When I was young, my mom gifted me a subscription to Dog Fancy magazine. It was definitely one of those scenarios that sounds great in theory, enriching even - until the back-issues begin piling up. Oh great, another one? Add it to the stack… I still have about a year’s worth of The New Yorker sitting under my bed. I’ll get to it.
 
The main reason why I was a subscriber of Dog Fancy wasn’t because, at age eight, I wanted to learn the ins-and-outs of the cutthroat canine industry. It was because I thought my two Shetland Sheepdogs would enjoy it. But, guess what? They could not have cared less. I mean, Dog Fancy is sooo “basic.” It’s like a dog reading Martha Stewart Living. Sure, my dogs could barely see, but at least they had class.
 
Years later, I discovered that there had been a few late-eighties parody magazines, specifically Canine Quarterly and Dogue, written for the classy, sophisticated dog of the modern American home. Although cleverly tongue-in-cheek, the content within is presented in an entirely serious manner, as if its audience was wholly made up of trendy, upscale pooches. Topics range from your typical leisure digest fare - relationships, diet, style, travel, home, and fitness. There’s a cover story on Spuds MacKenzie (Bud Light mascot and the “Original Party Animal”), a section on dream doghouses, hound-friendly dinner recipes, canine couture, pet horoscopes, and a gift guide for their favorite human. It is truly, as they say, “paw-some.”
 

 
The most rewarding thing about picking up a copy of Dogue or CQ are its advertisements - mostly just spoofs on popular clothing brands, jewelry, and cosmetics. It is very clear that the author had a lot of fun creating these, especially since a number of other similar satire publications had popped up in the years surrounding, like Cowsmopolitan, Playboar, Vanity Fur, Good Mousekeeping, and Catmopolitan. Just don’t purchase any of these thinking your pet would be interested in reading - it still isn’t food.
 
Take a look at some of the most clever advertisements and other photos from ‘Canine Quarterly’ and ‘Dogue,’ below:
 

 

 
More after the jump…

 
In the mid 1950s, after Frank Zappa moved from San Diego to Lancaster, California, he and Captain Beefheart (a/k/a Don Van Vliet; born Don Vliet) met while attending the same high school. The two found they had a similar taste in music, and quickly bonded over a shared love of blues, doo-wop, and R&B records. After graduation, Frank enrolled in Antelope Valley Junior College, which Don also attended for a semester. In either late 1958 or early 1959, they recorded material at the school using a portable reel-to-reel machine. One of the songs was called “Lost in a Whirlpool,” which was written by Zappa (music) and Vliet (lyrics).

During a 1989 interview, FZ talked about the tune and the Antelope recording.

“Lost in a Whirlpool” was taped on one of those tape recorders that you have in a school in the audio/visual department. We went into this room, this empty room at the junior college in Lancaster, after school, and got this tape recorded, and just turned it on. The guitars are me and my brother (Bobby Zappa) and the vocal is Don Vliet.

The story of “Lost in a Whirlpool” goes back even farther. When I was in high school in San Diego in ‘55, there was a guy who grew up to be a sports writer named Larry Littlefield. He, and another guy named Jeff Harris, and I used to hang out, and we used to make up stories, little skits and stuff, you know, dumb little teenage things. One of the plots that we cooked up was about a person who was skindiving—San Diego’s a surfer kind of an area—skindiving in the San Diego sewer system [laughter], and talking about encountering brown, blind fish. [laughter] It was kind of like the Cousteau expedition of its era. [laughter] So, when I moved to Lancaster from San Diego, I had discussed this scenario with Vliet, and that’s where the lyrics come from. It’s like a musical manifestation of this other skindiving scenario.

Frank added that the recording is “the earliest tape that I have a copy of, from when I first started taping stuff.”

“Lost in a Whirlpool” sat in the Zappa vault for decades, but eventually saw release on the posthumously issued compilation, The Lost Episodes (1996).

Another perspective on “Lost in a Whirlpool,” from the liner notes of The Lost Episodes:

This spectacular item, according to FZ, probably marks the recorded blues-singing debut of the teenaged, yet-to-be-christened Captain Beefheart, Don Van Vliet. It was taped in an empty classroom at Antelope Valley Jr. College in Lancaster, California, with FZ on lead guitar (an instrument with which he had been acquainted for only about six months), and Frank’s former guitar teacher, brother Bobby, on rhythm guitar. (Bobby, FZ noted, later abandoned music and entered the Marines “in order to not be anything like his brother.”) It was recorded on an old Webcor reel-to-reel that, FZ fondly remembered, “just happened to be sitting there waiting to be plundered—maroon, with the green blinking eye.” The tale of a lover spurned in rather surreal fashion, “Whirlpool’s” lyrics were improvised by Vliet, who begins with an arresting parody of a (female?) blues singer. After a few lines, the essential vocal personality of incipient Beefheart becomes apparent. Listeners with an ear for metaphor and a penchant for “interpreting” lyrics might be advised not to burrow too deeply here. The whirlpool in question is one that is commonly found, and regularly employed, in modern households. Said Vliet: “Frank and I had a good time. We were just fooling around.”

 
An additional song, parodying the Bridey Murphy tale, was captured on the same day as “Lost in a Whirlpool,” but remains unreleased.

Frank and Don continued to collaborate, periodically, through the mid ‘70s. Their most famous team-up was for Beefheart’s Trout Mask Replica (1969), which Zappa produced. The seminal double album was recently reissued by Third Man Records.
 

‘Bongo Fury’ photo shoot, 1975.

8mm footage of Don Vliet, shot by Frank Zappa around the time “Lost in a Whirlpool” was recorded, was incorporated into FZ’s video for “G-Spot Tornado” from Jazz From Hell (1986).
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
‘Metal Man Has Won His Wings’: Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa’s early ‘60s R&B band, the Soots
Captain Beefheart loses his shit during tumultuous 1975 gig opening for Frank Zappa

 
The argument at the back of the bar was about which decade produced the best films. The noughties didn’t make it, nor did the teens, unless that was the nineteen-teens. The shortlist was whittled down and we agreed upon the forties, the fifties, the sixties, but were almost unanimous on the seventies. That glorious decade when movies had something important to say as told by actors, writers, and directors and not CGI. The decade that gave us Taxi Driver, The Godfather, The French Connection, Deliverance, Apocalypse Now, Mean Streets, The Conversation, The Exorcist, The Last Detail, Chinatown, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Don’t Look Now, Tommy, Roma, Jubilee, Star Wars, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Jaws, A Clockwork Orange, and a marathon-length movie like Lindsay Anderson’s O Lucky Man! among many, many other cinematic classics.

Malcolm McDowell had the original idea for O Lucky Man! He wanted to work again with director Lindsay Anderson after their success on the class war fantasy If… in 1968. McDowell had an idea for a film based around his own experiences working as a coffee salesman. In August 1970, twenty pages were written in collaboration with If… screenwriter David Sherwin. These were then shown to Anderson, who thought the story of a coffee salesman being mistaken for a spy “too mini and naturalistic.” Nevertheless, he encouraged McDowell and Sherwin to keep on working and get it away from “just being about selling coffee.” Anderson wanted something “epic” and suggested they read Heaven’s My Destination about a bible salesman, Franz Kafka’s Amerika, and Voltaire’s Candide.

On August 21st 1970, Sherwin was at McDowell’s flat talking ideas back-and-forth “trying to find the essence of [their twenty-page script] Coffee Man, trying to make it ‘epic’ for Lindsay,” as Sherwin noted in his diary.

McDowell recalled the Sales Director, Gloria Rowe, who he often talked to when training on the shop floor.

“I wasn’t really training—I was just walking around with a clipboard looking for something to do—she used to say to me, ‘Malcolm, you’ll either end up a duke or a dustman.’ And I’d always been told I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I always believed I would be lucky.”

Sherwin jumped up and said “That’s it!”
“What?” said McDowell.
“Luck—luck’s the essence. You’ve always believed you’ll be lucky.”
“Yes—luck—Lucky Man.”
“Lucky Man!” they yelled in unison.

Now they had a title and the essence of what they hoped would be their next film. They drove round to tell Anderson.

“We’ve got the title, Lindsay, Lucky Man.”
Anderson made the inside of his cheek pop with his forefinger—“an annoying habit” he had when considering the merit of something. He then said, “No.” And gave pause for full dramatic effect before adding it should be O Lucky Man, like [one of his earlier films], O Dreamland or even the stage show Oh! Calcutta. The title should also have an exclamation mark—but where to put it?
“After the ‘O’?” ventured Sherwin.
‘No,” said Anderson, “At the end.”

Anderson always had the demeanor of one who knows best. The tetchy grown-up lecturing the kids. It was an artifice he used to hide his own insecurities, his lack of confidence, and to repress his sexuality. His personality became, as the actor Alan Bates noted, abrasive which irked critics and producers alike and eventually “lost him the opportunity to make more films.” Bates was similarly closeted about his own homosexuality—never acknowledging his gay lovers or admitting his sexual orientation. Anderson was born into a military family in Bangalore, India, in 1923. His parents separated and his father cut his family out of his life, an experience which made Anderson distrustful of sharing his emotions. After university and military service in the Second World War, Anderson had considered becoming an actor before focussing on a career as a film critic and then film and stage director. In 1956, he co-founded the Free Cinema movement with Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzetti. Their belief was that “no film could be too personal.” That the image was more important than sound and “a belief in freedom, in the importance of people and the significance of the everyday.”

Though Anderson spent more time working in theater, he still managed to make an impressive catalog of innovative and highly controversial films like O Dreamland, This Sporting Life, If…, O Lucky Man! and Britannia Hospital.
 

 
Full photo-spread for ‘O Lucky Man!,’ after the jump…
 

An early shot of the mighty Van Halen. Photo by Andre Csillag.
 
After opening its doors in 1971, Cherokee Studios in Los Angeles would play host to the likes of Alice Cooper, DEVO, the Cars (who recorded Candy-O there), and Gene Simmons of KISS who laid down his solo album at Cherokee. One of the first major acts to work at Cherokee was Steely Dan, who would record their third album, Pretzel Logic at Cherokee in 1974, scoring the studio its first gold record and the band its third. Later the same year a young version of Van Halen would drop into Cherokee to record what is considered their very first demo. The group was already a popular attraction in the local LA club scene when they recorded four songs at Cherokee, “Angel Eyes,” “Believe Me,” “Simple Rhyme,” and “Take Your Whiskey Home,” a number that would later appear on VH’s 1980 album Women and Children First along with “Simple Rhyme” (“In a Simple Rhyme”).

While these recordings are not the earliest in the band’s career, they are the earliest recordings of the group with David Lee Roth, Eddie, and Alex Van Halen and bassist Michael Anthony. Prior to this, a recording generally referred to as “the Glitter demos” was completed by the band; however, bass duties were performed by original Van Halen bassist Mark Stone while VH was still calling themselves Mammoth. David Lee Roth ended up with the masters from the Glitter session and released them online in 1998. The Cherokee demos are technically the earliest recordings of Van Halen in their most formidable form which would last until Roth departed the band in 1985.
 

The brothers Van Halen with original VH bassist Mark Stone (left).
 
Now let’s talk about the demo itself, which, since it’s a demo, is rough sounding at times. Nonetheless, the recording contains moments where you can clearly hear where the band was headed. Whether it be Eddie’s blister-inducing riffs, DLR’s high notes, the multitalented Michael Anthony and his bright backing vocals (sigh), or the extraordinary timekeeping skills of Alex Van Halen, the Cherokee Studios’ demos are very much a crystal ball allowing us a glimpse into the birth of Van Halen. At the time, Eddie was nineteen, both DLR and Michael Anthony were twenty, and Alex was 21. Also of interest is that David Lee Roth is said to have played the guitar on the acoustic song, “Angel Eyes.”

Listen after the jump…

 
In 1969, a single by the Bartos Brothers Band was released, and the A-Side is absolutely amazing. “Gambler” is a driving acid rocker, jam-packed with heavy guitar riffs. It also features some proto-metal vocalizing, and has an intro that is out of this world. Once a super-obscure track, “Gambler” can now be had via a superb new compilation.

There isn’t much information readily available concerning the Bartos Brothers Band. We know that they were an Ohio outfit led by Kenny and Neil Bartos, and that their 45 came out on in ’69 on their label, Chance Records. The group were accidentally credited as “Gambler” on the 7-inch, so the guys used corrective stickers (as seen above). It’s possible they were indeed called Gambler, but then changed their name around the time the single was released.
 

 
That’s essentially all we can tell you—other than that “Gambler” is awesome.
 

 
The number has been reissued for the first time on Brown Acid: The Eighth Trip, the latest in a series of collections consisting of raw, rarely heard heavy fuzz rock and proto-metal 45s from the ‘60s and ‘70s. Released by RidingEasy Records, every song on these compilations is licensed from those involved—often no easy task, as it’s frequently difficult to locate people that put out little-known singles decades ago. The new Brown Acid is really, really good, which is kind of miraculous, considering they’re on the eighth one and still had so many fantastic rarities to unleash on us—kudos!
 

 
Brown Acid: The Eighth Trip is available in various LP and CD editions, and as a digital download. The full collection is streaming on multiple platforms, including YouTube.

We’ll end with a couple of our other favorites from the comp.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The outstanding 1976 ‘tax scam’ album by obscure hard rock powerhouse, Stonewall, is back!
‘Brown Acid: The Fourth Trip’: Stream some obscure vintage fuzz rock from the 60s & 70s
‘Brown Acid: The Second Trip’—Listen to DM’s exclusive stream of rare psychedelic fuzz from the 70s

Portrait of Larry “Ratso” Sloman by William Beaucardet.

What most people dream about, Larry “Ratso” Sloman makes happen. Anyone who’s read Ratso’s first book, 1978’s On The Road With Bob Dylan, has witnessed his epic persistence. A young Rolling Stone reporter in ‘75, he took an invitation from a fueled Bob Dylan to join the tour being convened and he held Dylan to his word. Repeatedly treated as Slo-man on the totem pole by Rolling Thunder Revue functionaries and dubbed “Ratso” by Joan Baez for his slovenly, streetwise demeanor, he refused to give up, eventually melting down in a motel lobby in one of the best scenes in Renaldo and Clara, issuing the righteous demand of “Access!  I want access!”

Access he was given and access he has to this day.

I read On The Road With Bob Dylan close to its pub date in one furious sitting, completely unaware of who this guy Sloman was, but blown away by his chutzpah and ability to describe what it was like to hang with Bob better than any scribe before him. Within a couple weeks of reading it, my pal Kinky Friedman brought an entourage to West Village dive bar Bells Of Hell to see my band Slewfoot. I met Larry Sloman in that crew and a friendship of 41 years followed.   

We went on to edit the National Lampoon together with my brother Andy Simmons in the1980s and have had more adventures than there is room here to recount. (Hey Rats—remember The Babysitter at Baratta’s house in the Hamptons?) In addition to writing bestsellers with Howard Stern, Abbie Hoffman and Houdini biographies, acting/writing/producing movies and sundry side activities like managing strongman Dennis Rogers, the snappy-dressing Ratso decided he wanted to be a rock star. 

And so he is.

At age 70, he’s released his debut album, the appropriately titled Stubborn Heart (Lucky Number), and it’s a dark nocturnal emission—an atmospheric, minor-chord tone poem broken up into nine songs, including co-writes with John Cale. It’s beautifully produced by Vincent Cacchione of Brooklyn band Caged Animals, with guest shots by buddies Nick Cave, Warren Ellis of the Bad Seeds, Leonard Cohen’s collaborator Sharon Robinson and Lebanese chirp Yasmine Hamdan, among others. (Interesting footnote: Cave’s song “Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!” was inspired by Ratso’s Houdini bio.) And then there’s his intriguing voice – a talk/sing hybrid strongly reminiscent of Cohen and Dylan – two fellow Jewish mavericks also known for ensuring that miraculous artistry magically materializes.

Like Dylan, like Cohen, Ratso has the poet’s touch. In Cale co-write “Dying On The Vine” (first heard on John’s 1985 album Artificial Intelligence), Ratboy intones: “And I was thinking about my mother/I was thinking about what’s mine/I was living like a Hollywood/But I was dying on the vine.” Note the addition of “a” before the noun “Hollywood.” It’s a savvy – and mysterious—lyrical decision that kicks open doors of potential meaning that would’ve been locked shut had it not been present. What is “a Hollywood”?  I don’t know, but it’s a gift to be forced to think about it. And then there’s the Rat-wit. In the Cave duet “Our Lady Of Light,” he sings of the heroine: “She’ll dance round your shyness, poke fun at your gloom/But you can’t help but smile as she gooses the groom.”

June 12 will see the release of Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story By Martin Scorsese, the latter’s documentary of that fabled tour. Naturally, Ratso is said to be a key talking head in the film. (I know because it’s Ratso who says it.) Fittingly, Stubborn Heart ends with an audacious homage to the man who kickstartled Ratso’s career. His cover of “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands” works because, like everything he does, he puts a twist on it, spicing up the proceedings by having several sad-eyed lady singers tackle each chorus, culminating with Ruby Friedman emitting the lungpower of a ferocious and fiery tigress.

As we aging freaks become more reliant on prostate medication (something my medical advisor Dr. Sloman keeps me up on), we will need our hearts to be even more stubborn than in our demanding youth, to meet the injustices of aging and to continue to foster creativity as our bodies fail. Ratso has lit one path with his decision to make a record at this point in his life. He’s an inspiration to each individual to decide if and how they’ll follow through for themselves.
 

“Our Lady of Light” with Nick Cave.
 
More after the jump…

Nodding God’s new album (House of Mythology)

Three assenting Pazūzu-heads agree: David Tibet and Andrew Liles’ new album of DayGlo demonology is more fun than a desert wind bearing fevers and plagues! Nodding God Play Wooden Child is the first release from the pair’s new group, which has yet to make its live debut; the Islington Assembly Hall show scheduled for May appears to have been cancelled. Nodding God is as fresh as a daisy.

To be sure, the press materials for the LP claim Liles and Tibet have been working with a third member, The UnderAge Shaitan-Boy, since 1353:

NODDING GOD were formed 666 years ago by Andrew Liles, David Tibet and The UnderAge Shaitan-Boy in a Boys-Only preparatory boarding school in Babylon, since shut down by unfortunate events that took place there, in the night, in the dark.

Tibet’s lyrics for the album are mostly (I hear the Hebrew names of the archangels) written in the ancient Mesopotamian language of Akkadian. Chanted through a pitch shifter over the plashing and gurgling of liquid sequencers and synths, they sound like fearsome invocations of the Great Old Ones, though for all you and I know, they might just as well be sections of the Code of Hammurabi or complaints about the rising price of crisps at Sainsbury’s. Whatever the lyrical content, the effect is the same: discarnate entities awake from their centuries-long sleep, take spectral form in front of your hi-fi, and boogie.

House of Mythology, the London label that has released music by Tibet’s Hypnopazūzu and Zu93 projects, will issue Nodding God Play Wooden Child on pink vinyl, black vinyl, and CD on May 10. The album is available for pre-order from House of Mythology’s US and UK stores. Below, stream Nodding God’s selection for Dangerous Minds, “Natron Skipping Rope.”

The very lovely exhibition Invocation of Almost: The Art of David Tibet is open through May 25 at Cal State Fullerton’s Begovich Gallery.
 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
The thrilling conclusion of Andrew Liles’ 42-hour musical work, ‘Colossus’
Current 93’s David Tibet and Killing Joke’s Youth discuss their first album as Hypnopazūzu

 
Roman Booteen is a master of crafting hobo nickels. He carves intricate designs featuring icons from pop culture, literature, history and film onto American nickels and silver dollars. Based in Yekaterinburg, the fourth largest city in Russia, Booteen’s incredible one-off coins sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. In 2017, his “1921 Morgan Dollar Hobo Nickel” was sold for a staggering $10,101. Nice.

Modifying coins by carving a bas-relief onto their surfaces has been around since the middle of the eighteenth-century. Such decorated coins were given as gifts and love tokens or worn as jewelry on bracelets or necklaces. In America, this kind of coin carving grew in popularity with the introduction of the Buffalo nickel in 1913, as the nickel had a larger, more malleable surface which was especially suitable for carving minute detail. These modified coins were called “Hobo nickels” as they were mainly crafted by itinerants as a way to make money or exchange their handicraft for food.

Booteen’s work has evolved from simple bas relief to one coin featuring a “gold bug” which can open its wings (inspired by the story by Poe) and another that has a finger trap with teeth which can literally chomp thru wood. Little is known about Booteen. He keeps a low-profile which has led to him being described as a “man of mystery.” However, he shares his work via Instagram and Facebook and his hobo nickels sell on eBay. He also does a wild selection of engravings for Zippo lighters (see below) and Hotco.co will be releasing a limited replica edition of his “The Trap With the Golden Bait” this year.
 

 

 

 

 
Henry Cow was one of the most distinctive (okay, difficult) of England’s ‘70s prog-rock groups. They are impossible to categorize and are totally an acquired taste, but once you “get” their music, you come to see how Henry Cow fills in several boxes of the “everything that can possibly be done with the popular music artform” grid all on their lonesome. If you’re a Zappa-head or a Sun Ra fan then Henry Cow might be up your street.

For about three years in the late ‘70s, I saw the same Henry Cow album, In Praise of Learning, sitting pricey and unsold in the “Imports” bin of a Musicland store in a St. Clairsville, Ohio shopping mall, where artists like X-Ray Spex, Renaissance, Suzi Quatro, New York Dolls, King Crimson, the Velvet Underground, Fairport Convention, The Damned, Tangerine Dream, Nektar, Klaus Schulze, John Cale, The Stooges, Gentle Giant, Magma, Gong, and The Sweet were all placed in the context of a catchall “foreign music”/out of print in America/expensive category. “Imports” covered a lot of musical territory, even bringing In Praise of Learning to a town where not one single, solitary person even cared.

There was a quote on the back, from the Scottish filmmaker who coined the term “documentary,” John Grierson: “Art is not a mirror – it is a hammer.” The lyrics seemed smart and mysterious, and I wanted to understand them.

One of the clerks there told me, “If you’re into groups like Genesis and Yes, Henry Cow is supposed to be like a weirder version of that.” I don’t think he’d ever heard them either—the record was still sealed—but that was sort of their reputation.

Despite the fact that I loathed both Yes and Genesis, it was that quote, “Art is not a mirror – it is a hammer” that eventually made me so curious about what was going on in the mysterious grooves of that record, that I finally succumbed and bought it. I think I paid $12 for it at a time when domestic LPs cost around $5.98 list.

I fucking hated it. The cool Marxist lyrics aside, it did nothing for me, but then again, I doubt that the band members of Henry Cow were sitting around in 1975 thinking “Hmmm, you know, how do make our unorthodox experimental music appeal to a teenage dickhead living in rural West Virginia?”

It would take several years, in fact, before I ever listened to In Praise of Learning again, after those first few bewildered spins, and then I began to appreciate the sheer bloody-mindedness of what these musicians were trying to do. Eventually I got really obsessed by it, especially the song performed in the clip below.

It’s not an album I pull out often. Would I ever, say, decide to listen to In Praise of Learning in the car? Well, no probably not. If you ask me, the way to appreciate Henry Cow, if you are approaching this work for the first time, is to look at them as a group of Marxist poets creating together. It’s certainly musical, but there is an “extra-musical” component that I appreciate about In Praise of Learning, especially in the epic polemic, “Living in the Heart of the Beast,” with lyrics by Tim Hodgkinson:

Situation that rules your world (despite all you’ve said)
I would strike against it but the rule displaces…

There I burn in my own lights fuelled with flags torn out
of books, and histories of marching together…
United with heroes, we were the rage, the fire.
But I was given a different destiny - knotted in closer despair.
Calling to heroes do you have to speak that way all the time ?
Tales told by idiots in paperbacks; a play of forms
to spite my fabulous need to fight and live.

We exchange words, coins, movements - paralysed in loops
of care that we hoped could knot a world still.
Sere words, toothless, ruined now, bulldozed into brimming pits
- who has used them how? Grammar book that lies wasted :
conflux of voices rising to meet, and fall,
empty, divided, other…

Clutching at sleeves the wordless man exposes his failure :
smiling, he hurls a wine glass, describing his sadness twisted
into mere form : shattered in a glass, he’s changed…
How dare he seize the life before him and discompound it in
sulphurous confusion and give it to the air?
He’s rushing to find where there’s a word of liquid syntax
- signs let slip in a flash : “clothes of chaos are my rage !”
he shrieks in tatters, hunting the eye of his own storm.

We were born to serve you all our bloody lives
labouring tongues we give rise to soft lies :
disguised metaphors that keep us in a vast inverted silliness
twice edged with fear.
Twilight signs decompose us
High in offices we stared into the turning wheel of cities
dense and ravelled close yet separate : planned to kill all encounter.
Intricate we saw your state at work its shapes
abstracted from all human intent. With our history’s fire
we shall harrow your signs.

Now is the time to begin to go forward - advance from despair,
the darkness of solitary men - who are chained in a market they
cannot control - in the name of a freedom that hangs like a pall
on our cities. And their towers of silence we shall destroy.

Now is the time to begin to determine directions, refuse to admit
the existence of destiny’s rule. We shall seize from all heroes and
merchants our labour, our lives, and our practice of history: this,
our choice, defines the truth of all that we do.

Seize on the words that oppose us with alien force; they’re enslaved
by the power of capital’s kings who reduce them to coinage and
hollow exchange in the struggle to hold us, they’re bitterly
outlasting… Time to sweep them down from power
- deeds renew words.

Dare to take sides in the fight for freedom that is common cause
let us All be as strong and as resolute. We’re in the midst of
a universe turning in turmoil; of classes and armies of thought
making war - their contradictions clash and echo through time.

This was music made for the coming revolution that never came, but the artists involved successfully freed their heads. No, this music isn’t for everyone, but it’s heroic, man!

Below, Henry Cow: Georgina Born – bass guitar, cello; Lindsay Cooper – bassoon, oboe, recorder, sopranino saxophone, piccolo, piano; Chris Cutler – drums; Fred Frith – guitar, violin, xylophone, piano, tubular bells; Tim Hodgkinson – organ, alto saxophone, clarinet; Dagmar Krause – voice—performing “Living in the Heart of the Beast” in Vevey, Switzerland for the Swiss TV program Kaleidospop on August 25, 1976. The entire 75-minute concert can be found on Henry Cow’s 40th Anniversary Box Set.

Stay with it. Some of you might not be able to take it, but if you can go with it, by the end it will make total sense. Fred Frith’s guitar solo in the latter half is utterly mind-blowing and it’s amazing to watch Christ Cutler in action.
 

Not a real product, sorry Deadheads.
 
As if the title of this post wasn’t strange enough, before a toilet that once resided in Jerry Garcia’s master bathroom was stolen, it was purchased at auction by online casino Goldenpalace.com for $2,550. After beating out a dozen other bids for Garcia’s commode, Goldenpalace.com announced its latest acquisition would join actor William Shatner’s kidney stones and a grilled cheese sandwich with an image of the Virgin Mary on it in a traveling exhibit. It was also said people would be able to actually sit on Garcia’s old master-bathroom toilet and pose for pictures—for a price. Because nothing says “throw away your money here” more than a traveling exhibit sponsored by an online casino full of kidney stones, an old grilled cheese sandwich, and a funky toilet once used by the King of the Deadheads, here’s a little bit more about Garcia’s throne from its description in the auction:

“Located in Garcia’s master bedroom suite on the second floor of 55 El Mirador Dr. in Nicasio, CA! Overlooking the pool with a view of Mt. Tam and Mt. Diablo! Salmon color! 25″ deep x 19″ wide x 16″ high!”

In total, Goldenpalace.com purchased four of Garcia’s crappers spending a total of $5000 on the bathroom items from Garcia’s former home in Nicasio, California. Also offered in the auction (held to benefit a now-defunct charity assisting children and families in need, The Sophia Foundation), was Garcia’s stereo, his two-person jacuzzi, a bidet, and his kitchen sink. The salmon-colored toilet in question was outside former Garcia homeowner Henry Koltys’ house in Sonoma, California, waiting to be picked up by representatives from the casino when it disappeared. As far as the theft of this costly used toilet was concerned, the police had almost no clues or leads to pursue. Here’s a statement from Sgt. Greg Miller on the great/gross Garcia toilet caper of 2005:

“If somebody tries to sell it as Jerry Garcia’s toilet, there’s a possibility we could get it back. Frankly, I wonder if they even know what they have.”

To date, Garcia’s lavatory has never been recovered, which may be reason enough to believe that someone knew exactly what they were swiping and the latrine is now part of some sort of Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia shrine, where Deadheads gather to pay their respects. On the other hand, it might be residing in less lofty conditions in the home of a toilet thief.

Below is a recording of “The Weight” taken from the soundboard during a Grateful Dead show on July 18th, 1990 in Deer Creek.
 

“The Weight” with shared vocals by Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Brent Mydland. This would be one of the last live appearances of Brent Mydland, the longtime keyboardist for the Grateful Dead, who would pass away eight days later on July 26th, 1990.

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Headline: ‘Ozzy Pleads Guilty to Killing Jerry Garcia’
Read a sweet 1982 love letter written by Jerry Garcia to Vogue cover model
Dead to Dan: Steely Dan’s amazing guide to giving up the Grateful Dead and becoming a Steely Dan fan
The Grateful Dead guide to dealing with a bad LSD trip