eLetter from Tom Wheeler
posted in Captain Beefheart, Ed Sanders, Sleeper Awakes, The Invertebrates, Tom Wheeler |Bassist, composer and co-founder of legendary San Francisco band, The Invertebrates, my friend Tom Wheeler single-handedly represented 15% of the ultra-leftist anarcho-surrealist art posture in our high school senior class (LPHS ‘73). I was at least another 8-9%. As roommates that year, first in a tiny garage apartment, then in a small, down-at-heels frame house, we began explorations of social, psycho-spiritual and expressive spheres that have continued to color both our lives across all the ensuing days. I am still pleased to call Tom a friend and active influence. Search for The Invertebrates on MySpace, or use the link in the right column of this page, then seek out and purchase every particle of their available music. The following is an e-letter Tom sent 11/24/009:
Hey Rob:
As I was ambling my way through, “Sleeper Awakes,” I noted the winged fingerling and captains of a magic band … the great van vlelt; and thought triggers took me to where I first heard Captain Beefheart. Yes again, it was in the garage apartment in La Porte. You had the Warner Bros sampler album, The Big Ball, which had Ella Guru on it, as well as Ed Sanders’, The Iliad (Johnny Piss-off Meets the Red Angel of Death). I was already a Mothers fan, but hadn’t gotten Hot Rats yet, which I added to my collection shortly after moving to La Porte, prompted by multiple listens to Ella Guru.
For no particular reason, I have been alternating reading “Sleeper Awakes,” with Ed Sanders multiple volume “History of the United States in Verse.” I started with the shorter volume “1968″, out of sequence; and just after pondering the Beefheart/Big Ball moment, I got to the part of Sanders text where he interjects his personal experience of 1968 recording the Fugs “It Crawled Into My Hand Honest,” which contained the first episode of Johnny Piss-off (the Iliad being the second). This produced another thought trigger, to a letter; I wrote Ed Sanders a few years ago which began, “I bought ‘It Crawled into My Hand Honest†with the cut out corner hacked off for 99 cents in the bargain bin of a Kmart in the suburban wasteland of Pasadena Texas in 1972.”
I wrote Ed; both ordering some books from him directly, and giving appreciation for the influence his work has had on me. I have thought from the start;Â The Invertebrates were working in the same territory as The Fugs, The Mothers, Country Joe and The Fish, Captain Beefheart and The Bonzo Dog Band interjecting humor, poetry, music and politics with a vaudevillian sense of presentation. Besides his work with the Fugs, I have also read most of Ed Sanders poetry and fiction. In particular, I have tried to direct poet friends to his mid-seventies essay/poem “Investigative Poetry,” where he advocates poets should write history, as the bards of antiquity with primary sources, footnotes and bibliographies. His “History of the United States in Verse” is a wonderful example of this proposition. I would also highly recommend his prose work “Tales of Beatnik Glory” and “Fame and Love in New York.”
Anyway, a couple lines of reference and I’m off to the shaggy dog races again….
Love,
Tom
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