Swamp Gas CD and zine
Swamp Gas by Destroy All Monsters , 2002
Released in March, 2002, to coincide with DAM’s performance at All Tomorrow’s Parties (Los Angeles). Personal includes: Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Cary Loren, with special guest artists; Mathew Smith, Marnie Weber, Erika Hoffman and Warn Defever. This 72 minute studio recording contains vocals by Sun Ra re-mixed from original DAM tapes and interviews, samples supplied by Japanese Noise group Violent Onsen Geisha (Nakahara), and Mike Kelley’s jaw-dropping UFO poem-rant Dexter 1966. Special packaging includes a UFO zine; SWAMP GAS GAZETTE: a band zine that includes various rock histories, garage-rock, occult and UFO articles, and photos. Cosmic clip art and alien writing is featured on the CD artwork, trade edition of 800 copies. A numbered boxed edition of 200 copies (now sold out) was also issued with a cosmic clip-art booklet, Mike Kelley stickers, various random inserts, and plastic alien.
Note: inventory on Swamp Gas item is low!
This project drew inspiration from the great Dexter, Michigan UFO Chase of 1966: an incident witnessed by hundreds of bystanders, a women’s college out doing gymnastics, and also seen by the Ypsilanti and Dexter Police departments. The event made international headlines including coverage by Life Magize, the New York Times and a special UFO investigation by the FBI. This trade edition comes with the Swamp Gas Gazette newspaper and CD packaged in a plastic 7″ 45rpm protective record sleeve w/ cardboard title baggy topper.
“Swamp Gas is a collection of studio recordings made in Detroit in 1998 and 2001. This unique set — which comes in a large baggie, enclosing a newspaper, sticker, and CD — features music/anti-music by original Destroy All Monsters’ members Cary Loren, Mike Kelly, and the trio’s original guitar-terrorist, Jim Shaw. They’re aided and abetted by guest musicians including Marnie Weber, Anneke Auer, and Loren’s partners in his then-current Monster Island project: Warn Defever (His Name Is Alive), Matthew Smith (Outrageous Cherry), and Erika Hoffmann.
The group combines to improvise anti-music/noise music along with the sampled voice of the late Sun ra, which was remixed and overlaid from original source tapes, as well as sound loops supplied by the Japanese noise artist Masaya Nakahara (aka Violent Onsen Geisha). “The Voice of Silence” features a psychic channeling by Madame H.P. Blavatsky through her earthly channel and spiritualist guide Anneke Auer from the Netherlands, who speaks on “the seven rays of eternity.”
Another highlight is “Dexter 1966,” an 18-minute Mike Kelley rant/poem which includes excerpts from police reports of UFO sightings (filed in March, 1966 in Dexter, MI). This is interspersed with Kelley’s DAM lyrics, sung to the melodies of such ’60s radio hits as the Beatles’ “Nowhere Man,” Bob Lind’s “Elusive Butterfly,” Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound,” and Nancy Sinatra’s “These Boots Are Made for Walking.” The theory at work here is that these popular songs were vaguely disguised alien messages and warnings of death and destruction to Earthlings, who required extraterrestrial intervention to save them from destroying themselves.
Also included in this deluxe package is the accompanying Swamp Gas Gazette a UFO newspaper filled with articles and band research on UFOs, UFO-based religions, and “unexplainable garage-band fictions mixed with descriptions of psychedelic trips and illustrated with cosmic clip art images.” The gazette includes outlandish apocalyptic theories behind the hidden meanings of classic rock tracks like “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” (here, it’s “In-A-Godda-Da-Vida”), “96 Tears,” and other connections between the emergence of garage rock, the number “13,” and Biblical prophecies of one sort or another.” ~ Bryan Thomas, All Music Guide
$ 39.99
