Appendix Apocalypse: Album Artwork

This time last year I had a ruptured appendix which required surgery. Despite being wheeled into the hospital at 6am stating I had sudden cessation of agonising abdominal pain over McBurney’s point (a clear sign of ruptured appendix, which I pointed out) it took the NHS eight hours to give me a basic clinical examination, 15 hours to give me antibiotics, and 28 hours wait in A&E before I could get surgery. The extent of my condition only became clear after 2 hours of surgery: my appendix had ruptured by 50% at the base by the cecum, and wrapped tightly in the surrounding omentum which created a challenging clean up job. The surgeon said I would have died without the appendectomy, and had understandable concerns for my recovery. When a surgeon worries about your “recovery” that means your “survival”. 

Weeks ensued of peritonitis, followed by a grumbling postoperative abscess. Given the standard of ‘care’ I had previously received, I decided to treat myself using herbal medicine. During my interminable A&E delay, I had started hallucinating as though I was looking out on the bleak ignorance of the world from inside a stagnating lime green fishbowl, with my internal organs churning in a dishwasher of their own faecal gravy. All around me was the madness and brutality of a medieval hell, which reminded me of the Hieronymus Bosch painting The Garden of Earthly Delights (1510). Completely unable to get through to the NHS staff the importance of getting immediate surgery, and in a private fishbowl of mortal torture, all I could do was elevate my consciousness above my broken body, and shine down compassion and unconditional love upon myself. 

During my convalescence I compiled this album. I felt something creative was in order to say I am here, I am alive, I will be whole again. Fuck you NHS, I survived in spite of your murderous negligence. I won’t ever be inanely banging pots and pans on my front doorstep like a clapping seal to say thanks for all your bullshit hard work.

Return of the Light: Album Artwork

One of the first things I did in the new year was make a dance compilation to keep the blood pumping, called Return of the Light. Some of it is old skool house and dance choons which I think shouldn't fade into obscurity so easily; some feature nostalgic female vocal mixes, e.g. Sade & Lisa Stansfield; and some of it is less frequented but contemporary Euro-dance like Gudrun Von Laxenburg, Elin Ey, etc. Now the nights are drawing in a bit, I am already hankering after lullabies and incantations to welcome back the sun. Anyway, below is the album artwork I compiled. If you're interested in the music, the tracks are currently all available on Youtube. 

LCD Soundsystem: New Body Rhumba (2022)

I recently watched Noah Baumbach's film White Noise , which is described as an absurdist comedy-drama, based on the book by Don DeLillo. For me it was a  David Lynch-like obscurantist meh-fest, yet with some delightful fluffy retro feels. Every time Adam Driver opened his mouth though, my inner Ewok kept screaming “You killed Han Solo” to the extent that it over-rode any critical appreciation of the film. The whole gig was rescued at the end by the minutely choreographed supermarket dance scene set to the track New Body Rhumba by LCD Soundsystem.

New Body Rhumba , the first single LCD have created in four years, has already been nominated by Critics' Choice Movie Awards (Best Song), North Dakota Film Society, Music City Film Critics Association, North Carolina Film Critics Association, Pandora International Film Critics , Chicago Indie Critics (all for Best Original Song) and Hollywood Music in Media Awards (Best Original Song in a Feature Film). No doubt it will be nominated for more film music awards, and might even win one of them at some point unless it dies of nomination-suffocation syndrome.

Whilst others have referred to its post-modern punky anti-capitalist lyrics, I was more flabbergasted by the great similarity of New Body Rhumba to the music of the B52s. And weirdly enough, whilst it is generally agreed that the B52s don't get enough credit for their services to punk-kind, it transpires that James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem founder) voiced this very opinion during a 2013 Red Bull Music Academy Lecture. So, tell me if he didn't at least once think to himself 'hey am I writing an 80's style B52s tribute song here?'. I would have no complaints if he did.

Lughnasadh (Lammas)

At Lughnasadh the first fruits of the harvest were cut down and offered to the gods. Celebration circular dances were performed in which the chiefs of the tribes wore horned headpiecesnin honour of hunting and physical prowess, and corncakes were baked in the shape of the corn king, Bel, who was treated as a sacrificial god and eaten. The autumn festival was one of plenty and prosperity, of celebration of the fruits of the earth and its bounty. It was also a time when alliances were arranged and marriages contracted. There was also a Celtic system in which a trial marriage could be entered into at Lughnasadh, and if the union proved unhappy, the contract could be dissolved at Beltain.

From: The Celtic Book of Seasonal Meditations, by Claire Hamilton, 2002. 

Almond, moong and adzuki beans.

Moong dahl with homemade besan (chickpea flour) chapati.

Fresh fenugreek and chickweed salad greens. 

Home harvested kale, kohlrabi, and rainbow chard.

A Lincolnshire harvest.

Peace restored. 

Osho Energy Darshans

The term  "Energy darshan" first appears in Osho material from Feb 1976 to denote events, where people would be invited by Osho to come close and be touched or guided to allow "their energy to move" while in specified postures. Sometimes Osho would ask another sannyasin in attendance to stand behind the recipient, hold their hands or whatever. These "shaktipat" (energy transmission) events were a regular occurrence with Osho.

In Feb of 1979, Darshans became wilder, more extravagant and on a much larger scale, coming to involve the whole ashram. The "mediums" Osho asked to assist in these energy transmissions became more numerous, and exclusively women, where before there had been occasionally a man.

With recipients of the energy transmission, those on whom Osho's energy was focused; in the past it had always been just one person at a time, with the occasional exception of two closely-related sannyasins, but soon it became several, which also entailed more mediums.

Another feature was music. It is not known when exactly musicians were added to this energy soup, but it would not have been long after the mediums. As of this writing, no specific guidance has been found in Osho's words to direct the musicians and indicate precisely when this happened. The music consisted of many instruments but it was central to the form that no rhythm or melody be created. It was loud and chaotic and fast, building to a crescendo and then ebbing or suddenly stopping. Many drums and other percussion were included, as these are the most "primitive" instruments, and least likely to induce any "civilized" or conceptual "music appreciation" and "purest" in terms of energy.

Osho spoke many nights as this phenomenon took shape, after the "talking darshans", people getting initiated, coming and going and asking questions. The excerpts below are recorded in chapter 22 of Won't You Join the Dance? taken from various Darshans.

All three of you start feeling the energy moving upwards -- feel pulled upwards. All feel together as if one energy. Just take it up. Don't be afraid. Feel pulled up. If sounds start arising, allow it. Now feel the energy going back down, just as if the whole energy is going down, as if you are disappearing into the earth.

Perfectly good. Things are perfectly good. Keep it (a box) with you and whenever you need me, just do the same experiment: sit silently, first start feeling energy going up. Raise your hands and feel pulled, and keep a tension being pulled, for at least five to seven minutes. Then relax, and then feel you are disappearing into the earth; even if you fall onto the earth, fall, and then rest for four or five minutes. This will give you tremendous transformation.

Completely forget yourselves; just become energies, all together, all four of you. Let it become a dance together. Just stop all movement. Be perfectly still. Be utterly like statues.

Just do one thing: the energy is at the sex centre, so all of you pull the sex centre up and then relax it, pull it up and relax it, seven times, not more than that. If any sounds start coming, feel orgasmic, feel sex energy moving upwards. Feel ecstatic. Let the energy become pure bliss. Be in a dance.

More on Sannyas Wiki

Stacia

It was a great shame to hear of the passing of Lemmy last month. In truth, it’s a wonder to me how he lasted as long as he did. Such is the stuff of legend. Of all the tributes that mentioned the brilliance of his alma mater & first true love Hawkwind, I didn’t hear anyone mention probably the most interesting character of the band: Stacia!

Stacia was an interpretive dance artist, over 6 feet tall (some say 6’2”), on stage often covered in the obscure grease paint of exotic symbols, moving like a gyrating psychedelic skin canvas on a space mission. That is, when she was dressed at all. Her bacchanalia was legendary enough to match that of the band members, who held her in high regard by all accounts.

The exact circumstances of her arrival in Hawkwind are unclear, but it is agreed that after she started dancing for the band in 1971 she became a central part of their live performances, and their artwork. Stacia was pictured in the iconic ‘Space Ritual’ fold out sleeve designed by Barney Bubble. Starting in 1971, she carried on through to 1975, so this included the Space Ritual years I mentioned in my blog of Aug 2015. Liner notes to the album In Search of Space (1971) indicate that poet and lyricist Robert Calvert recruited her for live shows, but Stacia herself stated in Melody Maker that she attended a show and, inspired by the music, got on stage and performed an impromptu dance to the band's music. Interestingly, she received no formal dance training after being kicked out of ballet class for being too tall. It was all just natural stoned groove.

Barney Bubble's Rendition of Stacia

Nik Turner (saxophonist and flautist for the band) fills in a bit more detail in Mojo Magazine in a 2012 interview; "I met Stacia for the first time at the Isle of Wight... She said, "Can I dance with you?" and I said, "Yeah, but you must take off all your clothes and paint your body." She took all her clothes off but unfortunately I didn't have any body paint. That was like her audition." In the 2007 BBC Four documentary (clip above), Lemmy said that she was working as a bookbinder before she joined the band, and others that she was a petrol pump attendant in Cornwall.

Jason Schafer, in his Dangerous Minds article entitled Stacia, Hawkwind’s Buxom cosmic Dancer Discusses Her Wild Sex Life in Vintage Interviews says:

I was checking out a Hawkwind fan site the other day when I came across a couple of interviews with the busty performer, both from 1974. The first one to catch my eye was from Penthouse and was entitled “Long, tall Stacia – the six foot lady with the two-way sex life.” The other, simply titled “Stacia, the girl in the band” came from the August 3rd edition of Record Mirror. Stacia comes off as a total badass in both, as I would imagine that you’d have to be to hang with the likes of Lemmy Kilmister all day long.

Actually very little is known publicly about Stacia beyond those two 1974 interviews and a smidgen derived from a 2010 Sunday Times retrospective entitled Time and place: Stacia Blake. Most of them go on about her bisexual propensities, onstage nudity, and prolific drinking habits as though they were the utmost in wanton debauchery. Things that nowadays, unless you live under Puritan Rock, are actually quite tame. Funny it’s always the ones who have the strict religious upbringing that go on to break all the taboos. Stacia was from a religious Catholic background. "My sisters didn't mind the nude bit, but my parents weren't too keen until I gave it up. Then my mother really got into the band - my aunts have even turned up at gigs. We're a Catholic family y'know, although I'm not religious."

From the interviews, we do find out about her relationship with then boyfriend Arthur Kane from New York Dolls, her girlfriend Ingrid, some thoughts about fans and her take on Women’s Lib: Stacia was 21 at the time (“I’m still a kid”), and lived in Earls Court with two men, two other girls, and two budgerigars. Well, had to mention the budgerigars. It is the Bohemian Budgie after all.

I lived in a basement flat at No14A Steeles Road, in Hampstead, northwest London, between about 1971 and 1975. I had lived at various addresses in London after moving from Ireland, including a squat in Camden, but Steeles Road was the place I was in for longest. I lived there with Roy Dyke, who became my husband and was the drummer in the rock band Ashton, Gardner and Dyke. I had my daughter, Aysha, while we lived there. I can’t remember how much the rent was, or even if we paid any. It was two rooms, a bedroom at the back and a tiny little kitchen off the hall. You couldn’t swing a cat in it. Being a basement flat, it was very damp.

Time and place: Stacia Blake

Sunday Times, 2010

Someone likened her to Dracula's aunt. 

Hawkwind, being a "weird" band, pull some "weird" crowds, especially in America where Stacia is constantly hounded by both male and female groupies. One lunatic even tried to murder her during a gig and she wasn't dancing naked at the time!

"I was doing a mime of a robot who was given a pill and becomes human for a spell. I was freakin' out at the time, and I felt this choking sensation round my neck. People thought it was a guy hugging me at first which was cool, but a roadie saw that he was strangling me and he threw the bloke off the stage.

"He even had a go at me a second time," recalls Stacia, "and the hall bouncers beat him up and threw him out. I was really shaken, and I wasn't much good for the rest of the tour."

"When we made Silver Machine we attracted a Top 20 audience of filthy little boys who came along to stare at me." There is a hint of bitterness in her voice.

That was a couple of years ago. Since then the band have developed, and Stacia dances naked no more. She has nine different costumes to choose from, and the dirty little boys have disappeared from the audiences. Ironically the reaction was pretty "cool" when she first appeared in her birthday suit: "Most people weren't surprised, because I don't think Hawkwind could surprise anybody. They get into so many weird things."

From Stacia, the girl in the band

Record Mirror, 1974

I love the way Stacia turns a murderous double assault into an opportunity to design a clutch of psychedelic outfits to dance in. Irrepressible genius. It speaks volumes.

Stacia’s 1975 departure must've come as a bit of a hammer blow to Hawkwind and fans, coinciding as it did with the simultaneous loss of Lemmy (to Motorhead) and Robert Calvert. Whatever happened on the preceding Warrior on the Edge of Time tour to precipitate this is anyone’s guess, but I’m expecting grueling tours, groupies, drugs, ennui, and complete mental and physical burnout would come high on the list.

After leaving Hawkwind, Stacia returned to private life and married Roy Dyke. As former Hawkwind manager Doug Smith said in the October 2000 issue of Classic Rock magazine, "The last anybody heard, Stacia was married with children and living in Hamburg with her husband Roy Dyke, formerly of Ashton, Gardner and Dyke." The couple has a daughter, Aysha Dyke, who lives in Hamburg and is currently in the band Generations of Music.

Stacia is now living in Ireland and working as an accomplished artist. She has said about her work: "It is greatly influenced by my love of nature, in all its aspects. Landscapes, people, animals, sound and movement. All these things permeate my being. I allow them to become part of me. After a time of reflection, all these impressions culminate in the creation of inner landscapes which are then released to create the images you see in my work." I have included a montage of Stacia’s artwork below, and may yet blog some more of it.

Links
Stacia. Wikipedia.
Stacia: Artist Website
Stacia Blake, Sunday Times, 2010

Stacia, the Girl in the Band. Record Mirror, 1974
Long, Tall Stacia – the Six Foot Lady with the Two-Way Sex Life. Penthouse, 1974
Hawkwind’s Buxom Cosmic Dancer Discusses Her Wild Sex Life in Vintage Interviews. Dangerous Minds.

North Utsire

Misty Lux

Misty Lux Review. Mondo Marveloso Monday 10^th June 2008

Misty Lux is a fire breathing, broken glass walking tattooed burlesque dancer. I bumped into her at Tiger Lounge, Manchester in 2008 as part of their wonderful Mondo Marveloso night, now sadly defunct. She went by the former name Cherry Burlesque as part of the Fanny Divine troop. Here is a review I wrote for her after seeing her show. I understand she now lives in New York, and has a taxidermy business called Morbid Curiosities. Indeed.

Some people are imbued with animal magnetism. They penetrate your consciousness somehow. I don’t know why, or how. Why it is, when certain people enter the room, every corpuscle of your racing blood is immediately orientated towards them like filings on a vivid Kirlan masterpiece. They occupy the centre of the room, wherever they choose to go, and you orbit them like an obedient satellite, looking hopelessly on as your heart is wilfully sucked into the inevitable vortex of attraction. So it was with Misty Lux. Of course, at the time I did not know of her great talents… I just knew her as ‘that pretty chick with the red hair’. So very pretty. The most radiant celestial being in my narrowing vision that night. I was heading for a cataclysmic implosion.

Imagine my surreal surprise when, some time on in that deliciously decadent night, my head swimming with oaken brandy, the musical mastery of Corrigan bubbling seahorses of absinthe into a corroding ceegar mind, a friend whispered “Its that red haired bird you like.. she’s the burlesque act”. BOOM. At the edge of the universe.. the laws of creation change. The very matter which constitutes us is remoulded and morphed into spasmodic contortions of liquid swirling passion. The fantastic becomes possible. How can a 5 foot 2 inch woman command such an orchestra of emotion? “And now laydees and Gentlemen… I give you Misty Lux”…

It is a conundrum of life that a man wants both an angel and a whore in the same woman. And yet he is never satisfied with either. Misty Lux is the antedote to this confounding problem. She deftly tiptoes along the knife edge between these two archetypes. Incredibly, she invokes courtly Love and Lust in one emotion... balls and brain unite in conflagration! She is a Force of Nature with the elemental power to transcend her own physical body. Where the King Cnut failed to control the oceans, the goddess in her succeeded. She can turn an ocean of pheromones wincing back on itself, or create a bawdy Tsunami of passion. She is the wicked shaman- tigress of primal dreams. With the wink of an eye, and a shoulder shrug, she will leave you desolate… a crying manchild on the Alter of the Earth, begging for her eyes to return to you. And in the same despondent moment she is there again… red velvet and lace with a smile you know is all for you, this time.

And in the height of it all… CORNISH PASTIES! What insane malevolence possessed the Gremlins to place them in my line of sight? Couldn’t they see I was floundering under Her spell? Suddenly a pack of hungry silhouette wolf men were there feasting… not only on this delicatessen of flesh, but on every available savoury morsel, gorging and gormandising in an orgy of self satisfaction… HEATHANS. BEASTS!  She has aroused the most base of desires in her followers. I writhe to free my mind.. its deliberate! Pasty Persecution! Then… as the climax is reached, the waves part and I see her rising again through the awe-struck crowd, but now with? FIRE! I fear for her delicate flesh, her mortal pain, the obscenity and perversion in me that led to this point. I falter in my faith. But she is noble and kind, and wants to teach me about the Mystery. She teaches me as the pale snow of winter sublimates into radiant flames of Solstice, so her pale flesh becomes one with Fire. And when it all ends in a groaning shudder of satisfaction… it is not over, for She is renewed. 

North Utsire

Human Be- In (1967)

“Well,” said Alpert, “it’s a hell of a gathering. It’s just being. Humans being. Being together.”

“Yeah,” said Allen “It’s a Human Be-In.”

"From the outset the costumed people in the Haight-Ashbury did not seem to form simply a new Bohemia. Almost immediately I referred to them in my field notes as "costumed people," partly because I had not yet heard the term "hippie," but also because I recognized that they could not be easily classified, that they did indeed hear a different drummer, that the meaning of their drama was hidden from me. Nor did my immediate colleagues use the term "hippie" at that time. referring instead to "the young tourists" or "the acid-heads." A young social worker who worked at the Institute and lived in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood immediately adjacent to the Medical Center initiated me into the use of the term "hippie," and I remember asking her to spell it for me when I finally realized that she was not using the older term "hipster." At about the same time as I began work, a long story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle on a commune of "acid-heads," who lived in a large old house in a poor neighborhood, not too far from the Haight-Ashbury; the word "hippie" was not used in the story at all, although in another month- so swiftly did the term catch on- the local newspapers were generally using the term imprecisely for various costumed young people anywhere in the Bay area."

Elegantly uncostumed costume- people

"Thus the neighborhood was in many ways ripe for the events that took place in such intensity during the period of which I write. It included a population geared in many ways to  the young and to new ideas, in particular to the idea of one world. Its flexibility can be demonstrated by the very fact that throughout the winter and spring, in spite of the influx  of young people whose numbers increased at an almost unprecedented rate in the life of any city, the neighborhood became increasingly accepting. By June, various estimates were  made that about 15,000 young flower children were living in the neighborhood, and most of this growth had taken place within the space of a few months."

Ginsburg holding court

"Thus within the space of a very few weeks, the nature of my feeling about these young people changed drastically. Mistakes they made, but they recognized them; they were critical of themselves; and they were flexible. To my amazement, they read many of the books that I had read as an undergraduate over thirty years before- D. H. Lawrence, Freud, James Joyce, Aldous Huxley, for example; and well-worn copies of books by these authors were pored over in the Psychedelic Shop, which periodically seemed to operate mainly as a  library. Moreover, they were concerned about the problems of child-rearing practices in middle-class American society and were exploring alternative solutions, such as the kibbutz in Israel; such books as Melford E. Spiro's Children of the Kibbutz were regularly borrowed back and forth by members of the young community whether they were parents or not. Under their influence, I read some of the books that they liked but that I had never gotten  around to reading, although most of them were at least familiar titles to me; the Tolkien books are notable examples. I discovered the importance of these books for the young people. Although Tolkien has denied that he was writing an allegory about Western civilization and the fear of nuclear destruction, the hippies read his books as an allegory for  their time and position. The consistently good people in the Tolkien books are Hobbits and  they have the lowliest status of all the groups of characters in the books. The hippies  thought of themselves as being or becoming Hobbits; from time to time as the winter wore  on, a sign would appear in the window of one of their gathering places to this effect: Do not add to the street confusion this weekend. There may be busts. Be good little Hobbits and stay home. I came to understand that the hierarchy of status in the establishment was one  of the serious concerns of this coalescent group of young people. As a member of the  second sex and as a marginal person in my own professional world- whatever that is- I found this concern congenial to me. What I am suggesting here is that with the passage of a relatively short time and some openness to this young community, the stranger began to feel at home."

The Human Be-In

Helen Perry, 1970

Human Be-In Flyer

The above flyer is a rare piece of cultural ephemera and evocative of a certain era. Designed by Michael Bowen and Stanley Mouse it announces “A Gathering of the Tribes for a Human Be-In”. This watershed event catapulted the hippie scene to national prominence. Participants were asked to “Bring food to share, bring flowers, beads, costumes, feathers, bells, cymbals and flags.” That they did. These ideas transfixed mainstream culture, and the phenomenon of the “hippie” burst full force into the public consciousness, transforming a generation.

Human Be- In Poster (one of several)

As a prelude to the first Summer Of Love which made the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco a symbol of the American counterculture and introduced a suburban generation to the word “psychedelic”, the first Human Be-In in 1967 focused key ideas of liberation against the prevailing social norms of conventional middle-class commonality. Organiser Allen Cohen invited speakers on the day including Timothy Leary who set the tone with his famous phrase – “Turn on, tune in, drop out” and Allen Ginsburg who chanted his poetry. Janis Joplin, Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead provided the soundtrack to gathered masses who participated in the consumption of “White Lightning LSD” provided by underground chemist Owsley Stanley. Incidentally Stanley designed some of the first high-fidelity sound systems, culminating in the massive and infamous amplification rig used by the Grateful Dead in their live shows.

Ginsburg chanting mantras

It’s estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 people showed up. The event was seen by many as a meld between philosophically opposed factions of the San Francisco counterculture. One on side were the Berkeley radicals, who were tending towards increased militancy in response the the U.S. government’s Vietnam War. On the other side were the non-partisan hippies who urged peaceful protest. Although their means were drastically different, they held many of the same goals- personal empowerment, cultural and political decentralisation, communal living, ecological awareness, higher states of consciousness and liberal political consciousness. The happening was more than a war-protest. Authority was questioned on civil rights, women’s rights and spawned it’s own alternative media in the form of newspapers and radio stations as well as new directions in music, art and technology. The dynamic milieu of San Fransisco in the 1970s gave birth to the ultimate gesture of modern personal power – the personal computer, countering the prevailing main frame computer paradigm which implied centralised authority.

Humans being-in

“The predominant feeling among the Hippies from about 1965 through the summer of ’67 was that they were agents and witnesses of a dawning of a new age. An age in which the warrior spirit, that had vaulted western man to the domination and potential destruction of creation, would be dissolved in the spiritual transcendence of the saint. Ghandi and Martin Luther King were our heroes and we had turned to the rich heritage of Asian mysticism and metaphysics for our inspiration and our practice. We leaped across oceans and through time to pre-Christian mythologies like the American Indian, the Egyptian and the occult and pagan philosophies of Europe. We studied with Buddhists and Indian gurus, native shamans, witches and yogis. We turned from Aristotelian and Christian dualism to the four pronged logic of Vedanta philosophy. We studied the Upanishads, the Tao Te Ching, Alan Watt’s books on Zen Buddhism, and Hermann Hesse’s novels, especially Siddhartha. We wouldn’t leave the house without consulting the I Ching, or our Tarot cards or our astrological charts.”

“Were we being naive or superstitious? No, I think this was the most important and long lasting aspect of the 60s despite the backlash of the 80s. It was the beginning of a renaissance in thought and culture similar to the Renaissance that brought Greek and Roman images and ideas back to Europe in the middle ages. Ideas that eventually led to the end of the domination of the Catholic Church, the rise of the nation state, the rebirth of democracy and the development of science.”

"The Gathering of the Tribes" in a "union of love and activism" was an overwhelming success, Over twenty thousand people came to the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park. The psychedelic bands played -Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Poets Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, Michael McClure, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Lew Welch, and Lenore Kandel, read, chanted and sang. Tim(othy) Leary told everyone to "Turn on, Tune in and Drop out", the Diggers gave out free food. The Hells Angels guarded the generator cables that someone had cut, Owsley Stanley gave out free acid; a parachutist dropped like an angel from the sky and the whole world watched on the evening news. Soon there would be Be-Ins and Love-Ins from Texas to Paris and the psychedelic and political aspects of the youth culture would continue to grow hand in hand everywhere." – Allen Cohen

"Turn In, Tune Out, and Drop One"

When will the next of the big free love- festivals be? 

North Utsire

Bobby "Boris" Pickett: Monster Mash (1964)

From American Bandstand. October 13, 1964.

Monster Mash is a 1962 novelty song and the best-known song by Bobby "Boris" Pickett. After his discharge from the Army in 1961 Paxton became a member of a vocal group called The Cordials and tried his hand at show business. He spent his time taxiing, performing with the Cordials at night and going to auditions during the day. He would do impersonations between songs, often imitating the voice of Boris Karloff. One night, while performing with his band, Pickett did a monologue in imitation of horror movie actor Karloff while performing the Diamonds' Little Darlin'. The audience loved it and fellow band member Lenny Capizzi suggested the pair take advantage of the novelty song craze that was prevalent in the early sixties so they wrote a song around Pickett's imitation of the horror movie star. Then recorded it.

The song was released as a single on Gary S. Paxton's Garpax Records label in August 1962 along with a full-length LP called The Original Monster Mash, which contained several other monster-themed tunes. The Monster Mash single was #1 on the Hot 100 chart on October 20–27 of that year, just before Halloween. It has been a perennial holiday favorite ever since. It was on the top 50 in November of 2014, a full 50 years after its debut. I had a most enjoyable Halloween party in a caravan in the Lake District to (I think) the 1977 Monster Mash album, so it inspires fond memories. After getting tanked up we went down to the sea and used my friend as a human compass lying on the floor to point out the North Star. It was great fun, until we realised he had done a whisky sick, and we were spinning him around in it. Mixed evening. On the whole, good.

Bit of 1953 Boris for ya

Pickett and Capizzi recorded the song with Gary S. Paxton, then-unknown piano player Leon Russell, Johnny MacRae, Rickie Page, and Terry Berg, credited as "The Crypt-Kickers". (Mel Taylor, drummer for the Ventures, is sometimes credited with playing on the record as well, while Russell, who arrived late for the session, appears on the single's B-side, "Monster Mash Party".) The song was partially inspired by Paxton's earlier novelty hit "Alley Oop".

Pickett and Capizzi finished the “Monster Mash” in one afternoon, then cut it with producer Gary Paxton. Eight weeks later, in October 1962, the song was No. 1. The recording itself was completed in only a couple of hours. It was rejected by four major labels before Paxton, released "Monster Mash" on his own label. 

"Monster Mash" was the product of a very specific cultural moment and that upon its release the audience understood precisely what it was parodying. The two fads it drew on were the spate of Twist-inspired early 60's dance craze records, in this case specifically "Mashed Potato Time" by Dee Dee Sharp (based on the "Mashed Potato" dance craze, which is where The "Mash" in the title comes in); and the contemporaneous movie monster craze, ignited by the re-packaging for television of the Universal Studios 1950's monster movie catalogue, under the collective title "Shock Theatre".  The "Monster Mash" was a variation of the Mashed Potato, in which the footwork was the same but Frankenstein-style monster gestures were made with the arms and hands.

Bobby Pickett's record parodies "Mashed Potato Time" by turning it into a song about the movie monsters craze. The monsters in question have congregated at Dr. Frankenstein's lab and learn a new dance called the Monster Mash. The song is narrated by a mad scientist whose monster, late one evening, rises from a slab to perform the new dance. The dance becomes "the hit of the land" when the scientist throws a party for other monsters. Pickett does most of the record in his Boris Karloff voice, except for one line, which is the record's most brilliant moment: At the end of the fourth verse, in the exact same spot where Dee Dee Sharp had exclaimed "They even do it to 'Dear Lady Twist,'"

Bobby "Boris" Pickett doing the Mash 

Being 1962, many of the sound effects had to be created in the studio. The producers came up with several low-budget but effective sound effects for the recording, as follows:

• The coffin being opened was made by pulling a rusty nail out of a lump of wood with the claw of a hammer.
• The bubbling sounds came from blowing through a straw in a glass of water.
• The sound of the chains was made by dropping chains onto plywood planks on the record studio floor.

Incredibly despite the lampoonery, a recent "Roots of Rap" geneology tree has Monster Mash as a full branch on the tree, equal to Walter Brennan to Leonard Nimoy, and Lorne Greene!

In a 2004 interview with the Washington Post, Pickett said:

Washington Post: If you never worked another day in your life, would the royalties from Monster Mash be enough to support you? Are we talking big bucks here? Six figures a year perhaps?

Bobby "Boris" Pickett: Let's just say that it has paid the rent for 43 years.

North Utsire