Ten years ago, two old icons of a bohemia no longer relevant to any but those who either lived or glimpsed it first-hand vied for a stool at the end of the winding wooden countertop that was the bar at Max Fish. As far as the logistics of a disordered timeline may be concerned, John Farris — cantankerous, honey-skinned, sharp-tongued font of literary wisdom I once dubbed the poet laureate of the Lower East Side not long before he started to introduce himself as “god” — probably set up shop there first. But Mr Farris never begrudged Taylor Mead — equally keen of wit, though far more pale of complexion, and over a decade Farris’s senior — that seat, prized as it apparently struck both these wearied, gentle men.

I met Farris first. In the early ’80s he hosted the open mike at Life Café, before its owners transcended the darkest days of their past for the uplifting light of yoga that now irradiates every mention of their names. From there, Farris moved the series to Neither/Nor Studio Store-Beatniks From Space on 6th Street between Avenues C & C, playing pie-eyed piper to a host of scribblers orbiting the computer printout zine called Between C & D (more an indication of the substances ingested by these writers than the location of their constantly changing addresses). Around this time, I earned some of my keep at LaMama ETC, the theater on East 4th Street that saw as many dramatic luminaries hail from its wings as Neither/Nor saw writers. There, I first encountered Mr. Mead, initially unaware of his Warholian upbringing, though others were quick to make his celebrity known to me.

Fame was nothing Taylor bragged about. When prodded by others to describe life at The Factory, he would oblige with half an anecdote begun somewhere in the middle and insist you draw your own conclusions. Celebrity clearly meant more to you than it did to him, evidenced by the fact that you were the one asking him about it, not the other way round. As my own biography came to include more encounters with underground luminaries that ranged from the happenstance to the painfully intimate, Mead’s attitude regarding the famous became easy to understand. (Just tonight, an infamous pal recalled my refusal to cop cocaine for a two-time Academy Award winner I met in the back of Max Fish because I didn’t recognize him — he could just as easily have been the law.)

As for Taylor Mead, I really only came to befriend him in the last years of his public presence. A decade ago, he hosted a weekly night at the Bowery Poetry Club, a location I’ve tended to avoid for most of its incarnation. I’m told the evening was invariably an antic event, and as quick as Taylor was with his incisive hectoring, I’ve no doubt these accounts rang true. But instead of this comedic crowd, I opted for the late night quiet of the bar where I knew Mr. Farris was to be found, nursing his vodkas with tonic. For some reason, Mr. Mead began to frequent this same corner of the curvaceous bar at around the same hour, and I often found the two gentlemen engaged in all manner of vodka-and-time-fueled discussions of epic proportion and import expounded in an abundance of terms retrieved equally from the maws of guttersnipes as from the vocalalia of seraphim. Often, the discussion turned around asses — whether that of a young lady (Mr. Farris) or a young man (Mr. Mead) or either of their best-known works (Taylor Mead’s Ass, by Warhol; The Ass’s Tale, a novel by John Farris) — both of them knew that, in the end, one’s own ass is all that one has.

I loved the way these guys — older infamous queer and old Malcolm X-era inconnu — sparred and made up, and avowed their love for each other based on the solidarity derived from the ignorant youth now besieging their every “been there, done that” transgression, clueless kids dogging these studied old-timers’ shared but proud lament that they’d seen better days. A couple of happy has-beens, grateful to have been able to slog through the same tactile milieu at a time when the electricity of their interactive lives had come charging out of their own fingerprints and tongue lashings; not the slippery slump of some touchy-feely screen, but an everyday aesthetic awareness of whether or not this bag or that — from one end of the scene to the other — really grabbed you, and whatever groove proved a drag you just dropped. This is the way we can never undo. Taylor Mead is dead. Long live Taylor Mead. And Mr Farris is still around, but not at Max Fish.

It’s all one can do to stop oneself from wondering what good derived from the bohemian. With but a handful left of this quaint, obsolete type, and certain that bronze can do them no justice, one seeks in vain an appropriate epitaph, preferably inscribed in Sanskrit — if you catch my drift.

R.I.P. Taylor Mead
31 December 1924 – 8 May 2013

— Norman Douglas, 10 may 2013

The post TAYLOR MEAD IS DEAD. A PISS-POOR OBITUARY IF EVER THERE WAS ONE. appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

Taylor was a free spirit on film, exuding a peculiar elastic quality that was all his own…He had a languid goofiness that cut through pretension, an ability to hold your attention by virtue of an unexpected quality.

I used to run into him in bars on the Lower East Side where he always got free drinks. He would never want to talk to any female companion I might be with, but would converse about the Warhol years and other subjects. I was surprised at how politically conservative he was, defending the insane lunacy of the Cheney-Bush junta’s wars of aggression which drained our economy and jump-started a new era of repression and naked imperialism that will no doubt result in the fall of the US empire and untold misery for millions of innocent people. Taylor’s political opinions seemed to have been inflicted upon him by the Fox News Terror Network, a source of malignant propaganda directed at misinformed old people too lazy to turn off their TVs. It was unfortunate that this barrage of poison had infected Taylor’s thinking, but politics had little to do with our shared lifestyles as underground outsiders and Taylor’s memories were feeble so there were no hard feelings when we’d meet.

Once we walked downtown from an event in Times Square, stopping on 6th Ave so he could leer at bodybuilders in a gym on 17th street. Later we headed to Bowery Bar, where his presence produced a Parting of the Red Sea and afforded us entry into a snooty, vile watering-hole for young urban professionals immersed in a particularly repellant form of toxic narcissism that inexplicably enthralled Taylor. As muscle bound Ken Dolls reached around Taylor to grab their brewskies while engaging in besotted mating rituals with assembly-line Barbie Dolls exuding a noxious inbred plasticity, I asked Taylor if this was his idea of “fun.”

“These are MY people!” he exclaimed. “You need to get out of the Lower East Side, Nick.”
“But THIS IS THE LOWER EAST SIDE, TAYLOR!” I replied.

In 1999, I directed Taylor in Ecstasy in Entropy, wherein he gave a brilliant performance as a leering pervert in a lap dancing joint, shot in a place called Art Space (rumored to have once been a whorehouse) briefly the hottest experimental autonomous zone in NYC. After a year and a half of community board and police harassment, the groundbreaking performance space was padlocked forever, another victim of unrestrained government fascism, killed by a vicious vendetta of busybodies with too much power on their hands. Half a block away, heroin dealers continued to peddle their wares on the sidewalk, ignored by the cops and community board nitwits who were terrified of the existence of real art in the LES.

Taylor would yearly appear at the Poetry Marathon at St. Mark’s Church, delivering rambling oratorios accompanied by a shabby cassette player; self-indulgent exercises in embarrassing egomania which seemed to enthrall the less discriminating sentimentalists in attendance.

Taylor hosted an equally self-indulgent stint at the now defunct Bowery Poetry Club, where on Friday evenings at 6 or 7 he’d fumble with his tape deck onstage and listen to himself talk while two bartenders rolled their eyes and waited for customers to show up. A few hours later, the place would be filled with pitiful amateur rappers boasting of their sexual prowess and animal machismo to an ugly crowd of clueless cretins who failed to tip the bartenders (who hated them.) By then Taylor was probably onto his fourth beer, filling up with free drinks before climbing the 4 flights of stairs to his incredibly dirty apartment.

In 2005 I directed Taylor in the origin episode of Electra Elf where he played Jennifer Swallows’ grandfather, shot in Taylor’s filthy one-room apartment on Ludlow Street where he’d lived since 1979. Crawling with roaches and filled with trash and old paintings, this hovel was his final home in NYC until his greedy and disgusting landlord decided to embark upon a campaign of harassment designed to drive Taylor crazy or kill him. Taylor stubbornly refused to be moved while the construction crews demolished the interior of his building until he ended up in the hospital and decided to accept a large sum of money to leave. A few weeks later he was dead, having escaped to live with a niece somewhere in the Midwest.

Such is the way authentic artists are now treated by the city of New York, forced to flee in terror by troglodyte landlords and hordes of yuppie scum, poisoning every inch of “prime real estate” in an orgy of predatory capitalism; a degrading devolution of life based on “profits,” “the bottom line” and creating a playground for rich, spoiled brats with nothing to offer.

Taylor Mead was a living embodiment of freedom and slack…and therefore had to be wiped out…but his legacy lives on in our memories and in the movies, writing and art he left behind, if anybody still cares.

— Nick Zedd

The post Taylor Mead, RIP appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

I got off the plane around midnight and no one spoke as I crossed the dark runway to the terminal. The air was thick and hot, like wandering into a steam bath. Inside, people hugged each other and shook hands … big grins and a whoop here and there: “By God! You old bastard! Good to see you, boy! Damn good … and I mean it!”

In the air-conditioned lounge I met a man from Houston who said his name was something or other — “but just call me Jimbo” — and he was here to get it on. “I’m ready for anything, by God! Anything at all. Yeah, what are you drinkin?” I ordered a Margarita with ice, but he wouldn’t hear of it: “Naw, naw … what the hell kind of drink is that for Kentucky Derby time? What’s wrong with you, boy?” He grinned and winked at the bartender. “Goddam, we gotta educate this boy. Get him some good whiskey … ”

I shrugged. “Okay, a double Old Fitz on ice.” Jimbo nodded his approval.

“Look.” He tapped me on the arm to make sure I was listening. “I know this Derby crowd, I come here every year, and let me tell you one thing I’ve learned — this is no town to be giving people the impression you’re some kind of faggot. Not in public, anyway. Shit, they’ll roll you in a minute, knock you in the head and take every goddam cent you have.”

I thanked him and fitted a Marlboro into my cigarette holder. “Say,” he said, “you look like you might be in the horse business … am I right?”

“No,” I said. “I’m a photographer.”

“Oh yeah?” He eyed my ragged leather bag with new interest. “Is that what you got there — cameras? Who you work for?”

“Playboy,” I said.

He laughed. “Well goddam! What are you gonna take pictures of — nekkid horses? Haw! I guess you’ll be workin’ pretty hard when they run the Kentucky Oaks. That’s a race jut for fillies.” He was laughing wildly. “Hell yes! And they’ll all be nekkid too!”

I shook my head and said nothing; just stared at him for a moment, trying to look grim. “There’s going to be trouble,” I said. “My assignment is to take pictures of the riot.”

“What riot?”

I hesitated, twirling the ice in my drink. “At the track. On Derby Day. The Black Panthers.” I stared at him again. “Don’t you read the newspapers?”

The grin on his face had collapsed. “What the hell are you talkin about?”

“Well … maybe I shouldn’t be telling you … ” I shrugged. “But hell, everybody seems to know. The cops and the National Guard have been getting ready for six weeks. They have 20,000 troops on alert at Fort Knox. They warned us — all the press and photographers — to wear helmets and special vests like flak jackets. We were told to expect shooting … ”

“No!” he shouted; his hands flew up and hovered momentarily between us, as if to ward off the words he was hearing. Then he hacked his fist on the bar. “Those sons of bitches! God Almighty! The Kentucky Derby!” He kept shaking his head. “No! Jesus! That’s almost too bad to believe!” Now he seemed to be jagging on the stool, and when he looked up his eyes were misty. “Why? Why here? Don’t they respect anything?”

I shrugged again. “It’s not just the Panthers. The FBI says busloads of white crazies are coming in from all over the country — to mix with the crowd and attack all at once, from every direction. They’ll be dressed like everybody else. You know — coats and ties and all that. But when the trouble starts … well, that’s why the cops are so worried.”

He sat for a moment, looking hurt and confused and not quite able to digest all this terrible news. Then he cried out: “Oh … Jesus! What in the name of God is happening in this country? Where can you get away from it?”

“Not here,” I said, picking up my bag. “Thanks for the drink … and good luck.”

He grabbed my arm, urging me to have another, but I said I was overdue at the Press Club and hustled off to get my act together for the awful spectacle. At the airport newsstand I picked up a Courier-Journal and scanned the front page headlines: “Nixon Sends GI’s into Cambodia to Hit Reds” … “B-52′s Raid, then 2,000 GI’s Advance 20 Miles” … “4,000 U.S. Troops Deployed Near Yale as Tension Grows Over Panther Protest.” At the bottom of the page was a photo of Diane Crump, soon to become the first woman jockey ever to ride in the Kentucky Derby. The photographer had snapped her “stopping in the barn area to fondle her mount, Fathom.” The rest of the paper was spotted with ugly war news and stories of “student unrest.” There was no mention of any protest action at a small Ohio school called Kent State.

I went to the Hertz desk to pick up my car, but the moon-faced young swinger in charge said they didn’t have any. “You can’t rent one anywhere,” he assured me. “Our Derby reservations have been booked for six weeks.” I explained that my agent had confirmed a white Chrysler convertible for me that very afternoon but he shook his head. “Maybe we’ll have a cancellation. Where are you staying?”

I shrugged. “Where’s the Texas crowd staying? I want to be with my people.”

He sighed. “My friend, you’re in trouble. This town is flat full. Always is, for the Derby.”

I leaned closer to him, half-whispering: “Look, I’m from Playboy. How would you like a job?”

He backed off quickly. “What? Come on, now. What kind of a job?”

“Never mind,” I said. “You just blew it.” I swept my bag off the counter and went to find a cab. The bag is a valuable prop in this kind of work; mine has a lot of baggage tags on it — SF, LA, NY, Lima, Rome, Bangkok, that sort of thing — and the most prominent tag of all is a very official, plastic-coated thing that said “Photog. Playboy Mag.” I bought it from a pimp in Vail, Colorado, and he told me how to use it. “Never mention Playboy until you’re sure they’ve seen this thing first,” he said. “Then, when you see them notice it, that’s the time to strike. They’ll go belly up every time. This thing is magic, I tell you. Pure magic.”

Well … maybe so. I’d used it on the poor geek in the bar, and now, humming along in a Yellow Cab toward town, I felt a little guilty about jangling the poor bugger’s brains with that evil fantasy. But, what the hell? Anybody who wanders around the world saying, “Yes, I’m from Texas,” deserves whatever happens to him. And he had, after all, come here once again to make a 19th century ass of himself in the midst of some jaded, atavistic freakout with nothing to recommend it except a very saleable “tradition.” Early in our chat, Jimbo had told me that he hasn’t missed a Derby since 1954. “The little lady won’t come anymore,” he said. “She just grits her teeth and turns me loose for this one. And when I say ‘loose’ I do mean loose! I toss ten-dollar bills around like they were goin’ outa style! Horses, whiskey, women … shit, there’s women in this town that’ll do anything for money.”

Why not? Money is a good thing to have in these twisted times. Even Richard Nixon is hungry for it. Only a few days before the Derby he said, “If I had any money I’d invest it in the stock market.” And the market, meanwhile, continued its grim slide.

Waiting for Steadman

The next day was heavy. With 30 hours to post time I had no press credentials and — according to the sports editor of the Louisville Courier-Journal — no hope at all of getting any. Worse, I needed two sets; one for myself and another for Ralph Steadman, the English illustrator who was coming from London to do some Derby drawings. All I knew about him was that this was his first visit to the United States. And the more I pondered that fact, the more it gave me fear. Would he bear up under the heinous culture shock of being lifted out of London and plunged into a drunken mob scene at the Kentucky Derby? There was no way of knowing. Hopefully, he would arrive at least a day or so ahead, and give himself time to get acclimated. Maybe a few hours of peaceful sightseeing in the Bluegrass country around Lexington. My plan was to pick him up at the airport in the huge Pontiac Ballbuster I’d rented from a used car salesman named Colonel Quick, then whisk him off to some peaceful setting to remind him of England.

Colonel Quick had solved the car problem, and money (four times the normal rate) had bought two rooms in a scumbox on the outskirts of town. The only other kink was the task of convincing the moguls at Churchill Downs that Scanlan’s was such a prestigious sporting journal that common sense compelled them to give us two sets of the best press tickets. This was not easily done. My first call to the publicity office resulted in total failure. The press handler was shocked at the idea that anyone would be stupid enough to apply for press credentials two days before the Derby. “Hell, you can’t be serious,” he said. “The deadline was two months ago. The press box is full; there’s no more room … and what the hell is Scanlan’s Monthly anyway?”

I uttered a painful groan. “Didn’t the London office call you? They’re flying an artist over to do the paintings. Steadman. He’s Irish, I think. Very famous over there. I just got in from the Coast. The San Francisco office told me we were all set.”

He seemed interested, and even sympathetic, but there was nothing he could do. I flattered him with more gibberish, and finally he offered a compromise: he could get us two passes to the clubhouse grounds.

“That sounds a little weird,” I said. “It’s unacceptable. We must have access to everything. All of it. The spectacle, the people, the pageantry and certainly the race. You don’t think we came all this way to watch the damn thing on television, do you? One way or another we’ll get inside. Maybe we’ll have to bribe a guard — or even Mace somebody.” (I had picked up a spray can of Mace in a downtown drugstore for $5.98 and suddenly, in the midst of that phone talk, I was struck by the hideous possibilities of using it out at the track. Macing ushers at the narrow gates to the clubhouse inner sanctum, then slipping quickly inside, firing a huge load of Mace into the governor’s box, just as the race starts. Or Macing helpless drunks in the clubhouse restroom, for their own good … )

By noon on Friday I was still without credentials and still unable to locate Steadman. For all I knew he’d changed his mind and gone back to London. Finally, after giving up on Steadman and trying unsuccessfully to reach my man in the press office, I decided my only hope for credentials was to go out to the track and confront the man in person, with no warning — demanding only one pass now, instead of two, and talking very fast with a strange lilt in my voice, like a man trying hard to control some inner frenzy. On the way out, I stopped at the motel desk to cash a check. Then, as a useless afterthought, I asked if by any wild chance Mr. Steadman had checked in.

The lady on the desk was about fifty years old and very peculiar-looking; when I mentioned Steadman’s name she nodded, without looking up from whatever she was writing, and said in a low voice, “You bet he did.” Then she favored me with a big smile. “Yes, indeed. Mr. Steadman just left for the racetrack. Is he a friend of yours?”

I shook my head. “I’m supposed to be working with him, but I don’t even know what he looks like. Now, goddammit, I’ll have to find him in that mob at the track.”

She chuckled. “You won’t have any trouble finding him. You could pick that man out of any crowd.”

“Why?” I asked. “What’s wrong with him? What does he look like?”

“Well … ” she said, still grinning, “he’s the funniest looking thing I’ve seen in a long time. He has this … ah … this growth all over his face. As a matter of fact it’s all over his head.” She nodded. “You’ll know him when you see him; don’t worry about that.”

Great creeping Jesus, I thought. That screws the press credentials. I had a vision of some nerve-rattling geek all covered with matted hair and string-warts showing up in the press office and demanding Scanlan’s press packet. Well … what the hell? We could always load up on acid and spend the day roaming around the grounds with big sketch pads, laughing hysterically at the natives and swilling mint juleps so the cops wouldn’t think we’re abnormal. Perhaps even make the act pay up: set up an easel with a big sign saying, “Let a Foreign Artist Paint Your Portrait, $10 Each. Do It NOW!”

A Huge Outdoor Loony Bin

I took the expressway out to the track, driving very fast and jumping the monster car back and forth between lanes, driving with a beer in one hand and my mind so muddled that I almost crushed a Volkswagen full of nuns when I swerved to catch the right exit. There was a slim chance, I thought, that I might be able to catch the ugly Britisher before he checked in.

But Steadman was already in the press box when I got there, a bearded young Englishman wearing a tweed coat and HAF sunglasses. There was nothing particularly odd about him. No facial veins or clumps of bristly warts. I told him about the motel woman’s description and he seemed puzzled. “Don’t let it bother you,” I said. “Just keep in mind for the next few days that we’re in Louisville, Kentucky. Not London. Not even New York. This is a weird place. You’re lucky that mental defective at the motel didn’t jerk a pistol out of the cash register and blow a big hole in you.” I laughed, but he looked worried.

“Just pretend you’re visiting a huge outdoor loony bin,” I said. “If the inmates get out of control we’ll soak them down with Mace.” I showed him the can of “Chemical Billy,” resisting the urge to fire it across the room at a rat-faced man typing diligently in the Associated Press section. We were standing at the bar, sipping the management’s scotch and congratulating each other on our sudden, unexplained luck in picking up two sets of fine press credentials. The lady at the desk had been very friendly to him, he said. “I just told her my name and she gave me the whole works.”

By midafternoon we had everything under control. We had seats looking down on the finish line, color TV and a free bar in the press room, and a selection of passes that would take us anywhere from the clubhouse roof to the jockey room. The only thing we lacked was unlimited access to the clubhouse inner sanctum in sections “F&G” … and I felt we needed that, to see the whisky gentry in action. The governor would be in “G.” Barry Goldwater would be in a box in “G” where we could rest and sip juleps, soak up a bit of atmosphere and the Derby’s special vibrations.

The bars and dining rooms were also in “F&G,” and the clubhouse bars on Derby Day are a very special kind of scene. Along with the politicians, society belle and local captains of commerce, every half-mad dingbat who ever had any pretensions to anything within 500 miles of Louisville will show up there to get strutting drunk and slap a lot of backs and generally make himself obvious. The Paddock bar is probably the best place in the track to sit and watch faces. Nobody minds being stared at; that’s what they’re in there for. Some people spend most of their time in the Paddock; they can hunker down at one of the many wooden tables, lean back in a comfortable chair and watch the ever-changing odds flash up and down on the big tote board outside the window. Black waiters in white serving jackets move through the crowd with trays of drinks, while the experts ponder their racing forms and the hunch bettors pick lucky numbers or scan the lineup for right-sounding names. There is a constant flow of traffic to and from the pari-mutuel windows outside in the wooden corridors. Then, as post time nears, the crowd thins out as people go back to their boxes.

Clearly, we were going to have to figure out some way to spend more time in the clubhouse tomorrow. But the “walkaround” press passes to F&G were only good for 30 minutes at a time, presumably to allow the newspaper types to rush in and out for photos or quick interviews, but to prevent drifters like Steadman and me from spending all day in the clubhouse, harassing the gentry and rifling an old handbag or two while cruising around the boxes. Or macing the governor. The time limit was no problem on Friday, but on Derby Day the walkaround passes would be in heavy demand. And since it took about 10 minutes to get from the press box to the Paddock, and 10 more minutes to get back, that didn’t leave much time for serious people-watching. And unlike most of the others in the press box, we didn’t give a hoot in hell what was happening on the track. We had come there to watch the real beasts perform.

View from Thompson’s Head

Later Friday afternoon, we went out on the balcony of the press box and I tried to describe the difference between what we had seen today and what would be happening tomorrow. This was the first time I’d been to a Derby in 10 years, but before that, when I lived in Louisville, I used to go every year. Now, looking down from the press box, I pointed to the huge grassy meadow enclosed by the track. “That whole thing,” I said, “will be jammed with people; fifty thousand or so, and most of them staggering drunk. It’s a fantastic scene — thousands of people fainting, crying, copulating, trampling each other and fighting with broken whiskey bottles. We’ll have to spend some time out there, but it’s hard to move around, too many bodies.”

“Is it safe out there? Will we ever come back?”

“Sure,” I said. “We’ll just have to be careful not to step on anybody’s stomach and start a fight.” I shrugged. “Hell, this clubhouse scene right below us will be almost as bad as the infield. Thousands of raving, stumbling drunks, getting angrier and angrier as they lose more and more money. By midafternoon they’ll be guzzling mint juleps with both hands and vomiting on each other between races. The whole place will be jammed with bodies, shoulder to shoulder. It’s hard to move around. The aisles will be slick with vomit; people falling down and grabbing at your legs to keep from being stomped. Drunks pissing on themselves in the betting lines. Dropping handfuls of money and fighting to stoop over and pick it up.”

He looked so nervous that I laughed. “I’m just kidding,” I said. “Don’t worry. At the first hint of trouble I’ll start Macing everybody I can reach.”

He had done a few good sketches but so far we hadn’t seen that special kind of face that I felt we would need for the lead drawing. It was a face I’d seen a thousand times at every Derby I’d ever been to. I saw it, in my head, as the mask of the whiskey gentry — a pretentious mix of booze, failed dreams and a terminal identity crisis; the inevitable result of too much inbreeding in a closed and ignorant culture. One of the key genetic rules in breeding dogs, horses or any other kind of thoroughbred is that close inbreeding tends to magnify the weak points in a bloodline as well as the strong points. In horse breeding, for instance, there is a definite risk in breeding two fast horses who are both a little crazy. The offspring will likely be very fast and also very crazy. So the trick in breeding thoroughbreds is to retain the good traits and filter out the bad. But the breeding of humans is not so wisely supervised, particularly in a narrow Southern society where the closest kind of inbreeding is not only stylish and acceptable, but far more convenient — to the parents — than setting their offspring free to find their own mates, for their own reasons and their own ways. (“Goddam, did you hear about Smitty’s daughter? She went crazy in Boston last week and married a nigger!”)

So the face I was trying to find in Churchill Downs that weekend was a symbol, in my own mind, of the whole doomed atavistic culture that makes the Kentucky Derby what it is.

On our way back to the motel after Friday’s races I warned Steadman about some of the other problems we’d have to cope with. Neither of us had brought any strange illegal drugs, so we would have to get by on booze. “You should keep in mind,” I said, “that almost everybody you talk to from now on will be drunk. People who seem very pleasant at first might suddenly swing at you for no reason at all.” He nodded, staring straight ahead. He seemed to be getting a little numb and I tried to cheer him up by inviting him to dinner that night, with my brother.

“What Mace?”

Back at the motel we talked for a while about America, the South, England, just relaxing a bit before dinner. There was no way either of us could have known, at the time, that it would be the last normal conversation we would have. From that point on, the weekend became a vicious, drunken nightmare. We both went completely to pieces. The main problem was my prior attachment to Louisville, which naturally led to meetings with old friends, relatives, etc., many of whom were in the process of falling apart, going mad, plotting divorces, cracking up under the strain of terrible debts or recovering from bad accidents. Right in the middle of the whole frenzied Derby action, a member of my own family had to be institutionalized. This added a certain amount of strain to the situation, and since poor Steadman had no choice but to take whatever came his way, he was subjected to shock after shock.

Another problem was his habit of sketching people he met in the various social situations I dragged him into, then giving them the sketches. The results were always unfortunate. I warned him several times about letting the subjects see his foul renderings, but for some perverse reason he kept doing it. Consequently, he was regarded with fear and loathing by nearly everyone who’d seen or even heard about his work. He couldn’t understand it. “It’s sort of a joke,” he kept saying. “Why, in England it’s quite normal. People don’t take offense. They understand that I’m just putting them on a bit.”

“Fuck England,” I said. “This is Middle America. These people regard what you’re doing to them as a brutal, bilious insult. Look what happened last night. I thought my brother was going to tear your head off.”

Steadman shook his head sadly, “But I like him. He struck me as a very decent, straightforward sort.”

“Look, Ralph,” I said. “Let’s not kid ourselves. That was a very horrible drawing you gave him. It was the face of a monster. It got on his nerves very badly.” I shrugged. “Why in the hell do you think we left the restaurant so fast?”

“I thought it was because of the Mace,” he said.

“What Mace?”

He grinned. “When you shot it at the headwaiter, don’t you remember?”

“Hell, that was nothing,” I said. “I missed him … and we were leaving, anyway.”

“But it got all over us,” he said. “The room was full of that damn gas. Your brother was sneezing and his wife was crying. My eyes hurt for two hours. I couldn’t see to draw when we got back to the motel.”

“That’s right,” I said. “The stuff got on her leg, didn’t it?”

“She was angry,” he said.

“Yah … well, okay … let’s just figure we fucked up about equally on that one,” I said. “But from now on let’s try to be careful when we’re around people I know. You won’t sketch them and I won’t Mace them. We’ll just try to relax and get drunk.”

“Right,” he said. “We’ll go native.”

Derby Morning

It was Saturday morning, the day of the Big Race, and we were having breakfast in a plastic hamburger palace called the Ptomaine Village. Our rooms were just across the road in a foul scumbox of a place called the Horn Suburban Hotel. They had a dining room, but the food was so bad that we couldn’t handle it anymore. The waitresses seemed to be suffering from shin splints; they moved around very slowly, moaning and cursing the “darkies” in the kitchen.

Steadman liked the Ptomaine Village because it had fish and chips. I preferred the “french toast,” which was really pancake batter, fried to the proper thickness and then chopped out with a sort of cookie cutter to resemble pieces of toast.

Beyond drink and lack of sleep, our only real problem at that point was the question of access to the clubhouse. Finally we decided just to go ahead and steal two passes, if necessary, rather than miss that part of the action. This was the last coherent decision we were able to make for the next 48 hours. From that point on — almost from the very moment we started out to the track — we lost all control of events and spent the rest of the weekend just churning around in a sea of drunken horrors. My notes and recollections from Derby Day are somewhat scrambled.

But now, looking at the big red notebook I carried all through that scene, I see more or less that happened. The book itself is somewhat mangled and bent; some of the pages are torn, others are shriveled and stained by what appears to be whiskey, but taken as a whole, with sporadic memory flashes, the notes seem to tell the story. To wit:

Unscrambling Derby Day — I
Steadman Is Worried About Fire

Rain all nite until dawn. No sleep. Christ, here we go, a nightmare of mud and madness …. Drunks in the mud. Drowning, fighting for shelter …. But no. By noon the sun burns, perfect day, not even humid.

Steadman is now worried about Fire. Somebody told him about the clubhouse catching on fire two years ago. Could it happen again? Horrible. Trapped in the press box. Holocaust. A hundred thousand people fighting to get out. Drunks screaming in the flames and the mud, crazed horses running wild. Blind in the smoke. Grandstand collapsing into the flames with us on the roof. Poor Ralph is about to crack. Drinking heavily, into the Haig.

Out to the track in a cab, avoid that terrible parking in people’s front yards, $25 each, toothless old men on the street with big signs: Park Here, flagging cars in the yard. “That’s fine, boy, never mind the tulips.” Wild hair on his head, straight up like a clump of reeds.

Sidewalks full of people all moving in the same direction, towards Churchill Downs. Kids hauling coolers and blankets, teenyboppers in tight pink shorts, many blacks … black dudes in white felt hats with leopard-skin bands, cops waving traffic along.

The mob was thick for many blocks around the track; very slow going in the crowd, very hot. On the way to the press box elevator, just inside the clubhouse, we came on a row of soldiers all carrying long white riot sticks. About two platoons, with helmets. A man walking next to us said they were waiting for the governor and his party. Steadman eyed them nervously. “Why do they have those clubs?”

“Black Panthers,” I said. Then I remembered good old “Jimbo” at the airport and I wondered what he was thinking right now. Probably very nervous; the place was teeming with cops and soldiers. We pressed on through the crowd, through many gates, past the paddock where the jockeys bring the horses out and parade around for a while before each race so the bettors can get a good look. Five million dollars will be bet today. Many winners, more losers. What the hell. The press gate was jammed up with people trying to get in, shouting at the guards, waving strange press badges: Chicago Sporting Times, Pittsburgh Police Athletic League … they were all turned away. “Move on, fella, make way for the working press.” We shoved through the crowd and into the elevator, then quickly up to the free bar. Why not? Get it on. Very hot today, not feeling well, must be this rotten climate. The press box was cool and airy, plenty of room to walk around and balcony seats for watching the race or looking down at the crowd. We got a betting sheet and went outside.

Unscrambling D-day II – Clubhouse/Paddock Bar

Pink faces with stylish Southern sag, old Ivy styles, seersucker coats and buttondown collars. “Mayblossom Senility” (Steadman’s phrase) … burnt out early or maybe just not much to burn in the first place. Not much energy in these faces, not much curiosity. Suffering in silence, nowhere to go after thirty in this life, just hang on and humor the children. Let the young enjoy themselves while they can. Why not? The grim reaper comes early in this league … banshees on the lawn at night, screaming out there beside that little iron nigger in jockey clothes. Maybe he’s the one who’s screaming. Bad DT’s and too many snarls at the bridge club. Going down with the stock market. Oh Jesus, the kid has wrecked the new car, wrapped it around that big stone pillar at the bottom of the driveway. Broken leg? Twisted eye? Send him off to Yale, they can cure anything up there.

Yale? Did you see today’s paper? New Haven is under siege. Yale is swarming with Black Panthers ….I tell you, Colonel, the world has gone mad, stone mad. Why they tell me a goddam woman jockey might ride in the Derby today.

I left Steadman sketching in the Paddock bar and sent off to place our bets on the sixth race. When I came back he was staring intently at a group of young men around a stable not far away. “Jesus, look at the corruption in that face!” he whispered. “Look at the madness, the fear, the greed!” I looked, then quickly turned my back on the table he was drawing. The face he’d picked out to draw was the face of an old friend of mine, a prep school football star in the good old days with a sleek red Chevy convertible and a very quick hand, it was said, with the snaps of a 32 B brassiere. They called him “Cat Man.”

But now, a dozen years later, I wouldn’t have recognized him anywhere but here, where I should have expected to find him, in the Paddock bar on Derby Day … fat slanted eyes and a pimp’s smoke, blue silk suit and his friends looking like crooked bank tellers on a binge ….

Steadman wanted to see some Kentucky Colonels, but he wasn’t sure what they looked like. I told him to go back to the clubhouse men’s rooms and look for men in white linen suits vomiting in the urinals. “They’ll usually have large brown whiskey stains on the fronts of their suits,” I said. “But watch the shoes, that’s the tip-off. Most of them manage to avoid vomiting on their own clothes, but they never miss their shoes.”

In a box not far from ours was Colonel Anna Friedman Goldman, Chairman and Keeper of the Great Seal of the Honorable Order of Kentucky Colonels. Not all the 76 million or so Kentucky Colonels could make it to the Derby this year, but many had kept the faith and several days prior to the Derby they gathered for their annual dinner at the Seelbach Hotel.

The Derby, the actual race, was scheduled for late afternoon, and as the magic hour approached I suggested to Steadman that we should probably spend some time in the infield, that boiling sea of people across the track from the clubhouse. He seemed a little nervous about it, but since none of the awful things I’d warned him about had happened so far — no race riots, firestorms, or savage drunken attacks — he shrugged and said, “Right, let’s do it.”

To get there we had to pass through many gates, each one a step down in status, then through a tunnel under the track. Emerging from the tunnel was such a culture shock that it took us a while to adjust. “Cool almighty!” Steadman muttered. “This is a … Jesus!” He plunged ahead with his tiny camera, stepping over bodies, and I followed, trying to take notes.

Unscrambling D-day III – The Infield

Total chaos, no way to see the race, not even the track … nobody cares. Big lines at the outdoor betting windows, then stand back to watch winning numbers flash on the big board, like a giant bingo game.

Old blacks arguing about bets; “hold on there, I’ll handle this” (waving pint of whiskey, fistful of dollar bills); girl riding piggyback, T-shirt says, “Stolen from Fort Lauderdale Jail.” Thousands of teenagers, group singing “Let the Sun Shine In,” ten soldiers guarding the American flag, and a huge fat drunk wearing a blue football jersey (No. 80) reeling around with quart of beer in hand.

No booze sold out here, too dangerous … no bathrooms either. Muscle Beach … Woodstock … many cops with riot sticks, but no sign of riot. Far across the track the clubhouse looks like a postcard from the Kentucky Derby.

Unscrambling D-day IV – “My Old Kentucky Home”

We went back to the clubhouse to watch the big race. When the crowd stood to face the flag and sing “My Old Kentucky Home,” Steadman faced the crowd and sketched frantically. Somewhere up in the boxes a voice screeched, “Turn around, you hairy freak!” The race itself was only two minutes long, and even from our super-status seats and using 12-power glasses, there was no way to see what was really happening. Later, watching a TV rerun in the press box, we saw what happened to our horses. Holy Land, Ralph’s choice, stumbled and lost his jockey in the final turn. Mine, Silent Screen, had the lead coming into the stretch, but faded to fifth at the finish. The winner was a 16–1 shot named Dust Commander.

Moments after the race was over, the crowd surged wildly for the exits, rushing for cabs and busses. The next day’s Courier told of violence in the parking lot; people were punched and trampled, pockets were picked, children lost, bottles hurled. But we missed all this, having retired to the press box for a bit of post-race drinking. By this time we were both half-crazy from too much whiskey, sun fatigue, culture shock, lack of sleep and general dissolution. We hung around the press box long enough to watch a mass interview with the winning owner, a dapper little man named Lehmann who said he had just flown into Louisville that morning from Nepal, where he’d “bagged a record tiger.” The sportswriters murmured their admiration and a waiter filled Lehmann’s glass with Chivas Regal. He had just won $127,000 with a horse that cost him $6,500 two years ago. His occupation, he said, was “retired contractor.” And then he added, with a big grin, “I just retired.”

The rest of that day blurs into madness. The rest of that night too. And all the next day and night. Such horrible things occurred that I can’t bring myself even to think about them now, much less put them down in print. Steadman was lucky to get out of Louisville without serious injuries, and I was lucky to get out at all. One of my clearest memories of that vicious time is Ralph being attacked by one of my old friends in the billiard room of the Pendennis Club in downtown Louisville on Saturday night. The man had ripped his own shirt open to the waist before deciding that Ralph wasn’t after his wife. No blows were struck, but the emotional effects were massive. Then, as a sort of final horror, Steadman put is fiendish pen to work and tried to patch things up by doing a little sketch of the girl he’d been accused of hustling. That finished us in the Pendennis.

Getting Out of Town

Sometime around 10:30 Monday morning I was awakened by a scratching sound at my door. I leaned out of bed and pulled the curtain back just far enough to see Steadman outside. “What the fuck do you want?” I shouted.

“What about having breakfast?” he said.

I lunged out of bed and tried to open the door, but it caught on the night-chain and banged shut again. I couldn’t cope with the chain! The thing wouldn’t come out of the track — so I ripped it out of the wall with a vicious jerk on the door. Ralph didn’t blink. “Bad luck,” he muttered.

I could barely see him. My eyes were swollen almost shut and the sudden burst of sunlight through the door left me stunned and helpless like a sick mole. Steadman was mumbling about sickness and terrible heat; I fell back on the bed and tried to focus on him as he moved around the room in a very distracted way for a few moments, then suddenly darted over to the beer bucket and seized a Colt .45. “Christ,” I said. “you’re getting out of control.”

He nodded and ripped the cap off, taking a long drink. “You know, this is really awful,” he said finally. “I must get out of this place … ” he shook his head nervously. “The plane leaves at 3:30, but I don’t know if I’ll make it.”

I barely heard him. My eyes had finally opened enough for me to focus on the mirror across the room and I was stunned at the shock of recognition. For a confused instant I thought that Ralph had brought somebody with him — a model for that one special face we’d been looking for. There he was, by God — a puffy, drink-ravaged, disease-ridden caricature … like an awful cartoon version of an old snapshot in some once-proud mother’s family photo album. It was the face we’d been looking for — and it was, of course, my own. Horrible, horrible …

“Maybe I should sleep a while longer,” I said. “Why don’t you go on over to the Ptomaine Village and eat some of those rotten fish and chips? Then come back and get me around noon. I feel too near death to hit the streets at this hour.”

He shook his head. “No … no … I think I’ll go back upstairs and work on those drawings for a while.” He leaned down to fetch two more cans out of the beer bucket. “I tried to work earlier,” he said, “but my hands keep trembling … It’s teddible, teddible.”

“You’ve got to stop drinking,” I said.

He nodded. “I know. This is no good, no good at all. But for some reason I think it makes me feel better … ”

“Not for long,” I said. “You’ll probably collapse into some kind of hysterical DT’s tonight — probably just about the time you get off the plane at Kennedy. They’ll zip you up in a straightjacket and drag you down to the Tombs, then beat you on the kidneys with a big stick until you straighten out.”

He shrugged and wandered out, pulling the door shut behind him. I went back to bed for another hour or so, and later — after the daily grapefruit juice run to the Nite Owl Food Mart — we drove once again to the Ptomaine Village for a fine lunch of dough and butcher’s offal, fried in heavy grease.

By this time Ralph wouldn’t even order coffee; he kept asking for more water. “It’s the only thing they have that’s fit for human consumption,” he explained. Then, with an hour or so to kill before he had to catch the plane, we spread his drawings out on the table and pondered them for a while, wondering if he’d caught the proper spirit of the thing … but we couldn’t make up our minds. His hands were shaking so badly that he had trouble holding the paper, and my vision was so blurred that I could barely see what he’s drawn. “Shit,” I said. “We both look worse than anything you’ve drawn here.”

He smiled. “You know — I’ve been thinking about that,” he said. “We came down here to see this teddible scene: people all pissed out of their minds and vomiting on themselves and all that … and now, you know what? It’s us … ”

Huge Pontiac Ballbuster blowing through traffic on the expressway. The journalist is driving, ignoring his passenger who is now nearly naked after taking off most of his clothing, which he holds out the window, trying to wind-wash the Mace out of it. His eyes are bright red and his face and chest are soaked with the beer he’s been using to rinse the awful chemical off his flesh. The front of his woolen trousers is soaked with vomit; his body is racked with fits of coughing and wild choking sobs. The journalist rams the big car through traffic and into a spot in front of the terminal, then he reaches over to open the door on the passenger’s side and shoves the Englishman out, snarling: “Bug off, you worthless faggot! You twisted pigfucker! [Crazed laughter.] If I weren’t sick I’d kick your ass all the way to Bowling Green — you scumsucking foreign geek. Mace is too good for you …. We can do without your kind in Kentucky.”

— Hunter S. Thompson. Originally published in Scanlan’s, June 1970

The post The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

Then I found out that today – May 1 – is Southern’s birthday, and I figured a quick homage was due.

Southern lived in Greenwich Village in the mid-’50s, where he worked at ad agencies and, unsuccessfully for the most part, wrote short stories and hung around with folks like Alexander Trochi, Larry Rivers and Jack Kerouac. His first big splash was the ground-breaking sexploitation romp Candy, followed by The Magic Christian. Both novels got mixed reviews but became cult classics.

He got a gig writing for Esquire, and his first article for them, “Twirling at Ole Miss” is considered as one of the cornerstones of New Journalism. Esquire sent him to England to do a feature on Stanley Kubrick, which was never published (you can read it here), but Kubrick was taken with Southern and the two collaborated on Dr. Strangelove.

Strangelove was a huge hit and Southern found himself in demand as a screenwriter, and he wrote some of the most ’60s of ’60s films, including Barbarella, Casino Royale, Easy Rider, ad-libs for his pal Peter Seller in The Pink Panther, and adaptations for The Magic Christian and Candy. Candy is one bizarre flick, with a star-studded cast including Marlon Brando, Richard Burton, Walter Matthau, Ringo Starr, Charles Aznavour, James Coburn, John Huston and the 19-year-old Swedish actress, Miss Teen International 1966, Ewa Aulin as Candy. Ewe’s next role was in an ever weirder movie, Miscoscopic Liquid Subway To Oblivion, followed by a storied career in Italian sex comedies. Candy is required, if somewhat painful, viewing. Miscoscopic Liquid Subway To Oblivion I’m not so sure about – you be the judge!

While in London to work on Casino Royale, he hung out at his friend Robert Fraser’s gallery, and became pals with the Beatles, the Stones, photographer Michael Cooper and others of that set, and ended up on the cover of Sgt. Pepper (designed by Cooper).

In 1968, Southern was sent by Esquire to cover the Democratic Convention in Chicago – you know, the one with all the riots, the Chicago 7, etc. – along with his “hard-hitting little press team – Jean Jack Genet, Willy Bill Burroughs, and yours truly…” They ran into Ginsberg, who was teaching the protesters how to say “Om” to ward off the police. When the police attacked, they escaped to Ginsberg’s hotel room. “Genet was absolutely appalled … Burroughs, of course, was ecstatic.”

Around the same time, Peter Fonda and Dennis Hopper brought Terry on board to help “write” the screenplay for Easy Rider, though they probably spent most of their time in dark rooms listening to hippie music and doing massive amounts of blow. The “script” is mostly ad-libbed, though Terry did come up with the awesome title. He also brought in his friend Rip Torn to play the part of George Hanson, the southern lawyer, but Torn and Hopper almost came to blows (Hopper later claimed Torn pulled a knife on him, and got sued for libel) and instead the part went to journeyman no-name actor Jack Nicholson, and it made his career.

By the ’70s, years of alcohol, Dexamyl abuse and harassment by the IRS (probably instigated by the FBI, who put him under surveillance starting in 1965) took its toll and Terry’s output diminished considerably. He spent an ignominous year writing for Saturday Night Live during the low point for that show, in 1981; despite fitting in reefer-and-cocaine wise, Southern’s humor was thought to be dated by the show’s producers and little of his material ever made it to the screen. He was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 1989 and shuffled off this mortal coil in 1995.

To learn more about this fascinating character, check out this 1996 interview with Terry.

Happy birthday Mr. Southern, wherever you are.

The post Happy Birthday Terry Southern appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

Read an excerpt from Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane.

Who reads Stewart Home? Home will say “very few, people are cowed by the malevolent society in which we live, they believe in its values for they have no other frame of reference, they fear it as they can think of nothing to replace it, they cannot question it for all questioning challenges its essence.” (It is very postmodern to say something for another; after all they may have said it, will say it or they may not have and never will. What is verisimilitude?). But no matter here is Stewart Home’s novel (or 245 pages of text).
The word anti-novel is always used when a novel by Home is reviewed, talked about, considered, analysed (and he is reviewed in erudite journals and newspapers; the London Review of Books, the Guardian, the New Statesman to name a few, he must be famous, egotistical notoriety is probable his second name, his not intrinsic nature). But what is the anti-novel? It is a question that is vexing.

Is an anti-novel one which is badly written? Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane is not badly written, there are few grammatical errors and the paragraphs are evenly spaced, there are chapters with chapter headings, there is the odd spelling mistake but that, most likely, has to do with the spell check being programmed to English (US) rather than English (UK, or in this case SA).

Is an anti-novel one which follows no linear progression, has no real story, no beginning, middle or end? Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane does progress, there is a (kind of) story (despite there being no middle, beginning or end, one could start reading it anywhere). Charlie Templeton, or as he is also known, John Templeton, is a lecturer in cultural studies (cultural studies is, in these days of multiple cultures and consumer appetites, fashionable) at a university in the Northumbrian countryside (it is called City University, acronym CUNT, as young people want to live in a vibrant urban setting, so it is a city in the bucolic). He has not been promoted to professor so he is unhappy and determined to do something about it (and he is a drug addict so his unhappiness has multiplied into a many fold manifold obsession). And so he goes about, among other things: fucking his wife and his girlfriend, sometimes ex, and trying to fuck anyone else that he can pick up (not a lot of men, only women, he is gang banged by a gay rugby team but this is against his will, but then he isn’t anyway so it all works out). There is a lot of fucking (possible an anti-novel contains a lot of gratuitous sex) but the fucking is not erotic (even Brett Easton Ellis, to whom Home has been fairly, or unfairly, to Brett Easton Ellis or to Stewart Home, unsure, compared, has some, albeit not very nice and often gruesome sex, writes erotic sex, whereas the sex in Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane is not, there is no possibility of reading it over and over again in order to fantasise as one ponders masturbation). Possible the anti-novel is a text that has no appeal whatsoever. Charlie, or John, likes to fuck women who are unconscious, he gives them knock out drops and imagines that they are dead, it is the power that he likes rather than the act itself, domination can be quickly dealt with, so it is quick, over in a few sentences (I threw back the duvet, parted Mary Jane’s legs and tickled her clit with my tongue. I pushed my tongue between the lips of her cunt to lubricate the lady ……. I used my hand to guide my prick into her hole and proceeded to hump); proselytising to his students on, also among other things, slasher/zombie movies (Cannibal Holocaust, Night of the Living Dead, Return of the Living Dead III, Zombie Flesh Eaters, Day of the Dead etc.), good and bad movies, even ones that do not exist, music, (Camel, Caravan, the Clash, Pretty Things, Ike Turner, The Sex Pistols etc.), good and bad and some that does not exist, (Home is well known for his musical knowledge, particularly early punk rock and the music of the ’70s so there is a lot of this in Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane), exhibitions, mainly in London (Bas Jan Ader, Maya Deren, Ronald Nameth, Jud Yul Kut), who are these artists, are they are known to a Londoner, or do they also not exist?; how to keep well-toned by describing in detail a variety of exercises in a gym while watching pretty young things (they are always young, and always women, the culture is youth and women are things); managing a university as Charlie or John becomes a part of new management, this means lots of cuts both literally and figuratively, especially of superfluous lecturers, so that eventually John or Charlie both teaches and manages (he kills two birds with one stone so to speak), and of course delineates ideas on how to attract fee paying bourgeois students; making a movie on the degenerate and despicable way in which higher education has been maimed by a bourgeois conservative government (read society); this includes wide angled shots of murders, rapes and beatings; an analysis of the bombings by Islamic fundamentalists of the London underground and a mimicking of this by Charlie; and finally, (possible there is more but this is enough) the difficulty of obtaining a visa for hell and how problematic it is to stay there for longer than two weeks, there is a lot of red tape involved in getting into hell, paperwork, bribery, fake documents (much like trying to get from the developing world to the developed world). So there is a story, an anti-story. Really, the story is puerile, it has no real point and if one reads the book as a story the likelihood is that one will be disappointed.

But do not despair, for there is a lot more (more).

The writing is all about the messages that Home wants to put across, it’s part of his on-going project of critique, a critique of, among other things (once again): the exploitive consumerist superficial capitalist system which we take for granted as we have no alternative, our frame of reference is the mainstream, there is nothing outside of it, there is only subversion, the grotesque and the destructive; the manipulation and inequality in class, race, religious and gender systems; the obsession with a power that is so powerful/unpowerful it engulfs us. Home’s project for the uninformed is opaque, oblique; for the informed, it is yes, and yes. However regardless as to whether one is informed or uninformed the message will (possible already has) sink in. The anti-novel documentary is a litany of phrases, abstruse and invisible lists, tired and tedious axioms, the philosophy of music, movies, art works and performances, real and unreal, sometimes it is difficult to tell.

So what is the message, unless one casts the book aside after the first page, but then the message has already sunk in (literally), this reader is already the zombie that Home describes, the living dead reading to pass the time, reading because a good story satiates limitation, for this reader there is no message, this reader is the message? And if one does not cast it aside, one ponders and thinks, what one finds is that the anti-novel is an insolent challenge to everything that one knows; a work filled with plagiarism and appropriation, it flouts a society that cherishes the notion of individuality and originality.

Self-reflect for it is a nauseating and vile self-reflection.

—Barbara Adair

The post Stewart Home’s “Mandy Charlie & Mary Jane” – an Anti-Novel Review appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

John S. Hall and John Kruth

John reads a poem, “I Hate this Guy,” that he apparently wrote on his way over to the club on his Blackberry. As soon as John Kruth is ready on sitar, he quits it and moves on to “How They Fucked,” which was originally published in Sensitive Skin #7. As usual, John’s work is brilliant, hilarious and absolutely filthy…

The post John S. Hall at the Bowery Poetry Club appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

SS: Has having a psychologist for a brother affected your approach to music? Has the study of psychology influenced your understanding of composition, improvisation, performance and collaboration?

FRED FRITH: I have not studied psychology, though I did go through an extended period of Jungian therapy more than 20 years ago. Trying to understand oneself better seems to me a useful attribute for an artist, or anyone else for that matter. My brother has influenced my approach to everything, not by being a neuroscientist, but by being a wonderful role model in the realms of music and art, and by his intense curiosity and rich appreciation of life’s absurdities!

SS: In 1979, you wrote an article for NME, “Great Rock Solos of our Time.” Have you changed your mind about any of those guys, based on what they’ve done since? What rock guitar players of today do you admire?

FF: I haven’t read those articles in many years, but I’m fairly sure my subjects would hold up to scrutiny! Current rock players? Nels Kline. Ava Mendoza. Alee Karim. Gilles Laval.

SS: Any other currently working musicians or composers you admire? Any special favorites in improvised music?

FF: Far too many to name all of them. But of those you may not know: Annie Lewandowski, Katharina Weber, Lucas Niggli, Bérangère Maximin, Eduard Perraud, Paolo Angeli, Camel Zekri, Jason Hoopes, Jordan Glenn.

SS: Chamber or contemporary classical music?

FF: Not my area of expertise. But I like the animated notation school of composers, like Steini Gunnarsson and Ryan Ross Smith.

SS: At last count, you’ve played on some 410 albums. Which stand out as your personal favorites, the ones you feel are most enjoyable and/or most important?

FF: Wouldn’t know where to begin. I’m generally more concerned with what I’m doing now! [Editor’s Note: If you’re not familiar with Fred’s ouevre, we suggest starting with something by Henry Cow, Guitar Solos, Gravity, and Step Across the Border. Check out the links to some of our favorites at the bottom of this article.]

SS: What are some of your favorite albums or compositions, the pieces that were most influential to your body of work and the history of music?

FF: The biggest influences on what I do are the people I’ve been lucky enough to work with, whether they’re the members of Henry Cow and Skeleton Crew, performers like Evelyn Glennie or John Zorn, or the members of my current band, Cosa Brava. I’m often very influenced by my own failures, and you don’t get to hear those!

I’m generally trying to wrestle with material in a particular context with particular parameters and particular players. What emerges is the result of a process. I guide the process by trying to balance my original ideas with what the players bring to the table. Luckily it isn’t always the way I expect it to be.

SS: Has teaching composition changed your approach to performance (or vice versa)?

FF: My approach changes all the time, based on everything I’m going through, whether teaching, not teaching, composing, performing, cooking, talking, arguing, watching birds, going to movies, or reading books.

SS: Have you been influenced by any of your students?

FF: I hope so.

SS: Has your tenure at Mills College and later focus on classical composition led to any reevaluation of your earlier work?

FF: I don’t really do “classical” composition, and I’ve been composing on paper since I was 14. Whenever possible I compose what I hear for musicians who want to play what I write. Some of them are classically trained, and some of them aren’t. I am constantly re-evaluating everything I do.

SS: Do you see the earlier work as preparation for this stage or as work with a completely different set of aims and accomplishments?

FF: Not in any conscious sense, and not beyond the general idea that everything that you do leads in some way to everything else. In general, my aim has always been to make sense of what I hear, and that hasn’t changed.

SS: You recently performed Gravity in its entirety. Was that enjoyable? Any plans to do it again, or something similar?

FF: It was wonderful. I can’t wait to give it another shot.

SS: Do you draw a distinction between your fully notated chamber music and free improvisation?

FF: Of course.

SS: Do you think of them as separate and compartmentalized?

FF: Of course not.

SS: Despite your early musical training and experience, you graduated from college with a BA in literature and got your MA in the same subject. Why did you choose that path, and does it have a bearing on decision to write lyrics for what could easily have been purely instrumental bands?

FF: It was the only path open to me at the time. I failed in everything else, and I had no formal training in music and would not have been admitted to a music program. Much as I love words, I hate writing lyrics and usually try to find someone else to do it.

SS: Moving to New York was greatly freeing for you—what’s it been like to move to the Bay Area? Do you miss NY? Do you miss England? Any comments on the Bay Area music scene?

FF: My community stopped being identifiably centered in one geographical location a long time ago. I’m in New York every year and still have deep personal connections there. London, too, and many other cities. Lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time in Copenhagen. I tend to go where I’m invited, and the community I feel that I belong to is always evolving and mutating. The Bay Area scene has always been vibrant and exciting and I’ve been coming here regularly since my first concert in San Francisco in 1979, so moving here was not a great leap into the unknown. There’s a lot going on here, though I’m perhaps more drawn to the younger generation of creative musicians, because many of them stay on in the area after they graduate from Mills and I’m excited to see them develop. All I can say is that the scene is as vibrant and exciting as it’s ever been, and yet has an almost shocking lack of local media interest or support. If this were NY in 1978 or Chicago in the early ’90s, we would be the center of gravity for American creative music right now, but the media are so unadventurous they’ve never noticed, and there simply aren’t enough decent venues to take chances and try to build up the scene. Thank goodness for the ones that DO exist!

SS: Did you ever feel lonely having a bookish background on tours with bandmates trained purely as musicians? How did the study of literature affect your approach to music? Did it affect the way you communicated with other artists?

FF: Are you kidding me? My study of literature has been almost entirely irrelevant to my social life as a musician, and the people I work with are frequently some of the most well-read, articulate, open-minded, inquisitive and fascinating folks I know. The only time I feel lonely is when I’m traveling by myself, which seems logical to me!

SS: Sometimes your approach (and that of your musicians) seems to change from album to album. How would you prep a new player for work as diverse as yours?

FF: I work together with musicians to realize specific projects. The diversity of my work is not something we discuss. I generally try to work with players who are able to handle all the angles. It’s more a question of how I prep myself to work with them.

SS: Over the course of your career, you’ve played with an incredible variety of musicians—Zeena Parkins, Mike Patton, Brian Eno, the Ensemble Modern, Ikue Mori, Tom Cora, the Residents, Bill Laswell, John Zorn and the Arditti Quartet. Did you change your overview and approach drastically to work with any of these vastly different musicians? Which collaborators stand out as your favorites?

FF: I like to challenge myself by working in situations where I can learn something I didn’t already know. Maybe in order to really get a sense of that it would be good to add a few names that are maybe not so much in the Anglo-American new music “mainstream”: Babazula, Stevie Wishart, Keiji Haino, Concerto Köln, Wu Fei, Mart Soo, Daniela Cattivelli, Lucia Recio– I’ve learned so much from working with musicians like these, and I take any opportunity I can to seek such collaborations out.

SS: There’s an unusually diverse range of styles and approaches to writing, arranging and improvising in your body of work, and yet it all sounds like you somehow. When collaborating, do you switch between stylistic palettes or approaches in your head, or do you believe in the idea of musicians staying in character? How mutable is your idea of contrast between players in an ensemble?

FF: Why wouldn’t it sound like me? It IS me! I’m generally trying to wrestle with material in a particular context with particular parameters and particular players. What emerges is the result of a process. I guide the process by trying to balance my original ideas with what the players bring to the table. Luckily it isn’t always the way I expect it to be. Choosing the right players is the single most important decision. Sometimes they choose themselves, like Kaethe Hostetter, who wanted to play violin in the Gravity show and “presented her credentials” as it were! That was awesome!

SS: Zeena Parkins’s work on Cosa Brava’s The Letter (Intakt Records) is very different from that on Traffic Continues II. Do you tend to ask your musicians to try different approaches? Do you prefer them to enter into the work without preconceptions?

FF: I’ve known Zeena for more than 30 years. She was in my bands Skeleton Crew and Keep the Dog in the ’80s and ’90s respectively. I’m well aware of the vast range of her talents as harpist, pianist, accordionist, experimenter, composer, inventor, improviser. I would want to work with Z in any situation that required flexibility, a broad skillset, a fabulous work ethic, and a strong intuitive understanding of what’s required. When the Ensemble Modern commission came along, it was a chance to invite her to play her first instrument, an opportunity that doesn’t come along very often. It was also the first time that the EM had featured women soloists (Ikue Mori being the other). As for different approaches, we try different approaches if what we’re doing doesn’t seem to be working. And I prefer players to “enter into a work” in whatever way seems productive to them.

SS: How conscious were the folk and Celtic elements of The Letter, especially in the violin parts?

FF: I was awake when I wrote them, if that’s what you mean.

SS: What about the elements of pastiche that seem to hearken back to Henry Cow (such as the baroque sequence of fifths in For Lars Hollmer)?

FF: Owes as much to Victor Jara or Kurt Weill as it does to Baroque music. And in any case what I love about Lars Hollmer’s work is that he made melodies that seemed like you’d known them all your life, but which were also personal enough that they were obviously his. That was the quality I was looking for, not so much imitation as invocation. Lars was a dear friend and a huge influence and I miss him.

SS: You’ve collaborated with Iva Bittová in the past, who shares your background in Eastern European folk music as well as classical music—do you seek out that sort of background in collaborators and performers of your music?

FF: I like working with collaborators who share a broad sense of the possibilities and are not bound to a single approach. And I like improvising with musicians who don’t define themselves as “improvisers”.

SS: Your early influences included many kinds of world and Eastern-European folk music—a rare set of influences for a Western musician in those days. How directly did your early interest in world and folk music impact on your accompaniment to her voice?

FF: No idea. I wasn’t thinking about it particularly.

SS: Do you think of it as accompaniment or something else?

FF: See above.

SS: There are lots of unison lines performed by voices, guitars and violins instruments. This suggests you might be aiming for a verbal but not necessarily a vocal sound: The voices of verbal instruments. Is there a connection between the voices of instruments and the content of verbal expression?

FF: I’m not sure if I know what you’re talking about. Which lines are you referring to? The best example that I know of understanding instruments as voices (outside of the blues) is René Lussier’s Trésor de la Langue. More than simply a masterpiece, it changes our understanding of the musicality of language.

SS: On The Letter, but also on many of your other albums, the use of accordion, and of pitched and higher sounds in the percussion and synths, gives the violin and guitar a magical sound that reminds me of Lick My Decals off, Baby. There’s a glow to the parts. Do you think of certain sounds as shimmering, glowing, or nacreous?

FF: I had to look that up! And no, not particularly. We’re just trying to make it sound good.

Watch the award-winning documentary Step Across the Border here:

Henry Cow – Leg End – “Teen Beat”:

Henry Cow – Unrest – “Bittern Storm over Ulm”:

Fred Frith – Guitar Solos – “No Birds”:

John Zorn/Fred Frith – Late Works – “Horse Rehab”:

Fred Frith, John Zorn and Eye, live

Cosa Brava – “Drowning” – live in San Francisco, 8/4/11:

The post Fred Frith – An Interview appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

Click any image to launch the full-size slide show.

Arriving in Tijuana after over a decade of heroin abuse in a past life, I felt the garish lights of Tijuana’s zona de tolerancia, or North Zone, beckoning. I was fascinated by their resonance, and the street life, brimming with pathos, quickly made la zona norte my favorite part of town. The challenge of taking a camera to El Bordo, the river bottom that runs along the border between Mexico and the U.S., where an estimated 2,000 homeless drug addicted US deportees live, was irresistible. I would drive along Via Rapide, known as the “most dangerous road in TJ,” and look at the shadowy figures crouched along the river bank, or on the highway meridian, openly cooking up and shooting heroin. I became determined to gain access. Everyone I asked told me it was too risky. One day I decided to chance it. I noticed two guys poised at the edge of the high- way about to daringly dodge traffic to reach the river bank on the other side. I flagged them down: “Hey, you wanna make a little cash? Let me take some photos.” So began a long, interesting friendship with the people of Zona Norte.

—Chris Bava

As we were going to press, we learned that Chris died in a car accident, along with his wife and brother, early in the morning of October 21, 2012. This issue is dedicated to his memory.

The post Zona Norte – Photographs appeared first on Sensitive Skin Magazine.

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