Some people spend their time wondering about the meaning of life .......others worry about death and the afterlife. Me, I'm trying to figure out just how many people have recorded and released records over the last 60 years. I've concluded the answer is way beyond a million and even that may be a low estimate. Every year my brother and I take a road trip to "dig" for records, this year we did 3,000 miles, 5 states and looked at what we estimate to be over 2 million records. Our goal is to find those undiscovered gems of music that have been lost in the black hole of vinyl releases. Music that truly deserves attention but for various reasons never received any when they were released. Music that has remained unheard, sitting in the bin of a used record store until folks like us give them a spin and discover the magic within.


In Cedar Bluffs, Iowa there is an amazing store packed with vinyl called Kanesville Kollectibles....three levels of an old manufacturing plant with enough records to build a suspension bridge to neighboring Omaha......more records than most people see in a lifetime.....heaven for nuts like me. We arrived at this vinyl Mecca at 10:00AM and proceeded to spend the next 8 hours digging through racks and boxes of LP's....hoping to find that unknown gem, that musical golden ticket that makes all our time and effort worthwhile. This year's winner was found hidden away in the Country & Western section...an LP by a young couple, Kris & Jerry, who were from rural Illinois titled "A Sunny Day" released in 1966. The second the needle from my portable turntable hit the grooves we knew this was special...a great discovery....the reason we dig.


There are many amazing things about this record. The music is unlike any I've ever heard in my 30 years of vinyl addiction, sounding like a real down to earth Sonny & Cher without the Hollywood glitz that tainted their records. A folky duo that use saxaphone, accordian and viola all to their advantage.  The songs are beautiful monuments to young love and innocence and must be more powerful than both as Kris & Jerry are still married today some 43 years later.  When I realized I was in love with this record I decided to try to find Kris & Jerry which turned out to be pretty easy.

Still living in the same area, Jerry is a Music Director at a local school and had fond memories of the record he recorded in 1966. "I loved to write songs" Jerry told me, and the songs on the LP were written in very short order. "I didn't really have too many influences, I just wrote what I felt. It was a way for me to communicate". Very humble about his record I think Jerry was surprised that someone had unearthed his past.

The LP is a "vanity press", one of those records that have a generic catalog chosen cover which just happens to capture the feel of "A Sunny Day" in an uncanny fashion. The songs are short and to the point, all original songs except for the fitting cover of the Rolling Stones "As Tears Go By". This LP has that magic that very few LP's exude, something that occupies it's own special time and space while having a sound that has proven to be timeless. Cuts like "The Boy I Really Loved", "In A Far Away Place", "See The Shape I'm In" and "Little People" all reach out from my speakers and make the hair on the back of my neck stand at attention...an eerie journey into the private lives of two people who have no shame in sharing it with us. Kris's vocals which don't really jump out at first really grow on you in a beautifully haunting way that penetrates deeper with each listen.


It is with great honor that I am now able to share their music with the world and know that the message they placed in a bottle some 43 years ago has been found by an appreciative audience. Hopefully some enterprising re-issue label will want to get their music to a wider audience, until then click on the tunes below and enjoy the sounds of Kris & Jerry

The Boy I Really Loved


Can’t You See What You’re Doing To Me



In A Far Away Place

I'm a Baby Boomer.....not particularly proud of that fact but it's the truth. I don't own a cell phone, hell, I didn't even know what a "blog" was until I started writing here. At one time I was young and idealistic....now I'm old and realistic, the guy who embarrasses his kids in front of their friends with "Dad Jokes", random references to Roky Erickson and stories of drugs and hitchhiking. (That's right kids, I had to hitchhike to school in the snow...stoned....uphill....BOTH WAYS!!!).

So I thought I was going to impress the youngsters when I told them I was writing a blog for Blurt. I figured it would buy me a some credibility.....some skreet cred with the young'uns....after all this was Blurt, not some lame ass rag like Rolling Stone.. Instead I got "No one wants to read your old man stories"...and was dismissed as if I had just suggested we light sparklers for the 4th of July instead of setting off some M-80's. I'll show them, I thought....people will enjoy my old man stories....well, at least maybe some of the older folks will.  

I was wrong!

After 3 months of posting I have received two comments.....TWO.....to put it into perspective during that same time I have received 5 solicitation phone calls about buying funeral arrangements, 7 notifications that I have possibly won money from the now deceased Ed McMahon and 3 traffic tickets!! TWO FRIGGIN COMMENTS!! And my kids are laughing their asses off. at me....."What you gonna write about this month Dad?"....."The time you saw Peter Townsend pass out while sucking his thumb?". It's become a standard joke in my home and I have to fight back!

So I asked my kids for some advice....what should I write about? "Do what Rolling Stone does, just write a scathing article about GWB or the Republican Party" they told me "People never get tired of bashing Conservatives". Hmmm...how hard could it be to write about Sarah Palin having an IQ lower than an iceberg or why Donald Rumsfeld wears camouflage adult diapers. But then it hit me, this is a MUSIC blog, on a Music website, not KOS. So to tie it all together I decided to spout some embarrassing Dad jokes with that hip Rolling Stone political perspective.


THE TOP TEN HITS OF THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION

10) "I Fought Al Gore, And Al Gore Won" The Chad Fuller Four

 9) "Cheney's Got A Gun" Aerosmith & Wesson

 8) "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" Al Queda & His Tali Band

 7) "Wipe Out" N. Ron Hubbard

 6) "Born On The Bayou" Katrina Backwater Survival

 5) "Getting Hot In Here" The Intergovernmental Panel On Climate Control

 4) "Papa Was A Skull & Bones" The Bohemian Temptations

 3) "All My Lexus Are In Texas" The UAW Singers

 2) "Screwing Up The War" The Dick Armey

1)    "Mow The Lawn" The Bush Girls

The recent shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. had a lot of people, including myself, thinking "How does such an old guy live with so much hate inside him". You would think that after almost a century of life the dude would have learned to live and let live. That's how I was raised when it came to respecting people of different racial, ethnic and religious backgrounds. While I grew up in NY, my mother was from North Carolina and I got to spend some time in the South during  very  racially contentious times in the 60's. As a young boy my grandfather took me "across the tracks" to teach me to judge people by their character, not their color. He was blind, but more importantly he was color blind. My uncle Tom on the other hand was an entirely different animal.

He was an old stereotypical uneducated Tarheel farmer with overalls, a chaw of tobacco in his mouth, a coffee/spit can in hand, and hated everyone and everything. He lived with my Grandfather and had a "job" as a security guard at the Greensboro, Coliseum which they lived across the street from. You know, one of those 80+ year old coots who slept on a folding chair while a game or concert was going on.

One summer a friend and I hitchiked down to vist my Grandad and had a classic encounter with Uncle Tom. My friend Ray, who Tom called the "Eyetalian", walked into the house one afternoon and Tom was cussing under his breath... "I have to work tonight with a bunch of g-damn Ni****s jumpin' up and down at church and acting like they ate up with the dumb ass"....we asked him what he was talking about and he said that there was a big Ni**** Church Revival that night at the Coliseum and was bitchin' he had to go work it.

Later that afternoon Ray and I took a walk down High Point Road to get some Bar-B-Q....as we are walking past the Coliseum Ray points up, laughing his ass off, reading the marquee..."Tonight: Black Sabbath". As soon as we got back to the house we found Tom so we could tell him the news.... "Tom, it's not a church meeting, it's a rock band, BLACK SABBATH!....without missing a beat Tom started mumbling... "Goddamn long hair hippies smoking the pot and who knows what"!! Old dude was truly addicted to hate.

Musta been the late 80's or early 90's....my partner Mark and I took a trip up to Oklahoma City to look for records. Most of the day we hit various Flea Markets with pretty good success. Multiple sealed copies of Guiness and Tomorrow label LP's, about 20 sealed copies of the Markley LP, and alot more, most of them at $1.00 each.

Our last stop of the day was a place called The Memory Market, which is still there today. It's a large metal building that housed about 10-15 various antique dealers who specialized in "junk". The back 1/3^rd of the building was run by two elderly women who dealt in nothing but records. Tens of thousands of records, LP's and 45's. We started digging in and it was apparent that we were the first ones to go through this stuff who were looking for what we were looking for. The first hour yielded titles like Badge & Co. a very beat up copy of The Marble Phrogg, Darius, Trizo-50 and many more.

The market was going to close at 6:00 and it was about 5:45 when I came across an amazing looking record titled "The Psycho-Delic Sounds Of Jr. & The Soulettes". The cover was a "10" with Jr.  playing a Gibson Firebird behind his head while doing a split on the stage. I called Mark over, we pulled out the little Big Bird record player we carried with us and put the LP on to give it a spin. It was beyond warped, totally destroyed with only about 20% of the surface area being playable.....enough though for us to know we had found a MONSTER, yet bizarre LP. Mark pointed out that it had an Oklahoma City address on the back.

We paid for all the LP's and headed straight for the pay phone in front of the place. We looked in the phone book and sure enough, we found a Harold Moore Jr. & Sr. at the same address. I called the number and was greeted by something that could only be described as sub-human animal sounds.....Uhhhhhoooerrruggyhg....I could not make out a single english word this guy might be uttering. Then a second party picked up another line and told "Jr." to hang up. It was Harold Moore Sr. and he was one very friendly guy.

It was late winter and by 6:00 it was starting to get dark, yet Hariold Sr. invited Mark and I over to his house with the promise that "I have a whole suitcase filled with those old rekkids, you fellas come on over". We got directions and began to drive to the house......it wasn't long before we realized we were going to the worst part of OKC.

In the South it's pretty well known that if you live near the railroad tracks or by the river, you're probably in the bad part of town. The Moore house was built on stilts, with the river on one side and the railroad tracks on the other. We parked, went to the front door and rang the bell.....no answer. Then we knocked on the door pretty hard.....again, no answer. mark walked around to the side of the house and followed some very loud "Disco" music to a room in the back of the house. He looked inside and saw Harold Sr.  sitting in front of a column of amps and receivers that were producing this very bass heavy music. he banged on the window, got Mr. Moore's attention and he waved for us to go back to the front door.

Harold Sr. opened the front door and acted as if we were long lost friends...he quickly invited us in while yelling up the stairs at "Jr." while apologizing to us for his "effed up son". He brought us back into the "music" room and it was pretty bizarre. In the middle of the room stood a camera on a tri-pod. In each corner of the room that the camera was facing were little triangular stages built into the floor with a full length piece of plexiglas from floor to ceiling in front of each "stage". The stage was about large enough for one person to stand on.

Mark was an electronics engineer and in an attempt to start a conversation he asked Mr. Moore if he had the "schematics" for this contraption he had built out of about 20 amps and receivers. His response was "Schematics!! I just found this stuff in the garbage and makes it". Our goal was to get some LP's and get back to Dallas but Harold had alot to talk about and wanted us to stay.

After being there about 15 minutes Harold says..."You boys wanna see my puppet"!! How do you answer that question to a grown man??  Of course we said "Sure!!"....He opened his drawer and pulled out a puppet made out of a sock. You know, one of those winter socks that they make "Sock Monkey's" out of. "This here is my snake" and I'll be damned the thing had a hat that could not be described as anything but a "Pimp" hat and a big fat set of lips.

He then went on to explain that everything in the room was set up for the puppet....the music, the camera, the stages. He also explained that all his grandkids loved the puppet but he couldn't tell them about the puppet's "night life". He then pulled out a video, put it into a VCR and began to show us just what the puppet was all about. Before I attempt to explain what we saw I have to say that this moment was surely the most surreal in my life and I'd have given anything to have had a camera as I knew I would have to repeat what I saw and that no one would believe it.

The video starts off with that same bass heavy, thumping, Disco music and the pimp puppet "dancing" to the beat. Then a black woman, a naked black woman comes into the frame and begins to dance with the puppet. This goes on for about 5 minutes with the puppet doing various obscene things to what appears to be this super-imposed naked woman. The video stops, a new song starts to play and now the puppet starts dancing with a different, nude, black woman. Friggin' Amazing!!!

After about 10 minutes we've seen enough and tell Mr. Moore that we have to be going. Harold then explains at Mark's request just how he makes these movies. On a Friday or Saturday night Harold usually goes out and picks up a hooker. Not for sex, but to dance with the puppet. The naked hooker stands behind the plexiglas in one corner of the room while Mr. Moore operates the puppet behind the second piece of plexiglas in the opposite corner. The way the camera is set up on the tripod, it is able to not only record the puppet, but uses the plexiglas to make a reflection of the woman in the opposite corner so he gets the effect that they are actually dancing together!!! GENIUS!!!!

Getting down to business we asked for the LP's promising to pay him some big bucks. He goes into a closet and drags out a very old and beat up suitcase. He opens the suitcase which is FILLED with sleeveless 45's. Not an LP to be seen. "Oh you boys are looking for those BIG rekkids" he said....."I don't have any of those, they were all ruined". Needless to say we were disappointed but we bought a few of the 4 different 45's from him, two of them being non-LP cuts.  Harold apologized for not having any of the LP's and told this story.....

He had 4 children, Jr. and his three sisters who had been abandoned by their alcoholic Mom. Harold Sr. worked for a very rich Jewish woman who took a liking to the kids and bought them musical instruments and paid for lessons(This explains the Gibson Firebird).  She made the kids a deal that if they learned how to play at least 3 songs she would get them a slot on some local TV Telethon. The kids took to music very quickly and within a year were appearing on local TV. The response was so good that the woman paid for them to record an LP but suggested they write "original" songs.

This is where Harold Sr. comes in, writing all the songs that appear on the LP, with most of them being attacks on the drunken and supposedly abusive ex-Mrs. Moore......"Mama drinks Tequila, She stays drunk all the time"......once the LP was recorded and pressed the next step was to get them in the local record stores. At least one store told Mr. Moore that they could not stock them unless they were shrink wrapped. Harold went to a butcher shop where his brother worked and used their shrinkwrap machine to seal the LP's....unfortunately this was a high heat machine and he melted every single LP in the process. This wasn't discovered until someone bought one and brought it home....all the LP's were pulled from the stores and rather than re-press it, the woman decided to release some 45's.

The 45's themselves are a work of art....with photos of each of the kids heads on the label....very home made and cheesy looking. As Mark and I were leaving the Moore's home he asked for two favors.  One was to write to the Guinness World Book Of Records and request that his kids be put in as "The youngest group to make an LP and play their own instruments" which we did to no avail. The second was to never tell his grandkids what we saw the puppet doing...which has not been a problem to uphold.

No matter how well I told that story there is no way you can begin to understand just how weird it was. If I ever win the lottery this will be just one chapter in a film I'd like to make about some of the folks I've met in this wacky world of music....hope you enjoyed.

P.S. The day after we got home I made a cassette of the LP and a xerox of the cover and sent it to legendary Psych dealer Paul Major. Paul truly thoughtthat I had made this whole thing up and that there was NO WAY an LP like that existed......he eventually believed me.

"I'll be waiting for you in the parking lot and I'm gonna kick your ass". I'm sure these words have been uttered more than once but I'll never forget the first time I heard them. They came out of the mouth of my best friend, who was usually a quiet, peaceful guy, but on this particular night alcohol was using his body like a ventriloquist dummy. It was his birthday and it was Friday night. In the New York suburbs of Long Island in the 70's, that meant drinking alcohol and lots of it. It was a pastime that my friends and I started in our early teens. It came with the territory as we grew up in the infamous place called Levittown. Levittown was a development built in the late 50's and was touted as a place that young families from NYC could easily afford their suburban dreams. It later became known as a place that hosted wife swapping and drinking parties and more recently has been documented by the TV show "Desperate Housewives" which is supposedly based on life in this fine town. Suburban Hell.

"Excuse me Mr., will you buy us some beer" was the battle cry of this 13 year old weekend warrior as my three friends and I stood outside the local delicatessen on a Friday night trying to obtain a couple of six-packs of the cheapest beer available. Amazingly we almost always found someone willing to do our bidding and on most Friday's the four of us could be found sharing cans of Gennesee and listening to records at Quack's house. We all had nicknames that we still use some 35 years later, and these nicknames were all based on our last names. Quack was short for Quackenbush and rarely does a person get to carry a more accurate surname. Quack was the clown of our clique, a guy who's comedic and musical talents always left me in awe of him. It was at his house that our Friday night parties usually took place, mostly because he had the best record collection. Quack was cheap entertainment as he never joined in on the drinking and was just happy to turn us on to new music or revel us in the entire dialogue of a Bugs Bunny cartoon, imitating the voice of every character with uncanny accuracy. Quack's father on the other hand loved to drink and had no qualms about embarrassing himself when he did. I think this is why his son usually stayed away from alcohol, he didn't want to act like his Dad. Like the one Saturday morning when Quack came over to my house in a panic and asked if I could help him get his Dad down from up in a tree. I went down the block to his house and there was Mr. Quackenbush, in a tree with a rake, shouting "I'm tired of waiting for these god damn leaves to fall out of the tree". Embarrassing indeed.

Bone, Jab and Hippie(me) rounded out the circle of misfits. We had all known each other since Elementary School. It was music and sports that drew us together. In our early teens you might find us together at the Nets basketball game or a Led Zeppelin concert as we crossed the line between "Jock" and "Hood" with ease. We discovered pot in Jr. High School but beer was always our buzz of choice, mostly because it was easier to procure. And we often did some stupid shit while under the influence. Things that had once been innocent pranks evolved into psychotic episodes. One in particular really stands out. As pre-teens we would often hang out on the streets of our neighborhood being mischievous. One harmless prank we practiced was done right at dusk when the impending darkness made this prank possible. Two of us would stand on each side of the street making a pose as if we were holding a piece of rope across the street. The object was to get cars to stop so they wouldn't hit our imaginary rope. Once they did, we would laugh and the usually red faced driver would drive away. One night Quack decided to bring our little prank to the next level. His folks had just bought a new color TV and he took all the Styrofoam packing material and soaked it in gasoline, making a slimy gel. He then poured a thick line of it across the street just as it was getting dark. When the next car approached he lit a match and ignited the gel. Whoooosh...a 2-3 foot wall of flames appeared across the entire road. The car's driver slammed on his brakes and jumped out of the car cursing. Quack, in a panic, tried to stomp out the fire but the Napalm-like material just stuck to his shoes while still in flames. He was last seen that evening running away, feet on fire, and the rest of us were laughing our asses off, much to the chagrin of Mr. Veins Popping Out Of His Forehead, car driver. Just another day in our wacky neighborhood.

One Friday night, when we were about 15, our little gang made our first excursion into a bar. It was under unusual circumstances. There were plenty of local clubs that catered to the "18 and Over unless you have a fake ID" crowd. These clubs had names like Hammerheads, Uncle Sam's and Rumbottoms and they usually had live music. The bands that played these clubs were mostly cover bands and each specialized in their own genre of music. For instance The Stanton-Anderson Band played southern rock, Rat Race Choir played progressive music ala Yes/ELP and Zebra had the Led Zep sound down pat. On this particular Friday, Rumbottoms, which was about a mile from my house, was hosting The Bonnie Parker Band. The highlight of their show were explosions and flashpots and on this particular night they caught the ceiling on fire. Hanging out on the streets we heard the fire trucks, could see smoke in the distance, and hopped on our bikes to go view the carnage. We stood out there and watched the club burn into the early morning and when it was over, and the Police and Fire personnel had all left, we noticed the back door to the club was open. We peeked in and saw what had to be their liquor storage room! We each ran in, grabbed a couple of bottles, and high tailed it home. We were in my backyard admiring our haul when my Dad came out to see what was going on. We proudly showed him the smokey bottles of cheap liquor like Crème De Menthe and generic Tequila. He shook his head in disgust and said that if we were going to risk getting caught stealing, we should at least grab something worthwhile. He then rattled off a few brand names like Chivas Regal and Grand Marnier and suggested that if we went back we should grab them instead of the putrid Crème De Cacao we were so proud of. After that night we decided that we would start using the front doors of these clubs while they were open rather than the back door when they were closed/destroyed.

I was the youngest of the group, but looked the oldest. It was pretty easy for me to get phony ID and in the summer of '73 we started our journey into the local club scene. Nickel beer nights, cheap Tequila Sunrises and shots of the ultra sweet Alabama Slammers provided many a buzz for me and my buddies. Quack would usually just stare at the band, sober and wishing it was him up on the stage playing guitar. Bone would be earning his stripes trying to pick up the underage girls who had also used fake ID to gain entrance, while Jab and I tried to prove who could drink the most. We became regulars at the local spots, those within walking distance. Second rate clubs with second rate booze and second rate bands.....until the night we saw local legends, The Good Rats. The "Rats" were unlike any band we had ever seen before. They didn't just play music, they put on a show. A show that would whip the crowd into a frenzy and helped them gain a following like no other band on the Island. The Good Rats were an enigma, a group of street tough hoods who played original songs that were ½ Blue Oyster Cult tough and ½ Steely Dan jazz swank. The band had been started by the Marchello Brothers, Mickey and Peppi. Peppi was the frontman, a singer of great range and deep feelings. The rumor was that he had been in the Yankees farm system as a promising baseball player but had given it up for music. Peppi was often seen holding a metal garbage can filled with rubber rats that he would beat in rhythm with a baseball bat while flinging the rubber rats into the audience. Their drummer Joe Franco was the best I had seen and to this day the only drummer who's solos I could tolerate. Their lead guitarist John Gatto's playing could be summed up by the title of their second LP, "Tasty" Bass player Lenny Kotke and rhythm guitarist Mickey Marchello rounded out what was to become our favorite band. We became full fledged Good Rat fanatics and for the next 2 years we tried to see them as much as possible which wound up being at least 50 times. We knew the words to every song. We knew what order they were going to play them in. And we knew that more often than not a fight was going to break out in the club as Peppi would antagonize the drunken crowd and beer muscles would appear everywhere. It was a blast.

For the next two years our nightlife revolved around the Good Rats.....if it was one of our birthdays we'd celebrate at one of their shows. Back then the legal drinking age was 18 and by late '75 I was the only one of our group who was not yet "legal". It was Quack's birthday and we planned on going to Ubie's OTJ club where the Good Rats were considered the "house band". As I mentioned earlier, Quack didn't usually drink, but when he did, watch the fuck out. Later on in life I spent some time as a bartender in various clubs around New York, but I never saw alcohol have a stronger and more adverse effect on a human as it did on Quack. This quiet and gentle soul would transform into an absolute beast when he drank. And on this particular birthday he drank.....a lot. We started drinking at the house and continued all the way to the club. By the time we were inside of Ubie's we were pretty buzzed. And Quack was in rare form. All the hang ups that usually prevented him from approaching women had been washed away by booze as he hit on any female within earshot. His failure with these ladies just made him more agitated. Our salvation would be when the Good Rats hit the stage and Quack would be hypnotized by the music like the proverbial savage beast. But this night took a weird turn. Before the Good Rats hit the stage an announcer took the mike and introduced the "Opening Act", some unheard of comedian who had the daunting task of entertaining a room full of rowdies. And boy did he suck. His attempt at jokes were amazingly unfunny and the crowd let him know it. It reminded me of a comedy routine I once heard Albert Brooks do about opening for Richie Havens at an arena in Texas. He concluded that a comedian had no business opening up a rock and roll show. And this night was living proof he was right.

Five minutes into his act the "comedian", and I use that term loosely, had lost control of the crowd. In desperation he grabbed a conga drum and proceeded to jump off the stage shouting "Conga Line" attempting to calm the crowd down into some sort of controlled mayhem. Within seconds he was able to lure a few drunk folks to start following him around the room while he banged the conga drum and shouted some unusual cadence of grunts. It was surreal. But as they made their way past us Quack did what any drunk Quackenbush would do, he took a swing and the poor guy. A bouncer immediately grabbed him and escorted him, and the rest of us, outside. As we were exiting, above the sounds of the bizarre conga line, you could hear Quack shout these words at the opening act........"I'll be waiting for you in the parking lot and I'm gonna kick your ass". Well we didn't wait around for the comedian to leave the club and fall victim to Quack's seriously intended threats. We calmed him down, got in the car, and went home.

About 6-8 months later on a week night I was sitting in my families den with my Dad watching TV. He was watching a lame variety show called something like The Dick Van Dyke Summer Replacement Show. I was reading a magazine and half heartedly watching the show. Now you need to understand that my Dad was cut from the same cloth and raised in the same place as a well known character of the time, Archie Bunker. He was never bashful about speaking his mind and is never one to be what we now call politically correct. So when he said "Look at this wack-a-doo, they'll let anyone on TV these days" I didn't think much of it. Then I looked up at the TV and HOLY SHIT....THAT'S THE GUY QUACK WANTED TO BEAT UP!!!! Yep, that beyond lame comedian had somehow made his way to major network national TV. I was stupefied, how the hell could this have happened? As I watched it seemed like the guy was melting down, just like he did that night at Ubies, right there on my TV screen. This audience wasn't "getting it" either and it was all very uncomfortable to watch. I told my dad the story of what had happened that night and he said something like "This guy looks like he needs a good ass whupping, he's not funny, that's for sure". The next day I asked all my friends if they had seen "Mr. Unfunny" on TV and none of them had. They found my story hard to believe, how the hell did THAT clown get on TV. But over the next couple of months they all believed me. This guy was popping up on TV on almost a weekly basis and shortly thereafter appeared on our favorite show Saturday Night Live. And somehow, he was starting to be funny. Weird, but yeah, kinda funny.

I'm now 50 years old and there have been very few comedians during my lifetime that I think are truly genius. Lenny Bruce was one and his legacy is both groundbreaking and important. It's unfortunate he died so young as it would have been interesting to watch his comedy evolve through the tumultuous late 60's and 70's. Bill Hicks is another. A guiding light through the chaos of ignorance and hypocrisy and another one that was taken way too young. And then there is that also deceased crazy ass fool we first saw open for our beloved Good Rats. You know him as Andy Kaufman.

Rich Haupt is a noted music industry outsider and nationally recognized
non-entity. Co-founder of the Rockadelic Record label in the late 80's his
passion for vinyl has consumed his life and made it difficult to maintain
personal relationships. He does not own a cell phone.