When Warner Bros. records used to have their loss leader double LPs - available by mail order from a coupon on the WB Records dust jackets for $2, one of the best was called The Big Ball." Ed Saunders, post-Fugs, had a cut on it called "The Iliad." It was hilarious. Both spoken word and sung, it was a tale told in redneck first person then responded to by Saunders - shocking in its day and way ahead of it's time. "The Big Ball" was from 1970.
Part of the lyrics went:
Oh Johnny, Johnny, Johnny, Johnny,
Why did you beat up that queer?
You can also check out Ed in fine form on the Poetry in Motion DVD, playing his musical tie, in between great spots by Ted Berrigan, Anne Waldman, Helen Adam, etc. He's still around too. I remember standing next to him at an informal wake for John Wieners in Boston a few years ago. Same moustache!
josh- who is that chick?
We miss you, Squeaky Fromme!
King George misses you too ...
@3,
Kinda looks like something from The Beatles White Album shoot, no?
It's Susan Atkins, AKA "Sexy Sadie." She was the lead crazy in Manson's murder troupe.
This explains everything about you Josh. It figures you'd get into Ed Sanders writing style, complete with his little flourishes like "ooo-ee-ooo" in this book. And you're just NOW discovering it?? Unforgivable considering how old you are.
Ed Sanders (and his publishing entity, Fuck You Press) is mentioned several times in the Burroughs anthology Word Virus.
Plus, if the urge strikes to see some actual video footage of the guy, he appears in the documentary What Happened to Kerouac?, available on Netflix - he was on the same panel as Kerouac for a taping of William F. Buckley's Firing Line.
Weird, considering the Mansons were obsessed with that particular Beattles album.
When I was a kid, I read a memoir by a dude named Paul Watkins called My life with Charles Manson.
I remember it was a bit trippy and spacey and a bit deferential to Manson, but I remember reading it fast. Cant really say if it was a good read, but the dude was a part of that cult. I dont think that one is in print any more.
Im gonna get this one, if it sucks than may Gilbert Arenas be traded to the Lakers.
SeMe @ 8,
Paul Watkins figures prominently in Sanders's book.
yo josh check out sexy sadie now:
http://www.ocweekly.com/news/news/all-in-the-family/21906/
she went all jesus in the joint.
Ian MacDonald, in Revolution in the Head: The Beatles' Records and the Sixties, makes the point that Manson's use of the Beatles was an extension of the typically American failure to understand the very English/Irish use of irony, skepticism, self-deprecation, and pop contrivance (Manson took this to insane extremes, of course). It's true that the Beatles attract loonies, and nowhere are these loonies loonier than in America -- think of the Southern pinheads burning their Beatles albums in reaction to Lennon's casual Jesus remark in '66, or Manson, or Mark David Chapman, or in fact almost all American Beatles criticism. Only an American would think they were getting "messages" from a Beatles record.
My favorite part of the Manson story takes place before the murders, when all the Manson chicks were living with Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys, and he and most of the other males in their circle couldn't help but screw their brains out with them even though they knew they were filthy and infected with gonorrhea and syphilis.
@5 - actually, Sexy Sadie is really a certain guru in India.
But nice try.
ewww, Fnarf, I had forgotten that part, now it's back in my brain .... bad bad Fnarf!
@13,
Sexy Sadie is Mia Farrow's sister. The guru in India hit on her during the Beatles' trip to see the Indian guru (Farrow was in their entourage.)
The guru's boorish behavior clued the Fab Four into the fact that he was a charlatan.
As for Susan Atkins: As you know, the Manson girls had endless strings of nicknames. One of Susan's nicknames was Sadie. And so, when the Beatles cut a song called Sexy Sadie, La Famille Manson took it as a sign.
If you can ever get your hands on the out-of-print documentary MANSON, it's a must-see.
If you get obsessed try looking up old Oui magazines from the late 70's where they'd always have obscure Manson articles and stories and even an occasional John Waters submission. Much more personal and discriptive than that best seller and yawner Hellter Skelter.
the original lyrics were specifically about him, not her. it got changed later.
I saw Sanders, Tuli Kupferberg and The Fugs perform in Greenwich Village in approximately 1969. At one time I had an LP but it sadly got traded away, I think for a Steve Miller album. On the LP were such beauties as I Feel Like Homemade Shit (when we snobbish hippies still laughed at C&W), The Swinburne Stomp.
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