THE CHRONIC ILL-LOGICAL HIS STORY OF KONGRESS
by Otto von Ruggins
The first Kongress event took place appropriately at the Brooklyn War Memorial on Friday, November 6, 1975 (I believe that predates even the first Sex Pistols performance). My father’s VW open back truck transported my Hammond organ and Leslie Speaker cabinet along with VON LMO’s drums and an amplifier for Grok’s guitar. In the echo laden open interior space, we were told to lower the volume successively after each song and so continued the recurring tradition of Otto von Ruggins, Master of the Unheard Øf.
That Christmas Eve, our club debut at CBGB’s was reviewed by Variety. Kirby quipped, “Kongress is a defiant rock combo who expect a lot of auditors.” Well, a dozen years later in August, 1987, I received an invitation by the IRS to fulfill the prophecy, but back to that snowing Christmas Eve. That night, we got to meet CBGB owner Hilly Kristal for the first time and I must say I was impressed by his Christmas spirit as he chased a bum out the front door and pushed him on the ground off the curb, defining the demarcation line not to be crossed.
Next stop was up the block on Bleecker Street, a short lived basement firetrap excuse for a club boldly called Brave New World. It was the first week of January, 1976 and the last Kongress gig for Grok. Ironically, that night Robert Crash made his first appearance in my life, but since I did not foresee our later collaborations, it wasn’t until he put an ad in the Village Voice advertising ‘guitarist with 150 years experience…’ that I took him seriously and established contact.
During this period, I met Gaea Hawkins, a keyboardist extraordinaire, who with her modified B-3 was able to follow me down to some spectacular depths of sound. In improv sessions, we continued exchanging riffs long after the guitar, bass and drums had given up the ghost. Unfortunately, a few months later, she left on a short tour of the east coast, never to return (where are you Gaea?)!
Our next appearance at CBGB in February revealed myself on synthesizer and Farfisa with Von Lmo on drums – no guitar or bass. Hilly’s reaction was that we should find another place to rehearse. Then along came E. Paul Schnug, with his XES guitar synthesizer and a 15 year old roadie named Joe. We played CBGB on Mother’s Night that May and, conveniently, Hilly was in the hospital recovering from our last appearance. It was more than a rehearsal, but it was only a warmup for the following week at Zeppz, another venue with a short life for renegade bands, this one on 14th Street. We opened for the Dictators and the place was packed. This was right after Handsome Dick had been involved in an altercation with the soon to be altered Wayne to Jayne County. Apparently, no other group would play the date because it would mean being blacklisted as the Dictators were. Such risky business meant nothing to us back then, because no one was booking us anyway.
We played our first set, which ended in an exchange of profanity between Von Lmo with his rented drums and some members of the audience. As we left the stage, the hippest looking dude in the place came up to me declaring how great we were. I knew that my father’s Sam Ash amp was distorting the Farfisa/synth combination and Schnug’s guitar was out of tune with my synth, but I was pleased at the rave review nevertheless. Then the Dictators took the stage and the audience was theirs. After they finished a set (which did nothing for me) and abandoned the stage, the crowd stomped for an encore. This went on for some five minutes without their reappearance and, as the noise died down, I singlehandedly picked up my Farfisa and placed it back on the stage, anxious to begin our second set in tune. One of their crew, Steve Shrank, came running up to the stage shouting at us to get off and Von Lmo roared right back. Eventually, my organ was removed without physical violence and they came back for another forgetful performance. This time, after they left the stage, we were told they didn’t want us to do a second set. The next week in the Voice, James Wolcott described the scene, “A rowdy bottle smashing night…earlier in the evening there had been an altercation with a satanic occult band named Kongress that played music that sounded like a Concorde drone with Aleister Crowley lyrics. They abandoned the stage only after threats of violence were unfurled like vampirish cape flourishes.”
At this point in time, I made a deal with my wife with child. I could no longer agonize over the distorted sounds of my father’s antique amplifier, so I got to purchase a SunnConcert amp with a Cerwin Vega speaker cabinet and she got to name our third daughter as well – Dana (I managed the middle name – Sidonia, and five years later, Dana Sidonia’s vocals appeared on my collaboration with Robert Crash – an EP titled ‘Movie Viewers’, but back to the birth).
It was the bicentennial and I had plans for thee bicentennial birthday event – my wife on stage giving birth inside a see through sterilized plastic bubble to the strains of Kongress on stage (I even thought of having Charlotte Moorman violin bow the umbilical cord). I tried to contact then legendary promoter Bill Sargent. He had talked about bringing the Beatles back together again and having a man in a cage with a shark. He wasn’t talking anymore, as his phone was disconnected and my wife, Celia, would only go through with this for $10,000, so it became another one of those unrealized concepts. A similar event would have been the first Kongress performance at an Artist’s Day celebration the previous fall at the band shell in Central Park. I wanted to perform on stage while having my blood transfused to another person as theirs was filtering into mine. The concept was to have government nurture art and have art provide culture for people, completing the blood loop. I called the Board of Health to find out the requirements. They started freaking out, telling me I would have to have matching blood types and have an emergency crew on hand in case people in the audience started fainting from the sight. I offered the alternative of taking blood from one of my arms and transfusing it to the other. Again, the doctor cautioned that this would be dangerous for my blood pressure. In the end, it rained that day and the event was cancelled!
It was June, 1976 and we got our first gig at Max’s Kansas City. It was also Schnug’s last appearance. For a first time, the booking power, one Peter Crowley, seemed sufficiently impressed to give us a return engagement the last week of July. In fact, Peter showed Von Lmo and I some pictures he had received from a magician named Geoffrey Crozier. Instantly, my reaction was that I’d love to make soundtracks to his visuals. I got an address where he worked and in mid-July I made my first contact with the man from Down under. Coincidentally, From Down Under was the name of my first performing band. The name had nothing to do with Oz, as I was referring to the ‘Underground’ (which didn’t even exist back in 1964). My vision was music coming up ‘from down under,’ trying to be heard, hence I became the ‘Master of the Unheard Øf!’
Meeting Geoffrey for the first time in New York City must have been anti-climactic for both of us. After seeing him in the pictures in full costume, at the poster shop where he worked, he seemed relatively harmless and I was in an executive suit on my way home to Brooklyn, looking like a Congressman more than a musician. He indicated he had been out of performing for about a year, that I was the best offer he had had and he shouldn’t let me slip away. I arranged for him to come down that night to a studio in Brooklyn with Von Lmo, Robert Crash and a bass player who wound up writing an article about the experience for the Aquarian, Steve Mecca. I still have a cassette of that magical initiation (‘We Arrive’ and ‘Presence Known’ on CD two). It was the first of many incredible improvisational moments we shared. I remember Von Lmo singing my words to ‘Berlin Merlins’ and hearing Geoffrey comment, “There’s only one Merlin in here!” Poor Robert Crash – he didn’t know what he was not getting into. He had never played such free spirited music and, while I had no complaints about his playing, he kept haunting me about the rhythm section not defining the bottom.
The next day was my birthday, which I spent quietly with my family, but Von Lmo went into a rage and attempted to drop kick one of the local inhabitants of his neighborhood from on top of a car and when his leg was grabbed in mid-air, it broke and I visited him in Coney Island Hospital. With Von out of action and the Max’s date days away, I quickly began rehearsing with Robert Crash, the bass player from the studio session, Steve Mecca, and a replacement drummer, Joe Alexander (who was actually the drummer from my first group ‘From Down Under’). Geoffrey indicated he wasn’t quite ready for the stage with us, but we managed to put on a decent show, all things considered. Peter Crowley of Max’s was especially impressed at how my keyboards kept playing when I left the band on stage and walked through the audience to the upstairs dressing room (it was the ancient rite of the antique echoplex). At the end of the night, as we packed our gear, I discovered my new magical friend, Mr. Crozier, sprawled on the floor by the front tables. Apparently, he’d been working too hard!
The following weeks, I rehearsed with Geoffrey and his band of local youth, the Stokes brothers – Frank on bass and Chris on drums – and Bobby Burns on guitar. Later, they would become Geof’s Shanghai Side Show group, after a few gigs as Kongress, before Von Lmo came back on drums.
We had a few dates at Max’s lined up and the next time we played, the audience went wild. It was unbelievable how the visual antics of the magical ceremony, driven by a less than distinctive musical edge, resulted in such a strong and positive reaction. Again, Peter Crowley, commentator on the scene, offered his observation – “Nobody, not even Alice Cooper could have followed that act.” As for the audience’s approval, he described it as being, “…better than the N.Y. Dolls.” Those were heavy accolades, which unfortunately were not written about at that point in time, or lived up to live in the future.
The next Max’s date was on September 21st, the Equinox. I played my synthesizer at a Parks department event during the day with Geoffrey in attendance until he wandered off. That night’s show at Max’s lacked the spirit of the day and failed to bring the crowd to the same excited state.
Being musically unsatisfied with the sounds of the Stokes brothers and Bobby Burns, I had been bringing down other musicians to jam with. Among a mostly forgettable stream of musicians not fit for Kongress, some standout names were John Greaves, former bass player with Henry Cow, and Marc Bell, soon to be Ramones drummer. They actually played together with Robert one afternoon and it was a disaster.
The next stop was Halloween at Max’s and we were headlining with the Dead Boys opening for us. I still remember the crowd crying for ‘Kongress’ during the Daed Boys set. This would be the last performance with the Stokes brothers and Burns lineup for quite some time, with Von Lmo on the mend. The gig was marred by some excessive smoke from the cauldron which included Geoffrey’s sacrifice of a putrified dove. The stench was awful and I wondered why I had to stay on stage, as the crowd retreated. Someone from Max’s opened the door to let some air in during the performance and without missing a beat to the music, Geoffrey snarled, “Close that door! You’re ruining my ceremony!” A videotape was made that night by Bob Gruen and a week later at his apartment, we watched distorted lines grace the TV screen (video was still at its infancy, unfortunately).
A little over a year ago, I contacted Bob Gruen and he unveiled a Kongress Tape 2 from that Halloween performance. He transferred the old reel to reel video recording onto a DV tape. Then I was able to load it into my Mac through a firewire interface and view the black and white remnants of the episode etched in my memory, but elusive to being documented heretofore. All I can say is I can't wait till the DVD is made available and an unsuspecting world is able to see the only existing tape of Kongress with Geoffrey and myself on stage together. Just this week I pressed Bob again to look for the Kongress Tape 1 of Halloween, 1976 with the hope that maybe there is more to consider releasing on the DVD before I begin the critical task of putting this exceptional performance and documentation of a Master at his best on stage. I can only promise that it will be the epitome of what you expect from a Halloween performance.
By November, Von Lmo was wearing a short leg cast and he began coming down to Geoffrey’s storefront to play with Robert Crash on guitar and Frank Stokes on bass. The music picked up where our first studio session with Geoffrey had left off. We would go on for hours, non-stop, but subtle mood changes and dynamic intensity swings were orchestrated around Geoffrey’s improvised vocals. Sometimes he recited set pieces he had written, but each time it was different. Thankfully, I made about a half dozen cassettes from this period, some of which is found on these two CDs. These tapes genuinely surpass anything we ever did live.
Throughout this period, Robert Crash’s uncertainty about the direction was made known.
One night, a week before a December date at Max’s, after the most guitar dominated tape was recorded, Crash announced he was ‘cutting himself out of the project’ with a symbolic slice in the air. It was a hard blow and left us without a guitar, but the show went on, even if it wasn’t what it could have been. In fact, that missing Robert Crash guitar ingredient from all of the live Kongress shows with Geoffrey is responsible for the fact that the studio tapes sounded better than anything we did live.
About that time, I convinced long time associate Renate (female German lead guitarist extraordinaire) to come down to Geof’s rehearsal space and play with us. In the strange environment and because of her rigid playing background, she was a bit stiff and tentative in her playing. During the final piece for the night, Geoffrey grabbed her guitar from behind and started rocking her body to build the intensity and as she resisted, they fell to the floor rolling together. The rest of us began dropping out until there was just the feedback of the guitar, at which point Geoffrey jumped up and exited through his beaded doorway. Renate was still in shock, not knowing what had just happened or what to make of it when Geof slid back into the room and announced, “That’s the greatest thing that ever happened in rock ‘n ‘roll. Don’t look at me like a fuckin’ freak! It happened!” With that, they embraced, albeit she was still visibly shaken by it all. A recording of this event exists and will, hopefully, be released at a later date.
As I watched the whole scene unfold, I thought to myself, “That’s the last time Renate is going to come down here to play.” Amazingly, she and Geof hit it off. She added an air of discipline to the chaos and eventually made it onto stage with us at CBGB’s on December 26, 1976. That was a night Hilly would long remember. He was particularly fond of Renate, but for what took place on his stage that night, Kongress was barred from playing at CBGB’s for 13 months, and by then both Von Lmo and Geoffrey had passed through the band and moved on.
So much took place that night that I was unaware of, I can only recount some events in a legendary fashion. The evening began with Geof drinking cognac backstage while the road crew prepared the stage for the ceremony. The electric chair was brought along for the event and the first row of tables was cordoned off with chairs placed on them to discourage front row seats, in view of the fact that the perimeter of the stage was rigged with flashpots. I remember seeing a crucifix attached to a microphone stand, the usual cauldron of hot coals, a water basin, some flares and a huge spear that later whizzed by Von and stuck in the back wall of the stage Lmo (Von was back playing drums with a leg cast). After we hit the stage, things happened so fast, it’s hard to sequence the events, but all of the following is related to have taken place.
I saw a picture someone took of Geof flipping the water basin. It captured the water in the shape of the vessel while it was in mid-air – a very magical instant on film. I actually saw Geoffrey pummel the crucifix on the microphone stand into pieces on stage, but I missed his putting his fingers down his throat and the ensuing regurgitation. I remember one of the flares, which were in holders standing upright, falling to the stage and facing the audience. Hilly came up to the side of the stage and grabbed it, nervously holding it over his head like Lady Liberty (more like the Statue of Tyranny), not knowing what to do with it. One of the roadies took it from him and wrapped it up in a wet towel and went relay fashion racing out the back door. It must have been about then that the flashpots were detonated, because the story I heard was that Hilly was sent barrelling back from the force of the explosions. Another report alleged that cables were burned on stage and the next group couldn’t go on for over an hour. The club was full of smoke and, while it wasn’t a sellout, there were crowds of people both moving up front to see the spectacle and retreating from the battle stations by the stage. When most of the damage was done, I saw Hilly waving his arms at me indicating ‘ENOUGH!’, so I abandoned the stage, but not before I turned up my amp and switched on my echoplex which continued to air my keyboard sounds. I was not in control of the rest of the stage, but eventually, they all stopped playing and left the stage.
Hilly was pretty upset, but I pressed him for his reasons, to which he asked me, “Why?” I responded that I wanted to know what made him tick. He stated the facts, “I don’t like your music and I don’t like your attitudes!” About a year or so later, Hilly welcomed the Plasmatics to CBGBs and they used flashpots and smoked the club worse than Kongress, but they were not barred because, apparently they attracted a larger crowd and made it worth his while.
At the end of that Kongress December gig at CBGBs, John Holmstrom, Editor of Punk Magazine, walked in and heard what had happened. Eventually, the legend of that event surfaced in a paragraph of a future issue describing us as, “Kongress, the most dangerous band in the world…”
While CBGBs was off limits, Max’s was a welcome home for Kongress and we returned with yet another guitarist, a Frenchman named Jacques Limage, who was gone by the next show. I think this was the night a band called ‘Bitch’ opened for us. It was indeed a ‘bitch’ of a night, as even though we had actually made a decent profit (I got paid some $70), it had rained so heavy that night that after dropping Geoffrey off at 3AM, I then proceeded down a dark winding road to the highway to take Von Lmo home. I remember Von declaring, “It looks like we’re driving to the unexpected…” or something of the sort. Sure enough, at the bottom of the hill, at an underpass, we encountered several feet of unexpected water, which wet my ignition wires and as soon as we hit the highway, I lost power. There I was with Von, foot in cast and a carload of equipment.
I walked off the highway and made my way to a phone booth, but along the way I encountered a pack of wild dogs by the booth. One of the dogs was chewing on a sneaker, probably from their previous victim. It’s strange how our fears are often realized in reality, as I was thinking about the previous week and how when I visited a prospective Kongress guitarist from an ad in the Village Voice, he introduced me to his pet Doberman stating ‘Make friends Caesar’ – and the dog proceeded to take a bite out of my favorite velvet shirt and the arm underneath. So, it was as if some divine source was reading my mind’s worst fears and conjured up a pack of wild dogs for me. Anyway, when I finally was able to make the call, no one would come and get us and I returned to the vehicle not knowing how the night would end. Then, along came a samaritan, whose car smelled of herb, offering us a ride. He pushed my car off the road and we moved the equipment into this stranger’s car. He drove Von home and, thankfully, I made it home, as well. Thanks to the kind person for that ride, wherever you are.
The camp was getting divided into what would become the Shanghai Side Show (the Stokes brothers and Bobby Burns) and the musicians I chose to play with. Around this time, Frank Stokes was replaced on bass by Kip Kuba. While it was music to my ears, Geof had this thing about loyalty and wanting people who were into the ceremony to work with.
The next event was with Kip at Copperfield’s, a basement hole of short lived duration. Von Lmo still had his short leg cast on and the power was surging and throwing my synthesizer and Farfisa organ out of tune. Kip, in his excitement on stage, knocked over a brazier with incense, much to Geoffrey’s displeasure, but when Von Lmo couldn’t get the beat going, he tore down the back curtain and kicked over his drums, finishing the set in under 10 minutes. This widened the chasm between my Kongress troops and Geof and his road crew who were outraged at carrying all the gear for what amounted to a non-performance. If the bad blood between Geof and Von hadn’t started back in the studio with the lines from ‘Berlin Merlins’, it was certainly boiling now.
The next time out, at a midtown nightspot named Le Cocu, we played as Kongress, but the lineup was back to the Stokes brothers and Bobby Burns. Then we had an audition for the grand opening of a gay disco, Starship Discovery I, which was on 42nd street. I had contacted the reigning queen and shown him photos of Geoffrey from his pre-Kongress past. They were enough to secure a 7PM Thursday night showcase at the Gilded Grape at 8th Avenue & 46th street, run by the same crew. When Renate attempted to catch the show, she was denied entry (no unescorted females was the reason, I believe), but the place was packed with transvestites and other odd sights. The queen sat perched on his throne with his court jesters surrounding him and we set up to perform what amounted to a ballet in a bathroom sized space (the stage area was very small).
Geof had the cauldron flames fanned nicely, but about 10 minutes into the set, some Clarabel with his fire extinguisher seltzer bottle sprayed out the flames and bodies converged around my keyboards. Geoffrey had the club employee responsible by the throat and I didn’t think we were going to make it without a brawl. Somehow, Geoffrey got back by the microphone and announced to the crowd that if they wanted us to continue, we would, otherwise we were going to split. They roared their approval and we entranced them for another half hour with water tricks and glitter dust, propelled by some powerful musical accompaniment.
As expected, we did not get the gig (we were too much of a spectacle for a grand opening to showcase a new club), but that Saturday, the front cover of the Daily News contained a black and white photo of the purple canopy of the Gilded Grape being removed by the traffic department because they did not have a permit. I’ve always wondered how this rated as a cover photo. Apparently, nothing else of importance was taking place in NYC, so it was with karmic delight that I accepted the front page synchronicity.
Soon after, in May of 1977, we found ourselves in the Elgin Theater on 8th Avenue at 19th street for a two week period during which we helped fill the theater with sound and smoke. Geoffrey took up residence in a room in the basement and Frank Stokes reappeared on bass. We also had a new guitarist, glamour boy Louis Rone who more than looked the part. He is hidden in the bottom corner of the CD label, as the main photo is from the Elgin’s back alley. In all the years I’d known him, Rone never sounded as good as he did for his brief sojourn with Kongress that spring of 1977. There was one night on stage when Geof, in a state of exuberance, pulled Rone by his long hair. Afterwards, Lou had talked about getting a baseball bat and going after Geoffrey!
During one of the rehearsals in the Elgin basement, I got word that my sixteen year old roadie Joe (born 6/6/60), who hadn’t been seen for a month or so, had been found dead in upstate New York with rope burns around his neck (an ironic twist as Geoffrey would later find out). The bearer of these ill tidings was none other than E. Paul Schnug, who introduced Joe to Kongress, and that was the last time I saw him as well.
One of the last nights at the Elgin, Rod Swenson was in the audience with Wendy O. Williams. This was pre-Plasmatics and, as we didn’t go on as scheduled, he was running back and forth to another club to see some other band, as well. Finally, we took the stage, Geof sporting a Mohican haircut and coordinating his pyrotechniques with road crew detonations, all no doubt registered in Rod Swenson’s memory banks for future reference. At a later performance by Von Lmo’s post Kongress Red Transister at Max’s, Rod was also seen observing Von’s chainsaw style, but it doesn’t matter who does it first, it’s who has the most eyes see it done first (or read about it being done first). Still, it was satisfying to hear Lenny Kaye’s description of our Elgin Theater period when I showed up for an audition for the Patti Smith Group, “It reminded me of Berlin during the war!” I didn’t realize Lenny Kaye was such an old soul.
After the Elgin, I wasn’t sure I wanted to continue dealing with the disappointments of the live performance end of the music business. It was time to document the madness, put out a record and stop running around till four in the morning for no pay and little glory. An instrumental acquaintance for later developments, Rick Rosenspire, arranged for some ‘free’ eight track recording studio time and on my 29th birthday (July 24th) we were in Studio 29 on 29th street.
This was the summer of the Son of Sam and I had penned an account of the events to that point, titled “Sam Son.” When we got in the studio and the engineer heard the title of the song, he commented that he had a black labradour retriever by the same name. Ironically, a few weeks later, after David Berkowitz was captured, it came out in the papers that he claimed to be receiving orders from his neighbor’s dog, a black labradour retriever! I expressed the desire to take a picture of the dog sitting in Geof’s electric chair for the record cover, but not only was the tape never released, later I was informed that Sam Son had died, having been run over by a priest!
If this sounds eerie or strange, after awhile you’ll get used to this type of phenomena because this sort of stuff has continually been a part of my life. I tend to categorize these events as some kind of synchronicity, with occasional glimpses of precognition. At this point, I’ll try to give some examples of this, out of chronological sequence, as many times these occurrences have had nothing to do with musical events.
One night I had a dream that John Denver had hung himself. The next day I saw his picture in the NY Daily News with a caption “Happiness and then Sorrow,” detailing how he had been at some charity event and received word that his father had died of a heart attack. Another time, I had just missed a train and was so annoyed that I was tempted to walk through the tunnel to the express station two stops away. I mentally listed the logic against this as a) the third rail and where would I go if a train came, b) the sludge built up on the track beds and c) the presence of rats. The first two reasons were enough to deter me and so I waited for the next local and got off two stops later at the express station. As I was waiting there, I was still thinking about how I had never seen any rats when suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spied some swirling objects down by the tracks. Indeed, what I saw was two rats darting about!
Around this time, I received a complimentary subscription to the Berkeley Barb. One issue had a review of Robert Anton Wilson’s classic on synchronicity and related fields, The Cosmic Trigger. I purchased the book and somewhere in the middle read about how Aliester Crowley had discovered that all the important words in the Greek Cabala had the numerical value of 93, hence Crowleyans to this day speak of their work as carrying the 93 current. My own Aleister Crowley connection was cosmically triggered and I proceeded to check page 93 of the books I was reading at the time, starting with The Cosmic Trigger, on which I discovered the term ‘cognitive dissonance.’ Wilson described this phenomenon as the complete reversal of one’s reality model. As an example, he cited two supposedly rational detectives in Pittsburgh who witnessed a dog bark and disappear into a puff of green smoke. I made note of this term as an appropriate description of the intended effect of my music. The next week, the Village Voice had an article about David Bowie’s first LP produced by synth wiz Brian Eno,‘Low,’ and the closing statement was ‘cognitive dissonance’ still lives!
I bought a copy of The High Times Encyclopedia of Recreational Drugs and immediately turned to page 93. At the top of the page, much to my amazement, appeared the following verse –
“For this you;ve my word and I never yet broke it
So put that in your pipe my Lord Otto and smoke it!”
In September, 1982, after the release of my first recording, an EP titled ‘Movie Viewers,’ a friend advised me that he’d seen a review of it in High Times Magazine. I stopped at a newsstand and scanned the index of the latest issue. Not surprisingly, it contained an excerpt from Aleister Crowley’s pamphlet on cocaine. I turned to the music reviews, but didn’t see mine, however, there was a continuation on page 93. When I opened the magazine to page 93, there I was, cropped from the EP cover over the space where the number 93 should have appeared!
I was already familiar with Crowley’s Cocaine pamphlet, having discovered it in the Warlock Shop in Brooklyn Heights around 1974. I had just conceived the title for a song – ‘Chinese Laundromat,’ the night before. Imagine my sense of purpose when on the train ride home, after purchasing the pamphlet, I read about how all sorts of drugs were readily available in the early 1900’s at the local Chinese laundry. Eventually, this inspired the recording, ‘Vietnamese Laundry.’
BOOK REVIEW! "GAG ON THIS" BY CHARLES RODRIGUES (Fantagraphic Books, 2015)
Anyhoo getting back to more palatable things, some of you might remember back when I reviewed one of these Charles Rodrigues collection of legendary NATIONAL LAMPOON cartoons (the RAY AND JOE one...search this blog if you so desire to read the thing), and darned if this 'un's even better with regards to giving bad taste an even WORSE name! Yes, in this day of Big Mother Watching Each And Every One Of Us So SMILE, getting a hefty dose of these tasteless, offensive and downright negative cartoons really is something that gets my juices flowin'! And if you are of the opinion that being funny is something that doesn't pertain one iota to the moralist highbrow rants and post-Carrie Nation lectures that comedy has become over the past few decades well then, you probably need this book just as much as I do!
Yes, almost nothing was beyond the realm of bad taste when it came to Rodrigues, and this collection, mostly culled from LAMPOON, serves to remind us just why issues of that mag were flying off the shelves back when we were living in some sort of post-racial/gender/Nixon land where even the radicals could poke potent fun at themselves. Ya gotta remember that the likes of Bill Griffith's and Jay Kinney's (even R. Crumb's) better work of the day pretty much satirized the entire underground milieu from which they sprang, and ya also gotta get through your head that seventies attempts at humor from NATIONAL LAMPOON and BLAZING SADDLES to the original SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE would never be allowed in the grim clime of modern day what passes for entertainment. These cartoons by Rodrigues (not to mention his LAMPOON partner in bad taste, the superbly named Sam Gross) really do remind me of the times when envelope pushing did rattle the ire of more'n a few blue haired old lady and budding feminist types, but then again many of 'em were probably laughing their own pockmarked behinds off before being able to mutter...."that's not funny".
