Prototype of the Mansion of Madness T-Shirt Design

Plechazunga (hand-painted banner, 2011) by Hieronymous Superfly This is a banner from 2011 featuring an interpretation of Plechazunga, the warrior pig from Thomas Pynchon's 'Gravity's Rainbow.'

The Transcendental Fugs

Wandering far afield from the usual suspects of sacred song, it is possible to hear music that glorifies the individual path and the beauty of the human spirit. In late 20th century Germany, Kosmische music seemed to revivify the spirit of German Romanticism exemplified by thinkers like Novalis and Goethe. In 1960s America, bands like the Holy Modal Rounders and The Fugs created a mutant hybrid of old string band/ jug band music that was, by turns, sophomoric and sublimely mystical.

Often listed as proto-punk, The Fugs were vulgar, confrontational and hilariously lowbrow. But they also sang poetry culled from William Blake and Algernon Swinburne. Sometimes they were shocking and sublime in the space of a single song, as in "Johnny Pissoff Meets the Red Angel," which culminates in a gloriously beautiful condemnation of bigotry and violence:

When The Red Angel comes and the TV is cold,
Will you pray in the dawn for the rest of your soul?
When you lie in the dour death coma,
Do you think youre gonna go to heaven, oh Johnny,
With a violent heart? With a violent heart?
Are you ready Johnny? Are you ready?

Ahimsa, oh Johnny, ahimsa!
In the spinning confusion, ahimsa!
In the blood of life, death, and torture,
Ahimsa! Ahimsa! Ahimsa!
Ahimsa, is the seashell of Buddha.
Ahimsa, is the rose and the lamb.

Ahimsa is the philosophy popularized by Mahatma Ghandi, who wrote,"True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all." The Fugs not only celebrated this ideal but regularly mocked those who would "kill for peace." At the same time, they celebrated the carnal, the absurd and the underdog.

Some of their songs could be considered hymns for iconoclasts and heretics. The Fugs were not only intimately allied with the Yippies (one of their songs is a recording of the ritual to levitate the Pentagon), Ed Sanders, the group's singer, was the creator of Investigative Poetry, "a poetry adequate to discharge from its verse-grids the undefiled high energy purely-distilled verse-frags, using every bardic skill and meter and method of the last 5 or 6 generations, in order to describe every aspect (no more secret governments!) of the historical present, while aiding the future, even placing bard-babble once again into a role as shaper of the future."

Sadly, a few years ago we witnessed the tragic loss of poet and Fug Tuli Kupferberg, shortly after the release of The Fugs' Final CD, Part 2. But their legacy in song lives on and deserves fresh consideration. Some problems are perennial, which makes many of The Fugs' songs like potent medicine for the heart. Drink up!

New York Unexpurgated is a highly inventive, excruciatingly funny guidebook credited to "Petronius." It's hard to imagine anyone using this as an actual guidebook, even when it was released in 1966. It seems to be more a work of wishful, absurdist psycho-geography. For example, if an adventurous traveler wishes to visit the mysterious Key Club of the 7 Rooms, she must first pass muster at a sketchy Chinatown candy store called The Jellybean Path. Once at the alleged club, she will find seven rooms "jam-packed with indescribable nonsense" lit only by a "trained ape of undefined sex" who moves a single light bulb from one nook to another every 15 minutes. How I wish that such a place existed, but I am doubtful of the book's claims of simian efficiency, to say the least.

I brought this guide with me to New York City, curious about its promise to lead me to the "under underground" and soon have me "going down in Gotham." As suspected, it was worse than useless for this. Any legitimate entries, if there are such, would be 44 years out of date and long buried beneath the changing urban palimpsest. But what the travel-guide lacked in practical advice, it more than made up in amusement value. It's almost impossible to turn to a random passage without succumbing to belly-laughs. I had the most fun inviting New York City residents to read aloud from it.

This tome seemed like a useful tool for a dérive ("...a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiences. Dérives involve playful-constructive behavior and awareness of psychogeographical effects, and are thus quite different from the classic notions of journey or stroll" -Guy Debord). The playfulness of such an approach is irresistible to me and ideal for a walking city like New York. Combined with a list of pilgrimage points from the past (here is where CBGBs used to be, here is the former site of Peace Eye Books) and a few songs, the book was less useful than inspiring. It did lead me down the Jelly-Bean Path, though, and I did see a few sites that would have made great entries in an updated edition.

If you buy one spurious guidebook this year, it should be New York Unexpurgated. Its genius sadly under-appreciated, it's a cheap, tawdry read that might once have been valued by Dadaists.

Most Recent Episode of Dr. Night-pig

Here is the last episode of Dr. Night-pig, our radio serial performed live on Mansion of Madness, featuring the Mercury-in-Retrograde Theater of the Air.

Dr. Night-pig & the Time Toilet by Hieronymous Superfly on Mixcloud

Welcome to Mansion of Madness

Welcome to Mansion of Madness, weird freeform radio every Friday, midnight-4 a.m. CST on KNON (streaming at KNON.org). In addition to rare and unusual music, this show hosts live radio theater from The Mercury-in-Retrograde Theater of the Air, including the repulsive and offensive Dr. Night-pig serial, guest curator-selectors of rare and eclectic sounds. The show takes its name from the film directed by Juan López Moctezuma, and anyone interested in the idiotology behind the show might give it a gander.

Thank you for listening and please share the mad tidings of this show with your weird friends.