Walls Of Genius compilation appearances

Slave Ant Raid
Sound Of Pig - SOP 1 - C60 - 1984
two tracks by Walls Of Genius
- both initially released on WoG 0005 - Almost Groovy! - 1983
"Amerika Futura" - originally attributed to Big Man On Campus
"Tone Death" - originally attributed to K-9
Little Fyodor:
Our first compilation submission, and acceptance, was to Slave Ant Raid, put out by Sound of Pig Music by Al Margolis.
I cannot recall exactly how we heard about this opportunity, but hear about it we did, via some sort of cassette underground network avenue, and it seemed like an exciting thing to do. It was a way to get further connected into the underground network, and of course we sure always liked more exposure!
This must have taken place during June or so of 1983. I’m guessing we submitted only the tracks that Al accepted, "Amerika Futura", from the Big Man On Campus session, and "Tone Death", from the K-9 session (both already released on Almost Groovy!). I know Evan always greatly favored "Amerika Futura", even to this day, and I guess "Tone Death" showed another side of ours.
Another side of, wait, whose? Yep, well, according to the listing of this tape on the Discogs website (I cannot locate the liner notes or accompanying booklet of my own two copies), we actually called ourselves Walls Of Genius for this submission (and that does jive with my vague memory), marking this as actually the very first time we were actually identified as such as our actual band name. We probably did this for two reasons, one being that we sent selections from two different sessions and we probably wanted people to know them as both having the same band behind them. And because, well, the different band name every time we played was a fine joke on a Walls Of Genius Presents tape, but we probably wanted people listening to this compilation tape to know us by something more consistent and permanent. Pretty much the same reason we ultimately just became WoG, you might say….
Another very interesting to me thing about this tape is that, again, according to its Discogs entry, this was Sound Of Pig release #1! Sound Of Pig may only have been rivaled by Cause And Effect as the most prolific and prominent of American DIY cassette labels of the day, and its purveyor, Al Margolis, continues to this day as something of an avant-garde indie mogul, continuously sending me material for my radio show (as you should, too!) from his current label, Pogus Productions, as well as sometimes from another organization he has been involved with called The Deep Listening Institute, both featuring “serious” avant-garde music, including Al’s own enduring project, If, Bwana. I’m proud as punch ‘n’ Judy that WoG was right there on the very first thing he ever put out!
I’ll add that we were downright surprised and excited to have made it onto this compilation. For all I know, Al may have used all the material that was sent to him, but hey, it seemed like something of a breakthrough to our idealistic, naïve minds at the time! We had made it onto someone else’s tape!
Sound Of Pig - SOP 1 - C60 - 1984
two tracks by Walls Of Genius
- both initially released on WoG 0005 - Almost Groovy! - 1983
"Amerika Futura" - originally attributed to Big Man On Campus
"Tone Death" - originally attributed to K-9
Little Fyodor:
Our first compilation submission, and acceptance, was to Slave Ant Raid, put out by Sound of Pig Music by Al Margolis.
I cannot recall exactly how we heard about this opportunity, but hear about it we did, via some sort of cassette underground network avenue, and it seemed like an exciting thing to do. It was a way to get further connected into the underground network, and of course we sure always liked more exposure!
This must have taken place during June or so of 1983. I’m guessing we submitted only the tracks that Al accepted, "Amerika Futura", from the Big Man On Campus session, and "Tone Death", from the K-9 session (both already released on Almost Groovy!). I know Evan always greatly favored "Amerika Futura", even to this day, and I guess "Tone Death" showed another side of ours.
Another side of, wait, whose? Yep, well, according to the listing of this tape on the Discogs website (I cannot locate the liner notes or accompanying booklet of my own two copies), we actually called ourselves Walls Of Genius for this submission (and that does jive with my vague memory), marking this as actually the very first time we were actually identified as such as our actual band name. We probably did this for two reasons, one being that we sent selections from two different sessions and we probably wanted people to know them as both having the same band behind them. And because, well, the different band name every time we played was a fine joke on a Walls Of Genius Presents tape, but we probably wanted people listening to this compilation tape to know us by something more consistent and permanent. Pretty much the same reason we ultimately just became WoG, you might say….
Another very interesting to me thing about this tape is that, again, according to its Discogs entry, this was Sound Of Pig release #1! Sound Of Pig may only have been rivaled by Cause And Effect as the most prolific and prominent of American DIY cassette labels of the day, and its purveyor, Al Margolis, continues to this day as something of an avant-garde indie mogul, continuously sending me material for my radio show (as you should, too!) from his current label, Pogus Productions, as well as sometimes from another organization he has been involved with called The Deep Listening Institute, both featuring “serious” avant-garde music, including Al’s own enduring project, If, Bwana. I’m proud as punch ‘n’ Judy that WoG was right there on the very first thing he ever put out!
I’ll add that we were downright surprised and excited to have made it onto this compilation. For all I know, Al may have used all the material that was sent to him, but hey, it seemed like something of a breakthrough to our idealistic, naïve minds at the time! We had made it onto someone else’s tape!

Winnie & Friends WINNIE'S GOLD STAR
Bovine Productions - 1984
"In A Gadda Da Vida" by Road Damage
"Hava Nagila" by Religious Services (split into three parts)
"Doom In Kansas" by Major Faultline (split into three parts)
"Daydream Believer" by Mersey Less Beats
- see liner notes
- all later appeared on WoG 0015 - Embarassing Moments Cassette (more info at the link)
LF:
The next compilation announcement that I’m aware of that we responded to was a tape release called Winnie & Friends: WINNIE’S GOLD STAR, which was put out on Bovine Productions, the vanity label of Ken Clinger, another of the uber-dedicated and celebrated luminaries of the cassette and DIY movements who also has remained prolifically active to this day. This compilation announcement, discussed in the notes for our Embarassing Moments tape, for which it was an inspiration, requested submissions of artists’ “most embarrassing moments”, with the use of pseudonyms encouraged so that no one would have to worry about owning up to these faux pas. For WoG that was easy, as we just used the names that we originally called our various and sundry “bands” for the pieces in question anyway (hiding in plain sight?), meaning we essentially did the opposite of what we did for Slave Ant Raid, since this was immediately before we were to finally call ourselves WoG for good for our own tape releases. Ken likely used all that we sent him, which included our aborted “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (which started off his tape) by Road Damage (a band name that would only see visible release here and on our own Embarassing Moments tape, but the session was heavily represented on Crazed to the Core), “Hava Nagila” by Religious Services (represented on the Sunday, Monday or Always! tape) and “Doom in Kansas” by Major Faultline (also S,M or A). These latter two, Ken edited into multiple, separate segments for his tape such that they kept coming back, like a recurring nightmare…. Our submissions were “previously unreleased” at the time of their submission but of course soon saw release on our own label via our Embarassing Moments tape (don’t know which one made it to the presses first!). This likely all happened circa the spring of 1984.
Bovine Productions - 1984
"In A Gadda Da Vida" by Road Damage
"Hava Nagila" by Religious Services (split into three parts)
"Doom In Kansas" by Major Faultline (split into three parts)
"Daydream Believer" by Mersey Less Beats
- see liner notes
- all later appeared on WoG 0015 - Embarassing Moments Cassette (more info at the link)
LF:
The next compilation announcement that I’m aware of that we responded to was a tape release called Winnie & Friends: WINNIE’S GOLD STAR, which was put out on Bovine Productions, the vanity label of Ken Clinger, another of the uber-dedicated and celebrated luminaries of the cassette and DIY movements who also has remained prolifically active to this day. This compilation announcement, discussed in the notes for our Embarassing Moments tape, for which it was an inspiration, requested submissions of artists’ “most embarrassing moments”, with the use of pseudonyms encouraged so that no one would have to worry about owning up to these faux pas. For WoG that was easy, as we just used the names that we originally called our various and sundry “bands” for the pieces in question anyway (hiding in plain sight?), meaning we essentially did the opposite of what we did for Slave Ant Raid, since this was immediately before we were to finally call ourselves WoG for good for our own tape releases. Ken likely used all that we sent him, which included our aborted “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (which started off his tape) by Road Damage (a band name that would only see visible release here and on our own Embarassing Moments tape, but the session was heavily represented on Crazed to the Core), “Hava Nagila” by Religious Services (represented on the Sunday, Monday or Always! tape) and “Doom in Kansas” by Major Faultline (also S,M or A). These latter two, Ken edited into multiple, separate segments for his tape such that they kept coming back, like a recurring nightmare…. Our submissions were “previously unreleased” at the time of their submission but of course soon saw release on our own label via our Embarassing Moments tape (don’t know which one made it to the presses first!). This likely all happened circa the spring of 1984.
Evan Cantor:
“Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy” (Charity Cases): This is an alternate version of Little Fyodor’s solo vehicle that appeared on The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco, later included on Raw Sewage Volume 2. This is a case where it appears we wanted to develop an idea and pursue it further but then decided the results weren’t what we had hoped. Fyodor's later version of "Cheap" is certainly more well-developed. “Throbbing Idiocy” is my recitation, tacked on at the end alongside Fyo’s relentless rhythm guitar. In retrospect, I think it's one of my better "poems" from the era and I can't recall at all why it never re-appeared elsewhere.
Little Fyodor:
Dateline January, 2019! How many years has it been now since this archive was started and even (temporarily!) finished? Just days ago, I was contacted by Tony Coulter, who produces internet radio shows for WFMU, a fucking fantastic radio station in my opinion, and Tony does some freakin' great shows for their "Give the Drummer Some" stream, alternating thematically week to week but twice a month taking on the name of "Tape Hiss", a show devoted to music on -- CASSETTE, primarily from the Cassette Network, the milieu in which WoG operated! Tony contacted me days ago to ask me -- was I ever in a band called Charity Cases?? Because these Charity Cases had a piece called "Throbbing Idiocy" on a compilation he had just gotten hold of called Winnie's Secret and he was sure one of the voices on the piece just HAD to be mine! "Am I right?" he asked. Yes, indeed he was!! Charity Cases was the name of the "band" for the very first session Evan and I did together as just the two of us at Natasha's house in Eldorado Springs!
The odd thing, though, was that I had no recollection of this compilation appearance, and in fact I still don't! I didn't even recall this "Throbbing Idiocy" specifically at first and was really dumbfounded when I didn't find it listed in the reel box notes for the Charity Cases session that are shown at the bottom of the Johnny Rocco tape page. Only after some searching around did I finally figure out that "Throbbing Idiocy" is the coda to the attempt Evan and I made to do a new version of the song "Cheap!" that I had originally done on my own and which was released on The Many Faces of Mr. Morocco. This duo version actually did find release as "Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy" on our Embarassing Moments Cassette, and Evan and I gave our descriptions of this piece on that page of this archive. For whatever reason, Evan hadn't noted the Throbbing Idiocy part in his reel-to-reel box liner notes for the session, but he evidently noticed that he had recited a poem that had nothing to do with "Cheap" at the end of the latter when he excavated the piece for the Embarrassing Moments release and thus tacked a separate name onto the track to make it a medley. What appears on the Winnie's Secret compilation is an abridged version of the full piece which fades in during the "Cheap" portion (on a particularly spastic guitar strum-out of mine) and includes the final minute of that, with mostly me on lead vocals and Evan kibbitzing in, before transitioning to Evan's recitation of a poem of his own composition and then onto my own crazed kibbitzing at the tail end of that. While I sure don't remember this session in any detail, my guess is that I had no idea that Evan would recite a poem after we had made a go at "Cheap", and he might have not known he was going to do it until he did it, either! He may have had the poem handy nearby just in case the urge struck to read it, and that's the moment when it did? See, that's how we rolled! Apparently I picked up on what his poem was about as my kibbitzing addressed the topic of mass media damage as his poem did....
As for Winnie's Secret, yeah, what a secret! I don't remember this compilation nor appearing on it nor can I find any copy of it where I keep all my WoG and WoG related cassette tapes. The "Winnie" name reveals it to be the work of the wondrous Ken Clinger, long time cassette and DIY stalwart. Might we have sent this piece to Ken along with our other submissions for Winnie's Gold Star, for which Ken had solicited pieces representing bands' most embarrassing moments? And then he released it (or part of it) on this comp instead? Some of the circumstantial evidence would seem to suggest that, but ultimately I have no idea, just as I have no idea why I don't remember anything about this. At the same time, I'm not especially surprised that a compilation appearance has surfaced that we had not yet recalled or addressed in the archive, and I wouldn't be shocked if there's still another one out there somewhere....
“Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy” (Charity Cases): This is an alternate version of Little Fyodor’s solo vehicle that appeared on The Many Faces Of Mr. Morocco, later included on Raw Sewage Volume 2. This is a case where it appears we wanted to develop an idea and pursue it further but then decided the results weren’t what we had hoped. Fyodor's later version of "Cheap" is certainly more well-developed. “Throbbing Idiocy” is my recitation, tacked on at the end alongside Fyo’s relentless rhythm guitar. In retrospect, I think it's one of my better "poems" from the era and I can't recall at all why it never re-appeared elsewhere.
Little Fyodor:
Dateline January, 2019! How many years has it been now since this archive was started and even (temporarily!) finished? Just days ago, I was contacted by Tony Coulter, who produces internet radio shows for WFMU, a fucking fantastic radio station in my opinion, and Tony does some freakin' great shows for their "Give the Drummer Some" stream, alternating thematically week to week but twice a month taking on the name of "Tape Hiss", a show devoted to music on -- CASSETTE, primarily from the Cassette Network, the milieu in which WoG operated! Tony contacted me days ago to ask me -- was I ever in a band called Charity Cases?? Because these Charity Cases had a piece called "Throbbing Idiocy" on a compilation he had just gotten hold of called Winnie's Secret and he was sure one of the voices on the piece just HAD to be mine! "Am I right?" he asked. Yes, indeed he was!! Charity Cases was the name of the "band" for the very first session Evan and I did together as just the two of us at Natasha's house in Eldorado Springs!
The odd thing, though, was that I had no recollection of this compilation appearance, and in fact I still don't! I didn't even recall this "Throbbing Idiocy" specifically at first and was really dumbfounded when I didn't find it listed in the reel box notes for the Charity Cases session that are shown at the bottom of the Johnny Rocco tape page. Only after some searching around did I finally figure out that "Throbbing Idiocy" is the coda to the attempt Evan and I made to do a new version of the song "Cheap!" that I had originally done on my own and which was released on The Many Faces of Mr. Morocco. This duo version actually did find release as "Cheap/Throbbing Idiocy" on our Embarassing Moments Cassette, and Evan and I gave our descriptions of this piece on that page of this archive. For whatever reason, Evan hadn't noted the Throbbing Idiocy part in his reel-to-reel box liner notes for the session, but he evidently noticed that he had recited a poem that had nothing to do with "Cheap" at the end of the latter when he excavated the piece for the Embarrassing Moments release and thus tacked a separate name onto the track to make it a medley. What appears on the Winnie's Secret compilation is an abridged version of the full piece which fades in during the "Cheap" portion (on a particularly spastic guitar strum-out of mine) and includes the final minute of that, with mostly me on lead vocals and Evan kibbitzing in, before transitioning to Evan's recitation of a poem of his own composition and then onto my own crazed kibbitzing at the tail end of that. While I sure don't remember this session in any detail, my guess is that I had no idea that Evan would recite a poem after we had made a go at "Cheap", and he might have not known he was going to do it until he did it, either! He may have had the poem handy nearby just in case the urge struck to read it, and that's the moment when it did? See, that's how we rolled! Apparently I picked up on what his poem was about as my kibbitzing addressed the topic of mass media damage as his poem did....
As for Winnie's Secret, yeah, what a secret! I don't remember this compilation nor appearing on it nor can I find any copy of it where I keep all my WoG and WoG related cassette tapes. The "Winnie" name reveals it to be the work of the wondrous Ken Clinger, long time cassette and DIY stalwart. Might we have sent this piece to Ken along with our other submissions for Winnie's Gold Star, for which Ken had solicited pieces representing bands' most embarrassing moments? And then he released it (or part of it) on this comp instead? Some of the circumstantial evidence would seem to suggest that, but ultimately I have no idea, just as I have no idea why I don't remember anything about this. At the same time, I'm not especially surprised that a compilation appearance has surfaced that we had not yet recalled or addressed in the archive, and I wouldn't be shocked if there's still another one out there somewhere....

LF:
We finally recorded an original piece specifically for a specific compilation when we were asked to submit to the Objekt International Compilation No. 2 put out by Ladd-Frith. Brian Ladd had been reviewing our material in his Objekt magazine since our earliest days and was a fan, and thus he asked us to submit to this comp that he had big plans and high hopes for. He may have specified that he wanted something unique to his comp. He may not have made that a requirement, but he likely at the least expressed that preference. We responded with a piece that reflected much of the same Halloweeny mood that inspired some of Before …And After and which also employed the new toy that was featured on Before …And After, the autoharp that Frank Zygmunt had found for us (probably in the trash), only this time Evan finally got his chance to get his mitts on it.
This piece is mostly Evan’s doing, in fact I don’t know if I played anything on it at all, though I was the conduit to some of its features, most importantly the synthesized wind that makes up the bulk of the sound, which was actually created by my boyhood chum, Ed Granat, whom I described a bit about in the notes to Before …And After to explain the thanks he received on that tape’s liner notes.
I’ll add here that Ed Granat and I were the kind of friends who rode our bikes to the Willowbrook Mall together to look at girls, read Stranger Than Science books while wondering about aliens and frogs falling from the sky and listened to "I Am The Walrus" over and over for dead Paul clues. Ed (Granat) also introduced me to Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, and while he played my mother’s piano or a cheap, portable organ most of the time we played music together (including in a covers band that played out once or twice), he was also the first person I knew of to own a synthesizer. He would leave it on automatic and walk across the street to point out to me that we could still hear his synthesizer going and tempt me to abandon my weeding chores (ooh, did my father get pissed off at me for that!). So anyway, Ed (Granat) sent me this 90 minute tape of him playing his synthesizer, which I’m deducing from the “liner notes” to his tape was an EML 500 by Electrocomp, a synth company I had never heard of before or since, but which Googles right up. He called the tape “Communicato to Colorado”; I don’t think he meant it as a performance so much as something between a sample of what he could do and an audio letter to me.
Evan and I found a chunk of this tape that sounded like wind and, without consulting Ed (Granat) (though probably not Fowler, either), we used it as the background/foundation of this piece. Then Evan added some very tasteful, at turns ambient and dramatic, autoharp playing (at one point while listening, Brian Kraft commented, “And then the autoharp POUNCES!”), a lone scream probably through a distortion pedal, and some bells (either of us may have actually played them, but they were definitely Evan’s idea, to use bells to sound like they were blowing in the wind, though they were most likely the set of bells I had purchased at a museum back east for WoG use).
Oh, and we also added some evil male laughter juxtaposed with some female screaming, courtesy of a children’s record of haunted house sound effects called Sounds to Make You Shiver, which was probably mine then since it’s mine today, though to be honest I don’t recall where it came from. The track from that record that we used some of was called “Dracula And His Victim”, and so we borrowed that title for our own piece, and Evan drew a graphic with a WoG-moron version of Dracula holding the beheaded head of someone who might look a little like me (okay, maybe I’m paranoid!).
There’s also some subtle little explosion sounds in there and I don’t know if that came from Ed Granat’s synth or was something we added. I’m thinking now maybe the latter, and I’m thinking maybe that was my own only direct contribution to the piece, a pity though that I can’t recall what I was doing to get that.
This undoubtedly all occurred in the fall of 1984, in the narrow window between when Before …And After was recorded (or at least I know it came after my own uses of the autoharp on that tape, such as “Night Rat”) and before that tape was fully released, thus our being able to thank Ed Granat on the liner notes (it was probably also right around Halloween!).
Brian (Ladd) placed our piece at the very end of Side One of his compilation, which I thought highlighted it nicely…. I sent a copy of the tape to Ed Granat and only afterwards pointed out to him he was on it (I figured it’d be obvious to him), and he said, “Oh! Y’know I was thinking that’s just the way I would have made wind sounds myself….”
We finally recorded an original piece specifically for a specific compilation when we were asked to submit to the Objekt International Compilation No. 2 put out by Ladd-Frith. Brian Ladd had been reviewing our material in his Objekt magazine since our earliest days and was a fan, and thus he asked us to submit to this comp that he had big plans and high hopes for. He may have specified that he wanted something unique to his comp. He may not have made that a requirement, but he likely at the least expressed that preference. We responded with a piece that reflected much of the same Halloweeny mood that inspired some of Before …And After and which also employed the new toy that was featured on Before …And After, the autoharp that Frank Zygmunt had found for us (probably in the trash), only this time Evan finally got his chance to get his mitts on it.
This piece is mostly Evan’s doing, in fact I don’t know if I played anything on it at all, though I was the conduit to some of its features, most importantly the synthesized wind that makes up the bulk of the sound, which was actually created by my boyhood chum, Ed Granat, whom I described a bit about in the notes to Before …And After to explain the thanks he received on that tape’s liner notes.
I’ll add here that Ed Granat and I were the kind of friends who rode our bikes to the Willowbrook Mall together to look at girls, read Stranger Than Science books while wondering about aliens and frogs falling from the sky and listened to "I Am The Walrus" over and over for dead Paul clues. Ed (Granat) also introduced me to Pink Floyd and Hawkwind, and while he played my mother’s piano or a cheap, portable organ most of the time we played music together (including in a covers band that played out once or twice), he was also the first person I knew of to own a synthesizer. He would leave it on automatic and walk across the street to point out to me that we could still hear his synthesizer going and tempt me to abandon my weeding chores (ooh, did my father get pissed off at me for that!). So anyway, Ed (Granat) sent me this 90 minute tape of him playing his synthesizer, which I’m deducing from the “liner notes” to his tape was an EML 500 by Electrocomp, a synth company I had never heard of before or since, but which Googles right up. He called the tape “Communicato to Colorado”; I don’t think he meant it as a performance so much as something between a sample of what he could do and an audio letter to me.
Evan and I found a chunk of this tape that sounded like wind and, without consulting Ed (Granat) (though probably not Fowler, either), we used it as the background/foundation of this piece. Then Evan added some very tasteful, at turns ambient and dramatic, autoharp playing (at one point while listening, Brian Kraft commented, “And then the autoharp POUNCES!”), a lone scream probably through a distortion pedal, and some bells (either of us may have actually played them, but they were definitely Evan’s idea, to use bells to sound like they were blowing in the wind, though they were most likely the set of bells I had purchased at a museum back east for WoG use).
Oh, and we also added some evil male laughter juxtaposed with some female screaming, courtesy of a children’s record of haunted house sound effects called Sounds to Make You Shiver, which was probably mine then since it’s mine today, though to be honest I don’t recall where it came from. The track from that record that we used some of was called “Dracula And His Victim”, and so we borrowed that title for our own piece, and Evan drew a graphic with a WoG-moron version of Dracula holding the beheaded head of someone who might look a little like me (okay, maybe I’m paranoid!).
There’s also some subtle little explosion sounds in there and I don’t know if that came from Ed Granat’s synth or was something we added. I’m thinking now maybe the latter, and I’m thinking maybe that was my own only direct contribution to the piece, a pity though that I can’t recall what I was doing to get that.
This undoubtedly all occurred in the fall of 1984, in the narrow window between when Before …And After was recorded (or at least I know it came after my own uses of the autoharp on that tape, such as “Night Rat”) and before that tape was fully released, thus our being able to thank Ed Granat on the liner notes (it was probably also right around Halloween!).
Brian (Ladd) placed our piece at the very end of Side One of his compilation, which I thought highlighted it nicely…. I sent a copy of the tape to Ed Granat and only afterwards pointed out to him he was on it (I figured it’d be obvious to him), and he said, “Oh! Y’know I was thinking that’s just the way I would have made wind sounds myself….”

Beyond Step One
Sound Of Pig - SOP 10 - C60 - 1984
"It's A Scary World Out There"
- originally appeared on Before ...And After
LF:
We also later appeared on another Sound of Pig compilation, called Beyond Step One (#10 on the SOP label), with “It’s A Scary World Out There”, which was originally released on our most popular cassette, Before …And After. This probably took place in late 1984.
Sound Of Pig - SOP 10 - C60 - 1984
"It's A Scary World Out There"
- originally appeared on Before ...And After
LF:
We also later appeared on another Sound of Pig compilation, called Beyond Step One (#10 on the SOP label), with “It’s A Scary World Out There”, which was originally released on our most popular cassette, Before …And After. This probably took place in late 1984.

EC:
It was a real trip to hear this again after thirty years of believing it “lost”. I had no copy of the compilation A Peace Of Mind, nor any memory of it for that matter, until this archival process got started and Little Fyodor dubbed me a copy. The ballad sounds surprisingly contemporary, from everything to the acoustic guitar playing to the message imbued in the lyrics. Our technique of using extra tracks to create a “party” or “mania” atmosphere is used to perfection on this track. I especially love the voices in the opening verse that are instructed to “Shut up!” right before the song's vocal part begins. These extra voices feature me doing several faux-idiot voices and Fyodor doing what I always thought of as his “Smedley” voice, not the distinctive Fyodor-izations with which listeners will be familiar.
This track appeared on a compilation only because Ed Fowler (WoG’s “Red Ed”) objected to having it on a Walls of Genius cassette. He was worried that we would get into trouble somehow if we released it. The problem, as he saw it, was the refrain of “so fuck you, Ronald Reagan”, which sounded twice in the song. We had used obscenity numerous times prior, but never in the service of insulting the President of the United States. The refrain was a straightforward way of rejecting Reagan’s politics. I believed at the time (and still do) that Reagan was a militaristic war-machine cheer-leader. I had already used clips of him from campaign debates on a previous piece, so WoG was firmly established as anti-war and anti-Reagan in “our” politics. But I believe that made Ed nervous and Little Fyodor may very well have had sleepless nights as well. In retrospect, after years of violent rap music in the air, I hear this song as a very gentle rebuke to Ronald Reagan and the cold-war war-machine. I regret that it wasn’t heard by more Walls of Genius listeners as it is an unabashed classic.
LF:
“Ballad of a Patriot”, originally named for its “Fuck You, Ronald Reagan” chorus, was recorded approximately December, 1984 per the reel box photos. This was an Evan composition and I think he intended it as a follow-up to “Four More Years”, only post election, the one in which Reagan got his four more years. Unlike the sound collage based prior track, though, this one was an original folk song plus mania. Evan sang and played acoustic guitar and harmonica, and we both created the mania that included some crazy percussion. Evan was very proud of how we could just whip out this mania on demand, as if we were mania professionals, and in fact I was in a bit of an ornery mood at the time, not nearly as goofy and mischievous feeling as I maybe (hopefully) sound. Evan played and sang his folk song first, and then we overdubbed the mania. That’s Evan yelling “Shut up!” and saying “I hear he’s a really nice guy” and me saying “I hear he smokes dope” and “He’s just like my father”….
The big bugaboo about this song was that Ed, our Ed, objected to its appearance on a WoG release. Either because of the profanity or because of the combination of that and the politics. Which was odd because we had had plenty of obscenity on our material previously, and Ed seemed pretty apolitical to me then, and he’s actually somewhat of a hardcore Democrat now (being in a union may play a role in that!). I think it may have been because he wanted to play our newest release for his father who was in the hospital, or some variation on that, and thus maybe the combination of vulgarity and anti-Reaganism didn’t suit this purpose very well. I remember Evan reporting that Ed was kinda hurt when his pot-smoking, Telethon partying Republican friend Glenn complained to him about “all the anti-Reagan stuff” on Before …And After. Evan also said that Ed claimed that even in the Sixties, no one said “Fuck you, Richard Nixon”, as if he just thought it was all in all tasteless? Evan told me this while also reporting that another friend, when told this story, claimed that wasn’t true, saying, “We said fuck you Richard Nixon all the time in the Sixties!”
Evan seemed to feel that he simply could not put this song out over Ed’s objection. I wasn’t sure if it was as simple as that, but I kept mum cause I had my own issues with the song. I was no fan of Reagan, and I sure had no problem telling him, “Fuck you,” but aspects of the song just struck me as being very much not the way I would want to express myself on the subjects raised by it. I’m not big on marrying politics with art in general, and while I’m open to exceptions (like “Four More Years”!), I just wasn’t very comfortable moving into a more politicizing territory. Basically, it was Evan’s message and not mine. And while I accept that that kind of thing sometimes has to happen in bands, this discomfort muted any desire I may have had to support Evan and push for the song’s release, even though I did think it was a pretty good song overall, and I never would have objected to its release purely on my own. I actually never understood why, but Evan never asked me to support him or even what I thought of Ed’s objections. I don’t know how either of us would have felt about overruling Ed with a two to one vote if it ever came to that, but as it happened, the question just never came up. I just stayed mum and neutral on the matter, and Ed’s objection was sustained.
Meanwhile, Evan was very chagrined about feeling that he couldn’t release this song, and he even said something to the effect that he felt emasculated by the restriction. But just then, we were invited to contribute to a politically themed local punk compilation called A Peace Of Mind by a local chap with a Mohawk who went by the name of Vulture and had his own punk band called Dead Silence. I encouraged Evan to see that it was a good compromise to contribute this song to this (cassette) compilation so that we’d at least have it out there even if not on a WoG release. Evan was somewhat angst-ridden over this comp being the song’s only home, as if we were burying it there, but I said do it, do it. So we submitted it to Vulture and he used it. It’s funny how it really sticks out on the tape amidst all the rest of the material, which is pretty much all hardcore punk! So that’s the story of how “Ballad Of a Patriot” (funny title!) came to be one of our four original songs to appear on a compilation but nowhere else (or five if you count the alternate mix of “House of Horrors”, coming soon!), though, as you can see, it was definitely not created FOR the compilation it was on as “Dracula and His Victim” was!
It was a real trip to hear this again after thirty years of believing it “lost”. I had no copy of the compilation A Peace Of Mind, nor any memory of it for that matter, until this archival process got started and Little Fyodor dubbed me a copy. The ballad sounds surprisingly contemporary, from everything to the acoustic guitar playing to the message imbued in the lyrics. Our technique of using extra tracks to create a “party” or “mania” atmosphere is used to perfection on this track. I especially love the voices in the opening verse that are instructed to “Shut up!” right before the song's vocal part begins. These extra voices feature me doing several faux-idiot voices and Fyodor doing what I always thought of as his “Smedley” voice, not the distinctive Fyodor-izations with which listeners will be familiar.
This track appeared on a compilation only because Ed Fowler (WoG’s “Red Ed”) objected to having it on a Walls of Genius cassette. He was worried that we would get into trouble somehow if we released it. The problem, as he saw it, was the refrain of “so fuck you, Ronald Reagan”, which sounded twice in the song. We had used obscenity numerous times prior, but never in the service of insulting the President of the United States. The refrain was a straightforward way of rejecting Reagan’s politics. I believed at the time (and still do) that Reagan was a militaristic war-machine cheer-leader. I had already used clips of him from campaign debates on a previous piece, so WoG was firmly established as anti-war and anti-Reagan in “our” politics. But I believe that made Ed nervous and Little Fyodor may very well have had sleepless nights as well. In retrospect, after years of violent rap music in the air, I hear this song as a very gentle rebuke to Ronald Reagan and the cold-war war-machine. I regret that it wasn’t heard by more Walls of Genius listeners as it is an unabashed classic.
LF:
“Ballad of a Patriot”, originally named for its “Fuck You, Ronald Reagan” chorus, was recorded approximately December, 1984 per the reel box photos. This was an Evan composition and I think he intended it as a follow-up to “Four More Years”, only post election, the one in which Reagan got his four more years. Unlike the sound collage based prior track, though, this one was an original folk song plus mania. Evan sang and played acoustic guitar and harmonica, and we both created the mania that included some crazy percussion. Evan was very proud of how we could just whip out this mania on demand, as if we were mania professionals, and in fact I was in a bit of an ornery mood at the time, not nearly as goofy and mischievous feeling as I maybe (hopefully) sound. Evan played and sang his folk song first, and then we overdubbed the mania. That’s Evan yelling “Shut up!” and saying “I hear he’s a really nice guy” and me saying “I hear he smokes dope” and “He’s just like my father”….
The big bugaboo about this song was that Ed, our Ed, objected to its appearance on a WoG release. Either because of the profanity or because of the combination of that and the politics. Which was odd because we had had plenty of obscenity on our material previously, and Ed seemed pretty apolitical to me then, and he’s actually somewhat of a hardcore Democrat now (being in a union may play a role in that!). I think it may have been because he wanted to play our newest release for his father who was in the hospital, or some variation on that, and thus maybe the combination of vulgarity and anti-Reaganism didn’t suit this purpose very well. I remember Evan reporting that Ed was kinda hurt when his pot-smoking, Telethon partying Republican friend Glenn complained to him about “all the anti-Reagan stuff” on Before …And After. Evan also said that Ed claimed that even in the Sixties, no one said “Fuck you, Richard Nixon”, as if he just thought it was all in all tasteless? Evan told me this while also reporting that another friend, when told this story, claimed that wasn’t true, saying, “We said fuck you Richard Nixon all the time in the Sixties!”
Evan seemed to feel that he simply could not put this song out over Ed’s objection. I wasn’t sure if it was as simple as that, but I kept mum cause I had my own issues with the song. I was no fan of Reagan, and I sure had no problem telling him, “Fuck you,” but aspects of the song just struck me as being very much not the way I would want to express myself on the subjects raised by it. I’m not big on marrying politics with art in general, and while I’m open to exceptions (like “Four More Years”!), I just wasn’t very comfortable moving into a more politicizing territory. Basically, it was Evan’s message and not mine. And while I accept that that kind of thing sometimes has to happen in bands, this discomfort muted any desire I may have had to support Evan and push for the song’s release, even though I did think it was a pretty good song overall, and I never would have objected to its release purely on my own. I actually never understood why, but Evan never asked me to support him or even what I thought of Ed’s objections. I don’t know how either of us would have felt about overruling Ed with a two to one vote if it ever came to that, but as it happened, the question just never came up. I just stayed mum and neutral on the matter, and Ed’s objection was sustained.
Meanwhile, Evan was very chagrined about feeling that he couldn’t release this song, and he even said something to the effect that he felt emasculated by the restriction. But just then, we were invited to contribute to a politically themed local punk compilation called A Peace Of Mind by a local chap with a Mohawk who went by the name of Vulture and had his own punk band called Dead Silence. I encouraged Evan to see that it was a good compromise to contribute this song to this (cassette) compilation so that we’d at least have it out there even if not on a WoG release. Evan was somewhat angst-ridden over this comp being the song’s only home, as if we were burying it there, but I said do it, do it. So we submitted it to Vulture and he used it. It’s funny how it really sticks out on the tape amidst all the rest of the material, which is pretty much all hardcore punk! So that’s the story of how “Ballad Of a Patriot” (funny title!) came to be one of our four original songs to appear on a compilation but nowhere else (or five if you count the alternate mix of “House of Horrors”, coming soon!), though, as you can see, it was definitely not created FOR the compilation it was on as “Dracula and His Victim” was!

EC:
Another classic, however not unabashed! Little Fyodor had gathered letters addressed to Dan Fogelberg at the Boulderado Hotel, where Fyodor was employed on the graveyard shift as a desk clerk. Dan Fogelberg was both a revered and mythical character in Colorado during the 80s. Indeed, he apparently toured around the state with a band of friends at the same time we were doing Walls of Genius, appearing as “Frankie & The Aliens”. It was rumored that he had built a castle somewhere in the San Juan Mountains. Boulder was a sort of grand-central-station for this kind of music, with a legacy that included Nederland’s Caribou Recording Studio (Elton John, Chicago) and Gold Hill’s famous folk-rock residents (Steven Stills, the Dillards). Fogelberg’s sound was the prototypical 80s post-Crosby, Stills & Nash white-bread folk-pop that was iconic in Colorado at the time, popularized by the commercial success of Firefall (“Afternoon Delight”). Of course, this music was anathema to those of us who were fired up by punk-rock and New Wave off-shoots.
Our response was manifested numerous times with a satiric approach. I think of pieces we did satirizing bands such as America and artists such as Gordon Lightfoot and Billy Joel. On this piece, Stacy Benedict reads the letters, Little Fyodor chugs along with propulsive rhythm guitar and I am wailing away like a lunatic on the saxophone. I notice that everywhere the word saxophone appears in WoG literature, it has been misspelled. I very likely did own a dictionary, but… I very likely didn’t think I was spelling it wrong, so had no reason to look it up. And who cared anyway? This piece was created for the RRRecords compilation God Bless America, which was a real feather in our cap at the time. We were happy to give top-notch material to a compilation that would be heard by a great many listeners.
LF:
In early ’85, we were finally invited to appear on LP compilations, and y’know, vinyl was pretty much the holy grail for we measly cassettesters back then. In fact, it was as an attempt to take a step up that making an LP was on tap for the next WoG project just when Evan broke up the band in late March of ’86. Meanwhile, we were pretty excited at these first chances to appear on vinyl. I’m not sure which one was first, but based on the reel box notes, I’m going to guess it was "Letters to Dan Fogelberg" on God Bless America put out by RRRecords, another of the major DIY labels in the scene, run by Ron Lessard out of Lowell, Massachusetts. This was also our second go at recording a song specifically for a particular compilation, and there’s an interesting little story behind it, too….
I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this archive that I worked at the front desk of the Hotel Boulderado, an early 20th Century Victorian hotel that was something of a Boulder institution and was even mentioned in a John Prine song. Well, one day when I showed up for work, I found the front desk manager opening a piece of mail which he barely read before he hastily threw it into the trash in disgust. When I asked him what that was about, he said it was just another of this series of letters addressed to Dan Fogelberg written by some crazy lady who thought Fogelberg lived at the hotel for some reason. He just thought they were ridiculous and threw ‘em right out. “WHAT????” I said, “I want those! Don’t throw them out, have everyone at the front desk give them to me!!!” And so they did! They were love letters, written by a sadly, clearly-delusional woman from some halfway house or something to her idol, Dan Fogelberg! She expressed some degree of forlorn awareness that her love for Dan might never work out, but she seemed certain that Fogelberg lived at the hotel and was getting her letters and that he was likely reading them with great interest! I think I collected about four or five of these letters. I probably still have them around somewhere, but I’m too afraid of the ghosts living in that vault to go look, ha-ha!
Anyway, it was around this same time, let’s say spring, 1985, that we were invited to contribute to RRRecord’s triple LP compilation (it was later reissued as a double cassette, but its original incarnation was as a triple LP), and contributors were encouraged to contribute something that would fit the theme of its title, "God Bless America". It was Evan’s idea to incorporate this crazy woman’s love letters to Dan Fogelberg into a piece that would fit this theme. He edited together some of the choicest bits from the letters (though not in any way that changed the letter writer’s original intentions!) and enlisted our friend Stacy Benedict to read them. We made a recording of basic tracks with Evan playing acoustic guitar, me playing my Farfisa (through a bit of delay) and our friend and future live ensemble percussionist Riff Randall playing drums. Evan arranged and dubbed on top of this the recording of Stacy reading the letter excerpts through some heavy and varied delay. And then to top it all off, Evan played his new toy, his saxophone. This was surely the first recording made with Evan playing saxophone as it clearly precedes both “On Chord Nine” and the Miracle sessions. Evan took the sax on tour with us that June vowing to make people wonder what could possibly happen next when he pulled it out and started playing it! So we had Evan’s smooth acoustic guitar playing, my very melodic though extremely simple and repetitive organ part, and Evan’s very dissonant noise sax playing all together! And Stacy reading Letters to Dan Fogelberg! Yes indeed, God Bless America!
Another classic, however not unabashed! Little Fyodor had gathered letters addressed to Dan Fogelberg at the Boulderado Hotel, where Fyodor was employed on the graveyard shift as a desk clerk. Dan Fogelberg was both a revered and mythical character in Colorado during the 80s. Indeed, he apparently toured around the state with a band of friends at the same time we were doing Walls of Genius, appearing as “Frankie & The Aliens”. It was rumored that he had built a castle somewhere in the San Juan Mountains. Boulder was a sort of grand-central-station for this kind of music, with a legacy that included Nederland’s Caribou Recording Studio (Elton John, Chicago) and Gold Hill’s famous folk-rock residents (Steven Stills, the Dillards). Fogelberg’s sound was the prototypical 80s post-Crosby, Stills & Nash white-bread folk-pop that was iconic in Colorado at the time, popularized by the commercial success of Firefall (“Afternoon Delight”). Of course, this music was anathema to those of us who were fired up by punk-rock and New Wave off-shoots.
Our response was manifested numerous times with a satiric approach. I think of pieces we did satirizing bands such as America and artists such as Gordon Lightfoot and Billy Joel. On this piece, Stacy Benedict reads the letters, Little Fyodor chugs along with propulsive rhythm guitar and I am wailing away like a lunatic on the saxophone. I notice that everywhere the word saxophone appears in WoG literature, it has been misspelled. I very likely did own a dictionary, but… I very likely didn’t think I was spelling it wrong, so had no reason to look it up. And who cared anyway? This piece was created for the RRRecords compilation God Bless America, which was a real feather in our cap at the time. We were happy to give top-notch material to a compilation that would be heard by a great many listeners.
LF:
In early ’85, we were finally invited to appear on LP compilations, and y’know, vinyl was pretty much the holy grail for we measly cassettesters back then. In fact, it was as an attempt to take a step up that making an LP was on tap for the next WoG project just when Evan broke up the band in late March of ’86. Meanwhile, we were pretty excited at these first chances to appear on vinyl. I’m not sure which one was first, but based on the reel box notes, I’m going to guess it was "Letters to Dan Fogelberg" on God Bless America put out by RRRecords, another of the major DIY labels in the scene, run by Ron Lessard out of Lowell, Massachusetts. This was also our second go at recording a song specifically for a particular compilation, and there’s an interesting little story behind it, too….
I’ve mentioned elsewhere in this archive that I worked at the front desk of the Hotel Boulderado, an early 20th Century Victorian hotel that was something of a Boulder institution and was even mentioned in a John Prine song. Well, one day when I showed up for work, I found the front desk manager opening a piece of mail which he barely read before he hastily threw it into the trash in disgust. When I asked him what that was about, he said it was just another of this series of letters addressed to Dan Fogelberg written by some crazy lady who thought Fogelberg lived at the hotel for some reason. He just thought they were ridiculous and threw ‘em right out. “WHAT????” I said, “I want those! Don’t throw them out, have everyone at the front desk give them to me!!!” And so they did! They were love letters, written by a sadly, clearly-delusional woman from some halfway house or something to her idol, Dan Fogelberg! She expressed some degree of forlorn awareness that her love for Dan might never work out, but she seemed certain that Fogelberg lived at the hotel and was getting her letters and that he was likely reading them with great interest! I think I collected about four or five of these letters. I probably still have them around somewhere, but I’m too afraid of the ghosts living in that vault to go look, ha-ha!
Anyway, it was around this same time, let’s say spring, 1985, that we were invited to contribute to RRRecord’s triple LP compilation (it was later reissued as a double cassette, but its original incarnation was as a triple LP), and contributors were encouraged to contribute something that would fit the theme of its title, "God Bless America". It was Evan’s idea to incorporate this crazy woman’s love letters to Dan Fogelberg into a piece that would fit this theme. He edited together some of the choicest bits from the letters (though not in any way that changed the letter writer’s original intentions!) and enlisted our friend Stacy Benedict to read them. We made a recording of basic tracks with Evan playing acoustic guitar, me playing my Farfisa (through a bit of delay) and our friend and future live ensemble percussionist Riff Randall playing drums. Evan arranged and dubbed on top of this the recording of Stacy reading the letter excerpts through some heavy and varied delay. And then to top it all off, Evan played his new toy, his saxophone. This was surely the first recording made with Evan playing saxophone as it clearly precedes both “On Chord Nine” and the Miracle sessions. Evan took the sax on tour with us that June vowing to make people wonder what could possibly happen next when he pulled it out and started playing it! So we had Evan’s smooth acoustic guitar playing, my very melodic though extremely simple and repetitive organ part, and Evan’s very dissonant noise sax playing all together! And Stacy reading Letters to Dan Fogelberg! Yes indeed, God Bless America!

SNX International Compilation
"House Of Horrors"
Hawai - hawai 006 - 4 x LP - 1985
LF:
As I mentioned above, it was also around this same time that we were asked to contribute to another LP project, this being a 4 LP compilation being put out of France. WHOA!! Well, we weren’t going to pass this one up! I think we contributed "House Of Horrors" just because it was the latest thing that we had lying around and available. We may have sent them some other stuff too and they just picked this one? Not really sure. Actually, they sent it back at first, saying it had some low-end noise on it that made it impossible for them to master it! We listened to it and couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, but then I noticed and pointed out to Evan that you could hear some squealing from the chair I was sitting on, perhaps when mixing the song, right before it starts. Oooh, did Evan give me a dirty look! Well, we, or I should say he, re-mixed it and sent it back to France and this time they didn’t complain and it’s right there on the 4 LP compilation, called SNX – The Entomology of Tomorrow’s Music. So now we were on vinyl twice, and it was especially gratifying to be on a release with one of my heroes, Renaldo & the Loaf, whose album Songs for Swinging Larvae really blew my mind when I first heard it at a radio station where I deejayed, either WTJU back in Charlottesville or KGNU. Played a lot of that one! We later released a different mix of “House of Horrors” on our Do Not Write Below This Line tape. I describe some of the differences between the two mixes (and more about the song) in my notes for that tape….
////
Wall of Genius (sic), "House of horrors" (sic): on "SNX--popular music of tomorrow", HAWAI 006, ''projet Articule, M.A.S.M.-HAWAI, B.P. 34 10200 BAR 2/AUBE, FRANCE. Alternate title on documents: "The entomology of tomorrow's popular music SNX international compulsion". Documents indicate: (Boulder, CO), concocted by D. Lichtenverg, David Lichtenverg: Farfisa, synthesizer, percussion; "Mania" provided by Evan Cantor, Charles Verrette, D. Lichtenverg, Dave from the "Rado & Riff Randall". A sticker on the box indicates "Compilation internationale 4LPs plus one free single".
"House Of Horrors"
Hawai - hawai 006 - 4 x LP - 1985
LF:
As I mentioned above, it was also around this same time that we were asked to contribute to another LP project, this being a 4 LP compilation being put out of France. WHOA!! Well, we weren’t going to pass this one up! I think we contributed "House Of Horrors" just because it was the latest thing that we had lying around and available. We may have sent them some other stuff too and they just picked this one? Not really sure. Actually, they sent it back at first, saying it had some low-end noise on it that made it impossible for them to master it! We listened to it and couldn’t figure out what they were talking about, but then I noticed and pointed out to Evan that you could hear some squealing from the chair I was sitting on, perhaps when mixing the song, right before it starts. Oooh, did Evan give me a dirty look! Well, we, or I should say he, re-mixed it and sent it back to France and this time they didn’t complain and it’s right there on the 4 LP compilation, called SNX – The Entomology of Tomorrow’s Music. So now we were on vinyl twice, and it was especially gratifying to be on a release with one of my heroes, Renaldo & the Loaf, whose album Songs for Swinging Larvae really blew my mind when I first heard it at a radio station where I deejayed, either WTJU back in Charlottesville or KGNU. Played a lot of that one! We later released a different mix of “House of Horrors” on our Do Not Write Below This Line tape. I describe some of the differences between the two mixes (and more about the song) in my notes for that tape….
////
Wall of Genius (sic), "House of horrors" (sic): on "SNX--popular music of tomorrow", HAWAI 006, ''projet Articule, M.A.S.M.-HAWAI, B.P. 34 10200 BAR 2/AUBE, FRANCE. Alternate title on documents: "The entomology of tomorrow's popular music SNX international compulsion". Documents indicate: (Boulder, CO), concocted by D. Lichtenverg, David Lichtenverg: Farfisa, synthesizer, percussion; "Mania" provided by Evan Cantor, Charles Verrette, D. Lichtenverg, Dave from the "Rado & Riff Randall". A sticker on the box indicates "Compilation internationale 4LPs plus one free single".

Insane Music For Insane People Vol. 11
1986
"Typewriter Sonata" (Extract)
LF:
I remember recording the "Typewriter Sonata", but I had totally forgotten that it had received any type of release until I was Googling around, maybe doing some research or trying to satisfy some curiosity for this very archive project, when I noticed, in a Discogs entry, that it appears on the Insane Music for Insane People Volume 11 compilation put out by the Insane Music people out of Belgium in 1986! I knew we were in touch with those folks, and we included a piece by their band, Bene Gesserit, on our Son Of Madness compilation. I also remember selling a WoG CD-R to someone in Europe who said he’d heard of us through the Insane Music comps, so I knew there was something going on there, but I had completely forgotten the details!
This would stand as the only WoG release of any sort to include our downstairs neighbor, Andy Brennan, who appears in various poses in our packaging for our Son Of Madness comp. His main instrument was the piano, on which he composed his own classical music pieces (part of the score for one of which also appears in the Son Of Madness liner notes), but he plays the conga drum on "Typewriter Sonata". Evan plays the typewriter. On guitar we had a fellow by the name of Mose who was a friend and co-worker of Andy’s. They did janitorial work, and one of our jams we did that day, September 3, 1985 (per the reel box notes!), was called “Zeke Don’t Clean Out Ashtrays” in honor of another of their co-workers who apparently thought cleaning ashtrays was beneath him! I don’t remember what I did on this song. I can’t find any copy of this comp around my abode, so I don’t know if I’ll ever know, either! I remember Mose played a very fat sounding guitar, maybe through a guitar synthesizer, though I’m far from sure of that. Evan played a quirky but mechanical rhythm on the typewriter, which was mixed out in front so that it was an important part of the music.
Ed, again our Ed, had issues with this piece, too, or at least an issue emanating from it. While Evan and I were having dinner with Ed one evening, he told us that if we wanted to play with Mose instead of him, that he was okay with that and he could just bow out. WHAT?!?!? There was no way we wanted Ed to bow out! Evan and I were a little baffled by Ed’s reaction cause we had always had a revolving cast of characters involved, it had never meant anyone was being replaced. But then, we may never have played with another lead guitarist before either, so…? Well Ed’s reaction broke our hearts, so maybe that’s why we decided to give this piece the same treatment as “Ballad of a Patriot”, that is, to kind of banish it to Compilation Land, which was okay if not as good as being on a WoG release proper. Of course, there never was another WoG release proper after that point (well, not till the recent reunion), so probably it was just as well for the good old "Typewriter Sonata" to be compilationized. Too bad we don’t have a copy of that song to put on this site, but maybe one of you out there will get a chance to hear it someday anyway….
1986
"Typewriter Sonata" (Extract)
LF:
I remember recording the "Typewriter Sonata", but I had totally forgotten that it had received any type of release until I was Googling around, maybe doing some research or trying to satisfy some curiosity for this very archive project, when I noticed, in a Discogs entry, that it appears on the Insane Music for Insane People Volume 11 compilation put out by the Insane Music people out of Belgium in 1986! I knew we were in touch with those folks, and we included a piece by their band, Bene Gesserit, on our Son Of Madness compilation. I also remember selling a WoG CD-R to someone in Europe who said he’d heard of us through the Insane Music comps, so I knew there was something going on there, but I had completely forgotten the details!
This would stand as the only WoG release of any sort to include our downstairs neighbor, Andy Brennan, who appears in various poses in our packaging for our Son Of Madness comp. His main instrument was the piano, on which he composed his own classical music pieces (part of the score for one of which also appears in the Son Of Madness liner notes), but he plays the conga drum on "Typewriter Sonata". Evan plays the typewriter. On guitar we had a fellow by the name of Mose who was a friend and co-worker of Andy’s. They did janitorial work, and one of our jams we did that day, September 3, 1985 (per the reel box notes!), was called “Zeke Don’t Clean Out Ashtrays” in honor of another of their co-workers who apparently thought cleaning ashtrays was beneath him! I don’t remember what I did on this song. I can’t find any copy of this comp around my abode, so I don’t know if I’ll ever know, either! I remember Mose played a very fat sounding guitar, maybe through a guitar synthesizer, though I’m far from sure of that. Evan played a quirky but mechanical rhythm on the typewriter, which was mixed out in front so that it was an important part of the music.
Ed, again our Ed, had issues with this piece, too, or at least an issue emanating from it. While Evan and I were having dinner with Ed one evening, he told us that if we wanted to play with Mose instead of him, that he was okay with that and he could just bow out. WHAT?!?!? There was no way we wanted Ed to bow out! Evan and I were a little baffled by Ed’s reaction cause we had always had a revolving cast of characters involved, it had never meant anyone was being replaced. But then, we may never have played with another lead guitarist before either, so…? Well Ed’s reaction broke our hearts, so maybe that’s why we decided to give this piece the same treatment as “Ballad of a Patriot”, that is, to kind of banish it to Compilation Land, which was okay if not as good as being on a WoG release proper. Of course, there never was another WoG release proper after that point (well, not till the recent reunion), so probably it was just as well for the good old "Typewriter Sonata" to be compilationized. Too bad we don’t have a copy of that song to put on this site, but maybe one of you out there will get a chance to hear it someday anyway….
/////
Madness Lives Joe Colorado does "Surf City". Little Fyodor does "Everybodys Fuckin'")
Son of Madness Cowtown does "Rainy Day Women" (essentially WoG w/Peter Tonks singing). Wally Bob Colorado does "Ode To Ronnie Joe")
Madness Lives Joe Colorado does "Surf City". Little Fyodor does "Everybodys Fuckin'")
Son of Madness Cowtown does "Rainy Day Women" (essentially WoG w/Peter Tonks singing). Wally Bob Colorado does "Ode To Ronnie Joe")