The Mortal Micronotz’ debut LP
 
In 1981, when William S. Burroughs moved there, Lawrence, Kansas was home to a punk band called the Mortal Micronotz. Bill Rich, owner of Lawrence’s Fresh Sounds label and editor of Talk Talk magazine, was friendly with the author—according to Barry Miles’ Call Me Burroughs, Rich knew Burroughs’ longtime companion and editor James Grauerholz from the latter’s college days in Lawrence—and he arranged a meeting at the band’s request. Burroughs liked them well enough to give them a song lyric about paedophagy, “Old Lady Sloan,” which became a 90-second blast of disgust on the Mortal Micronotz’ eponymous debut. A few lines:

Old lady Sloan, she likes her chow
Burping up her baby like a happy old sow
Old lady Sloan, chewin’ on a bone
Chewin’ on the bones of her child
Old lady Sloan, she went hog wild
Old lady Sloan, she butchered her child
She stuffed him with apples, mincemeat and fig
and she roasted him in her ashpit like a fat little pig

 

A ghostly image of Burroughs and the Mortal Micronotz from the LP’s lyric sheet
 
A later lineup of the Micronotz discussed the association with Burroughs in a 1985 interview with Memphis station WLYX:

STEVE EDDY: We got hooked up with him, and he wrote some lyrics for one of our songs on the first record that we put out, a song called “Old Lady Sloan.” And it’s just about a fat old lady who eats her children. And we had some lyrics, and when Dean, our old singer, found out that Bill was an acquaintance—Bill Rich, our record producer, was an acquaintance of William Burroughs, he saw it as a good opportunity to find out what could be done in that area.

JOHN HARPER: Aside from that, the guy who produced our first album was James Grauerholz, who’s William Burroughs’ personal manager, so that kinda helped out.

The Mortal Micronotz’ debut album is long gone—you’ll need to buy a used copy or download a needle drop if you want to hear the original one-and-a-half-minute punk thrash version of “Old Lady Sloan”—but, remarkably, Burroughs recorded the song himself for 1995’s The Mortal Micronotz Tribute! The quality of moral outrage is missing from Burroughs and the Eudoras’ laid-back interpretation of the number, which makes use of a vibraphone; as one imagines Ms. Sloan lingered over her roasted child, they take their sweet time savoring WSB’s words and the Micronotz’ chords. Bon appétit!
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Robert Anton Wilson’s ‘punk’ album: ‘YOU’VE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR MINDS!!’
‘Birdbrain’: Allen Ginsberg’s Buddhist punk single, 1981