(Answers/Mirrors vet Dave Fleminger shares a trailblazing collaboration with a pioneer of the cyber-underground.)
R.U. Sirius and the Merry Tweeksters
Somewhat over 20 years ago today … it was twenty years ago to the day … somewhere in the Summer of Luv.
Soon after moving to the Bay area, I remember hearing the Morlocks raving about this amazing scene centering around one R.U. Sirius and his uber-cool magazine, High Frontiers. This being the new far-out future, it appeared that the amazing Negativland “Over The Edge” radio shows we had listened to on cassettes in SD were about to turn 3-D, or perhaps 10-8. … How random is random?
In 1985 R.U. organized a High Frontiers event held at the The Farm called “Celebration, the Neo-Psychedelic Cotillion Ball,” featuring the Morlocks and about 10 other bands, hosted by Woodstock emcee Wavy Gravy.
The Morlocks were later interviewed for High Frontiers, but soon thereafter the magazine morphed into its next persona of Reality Hackers, so somewhere there sits an unpublished Morlocks interview and artwork. (Hmmmm … ) And in time Reality Hackers magazine further evolved into the supremely influential Mondo 2000. (More about that in a future post.)
Early in 1987 Kenneth Laddish hipped me to the Reality Hackers symposia that were going on in Berkeley. It was an amazing scene, a heady mix of academia, real science, fringe science, brainiacs, maniacs, and pop/counter-culture that welcomed all who wanted to participate or just lend an ear. At the first symposium I attended, a cryogenic scientist spoke about new ways to survive into the future (albeit in suspended animation). As proof of the safety of such an endeavor, he told us of how he had cryogenically frozen his own dog, now a “perfectly functional” canine that happily trotted up the aisle to the podium as he spoke.
It was clear I was witnessing a moment in history as new sciences and philosophies were being woven into the fabric of a brave new world. … At the time I had never used a computer (I didn’t even know what the term “hackers” meant), and here were all these people talking about “techno-tribalism” and whatnot. I was out of my league but happy to soak up the vibe. This was the freaky-future-frisco I had heard about and was thrilled to witness, and hopefully somehow contribute to.
Kenneth kindly hyped me to R.U. as genre-mixing tunesmith, and as R.U. had penned a brilliant new timely take on the Beatles’ “Sgt. Pepper” LP for inclusion on a flexi-disc within his magazine’s 20th Anniversary Summer of Love issue, I was now given the opportunity to collaborate with Mr. Sirius and mess with the recipe of an iconic sonic tonic.
Our timeframe (and probably the flexi-disc format) forced us to concentrate on finishing just two tracks of 1980s Pepperland, the aptly titled “Merry Tweeksters World Mutation Day” (Sgt. Peppers intro) and “Sufi Sales” (“With a Little Help from my Friends”). R.U. supplied his characteristically twisted and topical lyrics along with conceptual direction; I recorded the basic drum/guitar/bass/keys/vocal tracks in my makeshift basement studio; and Jeff Lucas supplied the wonderfully melodic cello parts, which are even more astonishing given that these string harmonies were thought up and recorded virtually on the fly.
The results of the sessions, crammed and bounced around a 4-track reel (4 trax being good enough for the orig Pepper’s) were then taken to a proper studio for more vocals, including a crowd-singalong, a sax overdub, and proper mixing and sweetening. Unfortunately budget concerns within the magazine’s editorial staff led to dropping the flexi-disc plan from the Summer issue, and these songs were never released as we indeed left Reagan’s domain and beyond. …
A new creative partnership was born, one that would develop and influence me in ways I couldn’t have imagined at the time. But back in ’87, the rest of our ambitious ‘Pepper’ project would be left unfinished, although the third song in the cycle (“President of Outer Space,” our “Lucy” song) did become an early part of our repertoire in the next episode of this story, whence The Merry Tweeksters begat Mondo Vanilli.
–David Fleminger
(with thanks to R.U. Sirius for helping me get my facts right)