[Jandek] Re: jandek Digest, Vol 53, Issue 47

[spoon-unit]

> 
>> >Secondly and this is a question I could google as well, but if someone likes
>> to talk about the subject, he or she can have a go.. Trubee.. is or was a
>> musician? 
>> >anyone familiar with his work? what's the style?

Trubee is the inspired genius behind Blind Man¹s Penis ­ one of the greatest
songs of all time.... maybe. Also the creator of the only funny phone-pranks
I have heard. 

the following is an excerpt from: http://www.aspma.com/trubee.htm

In the back pages of the Midnight Globe (not the National Enquirer, as
erroneously reported elsewhere -- was it Time?), I scanned the geeky little
ads and saw: "Cowrite on a 50-50 basis, earn $20,000 royalties, send your
song poems to ..." some outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought to myself:
wouldn't it be fun to send these people the most ridiculous, stupid, vile,
obscene, retarded Iyrics to see their response?

In five minutes of stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness), I hammered
out the following:

Peace & Love

I got high last night on LSD
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind
Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs
And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
You can fuck them
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind ... etc.


I wanted to get an emotional letter from the jerks in Nashville. I wanted
them to tell me I was crazy. I wanted there to curse me out in writing so I
could show all my friends.

Several weeks later I received a letter from Nashville Co-Writers which
began:


Dear John,

We have just received your lyrics and think they are very worthy of being
recorded with the full Nashville Sound Production. ... I am enclosing a
contract of acceptance. Please sign and return along with $79.95 to cover
the cost for each song to be completed ...

Aha! They wanted my money. I knew it! But if I send them the money, they
would send me a tape and a record of my lyrics set to music. Although $79.95
was a lot to a minimum wage teenager, I signed the "contract of acceptance"
and returned it with a check. Several weeks later I received a 7-inch, 45
RPM record that had a label and grooves only on one side. Typed on the white
label was "Peace & Love" (John Trubee-Will Gentry). I immediately rushed
upstairs and put this little gem on the turntable for a listen. Over the
lamest, most minimal country track was some country hack singing the lyrics
I wrote. I was stunned.

They did change one line, though -- they excised all mention of Stevie
Wonder and had the singer croon repeatedly "A blind man" instead.

see also:
 
    JOHN TRUBEE AND THE UGLY JANITORS OF AMERICA 
The Communists Are Coming to Kill Us! (Enigma) 1984
The Deserts of Utah [tape] (Space & Time) 1985
Naked Teenage Girls from Outer Space (Restless) 1985
Strange Hippie Sex Carnival (Ger. Musical Tragedies) 1990

Best known for his inspired 1984 novelty single "A Blind Man's Penis" ‹ a
deranged spume of dada vulgarity given an inanely straight country-western
reading by one of those songs-from-your-lyrics mail-order companies ‹
guitarist/keyboardist John Van Zelm Trubee, a frequent Zoogz Rift associate,
has assembled several albums of his crank phone calls, puerile rants, rude
noises and misanthropically deranged musical efforts. The Communists Are
Coming to Kill Us!, which collects up odds and ends dating from the mid-'70s
through the mid-'80s, is intermittently listenable but more frequently an
offensive embarrassment.

Well on the way to working out his juvenile fixations, Trubee comes nearly
correct on Naked Teenage Girls from Outer Space, a relatively serious
jazz/rock horns'n'guitars album with perfectly reasonable ‹ actually quite
attractive ‹ instrumentals and a few songs which manage to avoid such
previously typical subject matter as genitalia and regurgitation. Even one
raucous noisefest makes some artistic sense. If not for the inclusion of a
couple of obnoxious telephone pranks, Trubee's creepy past would seem to be
entirely behind him.
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