News & Updates — punk

Happy birthday to the beatnik poet/singer/artist/anarchist Tuli Kupferberg! From NYC, he founded a beat magazine, Birth, in 1958, publishing Allen Ginsberg, Diane DiPrima, Leroi Jones (aka Amiri Baraka), Ted Joans and others. In 1964 he and Ed Sanders founded the unfiltered anti-pop group The Fugs, who released their humorous and crude tunes on ESP Disk and turned the NYC rock scene upside down (despite being the old man of the scene!). Tuli wrote several of their tunes, such as "CIA Man" and "Kill For Peace". He cut the bizarre spoken word album No Deposit, No Return in '66, the same...

Here's a birthday nod to the late Tom Cora, improvising cellist of out-rock, free-jazz, underground experimental and avant-garde styles. He modified and prepared his cello, often playing it violently like a guitar and through loud amplification. From Richmond, Virginia, he was originally a drummer before moving to jazz guitar in the DC area. Picking up the cello in college, he studied with Karl Berger and moved to NYC in '79. He quickly joined the rising Downtown avant-garde/improv scene, touring with Eugene Chadbourne and forming Curlew with George Cartwright & Bill Laswell and others. In '82 he formed the improvising duo...

The wildly popular and immediately recognizable blues stylist Jimmy Reed was a major influence on rock music. His style was so simple and basic that it didn't matter what the critics said of his music, it was heard far & wide as he cranked out pop hit after pop hit in his formula. His laid-back, almost slurry style was a huge inspiration to members of the '60s rock generation (Rolling Stones, Grateful Dead, Van Morrison, Yardbirds, Elvis Presley, Jimi Hendrix) as well as blues artists like Slim Harpo. Some consider him a precursor to punk rock. Born on a plantation...

Here's a shout-out to the original scumdog of the universe, Dave Brockie, better known as Oderus Urungus of the heavy metal/comedy/theatre/shock troupe GWAR. A Canadian, Brockie played bass, guitar or sang in the bands Death Piggy, X-Cops and DBX. For GWAR he reinvented himself as the 50 billion-year old caresser of his cuddlefish, dubbing himself Oderus Urungus, spewing fluids all over his audiences in outrageous costumes with equally outrageous storylines, attracting both positive and negative mainstream attention. As Oderus, he also had a character in the nutty TV sitcom Holliston. Happy birthday Dave Brockie, RIP.

The original Flying Luttenbacher, Hal Russell was a Chicago icon. A multi-instrumentalist, he played tenor sax, c-melody, soprano, drums, trumpet, vibes, marimba, musette, congas and keyboards. One of the most surreal jazz characters of the second half of the twentieth-century jazz scene, this guy brought humor, theater and playfulness into his artform. Harold Luttenbacher was born in Detroit, played drums in Dixieland and swing bands (Woody Herman, etc) before discovering bebop. Moving with his family to Chi-town as a teenager, he started playing trumpet as a second instrument in college. In 1950 he played drums with Miles Davis and did...