Walls Of Genius Catalogue #4
The face Of The Fiend 1984
The title page features my caricature of Ronald Reagan, the “fiend” of the title. I had a treasure trove of Reagan images because he was a TKE fraternity brother (like David and myself) and the national office was very proud of this, so they had a special issue of the semi-regular TKE-newsletter that featured Reagan. In this case, I have drawn him in clown make-up, as that’s what I thought of the fellow. The title is printed in various cut-and-paste letters ,while the legend “the ONLY official Walls of Genius Publication” appears across the bottom, as if there were fake ones or copy-cats out there in the world. This continued the joke of the “authentic” stickers, that allowed you to know that the cassettes came directly from Walls of Genius and were not just dubs that somebody made.
Page 2 features some reviews from Objekt, Cultural Sabotage (by S. F.—I checked the one surviving Objekt I own, but there’s no clue there to who S.F. is) and Little Victor Meets Violent Vince (from the #8 Dec 1983 Objekt by B. L., Brian Ladd of the Psyclones). A picture of Colonel Sanders appears in the upper right hand corner, likely an icon of material culture that I thought was amusing. Three panels of a Spiderman comic book appear in the lower left, John Jameson explains to Mary Jane why he hates Spiderman so much. His description of Spiderman sort of fits Walls of Genius.
In the upper left is a fake letter to me from “John Crawford, Manager, Historic Fairplay Hotel”. It refers to that “mischievous imp”, the “eminent Little Fyodor”, being doused in Coleman fuel by a “mad ski-vacationer”. This is part of my effort to create a false persona, or to expand on the persona that David had already created. The Fairplay Hotel is located in Fairplay, Colorado, the mythical setting for “South Park”. Of course, this was many years prior to the South Park television program. Fairplay sits in the middle of a high mountain valley called South Park. Why “Park”? It’s because the early French explorers called the high, flat valleys in the mountains of Colorado “parques”, hence North Park, Middle Park, South Park, Estes Park, etc. In other places in the west, such valleys were called “holes”, such as Jackson Hole. Fairplay is about a two-hour drive southwest of Denver and so David and I used to stop there sometimes to get lunch on our way to exploring the “western slope” of Colorado. The Fairplay Hotel has a restaurant and, in the 80s, there wasn’t much else going on there, so we’d stop there for lunch. The town of Fairplay got its name from miners who were ticked off that the mining strike in Tarryall had been completely claimed by the time they showed up. They called Tarryall “Grab-All” and founded their own town on the other side of the valley, calling it Fairplay in philosophic opposition to the idea of “Grab-All”.
In the upper left is a fake letter to me from “John Crawford, Manager, Historic Fairplay Hotel”. It refers to that “mischievous imp”, the “eminent Little Fyodor”, being doused in Coleman fuel by a “mad ski-vacationer”. This is part of my effort to create a false persona, or to expand on the persona that David had already created. The Fairplay Hotel is located in Fairplay, Colorado, the mythical setting for “South Park”. Of course, this was many years prior to the South Park television program. Fairplay sits in the middle of a high mountain valley called South Park. Why “Park”? It’s because the early French explorers called the high, flat valleys in the mountains of Colorado “parques”, hence North Park, Middle Park, South Park, Estes Park, etc. In other places in the west, such valleys were called “holes”, such as Jackson Hole. Fairplay is about a two-hour drive southwest of Denver and so David and I used to stop there sometimes to get lunch on our way to exploring the “western slope” of Colorado. The Fairplay Hotel has a restaurant and, in the 80s, there wasn’t much else going on there, so we’d stop there for lunch. The town of Fairplay got its name from miners who were ticked off that the mining strike in Tarryall had been completely claimed by the time they showed up. They called Tarryall “Grab-All” and founded their own town on the other side of the valley, calling it Fairplay in philosophic opposition to the idea of “Grab-All”.
Page 3 features the image of Big Boy with the legend, “Remember, Big Brother doesn’t miss a trick!” This was a recurring theme, as I used Big Boy to represent Big Brother, a ‘character’ in George Orwell’s book 1984. A line from a sexual aid advertisement is checked off, “Most of the time”, referring to good, satisfying intercourse. Reagan’s face is shown, marked with “X’s” and the words “resist” surrounding him. I dearly loved hating Ronald Reagan. Two reviews from the Jan/Feb 1984 #18 Warning are on the lower left, Sunday, Monday Or Always! and Little Victor Meets Violent Vince. Another faked letter appears from the Hotel Boulderado where David worked the night shift at the front desk. It’s a bill representing “the costs incurred covering up the swastika painted on our building during your recent performance”, as if somebody hated us so bad they would do such a thing. In the upper right is my Head Moron spiel, welcoming you to the catalog, marking our first anniversary. By this time, we are hawking Architects Office as well as our own stuff. Circulation is noted as approaching 300 catalogs. I accuse “distributors, while often performing a valuable service” of being “rip off artists of great talent.” (Not Cause And Effect!) [Editor's Note: No worries! We hadn't started Cause And Effect yet.] This was likely some sour grapes about being rejected by a variety of underground and alternate distributors. So this is another reason for bragging that you can only get WoG directly from WoG.
Page 4 features the list of cassettes available. There are some thanks in the lower right-hand corner, all self-explanatory. Two cartoon faces from previous catalogs appear, helping to provide some iconic continuity. Another fake letter comes to us from the Las Vegas Hilton, where apparently audience members thought they were buying tickets to see Sammy Davis Jr. but ended up with Walls Of Genius instead. They are apparently sending us a check for $1000 to “cover damage to (our) equipment.” They note that bar receipts are up “60% during (our) performance.” I don’t know where I got letterhead from the Las Vegas Hilton.
Page 5 features descriptions of four new titles on sale. First is The WoG Sampler!, which is decorated with a picture of a fellow who is obviously overjoyed at the sandwich on his plate and a woman staring into the camera with a ball-gag in her mouth. She has such a disgusted expression on her face, I thought this was rather hilarious. The second and third titles are the two Architects Offices cassettes that we produced, Partitions and Dispensation. This is a mostly serious description of their work and features an image of junked cars piled one on top of the other. The fourth is the Walls of Genius White Cassette, featuring an image of a woman slyly licking her finger apparently after somebody has come on her breasts and a brassiere advertisement for “Goddess” brassieres. The use of sado-masochist sexual images reflected both my amusement at how ridiculous they were as well as the underground culture’s fascination with it.
Page 6 features more reviews. Unsound #3 vol. 1 reviews The Guilt Vs. Time Money Complex. Judging from the review itself, I’m not sure if Unsound knew we weren’t compiling ourselves as different bands at this time. We include logos for two radio stations that were playing our material, KGNU (Boulder) and “the Fortnightly College Radio Report” (Bristol, Rhode Island). There is an un-credited review of Little Victor Meets Violent Vince. There are names and addresses of some underground zines that we encourage the reader to contact. Then there a pair of sado-masochist pornographic images. One shows a woman with a ball-gag and a high heel stepping on her back, with a look on her face that says, “yeah, I know, I’m getting paid to pose like this, so don’t bother me”. The other is a picture of a woman with a penis in her mouth. Her expression seems to say “ah crap, when is this photo session going to be over?” The legend “offensive” appears over this photo.
Page 7 is “The Cowboy”, a cut-up poem by Helen Broderick, in honor of her on-radio relationship with Evan’s alter ego, “Roy Watkins, from Mud Flats, Wyoming”. Still the favorite, she concludes, “put my body on my knees before the gods”. This continues the sado-masochist sexual theme that pervades the entire “fiend” catalog.