persons unknown. We do not expect to recover them. For the most part this box set was built out of audio sources that came from home recordings of the plays made by fans, some of whose names we know, some of whom remain anonymous. Meanwhile the play “The Last Tunnel to Fresno” is truly unknown in any complete audio form - a few minutes of it survived on tape and the audio quality is so horrifically bad we didn’t include it on the box set, even as a supplemental extra.

How long did it take to find them all?

Leaving aside “The Séance”, it took me just a couple of hours to find them all around 2001 when the first bootlegs hit the Internet and I downloaded them all (as many of us did; anyone who goes looking for torrents of Firesign rarities can still find many of the same sources I did). The difference between those bootlegs and what you’ll hear on the box set is the hundred or so hours I spent cleaning up the audio.

You always have crazy stories about the lengths you’ve had to go to locate a certain Firesign tape—like trawling through a shed that had fallen victim to a mudslide—did anything like that happen when you were trying to track the Magic Mushroom tapes down?

Sadly there was no climactic discovery that lead to the creation of this reissue; exactly the opposite was the case. I simply gave up on the idea that we’d ever find better copies of the material, and concentrated on trying to make it all sound acceptable.
 

Above, Firesign Theatre at the Magic Mushroom, 1967.
 
Purchase Firesign Theatre Live at the Magic Mushroom here.

‘Wierdo.’
 
Scot Sothern grew up in a photographic studio. His old man photographed weddings and portraits. He told him: When you take a portrait of the bride you gotta see her with the same love the groom has for her. It was a lesson Sothern never forgot.

Sothern worked around the studio. He started in the dark room then ended up taking wedding photos. He was expected to take over the family business. Sothern wanted to be a writer or maybe an artist like Andy Warhol.

It was the late 1960s. A time of revolutions. Sexual, social and political.  Sothern quit home in Springfield, Missouri and headed for Southern California looking for teenage dreams of sex ‘n’ drugs ‘n’ rock ‘n’ roll. He wasn’t making it as an artist. He wasn’t making it as a writer. Instead of giving up Sothern thought “fuck it, I’ll do whatever I want.” He started taking photographs. Kids making out at the skating rink. Working guys drinking at a bar. White working class people on the periphery. But no one was interested.

In the 1980s, Sothern documented the junkies, winos, and hookers. He followed his “hard-on.” He photographed his subjects with the same love a groom felt for his bride. He shot with a flashbulb or used sunlight. Nothing else. He showed his father his work. He liked the composition, the lighting, the power. The subject matter not so much. His brother thought he was “degenerate”. Sothern’s work said as much about his life as it did about the women and men he was photographing. He wrote the down their conversations. A short story of their lives. Still no one took an interest.
 

From ‘Low Life.’
 
1990: Sothern has motor bike accident. He stops taking photographs. He starts writing. But no one’s interested. He returned to photographing the people most politicians want to forget. The poor, homeless, and fucked-up.

It took 40-years for Sothern to get established. 40-years of rejection slips, and sorry this ain’t our kinda shit letters. In 2010, John Matkowsky at the drkrm Gallery in LA put on Sothern’s first solo show Lowlife. At the age of 60, Sothern had arrived.

Over the past decade, Sothern has exhibited across the USA and in Europe. He has published several books and launched a parallel career as a writer. This month, These Days will exhibit two major Sothern exhibitions under the title Generations: Sothern’s earliest personal photographs, Family Tree 1975-1980, and his most recent body of work, Identity both of which “explore time, change, and the multi-directional evolution of America.”
 

 
Tell me about your new exhibition ‘Generations’?

Scot Sothern: Well, Generations consists of two different bodies of works. The Family Tree photos were shot nearly fifty years ago and I think the original impetus was all about making my photography something more than portraits and snapshots. I was still in my twenties and mostly running wild, with little respect for the societal norms. I decided the best way to rationalize my lifestyle was to call myself an artist.

The other half of Generations, Identity, comes from looking for something new and wearing my politics on my sleeve. America has changed to a very different place since the Family Tree series, a lot the good of the Baby Boomer generation has decayed or was merely a delusion in the first place. A lot of things got fixed but in general America is fucked-up. I’m inspired by anger and I find I am inspired by younger generations of people who are reclaiming the identities that had been previously been kept in the closets.
 

‘The Fonz.’
 
More from Scot Sothern after the jump…

 
I awoke this morning to the extremely sad news that our friend Howie Pyro had passed. The rocker, cultural historian, DJ, founding member of D-Generation, bass player in Danzig, and frequent Dangerous Minds contributor, had a liver transplant last year, but then sadly caught COVID just when everything seemed like it was on a (TBH very unexpected) upswing in his health. I was just thinking about him yesterday and made a mental note to write and wish him well. Then this.

But the best thing of all, in a collection with literally hundreds of thousands of amazing and astonishing items, was his banana ashtray, but I’ll tell Howie tell you the story himself, in this Dangerous Minds post from 2017. RIP Howie Pyro, you will be missed.

It was fifty years ago this week that the future began with the Velvet Underground, Andy Warhol, and his banana. The destruction and rebuilding of rock ‘n’ roll music as it then existed commenced. This was all taking place even though only a few people knew about it at the time. The right few, as always. I have to think that anyone reading this knows the history of the Velvet Underground so I’m not going to rehash it here.

In the thirty years since Warhol’s death, the human race has bought and sold more “Andy” than Andy himself could possibly have dreamed of and more. Much more. Too much even. Year after year there are more Warhol books, toys, giant banana pillows, clothing lines, shoes, Andy Warhol glasses, movies, action figures (or maybe inaction figures, this being Warhol), pencils, notebooks, skateboards—literally everything ever! There’s been more most post mortem Warhol merchandising than for practically anyone or anything you can name. These days, probably even more than for Elvis, Marilyn or James Dean who had head starts.

Warhol and his entourage were infamous speedfreaks—speedfreaks with cameras, tape recorders, and movie gear who talked a lot and didn’t sleep much—and his every utterance was recorded, long before museums, historical posterity and millions of dollars were the reasons.

With the advent of the Warhol Museum, Andy’s every movement, thought, and influence has been discussed, dissected, filed and defiled ad nauseum. Every single piece of art he ever did can be traced back to an original page in a newspaper, an ad in the back of a dirty magazine, a photograph, a Sunday comic, or an item from a supermarket shelf and they’ve ALL been identified and cataloged.

Except for one.

Just one.

Probably the second most popular of Warhol’s images, standing in line right behind the Campbell’s soup can, is the banana image found on the cover of the first Velvet Underground album. Thee banana! But where did it come from? Everything else was appropriated from somewhere. What about this one?

I KNOW where it came from and I have known for around thirty years. Oddly enough it only just now occurred to me (when I looked up Warhol’s death date) that I found this thing, which I am about to describe, mere weeks before Andy’s untimely demise.
 

 
I grew up in the sixties and I’ve loved the Velvet Underground since even before the advent of punk. And I love Andy Warhol, too. Just look at my Facebook profile photo. I have shelves of books on Warhol and all things Velvets and have amassed quite a collection of Warhol and Velvets rarities. My favorite book of all time is Andy Warhol’s Index from 1966, a children’s pop-up book filled with drag queens, the Velvets, 3-D soup cans and even a Flexi disc record with Lou Reed’s face on it with a recording of the Velvet Underground listening to a test pressing of their first LP. The one with the BANANA.
 

The author’s Facebook profile pic. Duh.
 
Andy Warhol’s number one right-hand man in the sixties and the person who turned the Factory silver (among many many other things including being the primary photographer of the Factory’s “silver years”) was Billy Name (Linich). An online comment described him this way:

You can’t get more inside than Billy Name in Warhol’s Factory world. In fact he lived in the Factory - and to be more specific he lived in the bathroom at the Factory - and to be even more specific he stayed in the locked bathroom without coming out for months (years?).

 
And so to quote this definitive “insider” Billy Name on the history of the banana:

...bananas had been a Warhol theme earlier in the Mario Montez feature film Harlot mostly as a comedic phallic symbol. In the general hip culture, Donovan’s “Mellow Yellow” was going on [mellow yellow; roast banana peels in an oven, and then roll and smoke them]. The high was called “mello yellow.”

The specific banana image Andy chose came from I know not where; it’s not a Chiquita banana or Dole fruit company, because Andy’s banana has ‘overripe’ markings on it, and the fruit companies use whole yellow bananas on their stickers. Anyway, Andy first used this particular banana image for a series of silk-screen prints which he screened on white, opaque, flexible, Plexiglass (sort of like 2 feet x 5 feet). First an image of the inner banana “meat” was screened on the Plexi in pink, and then covered by the outer skin screened on and cut out of a glossy yellow sticky-back roll of heavy commercial paper (ordered from some supply warehouse). Thereby each banana could be peeled and the meat exposed and the skin could be replaced a number of times, ‘til the sticky stuff wore out. Naturally this was intentionally erotic Warhol-type art.

When thinking of a cover for the first Velvets album, it was easy for Andy to put one of his own works on the cover, knowing it was hip, outrageous, and original and would be “really great.” Andy always went the easy way, using what he had, rather than puzzling and mulling over some design elements and graphics for cover art that don’t really work. His art was already there, hip, erotic, and cool. The Plexi silk screen art definitely came first, in 1966. The album came out in ‘67. I do not recall any other design being thought of or even considered. The back of the album cover was a pastiche amalgam of photos from Andy’s films, Steven Shore, Paul Morrissey and myself and was messy and mulled over too much.

 

 
So here we are on the fiftieth anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico and its mysterious banana cover art, and I felt that I have held this secret for way too long. I always wanted to use this in a book or something but it never happened.

This thing was hanging on my kitchen wall for three decades, in New York and LA and is now in secured storage for reasons which are about to become obvious. This is how I found it: One day in the mid 80s I was cruising around the Lower East Side aimlessly—as I had done most of my life up to that point—running into friends, looking at stuff people were selling on the street, stopping into Manic Panic, Venus Records, St. Marks Books, and any junk shops that caught my eye. There was one on Broadway that I had never seen before right down the street from Forbidden Planet and the greatest place ever, the mighty Strand Book Store. I went in and there was a lot of great stuff for me. I found some old records, a huge stash of outrageous and disgusting tabloid newspapers from the sixties which I kept buying there for a couple months afterward, and some cool old knick-knacks. I knocked into something on a crowded table full of junk and heard a big CLANG on the cement floor. I bent down to pick it up. It was one of those cheap triangular tin ashtrays that usually advertised car tires or something mundane. I picked it up (it was face down) and when I turned it over I was surprised to see…THE BANANA!!

It was an ad for bananas printed on a cheap metal ashtray.
 

Don’t you like a banana? ENJOY BANANA. Presented by WING CORP. designed by LEO KONO production”

 
I thought wow, this is cool! But over time I realized that I had quite literally stumbled across a true missing link. I figured I’d use it for something big one day, but I never did. UNTIL NOW. Ladies and germs, Andy Warhol and Velvet Underground fans and scholars, without further ado I bring you THE MISSING LINK! A true Dangerous Minds mega exclusive! (As Jeb Bush would say “Please clap.”).

A primitive, pounding Moe Tucker drumroll please for the reveal of THEE BANANA…
 

 
Absolutely bananas, right?

I figured by now that there’d be at least some sort of information on this out there, as I honestly I haven’t looked in ages. But when I was reminded of the fiftieth anniversary of the album being released this past “Sunday Morning,” and took that silly Facebook profile picture it dawned on me. THE BANANA ASHTRAY, my own unique piece of Warhol and Velvets history!!! I spent two or three hours really scouring the Internet yesterday and there isn’t one word about it. No “banana ashtray.” No “Wing Corp,” no “Leo Kono production,” either. Nothing!

So now that I, Howie Pyro, have released this top secret banana, I hope all of you mellow yellow types out there in your yellow velvet uniforms go wild seeking out the info we need! So all you femme fatales, skip one of all tomorrow’s parties and run run run to find some heroin for all your European sons while waiting for your banana man, man.

Stay mellow, stay yellow and don’t slip on any banana peels (slowly, see?). Over and out. Warhol Museum, you know how to reach me…

(To read the comments left on the original post, go here.)
 

 

Enjoy an early classic Warhol film ‘Harlot’ (aka ‘Mario Banana’) starring that icon of perversion Jack Smith and Mario Montez.

 
The following is an excerpt from the liner notes to Riches to Rags, by Bob Mehr, the NY Times best-selling author of Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements.

The work of The Replacements’ co-founder and legendary lead guitarist, Bob Stinson has been well chronicled since his tragic passing in 1995. In addition to the expansions of The Replacements catalog, Stinson’s post-‘Mats work – in the prog-psych band Static Taxi and his collaborations with punk vet Sonny Vincent in Shotgun Rationale – have all been collected and anthologized. But unaccounted for in that discography is the time Stinson spent as Bleeding Hearts’ lead guitarist. 

Although Stinson’s shadow looms large over the history of the band, Bleeding Hearts were the brainchild of singer, songwriter, and guitarist Mike Leonard. Raised in suburban Minneapolis, Leonard cut his teeth on the punk rock of The Clash. By his late teens he’d become a skilled guitarist with a Rolling Stones obsession (and a magnificently exaggerated Keef-style coif to go along with it).

After moving to uptown Minneapolis, the then-21-year-old Leonard launched Bleeding Hearts in 1990 as a trio initially, with drummer Bob Herbers and bassist Rob Robello. Leonard was eager to expand the fledgling band into a two-guitar lineup, but finding the right player proved tricky.

“We went through about four or five guitar players in a short span,” recalled Leonard. “The last guy we had decided to leave the band when his car caught on fire after a show with his guitar and amp in it. I guess he took it as a sign to quit.”

A habitué of The Uptown bar, Leonard made the acquaintance of one of its other regulars, Bob Stinson. “I was at The Uptown five nights a week then, and Bob was hanging out there too,” he said. “I struck up a conversation with him. Actually interrupted him telling a joke—I told the punchline.”

At the time, Stinson—many years removed from The Replacements—was still in the midst of a long run with his group Static Taxi. “Static Taxi was very much Bob’s thing musically,” said Leonard. “It was all his favorite stuff: Yes and Steve Howe and psychedelic Beatles elements—that’s what his heart was really into, and which didn’t have a home in The Replacements.”

“Bleeding Hearts were actually more like The Replacements, more like a classic rock ‘n’ roll band. Since we were admittedly influenced by The Replacements, I figured why not have Bob Stinson play guitar? When I approached him about playing with us, he agreed.”

Stinson arrived at Bleeding Hearts’ practice space with his Fender Quad Reverb in tow, several sheets to the wind. “We started playing together, but it was total cacophony,” recalled Leonard. “The whole time we’re playing, Bob keeps saying, ‘You guys should get Jamie Garner to play guitar.’ At first, we’re like, ‘No, Bob, we want you.’ But after about an hour of this cacophony, we were like, ‘Uh, Bob, who’s this Jamie Garner guy again? Can you introduce us?’”

Stinson did just that, connecting the band with Garner, a vet of Twin/Tone Records outfit The Leatherwoods. Garner, a skilled player in his own right, joined Bleeding Hearts and spent much of the next year playing with the band. “Jamie was great, a phenomenal guitar player who took us up a couple notches,” said Leonard. But by the end of 1991, Garner had decided to move to San Diego and Bleeding Hearts second guitar slot was open once again.
 

Photo: Dan Corrigan
 
This time, Stinson—at loose ends after the breakup of Static Taxi—approached Leonard about joining the band. “Bob saw us one or two times, and he decided he wanted in,” said Leonard. “This time I was a little bit skeptical, but he was determined to play with us.”

At the time Stinson was living with his mother and stepfather, on the other side of town from Leonard. “It was the dead of winter and he trudged from way down on East Lake Street to where I lived over on West Lake Street,” said Leonard. “It was freezing outside, and he was wearing a light windbreaker and no hat or gloves. By the time he got to my apartment his face was red and frozen.”

“But we sat down and played guitars and he learned every one of our songs in a single sitting. He could be a really quick study. We banged out all the tunes and he came up with some embellishments that worked perfectly. Came up with all these cool harmonized guitar parts. I think he was happy to join the band and start playing around again. We were almost trying to resurrect him in a way too; he’d been written off by a lot of people by that time.” 

Leonard also made the generous, if perhaps unwise, move of inviting Stinson to come live with him. “I had this sense that the only way I’d be able to keep him in check was if he moved in with me,” said Leonard. Exactly ten years younger than Stinson, Leonard took on the role of a younger brother as well as caretaker. The two played together daily, roughhoused like little kids, rehearsed with the band five times a week, and listened to music the rest of the time.

“Bob had these stacks of speakers that he brought with him. And he’d just crank his music so loud,” said Leonard. “Bob would be dissecting the very first ten seconds of like an Urge Overkill song or something. Needle dropping it over and over again. He would analyze a one minute section of a song. He really heard music microscopically.” 

By this point, Bleeding Hearts were about to welcome a new drummer in Pat McKenna. Stinson —who, by this point, knew how to sharpen a band—would help fine tune the group.

“Bob really was like a musical savant. He would show the drummer how to do little detailed parts; he would come up with really good basslines,” said Leonard. “He was a weird talent. In a way, he couldn’t tell you what he was doing at all—like what scale or what chord he was playing. But then I’d come home and he’d be jamming along to Yes records, playing ‘Roundabout’ note for note. He just had an uncanny ability.” 

In early 1993, the band began doing pre-production for their first album. Stinson’s old friend and guitar successor in The Replacements, Slim Dunlap, would help prep the band at its rehearsal studio. “Slim came over and recorded some songs,” said Leonard. “He was always looking out for Bob, helping out however he could.”

A couple months later, in March of 1993, Leonard enlisted Twin Cities engineer Tommy Roberts—leader of the band Fauna—to cut a session with Bleeding Hearts at Terrarium Studios.

The recording was done mostly live, and found Stinson not only working in tight six-string tandem with Leonard, but adding other musical flourishes, like the bongos at the end of “Gone,” and the memorable whistling that starts “Imagination.”
 

Photo: Dan Corrigan
 
With half of a record complete, Bleeding Hearts seemed to be a band poised on the cusp of some kind of breakthrough in 1993. The Replacements’ former manager Peter Jesperson had picked them as a band to watch in the local alt-weekly City Pages, and they played a triumphant show opening for Tommy Stinson’s new band Bash & Pop at the 7th Street Entry, in what was an emotional reunion for the Stinson family. 

But behind the scenes, Bob was suffering, dealing with a combination of his own escalating mental and substance abuse issues—and reckoning with his son Joey’s health problems, as the infant had been diagnosed as a quadriplegic with cerebral palsy. “That really affected him. He’d talk about it but it was very hard on him,” recalled Leonard. “I think that drove him into a dark place.”

A professional complication in the band’s career came with a SPIN story that was published in the summer of 1993. Stinson, who’d been off the national radar since leaving The Replacements seven years earlier, had agreed to a feature interview in the magazine thinking it would help boost Bleeding Hearts profile. But the piece would instead focus on Stinson and his troubled Replacements’ past, painting him as a lost and wasted figure, while Bleeding Hearts were dismissed almost entirely. “We thought that was going to be a door opening for us, but it almost felt like a door closing,” said Leonard.

The story concludes in the liner notes—by Bob Mehr, author of the New York Times bestseller Trouble Boys: The True Story of the Replacements—from Riches to Rags, the long-lost album by Bleeding Hearts.