JOURNEY INTO MONTY'S BRAIN - PART 4
"Monty
Oxy Moron is a rather mysterious individual who has been creating
his own blend of psychedelic mayhem for a number of years now. Monty plays
all the instruments that are heard on the tapes himself and the sound
that is created can, I suppose, only really be described as ‘60s
British psychedelia meets the Goon show. With track titles like "Dance
of the Hysterical Teddy Bears" and "Stop Playing Football With
My Heart" a splendid time is guaranteed for all. An odd experience."
(Thus spake Richard Allen in the spring edition of the Encyclopaedia Psychedelica 1989.) Psychiatric nursing training began a long process of learning to become a competent human being… that still continues! I made more tapes for Mr Duffy until Acid Tapes dissolved into a record label: Imaginary Records specialising in tribute albums for the likes of Syd Barrett, The Velvet Underground, Jimi Hendrix and Captain Beefheart. My contribution was to be a version of "you done my brain in" by the Bonzo Dog Band which I recorded and waited for it’s release, and waited…and waited. I suppose they must have gone bankrupt; I desperately needed other outlets for my own insanity while learning to "be responsible" at work!
On days off I would visit Alasdair, now living with two college mates also into exploring the noise making potential of all things. He was very patient with me at this time because I frequently played instruments to death; here’s his website!
I found another outlet for musical insanity at the college 100 yards down the road from the grounds of the Victorian asylum where Rod Paton: genius of the French horn, was running an evening of free improvised music and still does (just turn up and play!). However the best outlet for the fuming spouts of creative steam to spew forth (ooer missis!) was at a special night-club in Brighton where I was finally able to put Kate Bush’s advice into action and where I first met a certain guitar player…
The Zap Club
In
the late’80s Brighton performers were to be found not in the gutter,
but below it in a long cavernous room along the seafront that must have
originally been a storehouse for barrels: a suitably intoxicating environment
for all kinds of acts natural and unnatural! (I saw Ron Geesin there playing
milk churns.)
Tuesday
night was platform night: the evening when crazy creative lunatics of
the Brighton underworld emerged from their dungeons, closets, ivory towers
and sewers to entertain, astonish and sometimes torture the small but
enthusiastic audience. These were whipped into shape by a tall fellow
with long thin sideburns, square-framed glasses, a zigzag and pointed
right eyebrow highlighted with makeup; dressed in flamboyant attire and
delivering with a voice that might have been derived from a GM experiment
evolving John Lydon and Vincent Price: Mr Ian Smith.
There was a truly eclectic mix of performers: musicians (of a wide range of both style and ability), poets, stand-up comedy, artists, dancers, theatre groups and other acts that defied categorisation altogether. Whatever the genre or quality, Ian would always ensure an enthusiastic welcome: "And now by crikey, let’s go apeshitbananacrazy for this next performer who will amaze and delight, LET’S ERUPT!!!!" There was Steve Zen-Zen, looking like a cosmic samurai brandishing his Shakuhachi (Japanese flute) and doing some crazy and hysterical mime. There was a bizarre synthesiser combo called the Toad Squad. And of course the irrepressible Gary Hawk!
Garry wore a different glittery costume each week and was, I guess, the platform night superstar. Leaping around in a headband and bare feet he would pummel his keyboard accompanied by a cheap drum machine (the speed of which he would intuitively vary in the middle of a song), and shriek his lyrics with great enthusiasm: "Twentieth Century Warrior AHH! AHH! AHH! Fantasy Aggression, Fantasy Aggression, a Twentieth Century AHHH!!!" An average song would last twenty minutes and most of the punters retreated to the bar next door; of course we stayed for the duration, occasionally joining in until Ian called it to a close…otherwise I think he would have gone on all night!
Our
debut was an ensemble featuring Alasdair blasting on a saxophone, myself
on metal objects and my sister and Danny on screaming and bike horn, Ian
loved it! Every week there was another unforgettable act: a gent with
a bushy ginger beard, baseball cap, glasses and occasionally a Walkman.
Taking the stage and instantly getting our attention he compelled us to
emanate a strange hypnotic hum and accompanied by this resonant hive began
a stirring rendition of this classic song: "Sun Arise early in
de mornin’" followed by some odd ditties of his own. "There’s
so much crap on the news: the colour of Fergie’s shoes…"
and "When it rains the people get wet", delivered in a soft
nasal voice with a slight lisp and occasional stutter (which adds to the
effect!) This was Captain Stupidt who soon became a fellow sound
collaborator with this here moron. And there was another Captain in the
audience checking out the weirdness; of course the two had to meet and
Ian who had the vision to introduce the two expertly played the role of
fate: "Stupidt meet Sensible, Sensible meet Stupidt",
or something like that. And so it came to pass that Captain Stupidt and
Monty Oxy Moron came to the abode of Captain Sensible to record music
of the Stupidt kind. He also came to our gigs in the Greys that used to
end with the audience being handed drums and toy instruments to play…until
the local fascist anti-music squad decided to enforce an ancient law that
states "Only two musicians alone and unaccompanied may play in an
establishment that has no entertainment licence", BASTARDS!
Captain
Stupidt continues to haunt the venues of Brighton wherever there is freedom,
and he appears on Captain’s "Revolution Now" album on a
track called "Vosene". Ian Smith got me involved in a one-off
TV show "hits the fan". Diverse groups of people, including
punks Goths and young conservatives (!) were thrown together in a nightclub
to argue about things while a bizarre cabaret took place. Ian was the
master of ceremonies, I the manic accompanist, and the acts included the
self destructive Grand Theatre of Lemmings, Magritte the mind reading
rat and the three-headed man. Also Binky Baker was there with a cardboard
cut-out barber shop choir, (he appears on Captain’s "Universe
of Geoffrey Brown" album) I also appeared later in Brighton with
the Theatre of the Bleeding Obelisk, friends of Ian’s, playing "bagpipe
without the bag" (Ian’s description!)
Latterly, platform night moved to Sunday at the Zap and became the Silver Tongue Club where mind-blown poets would bay at the moon. Here I was able to try improvising music to the wild vocalisations of the Four Poets of the Apocalypse including the wonderful Yvonne Luna. Also appearing was my grandmother making her performance debut reading stories and dreams (she had previously played for the silent movies and in a Glen Miller style dance band in the 1940s). Ian was impressed and created a performance with grandma on readings, him acting and myself on various instruments and gerbil cage. This went down a storm at the Brighton Art College. Later Ian created a hilarious and disturbing show about cannibalism before leaving Brighton for Glasgow; long may his grand weirdness prevail! After this the Zap club became less and less a venue for live performance and more and more a disco…story of the 90’s! Thus I was once again deprived of an outlet for lunacy.
After just one year of full time nursing after qualifying I felt stuck in a rut. I had been playing in a band for the first time called the Sweetcorn Experience (oer!) we played covers by the Ruts ("In a Rut" appropriately!) and the MC5 in and around Chichester (it’s a happening place baby!) Also I improvised crazy jazz with Mr Paton in a duo called ID after the untamed part of the mind. In order to do such things full time I went to Rod’s college to study Related Arts-a good move! Compared with working full time it was a paradise playground of creative stuff, AND I met my first girlfriend Sally there.
I
also met another architect of the absurd: Mr Martin Pottle. Martin’s
spontaneity and humour reminds me very much of Viv Stanshall (as featured
on the Damned’s "lovely money"). A constant stream of bizarre
psychotic and downright rude humour pours from his brain. He was one of
a group of freaks from Gosport (of all places), that had it’s own
language and secret handshake. Also a talented musician (bass player and
church organist) he had an endless list of names for non-existent bands
such as "Dr Smedley’s Mechanical Southend" and "Ellis
Banunu’s Large Trouser Orchestra". We produced a tape of songs
including "the man with mechanical ears", "the electric
tube insect" and "the staring song". We also conceived
the concept of the Corpse Organ one inebriated evening in the pub: instead
of letting your remains rot in the ground or burn in a furnace why not
have them made into a musical instrument so you can continue to jam? An
illustration of the device appeared in BLAHBLAHBLAH magazine (produced
by and old mate from Eastbourne Art College: Danny King) something Adrian
Hurst missed out on!
The Daevid Allen Workshops
Thinking Gong had all but disappeared I was delighted when there was a resurgence of their activity including some workshops run by Mr Allen himself near Glastonbury. Our focus was to unravel the negative self-constricting thoughts and feelings that have accumulated through life (I have many of these!), and replace them with positive affirmations in the realisation that dreams can come true and hopes become reality. (Well of course all this is hippie new age nonsense, nothing special happened in my life since then has it???) Daevid sends us strange e-mails from time to time and came to see us play at Byron Bay Australia in 1997. Who or what is Gong? Become more baffled than ever! (www.planetgong.co.uk)