I decided to do something a little out of the ordinary with this piece and make it a “mailbag” column. I’d love to actually do a full on letters column but nobody sends them – electronically or otherwise. I barely even get comments and wonder if this format isn’t especially conducive to leaving them as I imagine most of my readers aren’t registered WordPress users.
To be one hundred percent transparent the only reason I’ve gotten these things in the mail is because I’ve ordered them or mentioned not having and wanting them. It would be cool to randomly get stuff as a surprise but I’d have to list a mailing address and I don’t have a PO Box yet. I’d happily give my address to anyone who asked, after quickly vetting that they were neither a nefarious spam-bot or ill-intentioned fellow meat bag, but that kinda ruins the whole surprise part.
Anyway this will be kind of like a review column except for the fact that nearly everything mentioned here actually came out a decent amount of time ago and at least half of it isn’t available anywhere to purchase.
The Pepsi-Cola Addict June-Allison Gibbons : Strange Attractor Press 2023
I’ve been trying to get my hands on a copy of this book since I first read Marjorie Wallace’s The Silent Twins around twenty years ago. Thankfully a biopic of the same name, while not making much of a splash theatrically, has ignited a renewed interest in the Gibbons sisters’ literary works and a reprint of Jennifer Gibbons’ Discomania is even slated for release on the same imprint later this year.
For those unfamiliar June and Jennifer Gibbons are identical twin sisters of West Indian descent who were born in Great Britain in 1963. They developed an idioglossia, or secret shared dialect, which they used to communicate with each other while refusing to speak to outsiders or even family members for the early part of their lives. Both of them began writing short novels in their teenage years which they were able to have published through correspondence with vanity presses using their income from England’s version of social security money.
After short and awkward courtships with vacationing American boys they went on a minor crime spree of petty burglaries and eventually arson. This led to them being institutionalized against their will for a decade in a hospital called Broadmoor. Jennifer died of heart failure on the very bus that was transporting them to freedom in 1993 and June has since led a fairly private life with her immediate family.
The writing could be classified as Outsider Art – a field where literature seems to sit in the uncomfortable shadow of visual and musical endeavors. Henry Darger’s impressive works on paper were always intended to accompany his written opus In the Realms of the Unreal as illustrations but while these images have been exhibited and reproduced in multiple volumes the text has not been made as accessible.
The publication of Wallace’s book in 1986, while the twins were still at Broadmoor, introduced small selections from The Pepsi-Cola Addict and other works to a large audience and created a collector’s market for the original printing of the book. The thing that always attracted me to the prose was it’s romanticisation of youth and violence in a way that reminded me of works by both S.E. Hinton and Anthony Burgess.
When you add in the fact that the young writers barely left their own bedrooms, much less visited the locales of their stories, you have imaginative works comparable to Franz Kafka’s Amerika and Roussel’s Impressions d’Afrique.
I used to spend time on dedicated discussion boards searching for scans or pdfs of this book and making pacts with other seekers that if either of us were so lucky as to find a copy we would immediately make it digitally available. Unfortunately actual possession of this prize seemed to have a corrupting influence like Tolkien’s famous rings and every time somebody got their hands on one they’d decide to either keep it for themselves or attempt to recoup their spending with astronomically priced photocopies.
Now that the book is easily available to all and I have my own copy in hand I can report on the actual writing. When I first began reading the frequent use of awkwardly verbose synonyms for common words as well as the kaleidoscopic insertion of colors like amethyst and sorghum could be both dazzling and disorienting in turn. Now that I’m a third of the way through I scarcely notice as I am fully in the grips of the narrative and excited to follow these characters to what will no doubt be tragic conclusions.
If you enjoy any of the works I’ve thrown out comparisons to or find your interest piqued by my description it would be worth your time to secure your own copy or request that it be stocked at your local library.
Friends Forever – A Documentary Film Ben Wolfisohn : Plexifilm 2003
If you read my chapters on either Fort Thunder or my adventures traveling with this band you’d most likely be surprised by the fact that I’d never actually seen this movie but nonetheless that is the reality. This film does not provide a substitution for actually experiencing one of Friends Forever’s legendary van performance’s in all it’s smoke and spark spewing glory but it does some other things remarkably well.
The first thing that struck me was how tangibly it manifested the feelings and textures of both watching and traveling for underground music in the year 2000. The size and energy of the crowds, the meditation and monotony of long drives in between and the constant waiting in an era when nobody had a cell phone and computers for e-mail were things you had to go to instead of carry with you.
I won’t spoil the exact details but there are some amusing miscommunications that remind me a bit of when I booked a Gang Wizard show in a record store and somehow managed to screw up four different details on a single flyer. Nowadays I would probably end up sharing that kind of thing with a touring artist before I even got around to making photocopies but back then it was common to receive a single ambiguous message and fill in what often proved to be incorrect particulars.
I was reading a 2005 interview with Lightning Bolt from The Wire today and Chippendale said something about the evolution of “the scene” that kind of struck a note with me. To paraphrase:
“When it started out it was just our friends and then it grew to include people in other cities that we didn’t know yet but could be our friends…”
He went on to describe how the whole thing expanded one order of magnitude larger which isn’t to say anything negative about the folks that only learned about this kind of music when it achieved wider appeal but rather that one can only have so many friends and there are palpable differences between close-knit communities and ones in a more open stitch pattern.
The Friends Forever documentary was recorded during 2000 when things were still at that “people in other cities” stage so watching it is a more intimate experience than what you might have gotten if it was recorded even a year or two later. Friends Forever never really grew beyond a certain point because of their dedication to playing in a way that venues could neither legally sanction or often even pay them for but the shows they were playing in front of did eventually get larger.
One thing I am thankful for is the glimpse this movie provides of the interior of Monkey Mania – a storied Denver, Colorado space I never had the good fortune of setting foot inside of. Once I saw the words Providence, Rhode Island on the screen I knew the movie was about to cover my first experience with the band and wondered what Wolfisohn’s camera would make of Fort Thunder.
Imagine my surprise when the on-screen text merely described the space as “a club” and showed some footage of the performance in the alley without even mentioning that the crowd was the largest shown up to that point. It made sense though – traveling with Friends Forever meant hanging out with Nate and Josh in their vehicles with their dogs and one space is the same as any other if you never go inside.
Thinking back I can’t remember either seeing a member of the band inside that night or meeting Ben but I would understand the decision to keep the focus on Friends Forever even if the cameras had wandered in.
Wolfisohn’s decision to make this film feels almost prescient when viewed in context of how common this type of documentary would become over the next twenty years and how much of a fixture documentarians would grow to be in underground spaces. There are a good number of reasons to watch it, including if you happen to be a Troma completionist, and there are a host of online buying options.
Plague TV presents Halloween Special : Cthonic Crystal Video 2023
This is one of the two featured items that any reader can actually buy right this minute with the proper count of e-beans and an acceptable drop box. I’m throwing a link on the bottom so that everybody can get theirs in time for the big spooky celebration.
Nate had marked on the dvd that because it has so much content it might be watched in several seatings but instead I popped in after watching Friends Forever. I was hungry for more in an abstract sense but also a little loopy from my nightly Ambien. I enjoyed the feeling of hanging out with a friend while they put on a sequence of short films and music – nicely in the background of the greater hang “sesh”. Being swaddled in media this way felt safe and reassuring in a way I don’t always get to experience.
A little ways in an automated AI called something like DeathAI is introduced to keep things moving. Something about this one screams “trickster” and we wind up with a bit of back and forth banter in the style of Space Ghost Coast to Coast! Without this touchstone it would be harder to draw a comparison – perhaps the Seder dinners with the ignorant, bad and other types of sons.
It stays entertaining and some interesting music and short films make in into the playlist. With my pills kicking in I didn’t get the most of everything – especially Damon Packard’s Children of the Stones but if you’re planning a casual get together of Halloween film rarity enjoyers who might enjoy both a stern and squirrelly announcer character this could be the night for you!
https://store.cave-evil.com/products/plague-tv-halloween-special
Graveyard Whispers Feel The Wrath : Attention Deficit Black Arts 1998
I covered this band in the recent piece entitled The Loft Intermission and as luck would have it my words reached at least one of the pseudonymous members and my very own copy travelled steadfastly through the night on the wings of a bat to roost within my rural mailbox. You might find it difficult to secure a copy of your own and unfortunately my plans for a rough upload are on hold now that the first listen seems to have cursed the tape deck in my karaoke machine.
It is possible that the device is merely protesting and refusing to play my copy of Duran Duran’s Rio now that I’ve exposed it to true synth darkness with this clearly superior offering and will once again resume turning the moment I reintroduce Feel The Wrath.
(Stand by as I just discovered a forgotten boom box on my back porch containing a copy of Gary Numan’s I, Assassin)
On to the music – most goth bands are a bit self consciously campy but Graveyard Whispers goes for an overtly “fang in cheek” approach. A decent comparison would be fellow San Diegan industrial band Tit Wrench though this latter group doesn’t directly lampoon rivethead tropes in the same way Graveyard Whispers does goth ones. The sound is faithful with some faster aggressive songs like Death Die, Death Die, Black Hair Dye and slower selections like I’m a Moontan Child which works the short prank phone call sketches into it’s remix.
When I first slid the tape out of it’s Manila envelope packaging I thought it was a plain black cassette but closer examination revealed black on black printing. The physical production does not disappoint any more than the music when proper unholy levels are reached. I’m hard at work on an upload but in the mean time some weird collector dudes are unloading recently exhumed dead stock for as low as 80 dollars.
Or you may get a little luckier as I was and be blessed by the night for a bat to flit through your window grasping the recording in it’s formidable talons…
The Super Natural Peepshow Steve Lawrence : [unknown printer circa 1996]
I once had a conversation with my friend Tetsunori about how he used to catch wild beetles in Japan so he could trade them with his schoolmates for holographic and foil stamped trading cards. He described visiting his grandparents in the countryside and spreading out a bedsheet with honey in the center on the edge of a grassy meadow. In a kind of low-tech precursor to Pokémon schoolboys would collect living insects and even battle them against each other.
I was fascinated and asked a million questions about the different species and their relative strengths and weaknesses. At first Tetsunori tried his best to answer my queries but eventually he shouted out in exasperation:
“I don’t know man! I don’t care about fucking beetle I just wanted card!”
The broad appeal of trading cards is responsible for me getting my hands back on this artifact nearly thirty years after it was first printed in what seems like a minor miracle. When my friend Steve Lawrence first converted his oil paintings into this format to sell at the San Diego Comic Con at least one buyer acquired a set out of interest in the trading card in general. Steve has been homeless around Los Angeles for just over two decades and hasn’t been spotted by a friend or acquaintance in at least half of one but a lucky Google search led me to an eBay card-monger across the country with a set to sell.
Steve’s current circumstances are somewhat akin to the quantum puzzle of Schrödinger’s Cat – in the absence of either proof-of-life or it’s morbid opposite it makes sense to assume the best. I’ll be dedicating an entire chapter to Steve, his multiple creative pursuits and the profound influence he had on me as a budding aesthete but for now I’ll focus on his painting work and this card set.
He was a dedicated reader of Juxtapoz and closely followed the associated “lowbrow” art movement – looking back at his work now the influences of Robert Williams and Kenny Scharf are unmistakable. At the same time there is an innocence present in his canvases that hints at his earlier years spent operating a twee-pop record label called rugcore. Considering his laborious process of carefully layering oil paints until patches of color became finely detailed menageries of figures from vintage toys and his own imagination he churned out work at astonishing rate.
In the three or four years following the production of this card set he further honed his visual vocabulary on a handful of canvases that may well be lost to time. These cards are alarmingly flimsy, an issue with either their printing or the photographing of the actual paintings made nearly half of them come out too dark and I feel incredibly lucky to have had the opportunity to buy them again.
Some folks who have led lives less chaotic than mine might well still have sets in their possession but I seriously doubt this object will ever be available for purchase anywhere again.
************ BEWARE OF THE EVIL OF ********* ***************SELF PROMOTION**************
DIVING GOD / CASTLE FREAK SOLO MUSICALS : Wicca’d World Press 2023
I made a few of these things earlier this year and sent a few to friends, a zine faire and an online shop. After doing Bleak End at Bernie’s for a while I decided to shift my approach and produce a pair of consecutive musicals in which I’d be the sole vocal performer. In each case I enlisted a group of friends to help with music.
The first is called Castle Freak and examines the period of time where the beast from Grimm’s fairytale is entirely alone. He strikes out at his lavish surroundings with boorish fury, he dreams of the day he was cursed while questioning if his true tormentor ever left his side. He seeks for the innocent maiden that might save him but worries that he will only end up dragging her down into his personal hell.
The music was recorded in New Mexico with Dain Daller, Amander Speer, Sam Giles and a couple of samples for animal and weather sounds. Staging included elaborate makeup, a platter of disrespected grapes and chicken and finally a silver plated goblet to be thrown through a mirror.
The next piece was Diving God – continuing the theme of wretched men alone in exile it features Lucifer from Paradise Lost as he is cast from heaven;
“Prayer doesn’t suit you, you who rebelled. Heaven still bleeds through the hole where you fell. This is your future this is your fate. This is your nature this is your state…
For this one I put together an improvised lounge jazz band in Chicago with Henry Glover – drums, Liam Warfield – bass, Dain Daller – Farfisa, Amanda Speer – saxophone and Jeffrey Rocketmild Jefferson on clarinet with Lucifer on vocals. After two very brief practices we were ready to perform.
Although I had undoubtedly made them this way it saddened me that these pieces would simply cease to exist after as little as one performance. I thought how I might give them new life and decided on illustrated libretto. A big inspiration was a fancy printing of Milton’s Masque of Comus. I thought about packaging them with a recording of an audio rip from spectator’s uploads but went the awkward way of printing links to the actual videos instead.
Someone suggested a QR Code while I was in the copy shop but unfortunately I didn’t think of that.
I have a few copies left of the first run of 25 that can be had for $10 ppd in US with shipping discount for multiple copies. Message berniebleak@gmail.com to claim your copy.
Ok back to The Loft and another gospel next time!
Adventures in the Undiscovered Interior of Underground America 