A Don Van Vliet Atomizer Air-bulb Invention - rob chalfen

Written for the LA Weekly http://blogs.laweekly.com/westcoastsound/2010/12/captain_beefheart_facts.php

“We're matter – the stars are matter – but it doesn't matter”

a fine artist before he was a musician, after his musical career ended he resumed painting and achieved an international reputation.

at 11 had his own show sculpting animals on LA tv. Won a scholarship to study art in europe, but his folks wouldnt let him go, as all artists were 'fags'. Folks moved to Lancaster to get him away from the decadent element, where he met Frank Zappa

Saw Gregory Corso read in LA at 13.

with Zappa reconfigured R&B along lines of monster movie fanzines & MAD.

in the late 60s fused delta blues, beat poetics, Dada/Surrealist techniques, avant jazz, R&B & the kitchen sink into a metaphysics of the imagination that tore a giant hole in the ozone of pop-artistic possibility. Like an american Van Gogh he seened to open up new landscapes of consciousness as much as of music.

Claimed shamanistic & supernatural abilities; on one occasion the drummer in my band, following around Don & Dr John, witnessed the glass panes of a hotel lobby mysteriously turn opaque as they passed. He was a life-long defender of the rights of animals & wildlife.

ran his band as a sort of hothouse commune/cult of domineering personality, one veteran later describing the experience as 'my Vietnam". He communicated musical ideas via cassettes of his piano playing, singing and late night whistlings over the phone. The musicians were then expected to transcribe these fragments verbatim, and assemble them perfectly into 4-dimensional musical constructions.

he composed implausibly complex solo guitar pieces like modern acid madrigals

Zappa produced the Magic Band's masterpiece, Trout Mask Replica, in 1969, initially as a sort of Folkways-type anthropological field recording at the band's commune. Later Don insisted that it all be re-recorded in the studio, convinced that Zappa had been trying to do it on the cheap. (some of the home tapes made it onto the record anyway) . In the studio, he refused to wear phones, syncing his vocals with the band only via the faint leakage through the thick plate glass.

Opening acts, in Boston at any rate, included Mississippi Fred McDowell, the NY Dolls, Larry Coryell, Bonnie Raitt/Dave Maxwell, Dr. John & a trained monkey vaudeville act. "Did you like the Dolls? Oh, balls!"

in the mid 70s he wandered in an aesthetic wilderness - his label dropped him, he fell in with some sharp operators connected with the band Bread (!) and tried to record 'safe' pop. His Magic band left him, and he toured with a pick up group. One older cat Ellis Horn had played clarinet with Lu Waters Jazz Band in the 40s and had a feature playing 'Sweet Georgia Brown" on an old albert-style clarinet, upturned at the bell. "He sucked a cosmic particle up into his horn," opined Don.
Zappa helped jumpstart his career, incorporating him into his touring ensemble, though complained Beefheart couldnt cut the arrangements. Several of Zappa's sidemen later defected to the Magic Band.

In 1976 I interviewd Stiv Bators of the Dead Boys, who very enthusiastically claimed Don as a key influence. "A case of the punks!"

his 1970 & 1982 music videos, both rejected by tv as too far out, are both in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art.

Billy Ruane by Chris Rich

Billy Ruane by Chris Rich - 27 October 2010

sorry, evidently I had prematurely posted a draft.

"When It Was A Game" by Dr. Fishmonger

I don’t know if many people are aware of it, but I played a season with the Atlantic City Poiuyts in the seventies. I don’t remember which year. It was when I was drinking. I was signed on as a reserve overblat and as a result, I was concerned that I wouldn’t get much time on the flutney. Of course, I needn’t have bothered myself, there is a saying in the sport “anything can happen to an overblat.” Oh, can it ever, I would learn!

It was my privilege to play on the same squad with the nigh mythic Draja Druvnik in the waning years of his career. Disappointingly, my conversation with this legendary player was limited as he spoke Esperanto as his first and only language. This was made an even greater annoyance because on any given day one of my team mates would solemnly enjoin me to “listen to Draja! He knows all the tricks!” Once, upon asking his advice, he replied “Via patrina armeo botoj estas plej moda.” A fat lot of help that was!

My best friend on the team was Carl Yoelin, one of the wicket-men, who was the hero of our game against the Evanston Echidnas. He was a Menonite from a county in Southern Wisconsin that nobody had ever heard of. “It makes Satan happy that you’re a Jew. Think about it.” He used to say. Carl knew the rules to hundreds of card games in spite of the fact that his religion forbade him from playing any of them. It just seemed so perverse, but perversity was the norm in this game.

That year, the house band was the Ventnor Heights Marching Gamelan and they were a rip-roaring first class outfit if ever there was one! After the fourth ogre of every home game, they came out and played “Look Out Little Ruth” while marching in formation in the shape of pancakes and bacon. It was a show stopper! You just don’t see stuff like that anymore.

Being a reserve man, I spent most of my time “guarding the dummy” if you know what I mean. Don’t get me wrong, it was an honor just to be there and it was a weekly paycheck to boot. As I have previously noted, my time on the flutney was limited and much of it involved degradation and humiliation, but anyone can tell you that in this sport, degradation and humiliation is about as scarce as blondes in Stockholm, so I didn’t feel singled out.

It was in the seventh ogre of my final game, that my big moment came! We were facing the Allentown ‘Pataphysicians and I was called out to run guard whilst Druvnik carried the pritz! The crowd rose and hurled insults at the team and each other as the play commenced. What a moment! I raised my arms in triumph as I jogged beside the sport’s greatest player when a sharp pain caused me instantly to curl up like a cocktail shrimp and lie on the ground helplessly trying to draw breath! I looked up to discover that it was Druvnik himself who had jabbed the pointy end of his frulip into my testicles just for a lark. “Vi bonsorta knabo!” He shouted gleefully, “Mia fiŝo havas malvarman kaj lia familia nomo estas Coffsnowski!” At that point I was handed a penalty for “not taking it like a man” and was sent back to the bench.

The next week I quit the team and decided to run for congress, but that’s another story.

An interview with Santa Claus by Dr. Fishmonger

An interview with Santa Claus
by Dr. Ahmed Fishmonger, Special Correspondent for Glib Magazine

Although journalistic exclusives are rare for Glib magazine, the prospect arose for one of our staff to interview no less a personage than the merry old elf himself, Santa Clause fresh off of his Christmas Eve run through all of Earth’s Christian nations. Jumping upon this golden opportunity, I was brought by light airplane to a location that I am allowed to be no more specific about save to say that it is in the vast region of northern Canada called Nunavut.

I could devote pages to describing the large factory complex that I was shown, all of which seemed to have been constructed in the early nineteenth century and manned by the most extraordinary personnel I had ever encountered, but that would merely distract from the main event, my encounter with the living legend himself.

I was escorted to an office in a small building that might have once been a small quaint house from some storybook although it seemed almost too perfect. Strangely, it was bigger on the inside that it appeared to be from the outside. Santa’s “den” was at the end of a long corridor. In truth, it was an old-fashioned, but very well appointed office. There was no computer on the desk nor was there a telephone however there was a large brass and glass device that resembled a stock ticker that spewed out a constant strip of paper containing names, addresses and various coded symbols all fed off of a roll of paper that never seemed to diminish in size.

Father Christmas seemed relaxed enough, but even on the day after the big event, he was a busy man and had no time to waste. Santa Claus seems to be a human being about sixty years old, only moderately overweight. He is indeed white bearded and has a decidedly jolly demeanor. He rang a little silver bell and one of several curvaceous female assistants that I had seen in the front office entered with a plate of ginger cookies and brandy-laced hot chocolate in spite of the fact that it was around nine-thirty a.m.

I began asking my questions.

GLIB: So, was that Mrs. Claus?

Claus: Ho ho! They’re all sort of Mrs. Claus, if ya’know what I mean.

GLIB: Ahem…yes, I believe I do. So maybe I should call you “Hef” rather than Santa?

CLAUS: Let’s not get too glib, young man. I work hard and I play hard. You try doing what I do without some serious R&R.

GLIB: No disrespect intended sir, but that brings up a point. Exactly how do you do what you do? It seems utterly impossible for a single human being to accomplish this great feat that you perform year after year and just how long have you been doing this?

CLAUS: The operation had gone on at a small scale since about the year twelve hundred, but we really expanded around the turn of the 18th-19th century and have been growing ever since. I owe a lot to a well-organized support staff and of course I am not a human being.

GLIB: It almost goes without saying that we would make that assumption seeing as you have had the same appearance for centuries. So what exactly are you, then?

CLAUS: It’s no secret, people refer to it all the time calling me a merry old imp and it’s true, I am in fact an imp.

GLIB: An imp?

CLAUS: Yes an imp. A minor demon. I work in the service of the Great Dark One to keep the pagan traditions alive. I doubt that anyone could dispute that I have been quite effective.

GLIB: I think that my readers would be surprised to see you admit that so easily. Don’t you think it reduces your effectiveness to be so straightforward about your intent?

CLAUS: Not at all. Anyone can see that I have no connection with that Jesus fellow, but people still have no problem with me. It would be so easy for the world to dismiss me and I would be gone. The only force that keeps me in this world is the belief that people have in me. It doesn’t even have to be a belief in my actuality, merely the belief in me as a symbol. That’s all it takes. My workers are the elfin gentry, my symbology is that of the West’s ancient ways and yet generations of Christian men and women have encouraged their children to believe in me. I am one of Satan’s greatest triumphs!

GLIB (grinning and making heavy metal devil horns): Hail Satan! He he. But seriously, even with all of that, you don’t seem evil. I mean you bring toys to children. What could possibly be wrong with that?

CLAUS: Who said there was anything wrong with it? I believe in what I do and I think it brings people joy.

GLIB: Well, everyone loves getting stuff.

CLAUS: That’s right. Everyone loves getting stuff. I am the last place where people can simply get material things for nothing more than the act of believing in me and being nice.

GLIB: About that…being nice. You place quite a bit of stock in that, about a child being nice I mean. What defines that? What are the parameters?

CLAUS: Response to authority mostly. Obedience. I never define a rebellious child as nice but always as naughty. Parents find my existence to be a useful tool in enforcing discipline and I am happy to help in that regard.

GLIB: So the toys are bribes?

CLAUS: If you insist on putting it so simplistically, I suppose so. No one is compelled to accept my largesse but I do reward conformity and obedience and let me point out that it does not have to be conformity and obedience to me. It merely is to encourage the cultural value of those things.

GLIB: Why?

CLAUS: Well, the age of the Dark One is coming. I won’t tell you the exact date, so don’t bother asking, but it is coming. Those who have learned obedience as a value, you know, as a moral stance will be best prepared to deal with the new order.

GLIB: The new order?

CLAUS: The era when Satan rules supreme.

GLIB: According to the Book of Revelations, that should only be for a short time so far as Satan is concerned, then God has his kingdom on Earth.

CLAUS: Ah! Don’t you get it? It’s just a game between those two, a pissing contest, nothing more. When the whole human race thing is over with we all move on to something else. We have done it all plenty of times before. No-big-deal.

GLIB: But wait. Then what is the meaning of…


I was never to complete that last question as one of the female assistants chose that moment to enter the office and inform Santa that a group of local Inuits had arrived with several sled-loads of seal meat and they were hoping to trade it for guns and “laughing” privileges with his women. The great man excused himself and I was taken back to the plane, given a truly excellent gift-bag (it had, among other things, an Ipod with the complete Beach Boys preloaded!) and was flown back to Ottawa. Santa’s office has been refusing all of my calls since then.

Disco and Cocaine by Chris Rich

Disco and Cocaine.



Wow! It's as if some Skinnerian marketeer in some high-rise office, somewhere IMPORTANT, said one day, "Let's see how goofy we can make 'em look". And the next thing you know, people start looking real stupid all around you. Mind colonies...mining psychic resources... pushing little buttons.



And the suckers were thorough. A totally absurd mediocrity of an environment was crafted in every detail. If 'hippie' was goofy because of an impossible mythos projected, at least it was largely a home spun effort. This was different.



Big box department stores and their pitchers rushed with the zeal of prophets, using unprecedented apparatus of persuasion to round up the young public big time. Moo... Baah. And before you know it legions of the young and restless have dorky blow dry haircuts sculpted to suggest glans of a penis, preposterous platform shoes, horrid polyester 'leisure suits' and they're sore afflicted with Saturday Night Fever.



And just below the shiny surface sat coke, blow, toot or schnoof the perfect skinnerian drug. Rats'll do it 'til they die. Reward reward REWARD REWARD!!!



Porn movie stars, John Holmes in particular, were as representative of the era's cultural hero's as anyone was. The trouble was, once unleashed, these forces are difficult to manipulate precisely and often develop a life of their own. It was quite an attempt though, harness a most compelling psychic force to the bleak mill wheel of consumption.



But, beneath the polyester surface squelching, squelching lay depths unprecedented.



Disco, from a humble milieu of urban blackwaters, decloseted gays and newly assimilated latinos grew to an expansive market blast reaching the furthest edge of the national mind flock. Mind colonies. New exploitations of meta-resources. Dim suburban white people pathetically sought a life, someone else's.



So hapless. So helpless. Why derive ones worth from a heartless market, an empty mechanism? That Skinner's quite a skinner. Look at all those hides hangin' on a corner without a self to call their own. The nation of green grocers notion stretches past snap point to point to a beckoning big chill.



In the Vietnam War aftermath of imperial deflation, magnanimity, (always a matter of surface anyway), withered and voters stood revealed in their naked potbellied selfishness.



And the layers of exploitation, the patterns of exploitation were amazing in their geodesic intricacy. First, scam the downtrodden for their little hope of a lifestyle. Then puff it up to a level of abject bloated ridiculousness and fill the airwaves and department stores with the results and reel in the anxious idiots seeking a roost. Attention K-mart shoppers!



Curious it was, to see 'the Hustle' displace the square dancing of my childhood as the main form of public school dance instruction in a belated pathetic pursuit of social relevance.



Funny it was, to know that, by the time of its introduction it was nearly as hopelessly anachronistic as the allemandes and dosey-do's it supplanted. Way to go!



And the way gone took quite a few turns toward chop line plies on an infinite array of mirror fragments, credit cards, polished stone slabs, desktops, spoons and whatever other smooth flat surface answered utilities cry.



Okay, the question. The trail of inquiry most obviously begs attention. Could this TV screen, magazine, full page ad, sixty second voiceover, billboard, sky written, flyer dropped blast of contrived anxieties about bad breath, dandruff, potbelly terrors have undermined a sense of self worth for large swaths of the public?



And when coupled with an artificially, needlessly grueling work pace in a shifty work place, could it drive unprecedented ingestion of an overpriced crystalline powder ripped from the erosion trashed guts of the defenseless Andes and their fucked over inhabitants?



Set aside the venal brays of hack politicians belaboring the obvious nuisance of drugs run amok. No one seems to ask how life got so distorted and toxic, that a comparatively dull heart race, tooth chew and bowel churn drag of a drug seems like a good time. These sad bag bearers in charge persist in maintaining that a cumbersome and sloppy police state is a viable alternative to the implosive disruption likely from a serious examination of the mechanisms unsound premises.



The economics of cocaine are ridiculous. The mania maker costs between eleven and twenty cents a gram to make and costs its fans fifty to a hundred dollars a gram to take in order to babble drivel, struggle with paranoia, decorate the heart with a lattice work of scar tissue, irritate mucus membranes, crave sex if a woman, fear sex if a man with a weave of jitters, idiocy and pomposity throughout.



In the 'burbs, coke was there to greet folks as they settled into stasis. In most period piece meat markets where coke held its heyday court, the jukeboxes froze.



In the altiplano, parameters of Latifundio exploitation shifted to new hazards for the locals to add to the parade of toxic routines visited upon them since Pizzarro showed up.



In the cities, tendrils of altiplano and suburb intertwine to channel a blow flow into the anxious nostrils of a burgeoning American dream horde an American dream whored.



Dreams of Big Time, Multiple Orgasm, Perpetual Conquests, Life of Parties Wild and Crazy danced in many heads. If you shell out enough dough, you can at least simulate it with substantially less effort and for no extra cost you get delusions of significance, paranoid psychosis, permanent facial tics and an impressive acceleration of the aging process, maybe even a heart attack or a lung freeze.



And, of course, there is the underlying sense of emptiness nipping at the heels as soon as the transient buzz fades away. The promise dangles briefly to be torn away in a blink. Matrices of stress crisscross and lattice like those heart muscle tissue scars begging for analysis.



Well, there are the impoverished Quechua in economically comatose Bolivia with frail altiplano mid slope soil. Bolivia doesn't even much tin left. All the silver left centuries ago to support profligate Bourbon family debts to English banks. It's been said a bridge of silver could have been built from Rio to Bristol with the guts of Potosi alone.



Conquistador's descendents, scrambling for a new way to disembowel the land had to settle for blow. And, being land locked after a war instigated by the UK in the late nineteenth century. Bolivian coquero's ended up arranging for Colombians and Cuban exiles to help with the shipping.



Colombia has its own sordid legacy of messy civil wars and ham-fisted repression. Years of coffee growing further narrow the base of its economy. The soil grows ever more tired. The streets know intermittent bomb blasts, drive-by shootings, kidnapping and threats. The people war with each other over stupid business with us. How many billions of blow dollars flow? What's a President's price these days, anyway?



Cuban exiles are an evil bunch. They often steal half the shipment while making the buyer happy to walk away alive. Memories of Batista's good old days and Pig Bay betrayal linger yet.



Finally, there are the ridiculous flamboyant gun toters who comprise the blow distribution hierarchy here at home.

New rounds of stress, transposition of conflicts to our alleys and sidewalks, tract homes and apartments with retinues of bimbos, soldiers and flash customers filtering money through laundering schemes. Muscle bound minds tiptoe around fringes of lethal psychosis armed to the toenails.



Work a way to the everyday coffee table with its mirror, its razor blade and straw where everyday customers rise to a creed's epitome. Hyperactive glances clamor for a piece of blather, clitoral and nipple swell, a sinking feeling of tale chasing tireds racing around the emptiness 'til self melts to drivel.



Squalid memories linger. Sara wanted to suck me dry while her dying boyfriend slept in the next room. She wondered if I minded the herpes on her lip and hoped it wouldn't discourage me from feeding her my sperm.



Actually, the dying boyfriend was better goad to impotence and I played dumb and walked home despite her eagerness to 'give me a ride'.



Sara's little sister Marcy was a slender blue eyed blonde elf nymph who would happily drive her splendid long tongue up any slobs marginally clean asshole for a night of endless lines.



Leslie and Andy dragged out a stack of Penthouses in their late night apartment wondering if paper muff and tit images might inspire my participation in a messy little heap. Gaah, I thought, and told them I was tired. Why were we looking at these things anyway?



Skeletal Bev wanted to blow me for a five-dollar shortfall on a pot deal. She's bleak. My goofy thug friend laughs. Her daughter was doing homework down the hall and the life she led with mom turned her away from men forever.

The You In Me, by Emma Vlenio

The You In Me

I hold you so tight
as if I were trying to carve you into my body.
But I am,
in my own way
slowly marking your existence in mine:
big strokes,
capital letters,
vivid punctuation.
You are breathing rhythmically
on my left chest;
I run my finger along your sharp shoulder blades,
watch your skin stretches as you breath,
connect moles and freckles on your back
--- so I can find a map to your mind.

You are the precipitation of my ire,
The night by the sea,
radiating undistinguished color and sound,
next to a deserted pebble beach.
I am the sediment of your mourning,
the stone in the wind,
carrying indescribable dirge and texture,
stand by the tide at your shore.

Jaded, by Emma Vlenio

Jaded

The room seemed unfamiliar,
it suddenly hit,
the moment I turned the key.
My body against the yellow wall,
the bed sheets were white,
as blank as me.
Unnamed anger,
my swollen eyes
my hoarse voice
between my hands.

"You will be fine" they say.
I shall continue to breath, drink and eat.
"You will be occupied
with all the paperwork, school..." they say.
I shall be occupied,
won't have any room left
for dwelling on if the weather is good,
if my socks match.
I will be occupied alright.
No doubt that I can be more
than a human,
transforming into a work machine,
cut me to see if I bleed.

Sat on my desk facing the window,
blur vision, cigarette in hand,
unlit.
I should go for a walk.
Morning sun,
chilly air,
my well pronounced solitude.

Necessity to be jaded now. Now.

I cling upon our trust,
more than once tossed by you,
potentially-over-cherished by me;
then I find myself having nothing to hold.
The urge to smile with sorrow;
my erratic breathing rhythm;
the sensation of trapped in obscurity;
my over multiplied constancy
in a unbalanced formula.

Rascality in NJ (1906) submitted by Dr. Fishmonger

From “Bleeker’s Quarterly Magazine of Modern Police Procedure” Summer 1906.

A new system of criminal classification in use in the Garden State

It was my pleasure recently to accept an assignment from the editor of this journal that took me to city headquarters of Trenton New Jersey. It was in that place that I was introduced to a most unique recent modernity. I shall quote at length the words of Chief Warren Monk.
“This new century has brought many fresh challenges to the maintenance of civic authority. The need to classify the various types of threat to the civic order with speed and reliability has risen to paramount importance. It is for this reason that we in the city of Trenton have adopted the New Adjusted Constabulary Scale of Rascality. This scale, devised by experts at Princeton, allows the police department to determine the amount and type of manpower devoted to the pursuit, investigation and apprehension of a particular offender.
“The scale has four basic levels ranging from mere profligates to the most heinous villains.
“Villains are the very worst of social threats being persons for whom damage to the civil system is a goal in and of itself. In this category we find our archfiends, monsters, traitors and calculating criminal masterminds. It is to these people we are obliged to devote our most stringent efforts and they are number four on the scale. This category also covers fiendish rogues and allow me to digress here to point out that there is no such thing as a roguish fiend contrary to the claims of mister Clarence Wayne.”
Regular readers of this journal will be familiar with the doings of Clarence Wayne, a reprobate who characterized himself as a “roguish fiend” when he was, in fact no such thing. I am led to understand that it was partially this claim on his part that contributed to the creation of the NACSR. Nonetheless, Mister Wayne is still a current resident of the New Jersey state penitentiary. But enough about him for I must return the reader to the narrative of Chief Monk.
“Under heading number three we find rapscallions, a group that includes murderous (but not fiendish) rogues, miscreants, delinquents, dastards, scoundrels, blackguards, thugs and those more normal types of fiends who do not quite qualify as archfiends.
“The second degree on the chart is devoted to rascals who include cads, mountebanks, grifters, swindlers, hornswoglers, reprobates (and it is here that the redoubtable Mister Wayne is properly included), larcenous (but not murderous) rogues, subversives, troublemakers, brutes, hooligans and all manor of scamps and scalawags. Persons found it this group account for the greater number of arrests in the city.
“In group number one, we find those persons who generally do not violate the letter of the law, but are still worthy of being considered a threat to the general welfare and bear watching. These are profligates. This group includes libertines, Sabbath-breakers, socialists, maledictors, squanderers, wastrels, apostates, freethinkers, scoffers, mockers of tradition, poltroons and prevaricators, card sharps, intellectuals, blasphemers, nonconformists, former Confederates and their confederates, ‘Ragtimers’, ‘vipers’, ne’er-do-wells, ‘smooth operators’ of all sorts, Jews, Orientals and foreigners of all stripe and, it almost goes without saying, negroes. It is of great benefit to society that these persons of dubious intent be monitored closely.”
To say that I found Chief Monk’s explanation compelling and enlightening would be to grossly understate the case. Indeed, I should dare hold out hope that the New Adjusted Constabulary Scale of Rascality will become the standard used in police precincts throughout this great nation leading to a higher quality of law enforcement in our cities.