Great Jones Street (Contemporary American Fiction) Read online

  Than the children you kill

  Sits the ten-star general

  There he sits

  Ex-vaudevillian

  Honing his patter in a cancer ward

  Sits the cheesefeet duchess

  There she sits

  Wombless lady

  Cutting paper dolls of burning babes

  Nothing turns from death so much as flesh

  Untouched by aging

  Nothing turns

  To be younger than the ones you kill

  And remain a velvet child

  Too late their cells run wild

  General and his lady

  You have lost the war

  Oh what a bore

  You have lost the war

  You have lost the war

  “VC Sweetheart”

  Words-and-music Wunderlick-Azarian

  Copyright © 1968 Stanwash Music

  All rights administered Arkmaker Music

  Used by permission

  “Nothing Turns”

  Words-and-music Bucky Wunderlick

  Copyright © 1968 Stanwash Music

  All rights administered Arkmaker Music

  Used by permission

  Excerpts from seminar conducted jointly by the senior editorial board of Chance Mainway Publications and the Issues Committee of the Permanent Symposium for the Restoration of Democratic Options.

  The Committee CM Publications

  Robert Fielder Sam L. Bradley

  Turner Bakey Ross Holroyd

  Grace Hall Aline Olmstead

  Lester E. B. Niles George Porter

  Walter Jencks Olmstead

  Clarence B. Washington

  Special Guest

  Bucky Wunderlick

  Mr. Fielder: Turning now to our guest at this morning’s round table, I’d like to begin by taking this opportunity to welcome him, if I may, to our Chula Vista complex.

  BW: Yes, you may.

  Mr. Fielder: We’re not accustomed so much to this kind of discussion as we are to a different level or range, for example on the freedoms, or House and Senate priorities, or the emerging issue of pleadings and writs. But no phenomenon in recent years in perhaps the whole history of what we might call popular American culture has so brought about a massing of opinion one way or the other among the men and women, and I count myself among them, as do, I’m sure, most if not all the individuals at this morning’s round table, about whether or not we can profitably undertake a dialogue with the kind of young people who are at the very center of all this noise, and I hope nobody objects to that word. Please feel free to address yourself to this question in your own words because we’re not, although it may seem so to you, the kind of not-with-it people, not at all, the stuffed shirts we may seem so to you, and we’ve heard this kind of subfamily vernacular, and even the gracious ladies present at this morning’s session, I might venture to guess.

  BW: Noise, right. It’s the sound. Hertz and megahertz. We mash their skulls with a whole lot of watts. Electricity, right. It’s a natural force. We’re processing a natural force. Electricity is nature every bit as much as sex is nature. By sex, I mean fucking and the like. Electric current is everywhere. We run it through a system of wires, cables, mikes, amps and so on. It’s just nature. Sometimes we put words to it. Nobody can hear the words because they get drowned out by the noise, which is only natural. Our last album we recorded live to get the people’s screams in and submerge the words even more and they were gibberish words anyway. Screaming’s essential to our sound now. The whole thing is nature processed through instruments and sound controls. We process nature, which I personally regard as a hideous screeching bitch of a thing, being a city boy myself.

  Miss Hall: Yes, noise. Extraordinary. How, precisely, one wonders, do you do with it what you do with it? I freely confess to a kind of global migraine every time I go anywhere near one of your records. I mean totally apart from the question of decibels, there’s that intermixture of instruments or something that’s so sort of shattering to one’s composure, to put it mildly.

  BW: That’s why we’re so great. We make noise. We make it louder than anybody else and also better. Any curly-haired boy can write windswept ballads. You have to crush people’s heads. That’s the only way to make those fuckers listen.

  Mr. Porter: But what I’m really trying to get at, really, I think, is the more basic question of human values, human concerns.

  Mr. Holroyd: I think what George is really trying to get at is the effect of this type of thing…

  Mr. Porter: No, no, no, no, no.

  Mr. Bakey: Lunch.

  Mrs. Olmstead: Do you consider yourself an artist?

  BW: The true artist makes people move. When people read a book or look at a painting, they just sit there or stand there. A long time ago that was okay, that was hip, that was art. Now it’s different. I make people move. My sound lifts them right off their ass. I make it happen. Understand. I make it happen. What I’d like to do really is I’d like to injure people with my sound. Maybe actually kill some of them. They’d come there knowing full well. Then we’d play and sing and people in the audience would be frozen with pain or writhing with pain and some of them would actually die from the effects of our words and music. It isn’t an easy thing to create, the right sound at the proper volume. People actually collapsing in pain. They’d come there knowing full well. People dying from the effects of all this beauty and power. That’s art, sweetheart. I make it happen.

  Mr. Niles: At this point I suspect you’re only being half-serious.

  BW: Which half?

  Mr. Bakey: You’re not saying, or are you, that the only thing you do is make loud noises and this is what explains the Wunderlick formulation or ethos.

  BW: My whole life is tinged with melancholy. The more I make people move, the closer I get to personal inertness. With everybody jumping the way they do and holding their heads in the manner they’re inclined to hold their heads, I feel in kind of a mood of melancholy because I myself am kind of tired of all the movement and would like to flatten myself against a wall and become inert.

  Miss Hall: Quite so.

  Mr. Bradley: I wonder if you’d like to discuss the origin and meaning of the phrase pee-pee-maw-maw. I know it’s traceable to you and it seems to be sweeping the country at the moment. Everywhere I go, and I do extensive traveling, I see people wearing shirts and trousers with those little syllables on them, not to mention seeing pee-pee-maw-maw on shopping bags, buttons, decals, bumper stickers, and even hearing dolls say it over and over, five-dollar talking dolls that say that phrase over and over. I know it’s all traceable to you and I just wonder what it all signifies, if anything.

  BW: Childhood incantation.

  Mr. Bakey: Ah.

  Mrs. Olmstead: Perhaps you’d care to elaborate.

  BW: As a little kid in the street I used to hear older kids saying it. It’s one of the earliest memories of my life. Older kids playing in the street at night. I’d be on the stoop or watching from a window. Too little to play with the older kids. Summer nights on the street in New York. Very early memory. These kids chanting to each other. Pee-pee-maw-maw. I don’t think anybody knew what it meant or where it came from. Probably twelfth century England or the Vikings or the Moors. These kids chanting it on the street. Pee-pee-maw-maw. Pee-pee-maw-maw. Chants like that can be traced to the dawn of civilization. Like games kids play can be traced a thousand years back to kids in India. Same with incantations. It’s an interesting subject. You should schedule it.

  Mr. Fielder: For my closing remarks, which I promise you will be kept as brief as humanly possible, given the pronounced oratorical bias of your speaker and chairman, I’d like simply to say that this has been a most dynamic round table, surely for me a most instructive one as well, as it was I believe for all of us gathered here, although each no doubt has his or her own idea of levels of merit, remembering our own Turner Bakey and his oft-quoted rejoinder to Eddings’ paraphrase of Larue during the
Arts-Leadership Committee’s brunch on genocide. At any rate, thanks one and all. And now for a dip in the pool.

  Three tracks from

  DIAMOND STYLUS

  Recorded on Anspar Records & Tapes

  International copyright secured

  Cold War Lover

  I worked her body with a touch

  Learned from the hand of a blind old man

  Living in a one-room duplex

  In Nashville’s Chinatown

  It was love truest love

  Under gun

  One by one

  She was the butch of New Orleans

  I was her sometime beau

  In those murderbeds of pimps and tricks

  All those ranting nights

  We took what was and left the rest

  And mailed the short hairs east to west

  Oh funky city

  Funky city oh

  We loved each other with a heat

  Learned from the tongue of a strung-out tout

  Squatting in a two-room toilet

  In Tulsa’s Upper Crust

  It was love animal love

  Under lock

  Rock by rock

  She was the butch of New Orleans

  I was her sometime beau

  In those murderbeds of queens and marks

  Sultry afternoons

  We said a prayer and took a hit

  And went to church to nod a bit

  Oh funky city

  Funky city oh

  She washed my body with a grace

  Learned from the rub of a burnt-out case

  Locked in a padded tub

  In the Memphis Steamless Baths

  It was love animal love

  Under key

  Three by three

  She was the butch of New Orleans

  I was her sometime beau

  In those murderbeds of cons and pros

  All those summer days

  We reached the end and bent the wick

  And placed an ad for stamps to lick

  Oh funky city

  Funky city oh

  We broke each other with a skill

  Learned from the mind of a kindly dike

  Stuck in an airless shaft

  In Harlem’s Lonely Heart

  It was love truest love

  Cannibal war

  More and more

  She was the butch of New Orleans

  I was her sometime beau

  In those murderbeds of men and wives

  Final quickest trip

  She took a gun, a thirty-one

  Put her tongue to the bluesteel tip

  Oh funky cities

  Mobile’s paper mills

  I swim in the bay

  And get laid by day

  And cry for my love all the night

  Protestant Work Ethic Blues

  Rising up in the morning

  Looking down at yourself in bed

  Oh rising up in the morning

  Seeing your pale old body matter-of-factually dead

  Oh blue

  Never too white to sing the blues

  Getting yourself together

  Pulling day and night apart

  Oh getting yourself together

  Staring hard at your laminated astrological chart

  Oh blue

  Never too white to sing the blues

  Sitting up in your plastic chair

  Swallowing down some frozen toast

  Oh catching that old broken window train

  Take you to the place

  The place

  The place

  Take you to the place that you hate the most

  Oh yeah

  Protestant work ethic blues

  You got those white collar blues

  Dropping down behind your desk

  Crumpled in a puddly heap

  Oh dropping down behind your desk

  Waiting for the strength to take that existential leap

  Oh blue

  Never too white to sing the blues

  Falling off to sleep and weep

  In your three-poster bed

  Oh falling off to deep dark sleep

  You find yourself wearing a mask over your original head

  Oh blue

  Never too white to sing the blues

  Protestant work ethic blues

  Tough to shake those blues

  Diamond Stylus

  Sounds I see

  Breaking through the hard light

  Razor notes

  Close to someone’s throat

  Re-ject

  Is the mark along the arm

  Long-play

  Is the enemy

  Songs I touch

  Wheeling through the soft night

  Tracking force

  Is the way I die

  It scratched out lines on my face

  Test pressing time

  It pained me so it pained me so

  Drying out the vinyl

  Sound is hard to child-bear

  Skin inked black

  Turning into burning thing

  Circling into wordtime

  Words I taste

  Dripping through the knife’s bite

  Needle tracks

  Marking up the snow

  Re-volve

  Is the time I have to live

  Ma-trix

  Is the mother-cut

  Notes I play

  Twinkling through the bird’s flight

  Tracking force

  Is the way I die

  They give me five hundred hours

  One thousand sides

  Numbering down the broken sounds

  Scratching out a life

  Sound is hard to child-bear

  Skin inked black

  Turning into burning thing

  Circling into wordtime

  Sounds I see

  Breaking through the hard light

  Razor notes

  Close to someone’s throat

  Re-ject

  Is the mark along the arm

  Long-play

  Is the enemy

  “Cold War Lover”

  Words-and-music Bucky Wunderlick

  Copyright © 1969 Teepee Music

  All rights administered Transparanoia Inc.

  “Protestant Work Ethic Blues”

  Words-and-music Wunderlick-Azarian

  Copyright © 1970 Teepee Music

  All rights administered Transparanoia Inc.

  “Diamond Stylus”

  Words-and-music Bucky Wunderlick

  Copyright © 1970 Teepee Music

  All rights administered Transparanoia Inc.

  Complete transcript of interview conducted by Steven Grey, editor-in-chief of Ibex, a Journal of Rock Art.

  GREY: Hey, man, glad you could make it over. Just like to start off the proceedings by asking a couple or three questions about the mountain tapes. Are you figuring to just sit on this material or is there a release date for this material or what? It’s been a long time between releases and people are starting to wonder about that and in a business like our business you hear all kinds of things and I wanted to start off by asking straight out…

  WUNDERLICK: (garbled)

  CREY: Could you try to aim your words right at the thing there? Where you going? Hey, man, where you going?

  WUNDERLICK: (garbled)

  GREY: Hey, man. Aw, hey. Aw, come on back, man. Aw, no. Aw, hey. We just got…we just…aw, man, no.

  Feature story, reprinted in its entirety, from Celebrity Teen, volume 19, number 8, copyright © 1971 by Star System Inc., all rights reserved, reprinted by permission.

  ROCK STAR REVEALS SWEATER FETISH!!!

  by Carmela Bevilacqua

  After I’d interviewed hard-to-interview Bucky Wunderlick in his spectacular mountain retreat overlooking a shimmering lake in the rugged, scenic Adirondacks, I came away feeling just a mite dazed by his gentleness and quiet charm. After all, the supercharged
world of rock ‘n’ roll isn’t my usual beat, in addition to which everybody knows how difficult and temperamental Bucky is supposed to be, so imagine how delightfully surprised I was by his feather-soft nature. In fact it was a day full of surprises, including a strange and bizarre visit from an unexpected guest.

  But to get back to the beginning, maybe “interview” is the wrong word. Bucky didn’t actually answer any of my questions. Formal answers, no. But talk to me he certainly did! Nodding his head slowly at my queries about his personal and professional life, Bucky chatted slowly and with a kind of sleepy charm about his dreams and his fears, about music and love and poetry, about people, oceans, streets and trees. Such was the hypnotic quality of his voice that at times it was difficult to catch what he was saying. Sometimes his voice would drop away to a whisper and other times he just seemed to ramble on, stringing words together in an aimless pattern. As Bucky talked, his lady of the hour drifted in and out, occasionally joining the conversation. Since you’re probably dying to know, I won’t waste any time telling you that she’s slim and dusty-blond, and she goes by the name of Mazola June. (“They named me after the corn oil,” she said in a lil ole drawl of a voice.) After she drifted off thataway, I asked Bucky to fill in the details on this female friend of marriageable age.

  “We’re running death sprints,” he said mysteriously, and although I tried to prod him on the subject of marriage in the near future and the possibility of children and a life far removed from the tawdry glitter, he never returned to the subject of his pretty (and private) companion.

  It was about this time that one of Bucky’s ever-present aides, flunkies or what-have-you came slouching in to report that “some creep” had breached security and was hanging around in the hall outside, hoping to be granted an audience with the star himself. Bucky replied with a shrug and the intruder was ushered in. He was a smallish, pale man and he looked directly into Bucky’s eyes, spoke four sentences and then left without waiting for a reply.