The Dirt Clods, etc.
Fall 1982 and Winter 1982/1983
- Ed Fowler's house,
754 Dahlia Street, Denver, Colorado
Originally recorded with a cassette ghetto blaster.
Ed Fowler: Guitar, Percussion, Vocals, Kalimba, Effects
Evan Cantor: Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Percussion, Recorder, Blues Harp
Dena Zocher: Cello & Vocals on The Dirt Clods
Glenn Swanson: Piano on "Chariots Of Beer"
Marsha (Wooley) & Roger Boraas: Vocals & Effects on The Dirt Clods
Nina & Russ Stevens: Vocals/Effects on The Dirt Clods
Special Thanks to Patrick "on the chair"
ALL OF THE MUSIC ON THIS TAPE WAS CREATED SPONTANEOUSLY OUT OF THIN AIR!
Photographic and scanned materials provided by Evan Cantor and Little Fyodor.
Photograph of Ed Fowler's old house on Dahlia Street, Lauren Swain, January 2014.
- Ed Fowler's house,
754 Dahlia Street, Denver, Colorado
Originally recorded with a cassette ghetto blaster.
Ed Fowler: Guitar, Percussion, Vocals, Kalimba, Effects
Evan Cantor: Bass, Guitar, Vocals, Percussion, Recorder, Blues Harp
Dena Zocher: Cello & Vocals on The Dirt Clods
Glenn Swanson: Piano on "Chariots Of Beer"
Marsha (Wooley) & Roger Boraas: Vocals & Effects on The Dirt Clods
Nina & Russ Stevens: Vocals/Effects on The Dirt Clods
Special Thanks to Patrick "on the chair"
ALL OF THE MUSIC ON THIS TAPE WAS CREATED SPONTANEOUSLY OUT OF THIN AIR!
Photographic and scanned materials provided by Evan Cantor and Little Fyodor.
Photograph of Ed Fowler's old house on Dahlia Street, Lauren Swain, January 2014.
|
Side A
The Dirt Clods: 1. Arriba! 2. Whoopee Cushion Agent Man 3. Dead Pupples 4. All Along The Watchtower 5. Never Come On Sunday 6. Brother Paul's Soliloquy Chariots Of Beer: 7. Bats On The Wing Pt. I, II & III 8. Laundry 9. Evil Santa's Theme 10. Chariots Of Beer |
Side B
Jerry's Kids: 1. Ed's Blues 2. Paranoid 3. Evan's Blues 4. The Massacre Ed'n Evan: 5. Hot Tub In Tokyo 6. A Kiss Is Not A Contract 7. The Dog Bite 8. Leading The Worms To Slaughter 9. Lost In The Congo 10. Lost In The Congo, The Sequel 11. Angel Rot 12. I And I We Be Hi All Day 13. Dance Of A Trillion Teats The Dirt Clods: 14. Blue Jays Chariots Of Beer: 15. Reprise: Chariots Of Beer |
|
|
Hal McGee:
Evan recently sent to me a copy of a 90-minute cassette consisting of material that was recorded in late 1982 and early 1983. The cassette is untitled and it lists four bands: The Dirt Clods, Chariots Of Beer, Jerry’s Kids, and Ed’n Evan. Evan Cantor and Ed Fowler are on all of the recordings, as the duos Ed’n Evan and Jerry’s Kids, and with other performers in The Dirt Clods and Chariots Of Beer. David Lichtenberg is not credited in any of these recordings. Why not? Had Evan and Ed recorded or performed together before these recordings from late 1982?
Why wasn’t that cassette listed in the Walls Of Genius catalog? It does not say anything about Walls Of Genius on the cover, but is clearly related to the tapes in the WoG catalog. Some of the additional musicians, such as Dirt Clods member Dena Zocher, and Glenn Swanson (who was a member of Chariots of Beer on this tape), appear on later WoG tapes.
Evan Cantor:
What's the story with the 1983 cassette alternately known as "From The Living Room All The Way To The Closet, Vol. 1", "Authentic" or "The Dirt Clods, etc." (that's my name for it)? This is the tape labeled on the spine: "The Dirt Clods/Chariots Of Beer/Jerry's Kids/Ed'n Evan". This tape represents a transitional stage. Rumours of Marriage (1982) was a straight-ahead punky New Wave band in Lafayette, Colorado, in which Evan Cantor played bass and Ed Fowler played lead guitar. I had become involved with this band almost by accident. I wasn't interested in playing in a band at that time because I was sick of the trials and travails of the music business and the insanity of most of the musicians I had ever known. I wanted to be the recording engineer. But one thing led to another and I became the group's bassist. Thus, I ended up putting David Lichtenberg at the controls of the Dokorder 4-track reel-to-reel machine and we used a bunch of old used reels that the lead singer Mikal Bellan had laying around. I got ticked off at David because he let the VU meters go into the red, meaning that a lot of the recordings were hopelessly-distorted and he was playing the spoons really loud, which wasn't anything we wanted to hear. Perhaps there was too much partying happening, which would not have been surprising and I am in no position to judge as I am as guilty as anybody in that regard.
As Rumours of Marriage was preparing to implode, we made some recordings as "Couch Dots", consisting of extended jams with poetic recitations by the two lead singers, Riann Thonesson and Mikal Bellan. This approach was co-opted later on by Walls of Genius, albeit a good deal more frenzied and maniacal.
After the band completely blasted apart, I (Evan Cantor) needed a new place to live, as the Rumours of Marriage band-house was no longer viable. I moved into Rich Schaffer's place in south Boulder, but that was not a place where I could make music. It was not an environment amenable to all the music that I thought was interesting at the time, like The Clash and Talking Heads, much less music I might have wanted to make, so it quickly became a place I needed to escape from.
That escape was down to Denver, to Ed Fowler's place on Dahlia Street. Ed's place was a part of a four-plex kind of thing. We could make as much music there as we wanted. I would go down to Ed's place on a Saturday, we would party and jam and watch "bad" movies (so bad they're good). I'd sleep on the couch and we would recover at Annie's Cafe the next morning and subsequently watch the Denver Broncos on Sunday afternoon. We recorded our sessions on Ed's boombox, which we called a ghetto blaster in those days.
By this time, I was completely sick of the music business, sick of the parade of insane musicians that I had tolerated over the course of many years, sick of trying to find gigs and all I wanted to do was make music, whatever and however I felt like it. I no longer cared what anybody thought about my music or my chops or my approach. Ed and I would drink ourselves silly and in this environment of complete freedom, unleashed our demons. We let loose a barrage of zaniness and craziness, utilizing toys and bona fide musical instruments alike, playing whatever songs we happened to know and murdering them in a stoned, drunken frenzy.
On occasion, some of Ed's friends would show up and that's how Dena Zocher started playing with us, as well as the other folks listed on the "Dirt Clods" cassette, none of whom really embraced the approach besides Dena. I did some cowboy song duets with Marsha Wooley later on, but she declined to ever perform with us subsequently.
David Lichtenberg (aka Little Fyodor) does not appear on this collection because the tape represents sessions at Ed's place in Denver and I was still ticked off at David's lack of attention to the 4-track recorder at Rumours of Marriage sessions. Soon enough I was no longer ticked off. I must have played the tape for David or given him a copy. Perhaps he had his late-night experimental-music radio show at KGNU Public Radio Boulder by this time. I would have been interested in airplay although there was no "band" at the moment. David was interested in what Ed and I were doing, had plenty of his own zaniness and craziness to offer and our recordings after this date include him.
Later, WoG "released" some of the tracks from the Dirt Clods cassette on "official" Walls Of Genius releases. At the time these tracks were first recorded, we were unaware of the international underground of Do-It-Yourself artists and we had no inkling of what was to come. By the time there was an actual "Walls Of Genius" label "presenting" stuff, I felt that the material on the Dirt Clods cassette was not consistently strong enough to merit full release. But there were outstanding tracks and those made it onto later collections.
Hal McGee:
Evan, in the handwritten information on the cassette j-card of The Dirt Clods, Etc. tape you wrote:
ALL OF THE MUSIC ON THIS TAPE WAS CREATED SPONTANEOUSLY OUT OF THIN AIR!
Much of the music on this tape, especially by The Dirt Clods, seems to have been recorded in a very loose party atmosphere. As you have suggested above, this music sounds like it was done for the pure love of it, almost in a purposely thoughtless/carefree way and yet you chose to record these sessions. For what reason or purpose? You recorded the music on Ed’s cheap cassette boombox instead of a Dokorder reel-to-reel tape recorder like Rumours Of Marriage and most of your later recordings, so high fidelity was not a concern.
When were these recordings made? On the cassette j-card you wrote 1983, but I am guessing that some or much of this might have been recorded in the Fall and early Winter of 1982. Rumours Of Marriage broke up during the Summer of 82 and you usually do a lot of hiking and camping in the Summer, don't you? I know that it was 31+ years ago, but can you remember if the four different groups on this tape were recorded at four different sessions, on different dates, and are they in chronological order?
EC:
Yes, The Dirt Clods cassette was recorded on Ed's boombox--the 4-track Dokorder was too heavy to move around much (which is why I used my old 2-track reel for the Festival of Pain later on). We probably recorded the sessions out of habit--having been in bands for years, I was particularly annoyed that I had so few recordings of all the bands I had ever played in. Recording equipment in those days was not ubiquitous like it is now. We all had had to put up with total space-cases at the dials of 4-track tape recorders simply because they were the only people who actually owned them. Why these recording "engineers" were always fuck-ups, I can't really say, but that was my experience. Four-track reel-to-reel machines were not cheap either, but they gave you much better recording quality than anything else at the time (besides maybe 8-tracks and 16-tracks in professional studios). That said, it was supremely easy to pop a cassette into a boombox and hit the record button. We knew we were making something worth listening to and the Dirt Clods cassette was, in its own way, a 'demo' of what we were up to. It was definitely a "best of"--you can hear the fade-outs and fade-ins, so it was indeed "mixed". While we weren't yet organized in any way as a bona fide band, we must have thought highly enough of what we were doing to think it merited being recorded, if only for our own benefit.
That Summer of 1982 I had a job, working 40 hours a week at the Trust Company of America. I very likely went camping and hiking as much as I could, but it wouldn't have been to the exclusion of making music and I was looking for ways to escape the mundane reality of my roommates. Not that I didn't like the guys--in fact, I was in business with the primary roommate, Rich Schaffer. Rich was in the process at that time of giving up on legitimate employment altogether and becoming a full-time dealer. Dealers typically sold marijuana, hashish, psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine. As a musician, I knew people who wanted that stuff, not to mention myself. Rich declared that he was the "Jesse James of the 20th Century". He stopped reporting and paying taxes and didn't have any health insurance. How he managed to keep a driver's license was beyond my understanding. He had ruined his knees years before, from skiing, and eventually claimed he couldn't walk uphill. He was one of these guys who eventually did nothing outdoors but play golf. In later years, he had a series of heart attacks which cleaned out whatever savings he had amassed and the last one came about three years ago and finished him off. We hadn't spoken in over 20 years. I heard the news from a mutual acquaintance two years after the fact. Once I gave up the marijuana business, I became persona non grata to him and I knew when I was being blown off. That summer (1982) was probably the last times he ever went camping and hiking, because I took him with me. But once the Fall starts in Colorado, the high country goes to winter pretty quick and hiking/camping peters out as people wait for the ski season to start in earnest. I didn't yet know how to ski. So there was the whole Fall 1982 and Winter 82-83 wherein these recordings were made. By March 1983, David was participating, we were recording in Eldorado Springs and the reel-to-reel boxes give definitive dates.
The four "groups" on the Dirt Clods tape would have been at separate sessions. This was the time when Ed and I started to give crazy names to every session. Each session got a different band name. I cannot for the life of me remember "why" we decided to do that, but it became our modus operandi very quickly. Probably just another inside joke that amused us. Remember, we were sick of the traditional forms. Bands were crazy-making endeavors, featuring charismatic lead singers having shit-fits, bassists issuing ultimatums, asshole drummers playing way too loud, and a legion of dazed wannabes. We were rejecting all that. So one day we played as the Dirt Clods. Another weekend we played as Jerry's Kids. And so on. Whether or not the four groups on the Dirt Clods cassette were presented in chronological order is probably impossible to determine at this time. The reel-to-reel boxes place these recordings some time between June 1982 (final Rumours of Marriage sessions) and March 1983 (sessions later released as "Johnny Rocco", the so-called Greatest Hits Volume 2 of Living Room to the Closet). That's about a 4-month period (October-February). There's not a lot of documentation for this Dirt Clods tape since it pre-dates the realization that we were an actual band of some kind.
Hal McGee:
Evan, you said that the Dirt Clods cassette was a kind of "best of" tape from those sessions from the Winter of 82/83. You hung out at Ed's on weekends and partied and cut loose and jammed. Did you leave the recorder on the cassette ghetto blaster running constantly as you jammed, and then later listened back to the sessions and selected your favorite parts of the long jams? Yes, there is a definite fade-up at the beginning of the first song on the tape, "Arriba!", which makes it sound like it was an extract from a longer recording. Explain how you made these edits. I assume from one cassette deck to another. Did you make the selections by yourself or did you and Ed do it together?
The listed primary Dirt Clods group personnel consisted of you, Ed, and Dena Zocher (on cello and vocals), but it sounds like there were other people in the room when you made these recordings, notably in the background on "Arriba!", and in the sing-along chorus of "Dead Puppies". Dena participated in numerous Walls Of Genius recording sessions and releases, and even appeared on a couple of the cassette covers. Tell me about her, and how she got involved in WoG. I notice that he surname is spelled "Zoccer" on this tape and and "Zakar" on a later WoG tape.
Let's talk about the Dirt Clods tracks on the tape and share with me any recollections about how and why you recorded the songs/jams, the ideas behind them, what you were thinking about, etc. A lot of the music on these Dirt Clods recordings has a kind of impressionistic Eastern European or vaguely Asiatic feeling to it.
When I listen to "Arriba!" I get an impression of a caravan, or journey across a desert or maybe a jungle, or a traveling band of gypsies (mostly), or something like that.
"Whoopee Cushion Agent Man" is a funny, loose, rollicking take-off on the Johnny Rivers 1966 hit, "Secret Agent Man".
Of course "Dead Puppies" is a cover of the Ogden Edsl novelty song which gained notoriety/infamy on the Dr. Demento show.
In another section of the WoG profile Little Fyodor mentioned that "All Along The Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix blew Ed's mind when he first heard it and really turned him onto the possibilities of weird, wild and out-there guitar-playing. The cover version on this tape doesn't sound anything like Hendrix or Bob Dylan - hahahaha! That's some crazy percussion sounds you did on that, and is that a triangle that I hear?
Was "Never Come On Sunday" a reference to the film Never On Sunday? If so, I cannot detect much of the original song in this intricate instrumental consisting of electric guitar, oddball percussion and Dena's cool cello-playing.
And what's the deal with "Brother Paul's Soliloquy"? Sounds like one of you guys reading some kind of arbitrary religious text along with electronic and percussion jammage, harmonica distortifications and maniacal laughter.
EC:
In recording these tracks, we mostly left the recorder turned on and then later pulled out the best parts for The Dirt Clods, Etc. cassette. For some of the tunes, we probably practiced for a moment or two, then exclaimed, “okay, we know it, let’s do it”. For the jams, I faded in and faded out at “propitious moments”. I wish I had the original recordings so I could give dates, but I don’t seem to have anything left of the sessions other than this “best of” collection. I made these edits from one cassette deck to another, using my 6-track TEAC mixer for equalization and fade-ins/fade-outs. That was the machine that I used to interface with the 4-track Dokorder reel-to-reel. At Ed’s place, we were just recording onto a cassette-player boombox. Ed was never particularly interested in the mixing process afterwards. I did the mixing, all the choosing and deciding what material went on this tape.
Regarding Dena Zocher: Her name appears with different spellings in different places, but “Zocher” is correct. Dena was a hippie in those days and "official" things like name spelling likely didn't concern her, nor did I care much about it, so we just did our best to give credit where credit was due. Nobody had Facebook pages or personal websites or email addresses in 1983, so there was very little way to check up on these things other than asking face-to-face and we apparently never did until much later. In 1983, Dena lived at "The People's House" in Denver with a bunch of room-mates, a sort of "commune" type of set-up. Dena was a friend of Ed's, perhaps a short-term ‘old girlfriend’ and that's how she originally got involved with The Dirt Clods (and other WoG incarnations). Dena performed with WoG at the Left Hand Bookstore (Strange Rituals, on the Mr. Morocco cassette). How Dena met Ed is a story for Ed to tell, since I don’t know it.
On to The Dirt Clods, Etc. cassette:
The name "Jerry's Kids" was an obvious reference to the Jerry Lewis Telethon. The people involved with the Dirt Clods (Marsha Wooley, Roger Boraas, Nina & Russ Stevens, Dena Zocher) were all members of Ed’s Telethon Party “club”. Ed and a bunch of his friends got into mocking the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethons. They would have drunken stoned parties watching Jerry on the tube and go wild and crazy making fun of him, since Jerry Lewis’ “act” was essentially to behave like a stereotypically mentally-disabled idiot. Ed and his friends (including Glenn Swanson who appears on Chariots of Beer) even went to Los Angeles one time to attend the telethon in person. They made so much noise and were so distracting that Jerry Lewis kicked them out of the auditorium. He was apparently pissed off at their antics, their snickering and raising Cain in the audience. I'm surprised to hear myself playing so much blues harp on the “Jerry’s Kids” tracks.
Whether or not I thought up these names or Ed did is lost to posterity, as are most of the so-called band names we used. "Chariots of Beer" was a play on Chariots of Fire, a popular movie about competitive runners at the time that had a popular theme song, which Ed’s friend Glenn Swanson knew how to play. Since Glenn knew how to play it, we proceeded to murder it in what would become our typical fashion. Glenn never really embraced our approach and this is the only track which he appears on. I think he thought we were nuts. Maybe still does! "Ed'n Evan" is self-explanatory, just the two of us jamming with whatever devices were handy, like toys and kalimbas.
Very likely these names were assigned to the different sessions after the fact.
“Arriba!” features a lot of Marsha Wooley’s voice, a friend and perhaps short-term ‘old girlfriend’ of Ed’s. She was part of Ed’s Telethon Party group. How they met is yet another story for Ed. On this track you hear Marsha exclaiming “Whack-ah!” and, later in the track, egging-on somebody who is playing a party horn with “Blow hard! Blow harder!”. Evan is playing the acoustic guitar, Ed the lead lines that have an Arabian sound due to the scales he is using. There are lots of toys in the background. “Arriba!” is Evan’s voice, who also says “Say What Now?”.
“Whoopee Cushion Agent Man” is, as you say, a loose rollicking take-off of the Johnny Rivers hit song “Secret Agent Man”. “Secret Agent Man” was a part of my “straight” repertoire at that time and for this track, I broke up the head riff into pieces, playing them in a kind of halting rhythmic fashion. This was a typical approach that I took on many occasions in the making of improv jam music. This is an early recorded example of that approach. I am playing the acoustic guitar and Marsha Wooley is grunting over the whoopee cushion.
Ed sang "Dead Puppies", a song he had heard on Dr. Demento's radio show (by the band Ogden Edsl). I don’t think any of us knew who actually sang this song on the Demento show. Ed may have had a Demento “best of” collection since he actually knew the words and the chords. But I never heard the name Ogden Edsl until this question came up (2014). Ed also sometimes sang a song called "Fish Heads". I thought it was by Barnes And Barnes, but Ed says it was by Wild Man Fischer. Ed’s version of "Fish Heads" never made it onto tape. Wild Man Fischer was a clear influence, though, in our approach to raving maniacal vocal stylings.
“All Along The Watchtower”—this is a real stand-out track. The flute sounds in the background are a real mystery to me since this pre-dates David Lichtenberg having a synthesizer in the room and we did not have a flute player. It might have been a record that Ed had, but it fits like a glove. There is a lot of toy percussion on this one. The bell sound was part of a percussion toy, the one that had the ratchet sound and the spinning wheel sound. I am singing the lead on this, experimenting with different voices including a Louis Armstrong impression and a faux West Indian accent. Ed was likely playing the acoustic guitar on this since he knew the song from Jimi Hendrix, one of his idols. We often went in directions that reflected something we already knew.
"Never Come On Sunday" was a riff borrowed from Rumours of Marriage and I somehow slipped it into this jam at the very end. Ed plays an intro (not the "Never Come On Sunday" riff) and Dena picks it up on the cello. You can hear me in the way-back playing a chromatic harmonica. Dena runs with the theme and takes some cool cello solos. Ed changes his tone with the Echoplex (an echo machine that ran a tape loop to create echo and effects). The bass line from RoM's “Never” song roars in at the end and finishes it. As far as I know, it has no connection to the film of a similar name, but I have no idea if the lyrics associated with the music have a connection. The lyrics that appeared on Rumours of Marriage’s version of the song were written by either Riann Thonesson or Mikal Bellan, I don’t know which. Although I played in that band, I never listened very closely to the lyrics of this particular song—I was too much focused on the wild bass line that followed the music Ed had written.
"Brother Paul's Soliloquoy" sounds like a bizarre religious text, almost science fiction. Ed must have had it laying around and I ran with it, but I remember nothing about it. Nonetheless, it is a good example of what would become a typical WoG approach to text, going from sedate all the way to maniacal desperation as a climax. Ed plays spacey effects with the Echoplex, Dena and Marsha provide the mocking laughter as Brother Paul discusses God. It sounds like a toy organ in the mix—might have been Ed’s toy piano miked through a guitar amp. The end of this piece devolves into Ed’s explorations with the Echoplex and Evan’s “evil” laughter at the end.
“Bats On The Wing” is three parts of a single long jam that I cherry-picked the best parts. Part I starts with my bass line, Ed chimes in with electric guitar and establishes a new rhythm within which I play lead bass. It fades out. Then Part II fades in with Ed playing leads and it fades out again as Evan starts up a new bass line. Part III fades in with Evan playing chords on the bass and a weird clip-clop rhythm part coming out of the Echoplex, then fades out. This is Ed and Evan only. Regarding the song title, Ed loved the double entendre of the word “bat”—think baseball bats versus vampire bats. “Bat Kontrol” was one of Ed’s proposed names for the band that became Rumours Of Marriage.
“Laundry” starts with Evan’s bass through a flanger. Ed picks up the line while Evan improvises a rap about going to the laundry. This was likely an inside joke on Bill Snow, one of the musicians that was replaced by Evan in the band that became Rumours Of Marriage. Bill’s “big” song was a chant of “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”. My improvised rap becomes more abstract as I talk about taking a motorcycle up “Golden Canyon”. That would have been more properly Golden Gate Canyon, in which a highway follows from Golden, Colorado, up towards Central City. This is totally on the fly. I start whistling, then howling and laughing and ramp up into some screaming, a la the Beatles. Then it fades out…
“Evil Santa’s Theme”—Ed started this with a rhythm guitar and I fell in with a minor key doom-and-gloom bass line borrowed from the “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen” melody. I’m guessing this session took place in December 1982 because of the Christmas music worming its way into the mix.
Jerry’s Kids is just Ed and Evan again. “Ed’s Blues” is a standard blues progression that really shows off Ed’s prowess as a lead guitarist.
“Paranoid” is obviously a fade-in from the blues jam, which morphs into the Black Sabbath riff of the same name before fading out again.
"Evan's Blues" is a kind of satiric take on the form. It sounds like I'm making up lyrics as we go along and having a hard time not cracking up. Ed plays the rhythm guitar in Delta Blues style.
“The Massacre” is probably the best instrumental piece on the whole collection. On one hand, it’s just “another minor key jam”, but the combination of Ed’s effects with the Echoplex and my threatening bass lines made it work. It ends with me playing “Red River Valley” on the harmonica, which was one of about seven songs I knew how to play on the harmonica in those days. That explains why the song got called, after the fact, “The Massacre”. It was such a mournful version of “Red River Valley”, that it conjured up the tragic experience of Native Americans. I was really interested in Native American history at the time, too. I loved the western landscape so much, was so obsessed by mountains and canyons and desert, that I wanted to figure out how the original inhabitants viewed it. Of course it was a sacred landscape to them.
“Hot Tub In Tokyo” starts another session, again just Ed and I. Ed opens the piece with a gong and I fall in with baritone baroque recorder. This is perhaps the most ambitious music I ever made with the recorder. It’s an organically developing jam, named after the fact. The gong gave it a Japanese flavor to start, so that name was assigned to it. I have no idea if the name was Ed’s idea or my own.
“A Kiss Is Not A Contract” has Ed on the Echoplex again. I am playing a walking blues rock bass line. Ed’s voice is run through a guitar amp with effects and mostly incomprehensible, but “a kiss is not a contract” comes through and that’s how I labeled the song, a way to identify it. Ed may recall the source of the text; I do not.
"The Dog Bite" is one of my rants, but again, I have no memory of it other than knowing it appears on this cassette. My voice is run through a guitar amp with effects. The theme of a “drooling dog” reappears in later WoG material (“Dogshit Drool”). There is a lot of toy percussion on this. Also voice clicking percussion through the guitar amp. At the end, this morphs into “Malcolm’s Chant” (om-pane-mane-mo) which also reappears in later WoG material. Malcolm Barr was a room-mate of mine at the TKE house in Charlottesville, Virginia and we used to do that yoga-like chant on occasion. People in the house called it “that damn chant”.
“Leading the Worms To Slaughter” fades in, obviously after some extended jamming got it going. Ed’s lead guitar, Evan’s bass line. Evan’s voice comes through a guitar amp with effects, a lot of incoherent chanting in rhythm with the bass line. You hear some of Ed’s signature hot lead licks, borrowed from the lead guitar solo in Sugarloaf’s hit song “Green Eyed Lady”. Evan’s chanting moves into incoherent rumbling, paranoid howling and mewling as if something awful is about to happen. This, then, was a worm being led to the slaughter. This is a theme that would reappear in later WoG material, “March of the Lost Wormsouls”. It fades out as the jam apparently kept going. The worm-thing was mine own.
“Lost In The Congo” starts with Ed on kalimba. Evan’s electric guitar falls in, played through a digital delay. You can always tell my lead playing because I don’t have the hot licks that Ed did. It fades out… only to fade back in as “The Sequel”. This time I’m on acoustic guitar, mimicking the kalimba sound and Ed is wailing away on the Echoplex. It fades out. The “Congo” reference would have been in honor of the kalimba, an African instrument.
“Angel Rot” fades in, more edited jamming. Ed’s lead guitar, Evan’s bass line. Evan’s voice is heard through a guitar amp with effects, incoherent rhythmic chanting and scat singing. This is another piece that shows off Ed’s lead guitar prowess. It fades out… the jam continued…. as usual…
“I And I We Be High All Day”—this is a real shortie. Ed put an instrumental reggae LP on the record player and we played along with it. Ed on the guitar, me singing in a faux Jamaican accent through a guitar amp with effects.
“Dance Of A Trillion Teats” is Ed on acoustic guitar and me playing the recorder. I have no memory of why it was called this.
“Blue Jays” was metamorphosed from Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies” and overlaid with a sports announcer from an LP of sports history stuff that Ed possessed. We used a section about Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles, a kind of 'bird' related theme. You know, Blue Jays, Orioles… I am playing the rhythm guitar, Ed chimes in with a few electric licks about halfway through. This is also a parody, in a sense, of Willie Nelson, who had recorded a selection of jazz standards that was getting a lot of airplay at the time. You can hear a little of my nasal Willie impression being discovered on this trac. At the end, Ed turns his guitar to “Girl From Ipanema” and we fade out.
“Chariots of Beer (Reprise)” is covered previously—just another bit edited from the original jam to “round out” the collection.
The best material on this tape re-appeared in later "releases" like The WoG Sampler!. I cannot for the life of me recall what I intended to do with these recordings, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I was so sick of never having recordings of the bands I played in, I wanted tape recorders going on all the time. Thank goodness for that, because I really enjoyed hearing all this music again!
HM:
Four of these songs were later issued officially on WoG 0011 The WoG Sampler!: "Dead Puppies" and "Whoopee Cushion Agent Man" by The Dirt Clods, "The Massacre" and "Evan's Blues" by Jerry's Kids, and "Hot Tub In Tokyo" by Ed'n Evan.
"All Along The Watchtower" and "Blue Jays" by The Dirt Clods were included on the WoG 0009: Cultural Sabotage cassette.
Fyodor, you did not appear on this tape, but many of the tracks appeared on later official Walls Of Genius releases, alongside tracks including you. How do you view this tape in terms of WoG's later developments? And please feel free to comment in detail on this tape in general.
LF:
Well hey, the goings-on reflected on this tape were what started it all, so I have nothing but reverence for it! WoG went through a few phases, but it really started with the idea that you turn on the tape machine and record any and all shenanigans that transpire within its presence and that's your art! It's nice to always be recording cause then there's no "Uh-oh, we're recording now, it better be good, NOW!". There's less of a sense of a wall between life and art, it's all life, it's all art. Some may not like that idea, but whatever, there's pros and cons to everything, and that's what we did, and what went on during the making of that tape was what started it all. Like I said, the seeds of the idea I think started with the dissolution jams of Rumours of Marriage/Couch Dots, but it was during the sessions in question that "it" really started. If RoM represented the seeds, this tape represents the stalk sticking its head above the ground! I was actually mildly surprised when Evan first started making catalogs of our "available" material and didn't include this tape, but that's not to say I disagreed. I was fine either way. Being polished was never what WoG was about, even though you try to make improvements that don't interfere with your core mission, and I could see that even we "straight from the gut" self-proclaimed Morons might have origins too humble and primitive to share with the world as official "product"! Y'know, I remember playing something off that tape on my radio show and some woman called up and complained about not getting it! I told her the name of the band was the Dirt Clods and she said, "Oh, it's funny.... Okay!" Anyway, I'm definitely glad that some of these tracks did in fact see release on later WoG tapes, as you've ably documented!
Evan recently sent to me a copy of a 90-minute cassette consisting of material that was recorded in late 1982 and early 1983. The cassette is untitled and it lists four bands: The Dirt Clods, Chariots Of Beer, Jerry’s Kids, and Ed’n Evan. Evan Cantor and Ed Fowler are on all of the recordings, as the duos Ed’n Evan and Jerry’s Kids, and with other performers in The Dirt Clods and Chariots Of Beer. David Lichtenberg is not credited in any of these recordings. Why not? Had Evan and Ed recorded or performed together before these recordings from late 1982?
Why wasn’t that cassette listed in the Walls Of Genius catalog? It does not say anything about Walls Of Genius on the cover, but is clearly related to the tapes in the WoG catalog. Some of the additional musicians, such as Dirt Clods member Dena Zocher, and Glenn Swanson (who was a member of Chariots of Beer on this tape), appear on later WoG tapes.
Evan Cantor:
What's the story with the 1983 cassette alternately known as "From The Living Room All The Way To The Closet, Vol. 1", "Authentic" or "The Dirt Clods, etc." (that's my name for it)? This is the tape labeled on the spine: "The Dirt Clods/Chariots Of Beer/Jerry's Kids/Ed'n Evan". This tape represents a transitional stage. Rumours of Marriage (1982) was a straight-ahead punky New Wave band in Lafayette, Colorado, in which Evan Cantor played bass and Ed Fowler played lead guitar. I had become involved with this band almost by accident. I wasn't interested in playing in a band at that time because I was sick of the trials and travails of the music business and the insanity of most of the musicians I had ever known. I wanted to be the recording engineer. But one thing led to another and I became the group's bassist. Thus, I ended up putting David Lichtenberg at the controls of the Dokorder 4-track reel-to-reel machine and we used a bunch of old used reels that the lead singer Mikal Bellan had laying around. I got ticked off at David because he let the VU meters go into the red, meaning that a lot of the recordings were hopelessly-distorted and he was playing the spoons really loud, which wasn't anything we wanted to hear. Perhaps there was too much partying happening, which would not have been surprising and I am in no position to judge as I am as guilty as anybody in that regard.
As Rumours of Marriage was preparing to implode, we made some recordings as "Couch Dots", consisting of extended jams with poetic recitations by the two lead singers, Riann Thonesson and Mikal Bellan. This approach was co-opted later on by Walls of Genius, albeit a good deal more frenzied and maniacal.
After the band completely blasted apart, I (Evan Cantor) needed a new place to live, as the Rumours of Marriage band-house was no longer viable. I moved into Rich Schaffer's place in south Boulder, but that was not a place where I could make music. It was not an environment amenable to all the music that I thought was interesting at the time, like The Clash and Talking Heads, much less music I might have wanted to make, so it quickly became a place I needed to escape from.
That escape was down to Denver, to Ed Fowler's place on Dahlia Street. Ed's place was a part of a four-plex kind of thing. We could make as much music there as we wanted. I would go down to Ed's place on a Saturday, we would party and jam and watch "bad" movies (so bad they're good). I'd sleep on the couch and we would recover at Annie's Cafe the next morning and subsequently watch the Denver Broncos on Sunday afternoon. We recorded our sessions on Ed's boombox, which we called a ghetto blaster in those days.
By this time, I was completely sick of the music business, sick of the parade of insane musicians that I had tolerated over the course of many years, sick of trying to find gigs and all I wanted to do was make music, whatever and however I felt like it. I no longer cared what anybody thought about my music or my chops or my approach. Ed and I would drink ourselves silly and in this environment of complete freedom, unleashed our demons. We let loose a barrage of zaniness and craziness, utilizing toys and bona fide musical instruments alike, playing whatever songs we happened to know and murdering them in a stoned, drunken frenzy.
On occasion, some of Ed's friends would show up and that's how Dena Zocher started playing with us, as well as the other folks listed on the "Dirt Clods" cassette, none of whom really embraced the approach besides Dena. I did some cowboy song duets with Marsha Wooley later on, but she declined to ever perform with us subsequently.
David Lichtenberg (aka Little Fyodor) does not appear on this collection because the tape represents sessions at Ed's place in Denver and I was still ticked off at David's lack of attention to the 4-track recorder at Rumours of Marriage sessions. Soon enough I was no longer ticked off. I must have played the tape for David or given him a copy. Perhaps he had his late-night experimental-music radio show at KGNU Public Radio Boulder by this time. I would have been interested in airplay although there was no "band" at the moment. David was interested in what Ed and I were doing, had plenty of his own zaniness and craziness to offer and our recordings after this date include him.
Later, WoG "released" some of the tracks from the Dirt Clods cassette on "official" Walls Of Genius releases. At the time these tracks were first recorded, we were unaware of the international underground of Do-It-Yourself artists and we had no inkling of what was to come. By the time there was an actual "Walls Of Genius" label "presenting" stuff, I felt that the material on the Dirt Clods cassette was not consistently strong enough to merit full release. But there were outstanding tracks and those made it onto later collections.
Hal McGee:
Evan, in the handwritten information on the cassette j-card of The Dirt Clods, Etc. tape you wrote:
ALL OF THE MUSIC ON THIS TAPE WAS CREATED SPONTANEOUSLY OUT OF THIN AIR!
Much of the music on this tape, especially by The Dirt Clods, seems to have been recorded in a very loose party atmosphere. As you have suggested above, this music sounds like it was done for the pure love of it, almost in a purposely thoughtless/carefree way and yet you chose to record these sessions. For what reason or purpose? You recorded the music on Ed’s cheap cassette boombox instead of a Dokorder reel-to-reel tape recorder like Rumours Of Marriage and most of your later recordings, so high fidelity was not a concern.
When were these recordings made? On the cassette j-card you wrote 1983, but I am guessing that some or much of this might have been recorded in the Fall and early Winter of 1982. Rumours Of Marriage broke up during the Summer of 82 and you usually do a lot of hiking and camping in the Summer, don't you? I know that it was 31+ years ago, but can you remember if the four different groups on this tape were recorded at four different sessions, on different dates, and are they in chronological order?
EC:
Yes, The Dirt Clods cassette was recorded on Ed's boombox--the 4-track Dokorder was too heavy to move around much (which is why I used my old 2-track reel for the Festival of Pain later on). We probably recorded the sessions out of habit--having been in bands for years, I was particularly annoyed that I had so few recordings of all the bands I had ever played in. Recording equipment in those days was not ubiquitous like it is now. We all had had to put up with total space-cases at the dials of 4-track tape recorders simply because they were the only people who actually owned them. Why these recording "engineers" were always fuck-ups, I can't really say, but that was my experience. Four-track reel-to-reel machines were not cheap either, but they gave you much better recording quality than anything else at the time (besides maybe 8-tracks and 16-tracks in professional studios). That said, it was supremely easy to pop a cassette into a boombox and hit the record button. We knew we were making something worth listening to and the Dirt Clods cassette was, in its own way, a 'demo' of what we were up to. It was definitely a "best of"--you can hear the fade-outs and fade-ins, so it was indeed "mixed". While we weren't yet organized in any way as a bona fide band, we must have thought highly enough of what we were doing to think it merited being recorded, if only for our own benefit.
That Summer of 1982 I had a job, working 40 hours a week at the Trust Company of America. I very likely went camping and hiking as much as I could, but it wouldn't have been to the exclusion of making music and I was looking for ways to escape the mundane reality of my roommates. Not that I didn't like the guys--in fact, I was in business with the primary roommate, Rich Schaffer. Rich was in the process at that time of giving up on legitimate employment altogether and becoming a full-time dealer. Dealers typically sold marijuana, hashish, psilocybin mushrooms and cocaine. As a musician, I knew people who wanted that stuff, not to mention myself. Rich declared that he was the "Jesse James of the 20th Century". He stopped reporting and paying taxes and didn't have any health insurance. How he managed to keep a driver's license was beyond my understanding. He had ruined his knees years before, from skiing, and eventually claimed he couldn't walk uphill. He was one of these guys who eventually did nothing outdoors but play golf. In later years, he had a series of heart attacks which cleaned out whatever savings he had amassed and the last one came about three years ago and finished him off. We hadn't spoken in over 20 years. I heard the news from a mutual acquaintance two years after the fact. Once I gave up the marijuana business, I became persona non grata to him and I knew when I was being blown off. That summer (1982) was probably the last times he ever went camping and hiking, because I took him with me. But once the Fall starts in Colorado, the high country goes to winter pretty quick and hiking/camping peters out as people wait for the ski season to start in earnest. I didn't yet know how to ski. So there was the whole Fall 1982 and Winter 82-83 wherein these recordings were made. By March 1983, David was participating, we were recording in Eldorado Springs and the reel-to-reel boxes give definitive dates.
The four "groups" on the Dirt Clods tape would have been at separate sessions. This was the time when Ed and I started to give crazy names to every session. Each session got a different band name. I cannot for the life of me remember "why" we decided to do that, but it became our modus operandi very quickly. Probably just another inside joke that amused us. Remember, we were sick of the traditional forms. Bands were crazy-making endeavors, featuring charismatic lead singers having shit-fits, bassists issuing ultimatums, asshole drummers playing way too loud, and a legion of dazed wannabes. We were rejecting all that. So one day we played as the Dirt Clods. Another weekend we played as Jerry's Kids. And so on. Whether or not the four groups on the Dirt Clods cassette were presented in chronological order is probably impossible to determine at this time. The reel-to-reel boxes place these recordings some time between June 1982 (final Rumours of Marriage sessions) and March 1983 (sessions later released as "Johnny Rocco", the so-called Greatest Hits Volume 2 of Living Room to the Closet). That's about a 4-month period (October-February). There's not a lot of documentation for this Dirt Clods tape since it pre-dates the realization that we were an actual band of some kind.
Hal McGee:
Evan, you said that the Dirt Clods cassette was a kind of "best of" tape from those sessions from the Winter of 82/83. You hung out at Ed's on weekends and partied and cut loose and jammed. Did you leave the recorder on the cassette ghetto blaster running constantly as you jammed, and then later listened back to the sessions and selected your favorite parts of the long jams? Yes, there is a definite fade-up at the beginning of the first song on the tape, "Arriba!", which makes it sound like it was an extract from a longer recording. Explain how you made these edits. I assume from one cassette deck to another. Did you make the selections by yourself or did you and Ed do it together?
The listed primary Dirt Clods group personnel consisted of you, Ed, and Dena Zocher (on cello and vocals), but it sounds like there were other people in the room when you made these recordings, notably in the background on "Arriba!", and in the sing-along chorus of "Dead Puppies". Dena participated in numerous Walls Of Genius recording sessions and releases, and even appeared on a couple of the cassette covers. Tell me about her, and how she got involved in WoG. I notice that he surname is spelled "Zoccer" on this tape and and "Zakar" on a later WoG tape.
Let's talk about the Dirt Clods tracks on the tape and share with me any recollections about how and why you recorded the songs/jams, the ideas behind them, what you were thinking about, etc. A lot of the music on these Dirt Clods recordings has a kind of impressionistic Eastern European or vaguely Asiatic feeling to it.
When I listen to "Arriba!" I get an impression of a caravan, or journey across a desert or maybe a jungle, or a traveling band of gypsies (mostly), or something like that.
"Whoopee Cushion Agent Man" is a funny, loose, rollicking take-off on the Johnny Rivers 1966 hit, "Secret Agent Man".
Of course "Dead Puppies" is a cover of the Ogden Edsl novelty song which gained notoriety/infamy on the Dr. Demento show.
In another section of the WoG profile Little Fyodor mentioned that "All Along The Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix blew Ed's mind when he first heard it and really turned him onto the possibilities of weird, wild and out-there guitar-playing. The cover version on this tape doesn't sound anything like Hendrix or Bob Dylan - hahahaha! That's some crazy percussion sounds you did on that, and is that a triangle that I hear?
Was "Never Come On Sunday" a reference to the film Never On Sunday? If so, I cannot detect much of the original song in this intricate instrumental consisting of electric guitar, oddball percussion and Dena's cool cello-playing.
And what's the deal with "Brother Paul's Soliloquy"? Sounds like one of you guys reading some kind of arbitrary religious text along with electronic and percussion jammage, harmonica distortifications and maniacal laughter.
EC:
In recording these tracks, we mostly left the recorder turned on and then later pulled out the best parts for The Dirt Clods, Etc. cassette. For some of the tunes, we probably practiced for a moment or two, then exclaimed, “okay, we know it, let’s do it”. For the jams, I faded in and faded out at “propitious moments”. I wish I had the original recordings so I could give dates, but I don’t seem to have anything left of the sessions other than this “best of” collection. I made these edits from one cassette deck to another, using my 6-track TEAC mixer for equalization and fade-ins/fade-outs. That was the machine that I used to interface with the 4-track Dokorder reel-to-reel. At Ed’s place, we were just recording onto a cassette-player boombox. Ed was never particularly interested in the mixing process afterwards. I did the mixing, all the choosing and deciding what material went on this tape.
Regarding Dena Zocher: Her name appears with different spellings in different places, but “Zocher” is correct. Dena was a hippie in those days and "official" things like name spelling likely didn't concern her, nor did I care much about it, so we just did our best to give credit where credit was due. Nobody had Facebook pages or personal websites or email addresses in 1983, so there was very little way to check up on these things other than asking face-to-face and we apparently never did until much later. In 1983, Dena lived at "The People's House" in Denver with a bunch of room-mates, a sort of "commune" type of set-up. Dena was a friend of Ed's, perhaps a short-term ‘old girlfriend’ and that's how she originally got involved with The Dirt Clods (and other WoG incarnations). Dena performed with WoG at the Left Hand Bookstore (Strange Rituals, on the Mr. Morocco cassette). How Dena met Ed is a story for Ed to tell, since I don’t know it.
On to The Dirt Clods, Etc. cassette:
The name "Jerry's Kids" was an obvious reference to the Jerry Lewis Telethon. The people involved with the Dirt Clods (Marsha Wooley, Roger Boraas, Nina & Russ Stevens, Dena Zocher) were all members of Ed’s Telethon Party “club”. Ed and a bunch of his friends got into mocking the Jerry Lewis muscular dystrophy telethons. They would have drunken stoned parties watching Jerry on the tube and go wild and crazy making fun of him, since Jerry Lewis’ “act” was essentially to behave like a stereotypically mentally-disabled idiot. Ed and his friends (including Glenn Swanson who appears on Chariots of Beer) even went to Los Angeles one time to attend the telethon in person. They made so much noise and were so distracting that Jerry Lewis kicked them out of the auditorium. He was apparently pissed off at their antics, their snickering and raising Cain in the audience. I'm surprised to hear myself playing so much blues harp on the “Jerry’s Kids” tracks.
Whether or not I thought up these names or Ed did is lost to posterity, as are most of the so-called band names we used. "Chariots of Beer" was a play on Chariots of Fire, a popular movie about competitive runners at the time that had a popular theme song, which Ed’s friend Glenn Swanson knew how to play. Since Glenn knew how to play it, we proceeded to murder it in what would become our typical fashion. Glenn never really embraced our approach and this is the only track which he appears on. I think he thought we were nuts. Maybe still does! "Ed'n Evan" is self-explanatory, just the two of us jamming with whatever devices were handy, like toys and kalimbas.
Very likely these names were assigned to the different sessions after the fact.
“Arriba!” features a lot of Marsha Wooley’s voice, a friend and perhaps short-term ‘old girlfriend’ of Ed’s. She was part of Ed’s Telethon Party group. How they met is yet another story for Ed. On this track you hear Marsha exclaiming “Whack-ah!” and, later in the track, egging-on somebody who is playing a party horn with “Blow hard! Blow harder!”. Evan is playing the acoustic guitar, Ed the lead lines that have an Arabian sound due to the scales he is using. There are lots of toys in the background. “Arriba!” is Evan’s voice, who also says “Say What Now?”.
“Whoopee Cushion Agent Man” is, as you say, a loose rollicking take-off of the Johnny Rivers hit song “Secret Agent Man”. “Secret Agent Man” was a part of my “straight” repertoire at that time and for this track, I broke up the head riff into pieces, playing them in a kind of halting rhythmic fashion. This was a typical approach that I took on many occasions in the making of improv jam music. This is an early recorded example of that approach. I am playing the acoustic guitar and Marsha Wooley is grunting over the whoopee cushion.
Ed sang "Dead Puppies", a song he had heard on Dr. Demento's radio show (by the band Ogden Edsl). I don’t think any of us knew who actually sang this song on the Demento show. Ed may have had a Demento “best of” collection since he actually knew the words and the chords. But I never heard the name Ogden Edsl until this question came up (2014). Ed also sometimes sang a song called "Fish Heads". I thought it was by Barnes And Barnes, but Ed says it was by Wild Man Fischer. Ed’s version of "Fish Heads" never made it onto tape. Wild Man Fischer was a clear influence, though, in our approach to raving maniacal vocal stylings.
“All Along The Watchtower”—this is a real stand-out track. The flute sounds in the background are a real mystery to me since this pre-dates David Lichtenberg having a synthesizer in the room and we did not have a flute player. It might have been a record that Ed had, but it fits like a glove. There is a lot of toy percussion on this one. The bell sound was part of a percussion toy, the one that had the ratchet sound and the spinning wheel sound. I am singing the lead on this, experimenting with different voices including a Louis Armstrong impression and a faux West Indian accent. Ed was likely playing the acoustic guitar on this since he knew the song from Jimi Hendrix, one of his idols. We often went in directions that reflected something we already knew.
"Never Come On Sunday" was a riff borrowed from Rumours of Marriage and I somehow slipped it into this jam at the very end. Ed plays an intro (not the "Never Come On Sunday" riff) and Dena picks it up on the cello. You can hear me in the way-back playing a chromatic harmonica. Dena runs with the theme and takes some cool cello solos. Ed changes his tone with the Echoplex (an echo machine that ran a tape loop to create echo and effects). The bass line from RoM's “Never” song roars in at the end and finishes it. As far as I know, it has no connection to the film of a similar name, but I have no idea if the lyrics associated with the music have a connection. The lyrics that appeared on Rumours of Marriage’s version of the song were written by either Riann Thonesson or Mikal Bellan, I don’t know which. Although I played in that band, I never listened very closely to the lyrics of this particular song—I was too much focused on the wild bass line that followed the music Ed had written.
"Brother Paul's Soliloquoy" sounds like a bizarre religious text, almost science fiction. Ed must have had it laying around and I ran with it, but I remember nothing about it. Nonetheless, it is a good example of what would become a typical WoG approach to text, going from sedate all the way to maniacal desperation as a climax. Ed plays spacey effects with the Echoplex, Dena and Marsha provide the mocking laughter as Brother Paul discusses God. It sounds like a toy organ in the mix—might have been Ed’s toy piano miked through a guitar amp. The end of this piece devolves into Ed’s explorations with the Echoplex and Evan’s “evil” laughter at the end.
“Bats On The Wing” is three parts of a single long jam that I cherry-picked the best parts. Part I starts with my bass line, Ed chimes in with electric guitar and establishes a new rhythm within which I play lead bass. It fades out. Then Part II fades in with Ed playing leads and it fades out again as Evan starts up a new bass line. Part III fades in with Evan playing chords on the bass and a weird clip-clop rhythm part coming out of the Echoplex, then fades out. This is Ed and Evan only. Regarding the song title, Ed loved the double entendre of the word “bat”—think baseball bats versus vampire bats. “Bat Kontrol” was one of Ed’s proposed names for the band that became Rumours Of Marriage.
“Laundry” starts with Evan’s bass through a flanger. Ed picks up the line while Evan improvises a rap about going to the laundry. This was likely an inside joke on Bill Snow, one of the musicians that was replaced by Evan in the band that became Rumours Of Marriage. Bill’s “big” song was a chant of “Lather, Rinse, Repeat”. My improvised rap becomes more abstract as I talk about taking a motorcycle up “Golden Canyon”. That would have been more properly Golden Gate Canyon, in which a highway follows from Golden, Colorado, up towards Central City. This is totally on the fly. I start whistling, then howling and laughing and ramp up into some screaming, a la the Beatles. Then it fades out…
“Evil Santa’s Theme”—Ed started this with a rhythm guitar and I fell in with a minor key doom-and-gloom bass line borrowed from the “God Bless Ye Merry Gentlemen” melody. I’m guessing this session took place in December 1982 because of the Christmas music worming its way into the mix.
Jerry’s Kids is just Ed and Evan again. “Ed’s Blues” is a standard blues progression that really shows off Ed’s prowess as a lead guitarist.
“Paranoid” is obviously a fade-in from the blues jam, which morphs into the Black Sabbath riff of the same name before fading out again.
"Evan's Blues" is a kind of satiric take on the form. It sounds like I'm making up lyrics as we go along and having a hard time not cracking up. Ed plays the rhythm guitar in Delta Blues style.
“The Massacre” is probably the best instrumental piece on the whole collection. On one hand, it’s just “another minor key jam”, but the combination of Ed’s effects with the Echoplex and my threatening bass lines made it work. It ends with me playing “Red River Valley” on the harmonica, which was one of about seven songs I knew how to play on the harmonica in those days. That explains why the song got called, after the fact, “The Massacre”. It was such a mournful version of “Red River Valley”, that it conjured up the tragic experience of Native Americans. I was really interested in Native American history at the time, too. I loved the western landscape so much, was so obsessed by mountains and canyons and desert, that I wanted to figure out how the original inhabitants viewed it. Of course it was a sacred landscape to them.
“Hot Tub In Tokyo” starts another session, again just Ed and I. Ed opens the piece with a gong and I fall in with baritone baroque recorder. This is perhaps the most ambitious music I ever made with the recorder. It’s an organically developing jam, named after the fact. The gong gave it a Japanese flavor to start, so that name was assigned to it. I have no idea if the name was Ed’s idea or my own.
“A Kiss Is Not A Contract” has Ed on the Echoplex again. I am playing a walking blues rock bass line. Ed’s voice is run through a guitar amp with effects and mostly incomprehensible, but “a kiss is not a contract” comes through and that’s how I labeled the song, a way to identify it. Ed may recall the source of the text; I do not.
"The Dog Bite" is one of my rants, but again, I have no memory of it other than knowing it appears on this cassette. My voice is run through a guitar amp with effects. The theme of a “drooling dog” reappears in later WoG material (“Dogshit Drool”). There is a lot of toy percussion on this. Also voice clicking percussion through the guitar amp. At the end, this morphs into “Malcolm’s Chant” (om-pane-mane-mo) which also reappears in later WoG material. Malcolm Barr was a room-mate of mine at the TKE house in Charlottesville, Virginia and we used to do that yoga-like chant on occasion. People in the house called it “that damn chant”.
“Leading the Worms To Slaughter” fades in, obviously after some extended jamming got it going. Ed’s lead guitar, Evan’s bass line. Evan’s voice comes through a guitar amp with effects, a lot of incoherent chanting in rhythm with the bass line. You hear some of Ed’s signature hot lead licks, borrowed from the lead guitar solo in Sugarloaf’s hit song “Green Eyed Lady”. Evan’s chanting moves into incoherent rumbling, paranoid howling and mewling as if something awful is about to happen. This, then, was a worm being led to the slaughter. This is a theme that would reappear in later WoG material, “March of the Lost Wormsouls”. It fades out as the jam apparently kept going. The worm-thing was mine own.
“Lost In The Congo” starts with Ed on kalimba. Evan’s electric guitar falls in, played through a digital delay. You can always tell my lead playing because I don’t have the hot licks that Ed did. It fades out… only to fade back in as “The Sequel”. This time I’m on acoustic guitar, mimicking the kalimba sound and Ed is wailing away on the Echoplex. It fades out. The “Congo” reference would have been in honor of the kalimba, an African instrument.
“Angel Rot” fades in, more edited jamming. Ed’s lead guitar, Evan’s bass line. Evan’s voice is heard through a guitar amp with effects, incoherent rhythmic chanting and scat singing. This is another piece that shows off Ed’s lead guitar prowess. It fades out… the jam continued…. as usual…
“I And I We Be High All Day”—this is a real shortie. Ed put an instrumental reggae LP on the record player and we played along with it. Ed on the guitar, me singing in a faux Jamaican accent through a guitar amp with effects.
“Dance Of A Trillion Teats” is Ed on acoustic guitar and me playing the recorder. I have no memory of why it was called this.
“Blue Jays” was metamorphosed from Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies” and overlaid with a sports announcer from an LP of sports history stuff that Ed possessed. We used a section about Dave McNally of the Baltimore Orioles, a kind of 'bird' related theme. You know, Blue Jays, Orioles… I am playing the rhythm guitar, Ed chimes in with a few electric licks about halfway through. This is also a parody, in a sense, of Willie Nelson, who had recorded a selection of jazz standards that was getting a lot of airplay at the time. You can hear a little of my nasal Willie impression being discovered on this trac. At the end, Ed turns his guitar to “Girl From Ipanema” and we fade out.
“Chariots of Beer (Reprise)” is covered previously—just another bit edited from the original jam to “round out” the collection.
The best material on this tape re-appeared in later "releases" like The WoG Sampler!. I cannot for the life of me recall what I intended to do with these recordings, but as I’ve said elsewhere, I was so sick of never having recordings of the bands I played in, I wanted tape recorders going on all the time. Thank goodness for that, because I really enjoyed hearing all this music again!
HM:
Four of these songs were later issued officially on WoG 0011 The WoG Sampler!: "Dead Puppies" and "Whoopee Cushion Agent Man" by The Dirt Clods, "The Massacre" and "Evan's Blues" by Jerry's Kids, and "Hot Tub In Tokyo" by Ed'n Evan.
"All Along The Watchtower" and "Blue Jays" by The Dirt Clods were included on the WoG 0009: Cultural Sabotage cassette.
Fyodor, you did not appear on this tape, but many of the tracks appeared on later official Walls Of Genius releases, alongside tracks including you. How do you view this tape in terms of WoG's later developments? And please feel free to comment in detail on this tape in general.
LF:
Well hey, the goings-on reflected on this tape were what started it all, so I have nothing but reverence for it! WoG went through a few phases, but it really started with the idea that you turn on the tape machine and record any and all shenanigans that transpire within its presence and that's your art! It's nice to always be recording cause then there's no "Uh-oh, we're recording now, it better be good, NOW!". There's less of a sense of a wall between life and art, it's all life, it's all art. Some may not like that idea, but whatever, there's pros and cons to everything, and that's what we did, and what went on during the making of that tape was what started it all. Like I said, the seeds of the idea I think started with the dissolution jams of Rumours of Marriage/Couch Dots, but it was during the sessions in question that "it" really started. If RoM represented the seeds, this tape represents the stalk sticking its head above the ground! I was actually mildly surprised when Evan first started making catalogs of our "available" material and didn't include this tape, but that's not to say I disagreed. I was fine either way. Being polished was never what WoG was about, even though you try to make improvements that don't interfere with your core mission, and I could see that even we "straight from the gut" self-proclaimed Morons might have origins too humble and primitive to share with the world as official "product"! Y'know, I remember playing something off that tape on my radio show and some woman called up and complained about not getting it! I told her the name of the band was the Dirt Clods and she said, "Oh, it's funny.... Okay!" Anyway, I'm definitely glad that some of these tracks did in fact see release on later WoG tapes, as you've ably documented!