Walls Of Genius Catalogue #7
A Tale Of Two twits 1985
The title page features the name of the band (WoG) and the title ("A Tale of Two Twits") written with Letraset lettering in the center of the page, a kind of media Gothic and Helvetica, respectively. Emanating from this central axis are a bunch of wiggly lines and dots that I drew with India ink.
Page 2 features the fake newspaper article, “Fowler knew he was unstoppable”. This was based on an actual article about Alex English of the Denver Nuggets basketball team. I replaced Alex’s name with Ed’s, did some adjustment of basketball talk to guitar talk and there it was, another wonderful fake. It was absolutely marvelous that the description of Alex English’s hot night on the basketball court fit Ed’s guitar playing to a ‘tee’. In the lower corner, you see the date from the Denver Post (Monday, May 6, 1985).
Page 3 features “Slave To Genius, the moron’s message”. Two years and 600 cassettes have now gone by. I claim that we are all “sick demented slaves of twisted genius”. This is the usual hyperbolic, self-deprecatory humor to which our listeners have become accustomed. I talk about a number of things. We’ve got a lot of stuff! We discontinued some early titles, one of which was never released in the first place, and re-mixed the older material for the Raw Sewage series, Volumes 1 and 2. The compilation tape, Madness Lives! is now available. We have three 90-minute cassettes of the incredible Walls Of Genius And Miracle jam sessions (from the condemned school-house at the northeast end of Boulder). There is Slither/Sloth, a cassette “ep” of Little Fyodor solo material. We have finally been taken on by distributors, RRRecords (Lowell, MA) and M.A.S.M./HAWAI (Paris, France). We also indicate that a new release should be available soon exclusively from Cause & Effect. This would be Do Not Write Below This Line, produced exclusively for C&E, not available from Walls of Genius itself. A 7” ep (vinyl) version of Slither is expected soon from Little Fyodor. I talk about the road trip we did to California in June 1985, playing gigs in LA and San Francisco, as well as some local gigs. I declare that “it has never been more fun to do WoG than it is now and, not surprisingly, never more work as well.” Well!! That was certainly true. I announce that we are still accepting submissions for a second compilation (because we had so much we couldn’t fit it all on the first one). Three of the pointy-chinned pin-head face appear on the page beside a cow dreaming of a glowing hamburger.
Regarding the Walls Of Genius road trip:
We had lined up gigs at Los Angeles’ AntiClub, San Francisco’s People’s Theater Coalition at Fort Mason Center, and in Eureka, California, via Brian Ladd and Julie Frith of the Psyclones.
The Eureka gig got cancelled due, I believe, to a lack of interest in having such a band play and the resulting difficulty in finding a venue or an audience.
At the AntiClub, we went on stage for a sound-test early in the evening. Then they moved all our stuff to the back of the stage and we didn’t play until the wee hours. The sound-test was useless, Ed’s guitar could not be heard at all and it was a bit of a fiasco. We had a nice time visiting my junior high school pal, John Jones (The Urinals, 100 Flowers) who was playing at the time with a band called Radwaste and we got to see them perform.
The San Francisco show went very nicely, in an auditorium, a bonafide concert. I played bass out of a large amp stenciled “Tom Fogerty” (of Creedence Clearwater Revival). We stayed and visited with William Davenport of Unsound magazine, who had organized the show. Ed Fowler worked for Air Midwest at the time, so he got free airline tickets and flew from Denver to LA and SF and back home. David and I drove in my ’79 Toyota station wagon, stopped at Zion National Park on the way to LA, Big Sur on the way to SF and at Redwood National Park near Eureka.
Editor's Note: View additional materials for the Language is the Enemy program in San Francisco
Regarding the Walls Of Genius road trip:
We had lined up gigs at Los Angeles’ AntiClub, San Francisco’s People’s Theater Coalition at Fort Mason Center, and in Eureka, California, via Brian Ladd and Julie Frith of the Psyclones.
The Eureka gig got cancelled due, I believe, to a lack of interest in having such a band play and the resulting difficulty in finding a venue or an audience.
At the AntiClub, we went on stage for a sound-test early in the evening. Then they moved all our stuff to the back of the stage and we didn’t play until the wee hours. The sound-test was useless, Ed’s guitar could not be heard at all and it was a bit of a fiasco. We had a nice time visiting my junior high school pal, John Jones (The Urinals, 100 Flowers) who was playing at the time with a band called Radwaste and we got to see them perform.
The San Francisco show went very nicely, in an auditorium, a bonafide concert. I played bass out of a large amp stenciled “Tom Fogerty” (of Creedence Clearwater Revival). We stayed and visited with William Davenport of Unsound magazine, who had organized the show. Ed Fowler worked for Air Midwest at the time, so he got free airline tickets and flew from Denver to LA and SF and back home. David and I drove in my ’79 Toyota station wagon, stopped at Zion National Park on the way to LA, Big Sur on the way to SF and at Redwood National Park near Eureka.
Editor's Note: View additional materials for the Language is the Enemy program in San Francisco
Page 3 features a lengthy description of the Walls Of Genius And Miracle cassettes, as well as Madness Lives!. Page 4 features descriptions Slither/Sloth (Little Fyodor) and the Raw Sewage, Volume 1 and 2 cassettes.
Page 5 is a list of all the cassettes currently available. I have Xeroxed the spines of each cassette package to create a visual list with WoG “numbers” and prices. It would appear that we are no longer promoting Architects Office, the falling-out now absolute and complete.
Page 6 features a bunch of reviews: Madness Lives! (Richie Unterberger, Op), Before …And After (Richie Unterberger, Op and Anne Addison, Unsound), Ludovico Treatment (Steve Perkins, Unsound), The Mysterious Case Of Pussy Lust (two reviewers not noted, the third is Steve Perkins of Unsound), and Crazed To The Core (reviewer not noted). The background is the checkerboard I had used in the previous catalog.
Page 7 is essentially the mailing cover. It features a background of a moiré pattern. Atop the pattern is a space for addresses and a scratchboard drawing of a horrified face with the return address and the legend “Oh No! Not This Shit Again!”
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This was the final catalog issued by Walls Of Genius.
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This was the final catalog issued by Walls Of Genius.