BC Bat Benefit this Sunday afternoon! Long-form press release

This is the LONG VERSION of the BC Bat Benefit press release! A short version has also been sent out...

For immediate release: First Annual BC Bat Benefit to raise money for and awareness of BC's struggling bat population. Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/

Event in brief:

BC Bats are in crisis, with problems due to habitat loss, predation by housepets, declining insect numbers, and other man-made factors already making the situation dire before the arrival of White Nose Syndrome (WNS), which can wipe out whole roosts while they hibernate. The fungus that causes White Nose Syndrome, Pd (for Pseudogymnoascus destructans), which was accidentally brought into North America from Europe, has now been found in BC, and will likely further deplete bat populations. The Community Bat Programs of BC have enthusiastically welcomed the idea of a bat benefit, and Regional Coordinator Brynne Graham is preparing a presentation on bats. 

Origins of the event: The organizer of the BC Bat Benefit, Allan MacInnis, had written a song with NO FUN called "If I Was a Bat" https://atomicwerewolf.bandcamp.com/track/if-i-was-a-bat and has a long, fond history with bats. After discovering that a 2024 concert he had organized, which already involved songs about bats, coincidentally took place during International Bat Week (October 24th-31st), MacInnis decided to organize an actual bat benefit for the Community Bat Programs of BC. This year is the first official BC Bat Benefit. 

Event details: The concert this year will be held on Sunday, from 2pm to 6pm, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell), and will involve headliners NO FUN, Victoria-based band Hüskee Düde (Nick Venditti of Gnash Rambler, Little Guitar Army, and others); Sister DJ and the Hired Hand, fronted by Jill Mandrake of Sister DJ's Radio Band; and Rowan Lipkovits (Creaking Planks/ Accordion Noir). More on the artists below! 

Admission is $20 at the door. The venue is all-ages and kids are welcome, BUT NOTE that the event is designed with a mature, sophisticated audience (albeit ones who enjoy, at times, immature and/or frivolous songs) and there may be profanity, eccentricity, and "mature themes" during the course of the night. After covering costs and a small honorarium to performers, proceeds will be donated to the Community Bat Programs of BC.

Event page here: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/  

Allan MacInnis and friends

Event in full/ Backstory: 

1. Why Bats? The origins of "If I Was a Bat" and the BC Bat Benefit 
Allan MacInnis is the BC Bat Benefit event organizer and co-author, with David M., of the lyrics to NO FUN's "If I Was a Bat". He's long been fond of bats: "As a child, growing up in Maple Ridge in the 1970s, pre-Internet, one of the things some of the neighbourhood kids used to do for cheap entertainment was to go out into the parking lot of a local bar and throw pebbles in the air to see if the bats flying overhead would mistake them for bugs and swoop for them. Back then, there were plenty of bats to be seen, and it was fun to interact with them and see them dive. We made a contest of it: success meant getting the bat to dive and/or catch the rock. I hope none of the bats were hurt when they discovered what they thought was a fat flying insect was actually a small stone!"

Later in life, MacInnis would enjoy seeing our local bats swooping around under streetlights, hunting for moths and mosquitoes (and a plethora of other insects). When he moved to Japan for three years, 1999-2002, he found they also had lots of bats. "I would always be very aware of as I rode my bike through country roads on the way home from work, between rice paddies and bamboo groves; sometimes they would swoop quite close to you, so you did kind of notice them: 'Duck, it's a bat!' It was then, dodging bats on my evening commute, that I had the idea for a song lyric in which I imagined myself as a bat. I kind of envisioned it as a bluegrass song, originally: 'If I was a bat, girl, would you still love me?' It seemed important that it not be in the subjunctive mood, since a real bluegrass musician wouldn't sing, 'If I were a bat,' you know?"

Flash forward to 2017, when the "If I Was a Bat" author discovered he had squamous cell cancer on his tongue. "My girl Erika Lax and I were going to get married, and we had to move the date up, because we wanted to be married before I went in for surgery, which was going to remove a part of my tongue. I wanted to give her a memorable wedding gift, and I needed a best man for our wedding. So I asked my friend David M., of the so-called 'Beatles of Surrey', NO FUN, if he'd be my best man and write music for and perform 'If I Was a Bat' at my wedding. He did! His music was different from the peppy bluegrass tune I'd initially imagined but it worked perfectly and has become definitive."

David M., founder of NO FUN, the headliners of the BC Bat Benefit, writes: "I was surprised to get an email with a set of song lyrics from Allan MacInnis a few weeks before his wedding in March of 2017. The lyrics came with a request to set them to music so as to be performed by me at the reception as part of my contribution as best man at the wedding. I didn't change a word, including the 'Eep Eep Eep Eep, Eep Eep Eep' part, which stayed at 4 eeps then 3 eeps, and I emailed a demo version of the new song back to Allan about an hour after I got the lyrics. The demo didn't change much by Allan and Erika's wedding day, and it hasn't changed since. I know Allan had something different in mind for a musical setting, something more like boilerplate ragtime, but I think the intent of his lyrics was better served with another musical approach."

The first public performance of the song was on March 18th, 2017, in Duncan, BC, mostly in front of Erika Lax's relatives, many of whom were conservative Brits. M. says now of the performance: "When I played the song at the wedding reception, I sort of enjoyed the mild apprehension of the wedding guests about what they were about to hear. I mean, the groom and the best man wrote a song? Oh, no... but they relaxed almost immediately once the song started and they realized it would be pleasant and touching, and then very amusing with the eeps. It was a great moment in a great day. Thanks, bats!"

"It was perfect", MacInnis remembers. "I was nervous that I was going to be left speechless by my tongue surgery, where I'd only be able to express myself with sounds, not words, hence the 'Eep eep eep' chorus, so the lyric totally fit. How would Erika feel about having a husband who couldn't speak? Luckily my surgery went better than I had feared, so I can get onstage now with David and help with the eeps, which I did not in fact do at the wedding. But it was really fun to see David walking between the tables of the wedding guests in troubador mode. He did other songs, too, like a mixup of Bruce Springsteen's 'If I Should Fall' with Ben E. King's 'Stand By Me', but the bat song was the highlight, and I was delighted when, later that year, David performed it when he opened for Marshall Crenshaw at the Rickshaw. He reported that he could see Crenshaw chuckling at the side of the stage."

More on that story here: https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2024/10/why-bats-story-of-if-i-was-bat-my.html

"If I Was a Bat" remains a staple of NO FUN live sets, and was performed at LanaLou's in multiple versions in 2024 at the 20th anniversary of MacInnis' blog, along with other batty contributions (like Rowan Lipkovits doing the Sesame Street song "The Batty Bat"). Members of his wife's family attended, hearing "If I Was a Bat" live for the second time in their lives. Local photographer Gord McCaw was on hand to document the event.

https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2024/11/anyone-want-bowling-ball-alienated-20th.html

The event planted an idea in MacInnis' head: to hold another concert explicitly understood as a BC Bat Benefit, to raise money for and awareness of the plight of BC bats. Because he had known for years that something was amiss with BC's bat population. The once-plentiful bats that swooped around streetlights were few and far between. One evening in 2012, he had walked out into the countryside looking for bats, photographing streetlights as he went north on 224th. There were no bats to be seen; this was the topic of a blogpost entitled "Batquest 2012: Where have all the bats gone?" https://alienatedinvancouver.blogspot.com/2012/05/batquest-2012-where-have-all-bats-gone.html Colony collapse disorder among bees was already getting attention, but no one seemed that concerned about local bats.

2. BC's Bats in Crisis

Brynne Graham is the Regional Coordinator for the Metro Vancouver-Squamish Community Bat Program of BC. and an enthusiastic supporter of the BC Bat Benefit, not just as a potential fundraiser, but as a way of widening the conversation about bats, which, she says, are a stigmatized, misunderstood animal. Most of the calls that BC Bats get are people who are worried that they have bats on their property, and are along the lines of "how do we get rid of them" or "Is it safe?"

"It's shocking how many people still really dislike bats! We get contacted all the time about having bats living on the side of their home, in their barn, on their property, things like that. The biggest thing that people can do if they do have bats is, allow them to stay. Bats really are not problematic to have living around your home, as long as they're not getting inside. And I think that's a big misunderstanding that people have: they think that, you know, so many bats carry rabies, it's not worth the risk. Or people think that bats do damage to structures, and they don't; they're incapable of chewing or digging or damaging anything. So allowing them to stay if you have them is definitely the biggest thing, because it allows the population to remain in a safe spot that they've likely been using for years, sometimes for decades."

Another positive thing people can do is combat disinformation by talking about bats. People think that bats are "flying rats", but they aren't even rodents; as part of the order chiroptera (from the Greek for "hand wing"), not only are they the only true flying mammal, they're more closely related to cats and dogs and other carnivores than they are to mice or rats. And less than 1% of bats in the wild test positive for rabies. Finally, of course, bats are long associated with vampires, but in fact, BC bats are more likely to prevent your blood loss by eating mosquitoes, since Canada's bats are entirely insectivorous.

Brynne Graham continues: "The more we don't recognize their importance and continue to spread misinformation about bats, the more likely people are to get rid of them when they do have them, or demonize them when they see them, or to only ever talk about bats in the capacity of them having rabies and things like that. And I think as that kind of stigma shifts, so that people see how bats are critically important to our ecosystem, honestly in so many ways to our lives as well, that people will at least have a different view of bats, or be more inviting to having bats in the area. That's a really big part of it."

Because all the bat species in BC are insectivorous, declining insect numbers is also a challenge bats face. "If there are less insects, there are going to be less bats. Their population can't withstand that, they need those insect populations in order to thrive. And similarly, we have really manicured lawns now, where there are fewer insects growing and surviving, where we're scooping up all the leaf litter and getting rid of all the [insect] eggs. There are so many factors where we aren't necessarily helping bats all that much. And insects are also demonized! People don't want to have insects. When you tell people that they can garden for bats by encouraging insects to their properties, people don't really want to do that, because they don't want to have more insects. So it's unfortunate. And also, with lawn care now, people are getting plants that aren't native, or they aren't planting that many plants. I can't tell you how many lawns I've seen where it's flat grass, or even fake grass, and they don't have any shrubs, they don't have any flowers, so there's not really any way to support a robust insect population, which would then support a robust bat population."

New Roost for 2026 by Mike Gravnic

Habitat loss is the biggest problem faced by BC bats, Graham continues. "ll those places where bats have historically been living, people are now, what we call, 'excluding' bats from those properties. So many people don't want to have bats live on their property, even if they're totally harmless. They don't want them there, and they'll exclude them out, and they'll have to go somewhere else. Not to mention that there are also pest control companies that don't get rid of bats in a proper way; and there are people who still kill bats, even if that's illegal, you can't do that. But there are people who still do those things. I think when the environment changes so much, and we have all these big skyrises going in in areas where bats may have previously been living, all of a sudden, they're not there anymore. Sometimes they get killed without us even realizing it: buildings get demolished that have huge bat colonies living in them, and people don't realize. The building gets knocked down with all these bats inside. There can be these really big populations of bats in certain areas, where we were seeing them previously, and then their home gets taken away, and either they perish or they have to move somewhere entirely different in order to continue. It's really unfortunate."

White Nose Syndrome is a fungus that spreads among hibernating bats, and has decimated bat populations back east, including Ontario, where Graham first came in contact with bats as part of her work with Ontario Parks. Though it has not yet been found in a BC Bat, the fungus that causes the syndrome, Pd (Pseudogymnoascus destructans) has been found in BC, so it is only a matter of time, Graham continues. "It's killed about seven million bats in North America since it came here in 2006. It's a huge number of bats, many of those on the eastern side of the continent. When they're hibernating, their immune system shuts down; they hibernate similarly to a bear, so they're asleep during the wintertime. So it's kind of like getting poison ivy in the summertime, and you're trying to sleep: it starts growing onto their wings and their face and their ears, and it constantly wakes them up. It's itchy, they're trying to groom it off themselves, and every single time they wake up, they're wasting energy that they've been reserving through that hibernation. Some of them can also wake up in the dead of winter, and since they are all of a sudden awake, fly out looking for water or food, and they're met with an icy landscape where there's no food, there's no water to get to, and unfortunately they die." Graham previously worked for Ontario Parks, and saw her own park's population of a couple of hundred bats dwindle to about ten in a short time span due to White Nose Syndrome.

The Community Bat Programs of BC are studying bat populations in the hopes of better preparing them for/ insulating them from the effects of White Nose Syndrome, but meantime, Graham notes, other things people can do are to:

- Garden for bats, plant native plants that attract moths and other night time insects
- Keep large old dead trees when possible, cut them off at 20-30ft to leave habitat for bats
- Keep pet cats inside when it is getting dark out, cats are a number one predator of local bats
- Allow bats to roost on the side of your home so long as they aren't getting indoors
- Don't use pesticides or harmful deterrents like sticky tape
- Avoid fake cobwebs at Halloween
- Fight to protect local Riparian habitat, a must for healthy bat populations
-Talk about bats! Share your passion for bats and help dispel harmful myths about them.
- Report dead bats to our program from November-March (email address: bcbats@gmail.com, toll free# 1-855-922-2287.)
-Help count bats with us every summer!
- If you have a bat colony roosting on your building, call us for information on how to live safely with bats, or for best management practices on how to exclude them without harming them.

Brynne Graham is preparing a brief presentation to run before NO FUN plays! 

Brynne Graham

3. About the bands:

NO FUN, the Beatles of Surrey, is a long-lived comedic folk/ punk/ glam band that has existed in many forms since the 1970s. Their most famous incarnation also involved guitarist Paul Leahy (also of Toys, Transvestimentals, and POLLY), who passed in 2017. The duo were long associated with the Railway Club and their lively themed shows (NO FUN at Christmas, NO FUN on Drugs, NO FUN in Love), and opened for artists as diverse as the Violent Femmes, John Cale, Tupelo Chain Sex, and (in a solo incarnation, billed just as David M.), Marshall Crenshaw.
David M. continues to play around Vancouver and record under the NO FUN banner. Much of NO FUN's sizeable catalogue, which was for the longest time cassette-only, has now been reissued via the US-based Atomic Werewolf label.
NO FUN bandcamp here: https://atomicwerewolf.bandcamp.com/album/eep-eep-eep-eep
Most famous albums: 1894, Snivel; most famous songs, "Be Like Us", "I'm Not Taking Suzy to the Be-In", and "Mindless Aggression", which appeared on the legendary Vancouver Complication LP in 1979, alongside another song by NO FUN, "Old," and music by the Pointed Sticks, D.O.A., the Subhumans, the Shades, U-J3RK5, and the proto-Young Canadians band the K-Tels (featuring Art Bergmann). 

A new song based on NO FUN's "Why Are We So Fat?" has been repurposed by David M. and Allan MacInnis to be bat-themed and will debut at the event on October 25th. 

David M., left; Allan MacInnis, right. Bat: dangling from my  hand. 

Hüskee Düde is the alter-ego/ brainchild of guitarist/ vocalist Nick Venditti, whose has been in several bands, from Sex in Sweden to Aging Youth Gang, from Little Guitar Army to his own main project Gnash Rambler. Hüskee Düde was originally conceived of a Hüsker Dü tribute act but has expanded its pallete to include songs by bands as diverse as Mission of Burma and local heroes the SLIP~ons, as well as Nick's originals; though the set on Sunday will still ikely involve a few Hüsker Dü classics and deep dives. Nick fondly recalls his own interactions with bats: "I remember when my family went to Italy in the summer of 1983 my brother an I stayed up at our hotel room in Bologna to sit on the suite balcony and feed the bats there with tiny bits of salami. They would catch the pieces, chirping away to get a fix on the airbourne deli meat to catch it."

Nick Venditti

Gnash Rambler bandcamp here: https://gnashrambler1.bandcamp.com/album/gnash-rambler
Nick singing with Greg Norton of Hüsker Dü at Buddies Vancouver in 2025: https://youtu.be/D3jeX5uApOQ?si=teaZODMC4aiKOV4c
Sizeable interview with Nick here: https://www.straight.com/music/all-young-dude-many-guises-of-gnick-gnash#

Trivial side-note: Grant Hart of Hüsker Dü once toured with a bat-themed t-shirt! None of us have it though. 

Sister DJ & the Hired Hand:
Jill Mandrake is the former frontperson of Sister DJ's Radio Band. She has a long-lasting friendship with David M. of NO FUN, and references bats in her song "Halloween Lullaby". https://sisterdjband.bandcamp.com/album/halloween-treats-2 She normally performs with a small band billed as "Sister DJ and the Hired Hands", but since only one of her hired hands is available, guitarist Quentin, she has has requested for the singular to be used ("the Hired Hand"). She describes the event as a "fascinating fundraiser", pledges to put 100% of her honorarium to the cause of supporting our bats, and plans a short set of songs that are themed around Halloween or bats!

Selfie by Jill, with Quentin and Edgar Allan Poe

Rowan Lipkovits, AKA Blackbox Squeezebeard of the Creaking Planks:

Lipkovits records often-humourous covers of popular artists re-interpreted for accordion, which he posts on his Youtube Channel,Stupid Accordion Tricks with Rowan. Rowan is taking seriously the task of learning seasonal/ species-appropriate material, like the Sesame Street favourite "The Batty Bat", to kick the night off in a suitably chiroptera-centric way. Rowan, asked by MacInnis if he has any bat stories, says, "I got nothing, My involvement is due to my respect for your strange and deep seasonal reverence for the humble bat."

Note: Since at least one of the performers (Nick Venditti) and one of the audience members (Adam Kates) are celebrating a birthday, there will be cake! Kates and MacInnis actually first met at a Grant Hart show at the Lamplighter (Nick was there too, I think). 


The first annual (?) BC Bat Benefit will take place Sunday, October 25th, from 2pm to 6PM, at LanaLou's Rock'n'Roll Eatery (362 Powell). Again, the event is all-ages and educational but it is not necessarily designed for children: there may be mature themes! Caveat emptor!

Event page: https://www.facebook.com/share/1MjMsPjF7c/

Hibernating Myotis by Jordi Segers

Bat Night 2026!

There are no advance tickets, but I did do a writeup, here!

On second thought...

 Nah, that review wasn't right, nevermind! 

Fugs Film! at the VIFF: a Peter Stampfel Interview

Fugs left to right, 1965: Tuli Kupferberg, Ed Sanders, Ken Weaver, Peter Stampfel, Steve Weber

There is a Peter Stampfel interview apropos of the Fugs on the Straight website, which this is a supplement to.If you don't know the Fugs, you might want to start there, or maybe with Jeffrey Lewis' "History of the Development of Punk on the Lower East Side of NYC, 1950-1975," which puts the Fugs in context. The new documentary about the Fugs, Fugs Film!, screens this Friday at the Cinematheque. You can also see a trailer for it here. 

But meantime, here are two things: witness testimony on Fugs Film! from ARGH!!, who (unlike me) was able to see the film at its first screening, and after that, the full interview with Peter Stampfel, second from the right on the album cover (the guy holding a painting, which, note, is NOT painted by ths chimpanzee who did the painting on the cover of Fugs 4 Rounders Score: I checked.)


Part One: ARGH!! testimony (ARGH!! has disdain for capitals and follows his own conventions of punctuation*, so we are representing him as we have received this):

fugs movie is good…a gave it 5 stars (loved it) on the ballot after the movie…peter and jeffrey lewis give commentary throughout the movie…jeffrey is like a illegitimate son of the fugs…movie made me happy and sad…happy remembering my sprout yeas...i was 10-11 when the fugs started and i was just starting to see the world beyond family school tv cartoons and comic books…rushing home from school to watch cartoons and soupy sales then walter cronkite reporting assassinations and the vietnam war on the cbs evening news…body bags and bombs and crying vietnamese children running from burning villages…the beatles were making little girls ( and most of my friends) scream with adulation... the fugs were singing kill for peace and liking boobs a lot…i’m sad cuz the revolution the fugs were a soundtrack to fizzled and died and not much has changed in the last 60 years…war and corrupt fascist governments on the news everyday today… i graduated from mad magazine to paul krassner’s realist in my early teens…i stole a copy of abbie hoffman’s revolution for the hell of it and steal this book from the rack at seafair drugs across the road from my jr high school...the first fugs album i owned was the fug’s second album…somebody was an ARGHist before me…i found the album at a garage sale…wow…a band called the fucs…then realized someone fucked with the cover using a felt pen…a friend said it's the fugs not the fucs….

i wish i drew this…and i wish coulda attended this show…oct 22 is my birthday…1965…i turned 11

thinking now…weird juxtaposition…fugs film vs butthole surfers the hole truth and nothing butt…
fugs…60s revolutionary beat-proto hippies hoping for change…freaks for peace…utopian dreamers…
buttholes…80s hedonistic freaks out to shock…no redeeming values…the hippie dream turned nightmare…
both reflections of their eras…both entertaining…
i think the buttholes exemplify the decline of modern civilization…sad but true…
kinda kennedy vs trump…i’m glad i’m old…and the end is nigh…
baffled since i was young…why do people keep having children…
i remember reading overpopulation is the number one threat to humanity and survival on the planet…
more people…more hate…more war…not enough food or water...

Part Two: Peter Stampfel

I have interviewed Peter Stampfel many times, but the best two are here and here. And now this!

 Fugs in Rubble, March 1965, by Dave Gahr, who took the Fugs First Album cover photo. This is, weirdly, how the images appear in the press folder, but I'll be expanding on them presently. 


Allan (italics, below): So early on, did the Fugs seem particularly vulgar or edgy to you? Even songs like "I Feel Like Homemade Shit" seem pretty innocent now.

Peter: Well, one of the first points of attraction I had towards the Fugs was the fact that they had these two songs, "Coca Cola Douche" and especially "Bull Tongue Clit." I thought, like, 'Now man, that's in your face!" Y'know? And also you've gotta remember that when they do, "I Feel Like Homemade Shit", it was like, "I feel like homemade yodelodel-odel-odel-ay-ee," because of a reluctance to say "shit" on the record. It was certaintly extremely transgressive, which was one of the things that I thought was so great about it, but on the other side, there was the fact that Sanders was reluctant to say "shit" because it was going to be on a record, it is sort of mirroring a specfic era. That would be early 1965. I don't think there's anything that, y'know, vulgar or over the top on the first album, certainly not by current standards, but by contemporary standards, I could see how it could give some yahoos conniptions.

So you felt like it was edgy at the time. 

 
Edgier, more edgy, than anything previously had come close to even. Like, we talked about doing a version of "Get a Job", only (sings) "lick lick lick lick lick yum yum yum yum yum: Rim Job!" Y'know? (laughs). If I had have stayed with the group, I'm sure we would have worked it out. But anyway.

I could see why, actually, Sanders might worry about the word "shit", especially on the album cover, but... what about the line about heifer fuckin', which isn't censored?

That's curious (laughs)!

So tell me about "Bull Tongue Clit." It never made it onto a record? Was it an Ed or Tuli piece?

It was Ed. I don't think it ever did make it onto a record. It was not a great song! All I remember of it was, "She's got a bull tongue clit, she's got a bull tongue clit" (laughs). But it certainly was one of the most memorable titles ever. [It can be heard at about the 18:40 mark of this 1968 concert]. 

L-to-R Stampfel, Kupferberg, Sanders, Weaver, Weber, image by Dave Gahr

How did you end up going to see the Fugs, the first time, at the Peace Eye Bookstore?

 
Weber said, "Hey, you should see what Sanders and Kupferberg are doing, they've written all these...," y'know, "and they're having a rehearsal", and so I went right over. And they didn't have any instruments instead of Weaver's hand drum, and I instantly volunteered to back them up. I absolutely wanted in on this: this is, like, fantastic! How could I not want in? And it was with really fun. In retrospect, I wish I'd stuck with them, despite, y'know, Weber. But then again, it's somewhat foolish to talk about what one could have done because it would have been neat, y'know? But one didn't, so the neatness never happened.

What do you mean, "despite Weber?"

I quit playing with Weber because one, as soon as the Beatles appeared, Weber realized on some subconscious level that we had some chance of a level of success greater than had been previously anticipated, and he started, basically, refusing to work out new songs. And on the other hand, he'd bitch onstage, "I'm tired of these old songs." I mean, working on a song involves playing it three times, period, and that's all it took to work out a new song. But he would bitch about how there no new songs, and I'd go, "Okay, here, I got new songs" and he would stomp out of the room.

And then he started missing gigs. On the third occasion, the Rounders were playing at Club 47 in Boston in July of 1965, and he decided to hitchhike there instead of taking a bus, and so he didn't show up when the gig actually started. That was the third no-show that he'd done. And also he was taking, like, at that time, prodigious amounts of speed, even for him. Like he went through this one period for several days, he was babbling away, and every sentence he said would have nothing to do with the sentence prior or subsequent. I mean, I wish that it could have been tape recorded for posterity. It would have been a cultural touchstone for the era.

Do you know about Hot Shoppes? They were this diner chain. And we had a gig in Baltimore and it's lunchtime and the place is crammed with people getting their lunch. And he proceeds to give the waitress some hashish: "hey, yeh-ye-yeah, you just smoke it in a pipe." 1965, in a crowded public place, offering drugs...? He was cruising for bigtime trouble. And given all these cumulative factors, missing that gig was the last straw [the two would reunite a couple of years later on Indian War Whoop].

In Ed Sanders' book Fug You, there's mention of a gig for Verve or such that Weber played at that you weren't on.

 
Weber continued playing with the Fugs. I quit playing with the Fugs because Weber was playing with the Fugs and I wanted nothing to do with Weber. I realize I hadn't made that specific point clear. And when Weber got kicked out, they had a bigger than previous concert opportunity and they were waiting for Weber to get onstage, and Weber was tuning, and tuning. Like...

...one legendary thing that Weber did before I met him was, he'd show up in Washington Square, right, and people had heard about this kid, he would have been 18... he'd show up with a guitar, and he'd tune, and tune, and tune, and at 5 o'clock, the cops would march you away from the fountain with their nightsticks, meaning, like, "Stop playing now", while waving sticks. You couldn't start playing til noon, and at 5 o'clock sharp, dozens of cops were there, to make sure you stopped. So according to [Stampfel's first wife and the writer of "Bird Song"] Antonia, who was there with him at the time, he would tune and tune and tune and finally, like, at one minute to five, he would suddenly play, like, a frantic, amazing one minute, and then the cops would shut him down.

Anyway, then what happened [at the Fugs gig] was, he was tuning and tuning and tuning and then he went backstage to tune, and then he didn't show up, and Sanders went to get him. And he had crawled into a large box and fallen asleep. That was the occasion that caused him to be fired from the Fugs. I don't know if Sanders specifically said when he was kicked out, but it was either late 66, or somewhat early 1967.

He was not the only one using amphetamine, however. You have this song "New Amphetamine Shriek", tell me about that? The song is almost kinda anti-drug, but you were also into it?

 
Actually, Weber and I did tons of speed when we met, and there were all sorts of... it was a feared drug, like a very bad drug. There was a bunch of early speedfreaks in Chicago who were referred to as "meth monsters"; this would be, like, 1962. And this friend of mine from Chicago was there, and there were all these people hanging around, and he said something about meth monsters, and a guy with a needle full of speed came up to him and shot himself up in the neck: "You want to see a meth monster?" And blood squirts out and gets on the guy (laughs). That's the sort of behaviour that these meth monsters would behave like! And in the folk scene at the time, it was like, groups of methadrine users would get into black magic, and then they would proceed to do black magic against other groups of amphetamine users. I mean, I heard this, but the source of that information was Chester Anderson, who I subsequently found out was a pathological liar. Chester Anderson is a complicated person!

I quit taking speed because it allegedly would kill you if you took it for any amount of time. And in the winter of 63-64, I got really really sick, which I attributed to speed, and I quit taking speed. The first two albums were recorded on amphetamine and weed. And so I quit then, but Weber and Antonia, my old lady, continued.

One line [in the song] about speed was how speed made you not want to have sex. Which was actually the opposite; personally I found that speed made me really, extremely horny, and it was possible to have an orgasm and then have another orgasm and then have another. Also, orgasms lasted longer and felt better, which is the reason that many members of the gay community are into, like, sex on speed. I know Tennessee Williams was. He liked to have his sexual partners shoot him up with speed before sex, that was like a kink of his. So that line, "I don't have a bedtime, I don't need to cum" -- it was a song about speed with some accurate speed information and some inaccurate speed information.

Yes, and there's the line, "If you don't like sleeping and don't want to screw/ You should take lots of amphetamines too." If that wasn't your experience, why did you include that inaccurate information?

 
Because I felt kind of weird about how super into sex speed would make me. This is kind of like, possibly, tied to Sanders not wanting to say "shit" on a record, despite our extremely transgressive attitude, we were still products of the time. And I would say there was a degree of shame involve, like I'm mildly, uh... embarrassed isn't the word... I haven't been embarrassed in decades. I consider embarrassment like an altered state, another way of being high in a strange way; like when one is embarrassed, one's feelings are more intense.

You're more self-aware. Like a bad trip without the drugs.

Yeah, yeah.  

So have you seen the film?

I've seen the film maybe three times, I think. It's excellent! I think they did a really terrific job, and also, most of the material in it, the majority was stuff I didn't know. Like, the Ken Weaver backstory is, "Holy shit!" The film is fucking great. Like, I don't see how a much better job could have been done. There were a couple of screenings in which I was a participant in a panel afterwards, so I had to see it a couple of times, and I even enjoyed seeing it multiple times. I'm not much of a multiple watcher of films. I would absolutely give it the highest rating.

Terrific, let me clear up two quick things. After you left the Fugs in 1965, you did not play with them again, correct?

They invited me to do one show with them two years ago, period, that was it. It was a Fugs show where I joined them for a couple of songs. And Ed was willing to be interviewed for the Rounders documentary, Bound to Lose, and I would run into him occasionally, and we would talk, but I don't think there was a further occasion on which I played with them again.

And we should also mention the Jeffrey Lewis album of Tuli Kupferberg songs.

Oh yeah, yeah!

That's a marvelous album. How did it feel, revisiting those songs with a different band?

Well, for one thing, I hadn't heard most of those songs! I wasn't aware of the fact that Tuli wrote so many songs, and so many songs that were really, like, terrific. Jeffrey befriended Tuli in the 1990s or 80s, and that's when he learned a lot of these songs, and after Tuli died, Jeffrey would do a memorial on his birthday. And at a point, he asked me to join, you know? And he was playing, also, with Steve Espinola, who I hadn't met previously, who subsequently joined my band [he actually seems to be in both the Atomic Meta-Pagans and the Ether Frolic Mob with Peter, and perhaps others]. But what happened was, for Tuli's birthday, we'd get together and do Tuli songs, and we'd often do new ones, to be non-repetitive. And we kept saying, "We should record these," which we finally did, which I'm very, very delighted about. I highly recommend the album of us doing Tuli songs.

Did you stay in touch with Tuli?

 
We lived in the same neighbourhood, and he would be peddling stuff with his wife on Spring Street, which is two blocks from me. We were about a five minute walk from each other, so we would run into each other all the time.

Peddling stuff like what? Poetry, or...?
Poetry, cartoons. His wife made jewelry and countercultural geegaws.

Further observations to be had in the Straight piece, including Bev Davies' story of seeing the Fugs and Tuli. For more information about Fugs Film! or to buy advance tickets, go here: https://viff.org/whats-on/viff26-fugs-film/

*Addendum from ARGH!! 

tanx for sharing my views on the fugs and the state of humanity today...uncivilization...i don't have a disdain for capitals and punctuation...lazy one finger typer...usually a coffee or cocktail in the other hand...also i dig ee cummings...letter writing and comic captions i print all capitals...everyone shouts in my comics...my cursive handwriting is a scribble no one can read...

Silly distraction: My9Albums X 5 or... uh, 6... 7... 8... now at 72... no, 81... uh...

This website allows you to generate a list of 9 albums, with thumbnails, so you can post your favourite albums on social media. I'm now up to 45. Interestingly, they recognized the Spores' Schizofungi! (but had no cover art for it, nor a way I could upload it); but Red Herring's Taste Tests couldn't even be selected.

Some of those I barely listen to, but they have historical importance. Some, like the Moe Tucker, I picked because cover art was available, as compared to others by the same artist I think I like more (I Spent a Week There the Other Night, in the case of Moe). And maybe some of them only seemed great to me because of limitations on what I had experienced at the time I discovered them, and might not seem that cool if I went back now, but I loved them once, they were important to me, and they still have hooks in me. 

There are a few omissions that I can't help; like, I can't pick between Velvet Underground albums, though I guess their first belongs on there. And shit, what about Big Star's Third? And there are a bunch of those albums that I have gotten less mileage from than Goddo's double live album. Am I sheepish about sticking in Goddo? Lighve: Best Seat in the House, with the jeans-clad girl's butt on the cover. Boy I loved that record when I was 14 (and I still do have it today). And what about the Crucifucks!? I could almost do another based on the Crucifucks first album. 

But I won't, unless I wake up with five other records in the forefront of my brain and feel compelled to do another one of these. It might happen? 

Shit:

One note on the one below: I do love "Justine" off Ja-Jazz, but I was looking for Spot the Difference, which isn't an available option. 

...and Red Herring's Taste Tests, which isn't available as a choice, gets to be #100. 

Oh, and I told Buck I'd amend this: sub out the Dream Syndicate's How Did I Find Myself Here? for the Modernettes' View from the Bottom, okay?

Casa Sueño Night Two - notes and photes

All photos by me, this one is from the first night though. 

The Furniture is kinda too great to have a name like the Furniture. It suggests something you take for granted, the background of the scene, but you just try to take them for granted when they're onstage. And sorry, but they were a better opener than Superchannel the night before. They even had the balls (or ovaries?) to do a Stooges cover with a bonafide Stooge in the room! They're kind of Pixies-meet-garage and Aramis Starfish is a very compelling frontperson, plus the guitarist offers a lot of interesting tones and it's fun to watch Lana thank LanaLou's for letting the band play. (She seems very differently pitched than Aramis, much more solid/ grounded/ serious). 

The set by Casa Sueño was the same or close to the same as the first night, and the high points for me were the rockin'er numbers, like "Electric Chair." I want a lyric sheet for that one -- what does tugging on one's mortal knot entail? It can't possibly mean what it brings to mind for me...

I didn't take many photos of the night (Bob was there!) but I did get a couple I like of actor Tom Scholte with Watt. 

Bruce Stayloose came by as well and sat at our table with Tom and Bob and Erik Iversen and Erika; I gifted him a Jerry Jerry and the Sons of Rhythm Orchestra LP (and received gifts in return), and heard stories of how he recovered a Watt album he'd made the mistake of selling because he recognized damage done to the cover (a buddy had spilled beer on it). Later, when it turned up much later at a garage sale, he knew it for his own. 

It brings to mind, perhaps weirdly, a Kathy Acker quote: "We wear our mutilations as badges. Wearing badges is the only proof we have of human love." At least, I applied that quote when I recovered a Dead Kennedys EP I sold because it also had recognizable damage to the cover. Without the patch that got torn off when someone taped a coat-check tag to it, I would never have recognized the album when I stumbled across it at Audiopile. 

He showed off his girl's first-press Double Nickels, too, which Watt vouched for as the true first. I had that once, but my current is more "umpteenth reprint." 

Bruce got them both signed. Watt was pretty patient with signing stuff. It's interesting, because people (even me) were pretty restrained at the Baiza-Corsano gig. Not so much at LanaLou's. 

Gerald wore a Tyranny and Mutation shirt, by the way. Shit, I want one too! 

It was a great night, but I don't really want to give away too much of the material they played, so the only vid I'm posting for now is the same song I posted yesterday, "Diggin' That Hole", but now at a different angle. 

I got some stories from Watt about What Makes a Man Start Fires?, too. He had pointed out the first night that it was the first album he wrote all the music for (tho' not all the lyrics). We continued that story the second night: I asked if it began with a piece of Pettibon art or if the band had come up with the title and commissioned the cover. Closer to the former than the later, but, he told me, he'd had an experience as a child of having accidentally started a fire. "I was playing with matches. I was seven." This was when he was growing up in Virginia. 

Flash forward some years to adulthood. "It was a weird time in my life," he explained, adding that he'd been born with bad knees. He'd just had knee surgery and was laid up. He was going through a box of art by Pettibon and found the drawing you see, and it reminded him of having started a fire once himself.

So. Anyhow, I've always loved this album. This and The Punch Line (and the Post-Mersh CD that combines them) are probably my go-to Minutemen albums, so it's really cool to know a bit more about them. They're not their best-loved by the many (and we all know what their objective masterpiece is),  but they're the ones I enjoy most, now. 

I kinda bungled trying to tell him my own story of how I acquired (a long time ago) the first, textured-cover version of The Punch Line, which I swapped (I think for a Bruce Springsteen record!) with a couple of editors of the anarchist Open Road zine when I crashed at their place with friends after that Cramps/ Slow gig, but let's face it, no one really wants to know all the stories of how you acquired their albums, do they? Besides, I don't have that textured cover anymore.  

Anyhow, that was a great two night stand (and Mike Baggetta explained on mic that it was in fact their first-ever two-night stand). You should see this band if you can! They'll be playing Seattle soon, I think for another two-night stand... and then recording in Oregon. Looking forward to that record. 

Meantime I got two fIRHOSE albums I don't know so well, including fROMOHIO, which Tom says is his favourite. It's also the one fIREHOSE album I've never listened to before -- I think I even gave my CD of it to a friend. And now I have it signed by Watt and endorsed by a local actor/ filmmaker I admire. (Tom, you really really have to put your movie Crime up on Vimeo, so I can direct people to it!). 

And I got a Tortoise record, my first ever on vinyl (I have a couple of their CDs around). Because John really impressed me too. I think Tortoise went over my head a bit the first time I listened to them, to be honest. Glad to have a second chance to re-investigate.  

Happy travels, guys, and thanks for putting up with us! 

Casa Sueño turns LanaLou's into a House of Dreams

You people who didn't come last night realize that Watt is singing songs, new songs, right? Only a couple, but...

Most of my observations are being held for print reviews, but you can have that pic, and this one of Mike Baggetta with a rapt Aaron Chapman behind him. 

Oh, and there's video. 

Watt is a saint, sure, but Herndon (from Tortoise) and Baggetta were where the real musical action of the night was; they're amazing Watt seems to be mostly down for a real good time, takin' it pretty easy for a man who writes operas. But Watt having a real good time and takin' it pretty easy is in itself a joy to behold. And New! Songs! As fun as the days of pissbottles and pissbags, if you know what I mean "Truckstop Joe", hell yeah!

Got to tell Watt that "Pissbags and Tubing" meant a lot to me during my cancer surgery hospitalizations. ("I didn't fully appreciate that song before!").  

I have seen him five times now (bandleader twice, once with Baiza/ Corsano and once with the Stooges) but last night's gig was the one I enjoyed the most. Grateful to go again tonight. 

Oh, and Watt told me that What Makes a Man Start Fires? is the first album he ever did where he wrote all the music himself (which explains how cohesive it is!); that he plays "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs" with a pick, hence the bubbly-doubled effect on the notes (I mean, I bet a bass player would know that already!). 

Aaron, coming out of the Lana's men's room as I was going in, remarked about seeing Watt with the Stooges (which I did too, but in Seattle; his was, I think he said, in Ontario?). "Did he hump the amp?" I asked. "I think so", he answered. 

He humped the amp in Seattle, but he still looked to be having more flat-out FUN last night. And those socks! 

(His feet seemed to tap in different time signatures to each other, note).

No merch. No Minutemen covers, nor fIREHOSE, nor Engine Room stuff. Will the set be the same tonight? 

Still prolly a chance to see this, way too few people (-50) were there last night. 

Watt's back!

So I did this in the Straight, and guess I should mention it here, too! Casa Sueño is in town Tuesday-Wednesday. Their bandcamp is here, but Mike Baggetta and Watt played together for years previous in mssv. So check that out too!

Footnote: Watt's great and Watt's Watt (which is enough!) but I'm turning into a Baggetta fan. Some hot guitar goin' on! They play Seattle tonight... 

Belated RIP for Jonny Bones

Wrote a lot about Jonny Bones (Jon Aaron) while he was alive, then missed marking his passing, a few weeks ago (Aug. 21). My last one-on-one interactions with him were July 2026, when we swapped a few messages about Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, which I'd read the first third of and loved. Jonny was the biggest King fan I knew, even visiting his old stomping grounds in Maine as a bucket-list travel destination after he found out he was sick. He remarked, in part: 

It's a very strange book. King wrote it while wildly high and it shows. If you cut about 200 pages or so I think there's a really good story in there, but it gets very messy and bogged down in the middle for sure. He's trying to do his big expansive cast/town thing, but he keeps getting sidetracked distracted. Still, when it's good, it's really good.

I replied that the first third was amazing, I thought -- 200 pages of development of just two characters, which I always thought was King's strong suit, character development, and he replied that that was the focused part: 

But wait till you get to the hologram clocktower and superpower egg cartons and flying coke machine. It's a ride for sure. 

Shortly thereafter I got thrown from the book, when I got to the middle part he'd referenced, where after 200 said pages of character development, King completely walks away from the characters he'd invested so much in and proceeds to tell the story of everyone else in the town, a vignette at the time. "Aha, I see what Jonny means".

Maybe I should go back and finish it now! 

But that was our last private exchange, not our last actual one; a bit later on, he popped up in the comments on a Facebook post, back in August, when I listed some reactions to recent horror films I'd seen. I liked Backrooms most of all, but ranked Disclosure Day about Obsession, and while he agreed that Backrooms was special, he argued that I was wildly mistaken about the others -- he thought Spielberg had lost it and that Obsession was the far better film. This was just a couple of weeks before he passed -- which I kind of love, that he was talking horror and SF movies with friends until the end. 

Fittingly, there's a PWYC movie memorial at the Rickshaw on Thursday, with films at 7 and 9pm (also an update to his GoFundMe). Don't know what movies! I was at the final Hollywood Horrorshow back in June 2025 (they played the DePalma Carrie), but the movie I'll remember him for re-introducing me to was a bit after that, when they screened The Monster Squad at the Rickshaw after a benefit show; Jon told me it had been his favourite movie since he was a kid. I'd forgotten how delightful it was! 

RIP, Jonny, thanks for your service to your community...!