Clamor of the Godz: Radical Incompetence in 1960s Rock Author(s): Patrick Burke Reviewed work(s): Source: American Music,

Vol. 29, No. 1 (Spring 2011), pp. 35-63 Published by: University of Illinois Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5406/americanmusic.29.1.0035 . Accessed: 17/03/2012 12:50
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pATriCk burke

Clamor of the godz: radical incompetence in 1960s rock

Just about everyone is a musician. most scholars of music find this view fairly uncontroversial. We often define music as humanly organized sound or something similar, and allow a wide range of human behaviors into its purview.1 if one sings in the shower, one makes music. if someone taps his or her fingers rhythmically while waiting for a bus, he or she makes music. As the well-known example of percussionist evelyn glennie indicates, profoundly deaf people can comprehend and perform complex music, and recent scholarship demonstrates the significant musical capabilities of those whose disabilities, such as blindness or Aspergers syndrome, lead others to stigmatize them as abnormal.2 other than amusical people, such as those described by oliver sacks, whose neurological makeup renders them unable to perceive or make music, every person appears to be a musician.3 Not everyone, however, accepts this broad definition of musicianship. ethnomusicologists have reported, certainly, on societies that seem to regard everyone as more or less equally musical. Thomas Turino points out that some societies do not even have the concept of innate musical talent; the Aymara of peru and the Venda of south Africa generally think of musical and dance ability as being available to anyone who has the interest and who puts in time and effort.4 industrial and postindustrial societies that admire and market the work of professional musicians, however, typically have rigorous aesthetic and technical standards by
patrick burke is assistant professor of music at Washington university in st. louis. He is the author of Come In and Hear the Truth: Jazz and Race on 52nd Street (university of Chicago press, 2008). His next book, Whats My Name? Rock, Race, and Revolution in the 1960s, will address the relationship between rock music and the radical political movements of the late 1960s.
American Music spring 2011 2011 by the board of Trustees of the university of illinois

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which they judge what is and is not acceptably musical, and most members of a given society do not excel by these standards. The finger-tapper and shower-singer manifest a deep-seated human impulse to organize sound, but society at large, and especially the person in the adjoining cubicle or apartment, rarely holds their individual expressions in high regard. several scholars have examined the means by which cultural institutions separate musicianly wheat from untalented chaff. John blacking argues that the ethnocentric assumption of Western musics supposed exceptional complexity brings about a degree of social exclusion: being a passive audience is the price that some must pay for membership in a superior society whose superiority is sustained by the exceptional ability of a chosen few.5 Henry kingsbury, in his ethnographic study of the pseudonymous eastern metropolitan Conservatory of music, demonstrates that the notion of talent in u.s. concert music circles interprets musical expression in terms of the recruitment of an elite and conversely channels ostensibly unmusical people into another social role, that of the self-deprecating musically untalented person.6 institutions in the realm of popular music similarly police the boundary between talent and incompetence. TVs American Idol, for example, features public mockery of unsuccessful auditionees. matthew Wheelock stahl describes American Idols narratives of humiliation as instructive tableaux of punishment and vengeance that serve simultaneously as further legitimation and authentication of those in whom the desired talents inhere, and as graphic warnings to all those considering an attempt to breach a field for which their talents are not appropriate.7 more anecdotally, anyone who teaches introductory music courses to undergraduates, at least in the united states, has met the apprehensive student who explains bashfully on the first day of the semester that he or she, while a lover of music, is unfortunately tone-deaf or not musical and thus worries about fitting into the class. such students see music as a source of shame and insecurity rather than a natural ability that they can enjoy and celebrate. music scholars do not always limit themselves to reporting on these narrow notions of musicianship. sometimes they assume the role of activists who seek respect for overlooked or denigrated musicians. ethnomusicologists often stick up for the importance of everyday music-making in the face of oppressive canons of good taste, which they sometimes link to Western cultural imperialism. bruno Nettl argues that although [ethnomusicologists] take into account a societys own hierarchy of its various kinds of music, and its musicians, we want to study not only what is excellent but also what is ordinary and even barely acceptable. We do not privilege elite repertories, and we pay special attention to the musics of lower socio-economic classes, colonized peoples, oppressed minorities.8

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others focus on restoring Western capitalist society to the humane values associated with open, shared musical performance. Charles keil, in his ongoing born to groove project, proposes that childhood music education should celebrate imperfections as the paths by which each child, given enough interactive experience, co-evolves ways of grooving with others. keil believes that each child could be a happy and prolific musicking-creator if it werent for all the layers of typhosliterate fog, spin, lies, false standards, perfectionism, etc. etc.we put in the way of paideia con salsa.9 Historical musicologists, likewise, have increasingly moved away from the study of masterworks to address ostensibly lesser musicians in the concert tradition as well as popular genres and musicians. Christopher small, with his influential concept of musicking, goes a step further by moving away from works altogether, arguing that music is not a thing at all but an activity and that the universal distribution of musical ability is not a fantasy but is in many societies and cultures an everyday reality. small believes that the best music does not necessarily showcase virtuosity but rather contributes to healthy social relationships. He writes: if the function of musicking is to explore, affirm, and celebrate the concepts of ideal relationships of those taking part, then the best performance must be one that empowers all the participants to do this most comprehensively, subtly and clearly, at whatever level of technical accomplishment the performers have attained. Turino similarly distinguishes presentational music from participatory music, arguing that in the latter the success of a performance is more importantly judged by the degree and intensity of participation than by some abstracted assessment of the musical sound quality.10 even those scholars who express support for less-than-skillful musicians, however, often assume that these musicians aspire to achieve musical competence of a more or less conventional sort, or at least hope to improve their abilities by some standard. small, while he argues against an obsession with virtuoso technique, insists that doing the best one can with what one has is a recipe, not, as may at first be thought, for smug mediocrity but for constant advance into new territory, since those who persist in doing the best they can with what they have will get better, will find new nuances of relationship, and new skills with which to articulate them. keils work with children involves introducing them to the intricate, challenging rhythms of salsa and samba. Although he welcomes the necessary slippage and loose, open feeling that results from inexperienced players experimenting with a groove, he nonetheless lays out detailed, precise polyrhythms that need to be taught by a live experienced player in person. While both scholars seek to expand our notion of musical ability, they tend to treat incompetent musicians as earnest searchers who would welcome the opportunity to become

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skilled. even the recent scholarly collection Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate doesnt deal so much with incompetent music-making as with questions of taste, highlighting genres such as extreme hardcore and smooth jazz that many listeners regard as noisy or corny despite the technical proficiency of their performers.11 The scholars cited above, if they are ever widely heeded, have the potential to enhance the lives of many people by introducing them to the joys and challenges of music-making. Their sympathetic examinations of bad or incompetent music typically regard musical incompetence as a problem to be alleviated, either practically, by encouraging music education, or ideologically, by pointing out the variability and constructedness of notions of bad music and thus challenging the category itself. but what of incompetent musicians who dont care whether they ever become competent? put another way, what about those musicians who see the quest for competence as a burden or an irrelevancy, rather than an opportunity? This essay examines these questions in a specific historical and social context by addressing an extreme case: a group of musicians who were flagrantly, outrageously, unabashedly incompetent. The godz were a folk-rock band founded within the insular countercultural community of the lower east side of manhattan in 1966, at a moment when rock musicians often described their music as revolutionary and sometimes linked this claim to left-wing political stances. Although the notion of the 1960s rock revolution has become a clich, rocks critics and scholars have rarely devoted close attention to the concept of revolution or musics connection to it. some rock performers, such as Jefferson Airplane and the mC5, incorporated revolutionary political rhetoric directly into their lyrics and stage performances.12 others, such as the beatles, took a less direct approach, largely avoiding explicit politics but pushing rocks musical language in adventurous directions that seemed to herald a more subjective revolution in the head.13 The godz represented a third stream of revolutionary thought in rock: the radically inclusive premise that anyone could, and indeed should, make music.14 many rock musicians and their audiences prized spontaneity and freedom from formal restriction, musical values easily linked to the egalitarian rhetoric of the counterculture. performances that were sloppy or ragged by conventional standards could be taken as signs of the performers emotional sincerity, or as a way of breaking down the artificial barrier between real musicians and the rest of humanity. or, as Jim mcCarthy of the godz puts it, We wanted to show that you didnt have to be a music student to express yourself.15 The godz were hardly a typical rock band, but their peculiar career suggests new implications about the cultural significance of musical competence.

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Like a Bunch of Maniacs: The Godz and Their Music

The godz comprised four musicians: Jim mcCarthy (guitar), larry kessler (bass), Jay Dillon (autoharp), and paul Thornton (drums); each sometimes played other instruments, and all contributed vocals. During their initial tenure as a band, they released three lps: Contact High with the Godz (1966), Godz 2 (1967), and The Third Testament (1968).16 All three albums were released on the New York independent label esp-Disk, probably best known today for early recordings by pioneering avant-garde jazz musicians such as Albert Ayler and pharoah sanders. The four godz brought a wide variety of musical experiences to the group. Jim mcCarthy, who grew up in brooklyn, listened to country music as a child and also admired pop and rock-and-roll musicians such as bobby Darin and Chuck berry.17 mcCarthy recalls that he felt a great kinship with Darin, and could imitate him perfectly. in the mid-1960s, he became a member of the Dick Watson Five, a rock group who released an lp of versions of songs from the musical baker street, done in . . . a british invasion style.18 He went on to an excellent cover band that played the NY area as the Chosen Few. larry kessler was born in New York, but spent much of his childhood in baltimore, moving back to New York when he was nineteen.19 He played the violin in early childhood, but quit the instrument at the age of five when his grandfather, a concert violinist, began to insist on strict standards of technique. After r&b and rock-and-roll performers such as ray Charles and bill Haley reignited his interest in music, kessler began working in record stores. paul Thornton was another New Yorker, born and raised in Hells kitchen.20 An early influence was his mother, a Tennessee native whom Thornton describes as the next thing to a hillbilly. He remembers that my mother gave me a . . . kay acoustic guitarthis is when i was eight years oldand one of those mel bay books with the pictureshow to play the guitarand a Hank Williams album. And ive been singing Hank Williams songs ever since. Thornton also enjoyed the music of country stars Hank snow, eddy Arnold, and kitty Wells. As a teenager, Thornton joined bmi and started writing original songs. He also recorded a few 45s for small independent labels such as Tru-lite and mustang, including Walk in outer space and im Your rebel, an answer to the Crystals 1962 hit Hes a rebel.21 Jay Dillon, who passed away sometime before 2005, is the least documented member of the group. outside of the godz, he was best known as a graphic designer who served as esp-Disks art director and also worked for the short-lived Eye Magazine.22

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The godz formed at a moment when New Yorks downtown bohemian scene cast itself as an authentic alternative to the glossy standards of commercial popular culture and the midtown entertainment industry. mcCarthy, kessler, and Thornton met at a hub of that industry, the 49th street sam goodys, where they were all working as record salesmen.23 mcCarthy had recently quit the Chosen Few after visiting a rehearsal by the Fugs, a lower east side band whose genially sloppy musicianship supported satirical and often scatological lyrics.24 mcCarthy remembers that the reality of their music caught me and i thought Why am i fucking around singing other peoples songs when i should be expressing my own feelings?25 He adds, When larry kessler and i left the theater they were rehearsing in, i went straight to a payphone and called my guitarist to tell him i quit the band. Just did not want to do covers anymore. kessler had recently started working as a salesman for espDisk, the Fugs label, and was familiar with the group because his new job involved convincing record stores to stock Fugs albums. kessler remembers: i found them really, like, amusing . . . They were really nothing like us . . . because they had hired musicians and they were more poets, but they were very funny and very influential in breaking down the barriers, absolutely. Thornton contends similarly, i found the Fugs entertaining because they were funny . . . i enjoyed them, but they didnt influence me. The Fugs thus seem to have inspired the godz through their insistence on unbridled free expression and their unpretentious performances, rather than through their musical style as such. mcCarthy relates that one night, as the future members of the godz were hanging out at kesslers east 11th street apartment, there were all these percussive instruments lying around and out of total frustration, i got up and start[ed] shaking a tambourine or something like that, and thats how it all started. We all started to get up and make noise like a bunch of maniacs, expressing our frustration.26 The casual atmosphere mcCarthy describes is captured in Jud Yalkuts 1966 short film The Godz, shot mainly in kesslers apartment, in which the band members make music but also mug for the camera, watch a football game, smoke joints, and play with a cat.27 kessler quickly suggested that the group audition for esp-Disk. He explains that if you sounded even remotely like anybody else, you could forget it, he [bernard stollman, esp-Disks founder] wasnt gonna put you on his label. . . .Well, we were different. mcCarthy recalls, He said, oh, bernard stollman would love this! and i thought he was crazy. stollman was indeed skeptical at first, and left the audition laughing hysterically, saying, You guys are unbelievable!28 it turned out, however, that this was a compliment, and stollman booked the group into the studio on september 28, 1966.29 by this point, the godz had added Jay Dillon, esps art director, to their lineup. guitarist Thornton, despite a lack of previous experience, became

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the bands drummer after being overpowered by three other members of the group. mcCarthy claims that, although stollman only gave the band 2 hours of studio time to record a single, we ended up recording the whole Contact High album in that session. We recorded all the songs from beginning to end. exactly the way you hear it.30 kessler adds, We went in there and just kept recording stuff that we had done, but we didnt formulate, we just did it. Godz 2 was recorded in comparatively relaxed conditions. mcCarthy points out that for godz 2, we had acquired better instruments and had constructed the songs a bit more. our studio allowance was increased, so we had more time to experiment. Thornton remembers that after the first album, shure and other companies were sponsoring usthey were giving us electric guitars, amps, sound systemsso thats the difference . . . now we got better equipment, and thats why it sounded better. but we didnt change [laughs]. by the time The Third Testament was recorded, Jay Dillon had left the band. kessler explains that hed grown disgusted with our lifestyle. He was much more of an intellectual than the three of us.31 mcCarthy now asserts, i regret Jay Dillon having left the band. i think he was responsible for a great deal more of the godz sound than he gets credit for. if he had remained, we may have gone on to achieve greater success in our time, simply because he would have challenged us musically. instead, left to our own devices, we floundered. mcCarthy says of Third Testament, That record wasnt done as a group effort, it was separate elements of our own put together.32 Despite this, kessler defends the album: i always felt [that] Third Testament . . . was some great stuff, just different kinds of stuff. Third Testament was the last godz album until 1973s Godzundheit. The eccentricity and stylistic diversity of the first three godz albums makes it difficult to rely on the usual conventions of rock criticism in describing them. on the surface, at least, the bands organization was unadventurous. Contact High features instruments common to many folk-rock ensembles in 1966: acoustic guitar, autoharp, electric bass, and drums, with occasional enhancements such as maracas, violin, and flute. Godz 2 introduces electric guitar, piano, and organ on some tracks. The third album presents alternately sparer and more elaborate arrangements than do the first two. it includes several understated songs in which Thornton or mcCarthy accompanies his own singing on acoustic guitar, as well as collective improvisations with a large ensemble of guests (credited as The multitude or The Dogz) who play such instruments as flute and saxophone. The godz employed their unexceptional instrumentation in emphatically unusual performances. mcCarthys and Thorntons lead vocals generally display a solid command of pitch and phrasing, and each demonstrates skill as a guitarist. As a whole, however, the godz sound strikingly

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sloppy and discordant by most conventional notions of commercial pop music. perhaps the most distinctive trademark of the godz recordings is larry kesslers bass, which he rarely frets cleanly but rather plays by sliding his left hand up and down the neck to produce a blooping, thumping sound of indeterminate pitch. The stringed instruments often sound glaringly out of tune, both with themselves and with one another. Neither bassist kessler nor drummer Thornton reliably plays a steady beat, and when one does, that beat often conflicts with that of other members of the band (although by Godz 2, the band sometimes cohered rhythmically in droning rock songs such as radar eyes.) The band sometimes peppers performances with semiaudible mumbles or laughter that suggests they werent taking themselves too seriously. most of the godz material can be grouped into a few general categories. First, some of their repertoire (for example, Turn on, 1+1?, Travelin salesman, like a sparrow) comprises conventional threeor four-chord folk or pop songs, including covers of familiar tunes such as Hank Williamss may You Never be Alone like me and the beatles (somewhat more harmonically complex) You Wont see me. second, other performances employ only one chord, typically a major or minor triad strummed on acoustic or electric guitar. These often feature vocal improvisation based around vocables or a single word, as in Na Na Naa, eleven, and Where. on Godz 2 the band applies this harmonically static approach to more formal songs with composed melodies and lyrics, such as soon the moon, permanent green light, and radar eyes (the latter actually constitutes a two-chord song, as it moves occasionally from e minor to A minor).33 A third category consists of free improvisation without obvious reference to a predetermined form, meter, or key. riffin features unmetered group improvisation on drums, rattle, and harmonica, overlaid with hog calls and whistling as well as seemingly unrelated vocalizations that include Tarzan yells, an imitation of lyndon Johnson (proclaiming my fellow Americans, the war in Vietnam will soon be over), and snatches of absurd monologue in stereotypical indian and irish accents. The collective improvisations credited to The multitude on Third Testament (eeh ooh, First multitude, and AbC) were recorded, mcCarthy recalls, when we just invited all our friends down to the studio one night. most of them werent musicians and we just told them play and it rambled on.34 in some respects, these group improvisations were more conventional in the context of 1960s rock than the rest of the bands material; they resemble the free form freak-outs on red Crayolas 1967 album The Parable of Arable Land as well as The return of the son of monster magnet side of the mothers of inventions Freak Out (1966).35 larry kessler says of the bands music:

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A lot of it was improvised, you know. And a lot of it were just things that got stuck in our heads somewhere, and just a matter of getting that sound and that kind of rawwhatever we had at the time, which i still cant figure it outother than the fact that we were having the opportunity to do whatever it is we wanted to do artistically, and as long as we didnt really sound like anybody else we were fine as far as esp was concerned. The godz, moreover, sometimes combined these categories. Crusade begins with an atonal collective improvisation and ends with a precomposed song based on bertolt brechts poem Childrens Crusade and passionately sung by mcCarthy.36 Finally, some performances seem to occupy a category of their own, such as larry kesslers Womban, a monologue spoken over a stark, bluesy electric guitar line, or New song, a yodeled, largely wordless, faux-country song accompanied by kessler sawing dissonantly on his violin. because they can be compared to more familiar originals, the godz cover versions are especially revealing examples of their style. Take, for instance, their version of the beatles You Wont see me, which appears on Godz 2. This song would have been familiar to almost any rock musician in 1967 due to its inclusion on the influential 1965 album Rubber Soul, and it was presumably within the abilities of at least mcCarthy and Thornton, both of whom had already worked professionally playing similar material. lead singer Thornton carries the tune reasonably well and maintains a steady pulse on an instrument that he recalls as a stick with bottle caps attached to it.37 A barely audible acoustic guitar plays the correct chord changes. The rest of the recording, however, is chaotic by any conventional standard: maracas that play a varying beat only tenuously related to anyone elses; out-of-tune vocal harmonies; what sounds like a melodica improvising melodies vaguely related to the key; and no bass line whatsoever to anchor the performers.38 most strikingly, the godz botch the song entirely during the bridge, so that they need to stop completely and collect themselves; we hear studio chatter and another false start before they successfully resume the song. Although the recording sounds like a rejected studio outtake, the godz released it as-is on their lp. The bands cover of Hank Williamss honky-tonk classic may You Never be Alone like me, from Contact High, provides a similarly unruly take on a well-known song. The recording features atonal flute playing and a bass line whose occasional rhythmic or harmonic relevance seems to be largely coincidental. This song had been performed competently by countless country and western bands since Williamss recording of it was released in 1950. These performances seem intended to provoke questions about the godz motivations. Why play these songs so haphazardly, and why assent to release the results on a record?

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The godz casual attitude toward recording sessions also informed their sloppy and at-times-confrontational live performances, which according to their recollections took place mainly at Village clubs such as gerdes Folk City and Cafe Au go go. The group attracted a small but dedicated following. mcCarthy states that we were just trying to express our feelings, which were pretty intense, at that point in time and we were very unorthodox about it which deterred us in acquiring much of a fan club, though the few we had were very loyal.39 He also remembers that we played in every club in the city at least once, because after the first time, no one wanted us back. We auditioned at a club called The Night owl which is where the lovin spoonful got their break. ill never forget the afternoon we auditioned, because we went into White Cat Heat [a track from Contact High that features the band yowling like cats] and the door opened and the bouncer who was standing outside opened the door and looked at us with such incredible disbelief. . . . Needless to say, we didnt get the gig.40 The band displayed an extremely informal stage presence. kessler recalls that we just dropped things, we couldnt tune properly, we started singing and forgot what we were doing, we were arguing with the audience. According to Thornton, larry . . . would stand on the stage and talk to himself. This is insanity. How did i get here. And im laughing. Critic Tom miller reports that the godz used to ask audience members for suggestions and improvise songs. There was one about chicken soup and another called oatmeal Cookies and red balloons. He adds that when they started out, they didnt have any drums, so paul improvised a kit out of some pots and pans. one night, Jim needed a guitar pick, so he improvised one out of a razor blade.41 As Turino points out, participatory musical styles do not transfer well to presentational stage situations, and the godz live performances predictably polarized audiences, with some observers amused or inspired by the bands antics and others viewing them as irritating or perplexing.42 kessler remembers that even the Fugs had some type of show, but we were just total anarchy onstage. We used to argue with the audience. They thought we were kidding when we came out with a psaltery and plastic flute and acoustic guitar and big drum sticks, and we would just tune up for half an hour! And these people would be yelling! The freaky people liked us, but the regular people who were going down to greenwich Village from brooklyn or wherever were looking for some kind of folk singer, and we would come out!43 He describes one unlikely gig at which the band confused their audience: We did a thing at the ski show in New York and they put us up there on this big stage and we had ski sweaters on and we were playing

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and . . . these people were totally freaked. They were going huhwhat the . . . ? and were up there and were having a great time . . . thats the kind of stuff we did. Thornton, in contrast, recalls a show at which the godz fans were so enthusiastic that they confused the band. in an interview with the author, Thornton remembers: There was a place in the West Village called the Cafe Au go go. linda ronstadt was opening for us, but she came in for the second show, she wasnt in the city yet. And when they introduced the godz, about thirty people got out of the audience with instruments and came on the stage with us. i dont even know who they were. And people were drinking bottles of wine and stuff. They called up the owner of the club. linda ronstadt never got to do her set [laughs]they threw us all out. pb: so this was something you planned? i mean, you told all the people in the audience to get up, or they just figured they could? pt: No, we dont know where they came from. so we had weird fans. According to mcCarthy, the bands biggest gig was at the Civic Center in Durham, North Carolina. That was put together by esp[-Disk] campus reps at Duke university. mcCarthy remembers that it was a great show. There was a pretty good local blues band that opened for us and they were baffled out of their minds at why we had top billing over them [laughter].44 Thornton was surprised to see that there were thousands [in the audience], and we didnt realize we had that many fans. unless maybe thats what they did on Friday nightthey went to the Civic Center [laughs]. Whoever was playing there! As these selfdeprecating accounts suggest, the godz never became a popular live act, but their unpopularity was at least somewhat intentional, the result of their tendency to provoke and puzzle their audiences.

Goof City: The Lower East Side vs. the Technocracy

How can we explain the godz unusual approach to musical performance? At an initial hearing, one might dismiss (or celebrate) the godz as an example of outsider music, a broad classification that critic irwin Chusid applies to musicians as various as avant-garde composer Harry partch, psychedelic rocker syd barrett, and self-styled operatic diva Florence Foster Jenkins. Chusid explains that the average person hearing outsider-type musicians for the first time might conclude that their performances are inept, or that these artists lack talent, which seems to pertain to the godz. in Chusids patronizing definition, however, outsiderdom encompasses eccentrics, neurotics, and psychotics who lack self-awareness.45 This is not at all an accurate description of the godz, who are reflective and often ironic about their music. A seemingly more historically grounded, but su-

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perficial, response to the band would involve smiling smugly and opining that the 1960s were simply an aberrant era when undisciplined hippies ran amok. As sumanth gopinath argues, however, such an approach to this period might unintentionally reproduce the rightist consensus on the political, social, and cultural movements of the long 1960s as being a period of adolescent childishness that the baby boomer generation outgrew in a decade.46 This position, moreover, seems particularly inapplicable to the godz, who were idiosyncratic in their own time and thus did not embody a generic sixties zeitgeist. The godz, rather, epitomized a significant, specific facet of the 1960s counterculture: suspicion toward conventional values of technique and expertise. Historian Howard brick argues that the image of a technocratic social machine that brooks no challenge and suffers no faults, an image of total domination that can be escaped only by dropping out was a common form of radical hyperbole in the 1960s.47 At the time, critic Theodore roszak presented this view in great detail in his influential book The Making of a Counter Culture (1969). roszak argued that Americas dissident youth culture was best understood as a struggle against the technocracy, which he defined as that social form in which an industrial society reaches the peak of its organizational integration. in a technocracy, nothing is any longer small or simple or readily apparent to the non-technical man. instead, the scale and intricacy of all human activitiespolitical, economic, culturaltranscends the competence of the amateurish citizen and inexorably demands the attention of specially trained experts. such experts, roszak explained, assume authoritative influence over even the most seemingly personal aspects of life: sexual behavior, child-rearing, mental health, recreation, etc. The technocracy thus represents a subtle form of totalitarianism that substitutes industrial scientists, corporate management specialists, and think tanks for military dictatorships and violent repression. its prime strategy, roszak wrote, is to level life down to a standard of so-called living that technical expertise can cope withand then, on that false and exclusive basis, to claim an intimidating omnicompetence over us by the monopoly of the experts. This strategy has created a diseased society whose prime symptom is the ever-present threat of nuclear war, and whose lesser evils include a general devaluing of subjective experience and creativity. roszak believed that the playful, sometimes surreal or irrational, style of 1960s youth culture represented a noble effort to restore mystical experience and human passion to the cold, repressive society created by technocratic control and expertise.48 roszak did not say much about musics role in the technocracy, but the issue was addressed compellingly a decade later by French economist Jacques Attali in his frequently cited 1977 book, Noise: The Political Economy of Music. Attali describes music in the age of mechanically

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reproducible recordings as a monologue of institutions that silences individual subjects. mass music, he writes, slips into the growing spaces of activity void of meaning and relations, into the organization of our everyday life: in all of the worlds hotels, all of the elevators, all of the factories and offices, all of the airplanes, all of the cars, everywhere, it signifies the presence of a power that needs no flag or symbol: musical repetition confirms the presence of repetitive consumption, of the flow of noises as ersatz sociality. This ubiquitous, intentionally inoffensive music excludes error, hesitation, noise in favor of the inhuman abstract perfection both enabled and demanded by technocratic society. While this state of affairs sounds unbearably oppressive, Attali believes that it may be leading to a crisis with liberating potential. Attali argues that the conquest of the right to make noise is the only way to challenge the power of mindless technocratic repetition, and he anticipates a new practice of music among the people, one of collective play that will exist for pleasure outside of meaning, usage, and exchange and that plugs music into the noises of life and the body.49 in Music, Society, Education (also 1977), Christopher small similarly describes a society in which we have passed our experience into the hands of experts, not only those who compose and perform our music for us but also those who tell us what we should be listening to, and who filter our experience through their expertise. small argues that music is too important to be left to the musicians, and in recognizing this fact we strike a blow at the experts domination, not only of our music but also of our very lives.50 roszak, Attali, and small all make sweeping claims about society at large as well as the utopian potential of the counterculture or the peoples music. more to the point, however, we can find a similar antipathy toward technocratic values in the specific context that spawned the godz, the lower east side of manhattan (often called the east Village by the mid-1960s).51 The lower east side was the center of New Yorks bohemian community in the 1960s, an enclave of cheap apartments, bars and coffeehouses, book and record stores, and head shops specializing in drug paraphernalia, underground comics, and the latest in psychedelic fashion. one of the most dedicated chroniclers of the lower east side of the 1960s has been poet and musician edward sanders. sanders owned the peace eye bookstore (on east 10th street, and later on Avenue A) and was also one of the founders of the Fugs. in his semifictional account Tales of Beatnik Glory, sanders recalls his dream of turning the lower east side into what he called goof City. in sanderss words, goof City was to be a place of great freedom, affordability, cheap rents, adequate wages, wild times, plenty of leisure, guaranteed access to thrills and art, with streets so safe a person, man or woman, could walk naked at 4 A.m. and not be bothered or touched.52

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The lower east side seemed a perfect place to build goof City. . . . it had been discovered over and over for two hundred years by the beaten-down, the broken, the rebellious, the radicals, the socialists, the anarcho-syndicalists, the suffragettes and feminists, the Trotskyites, and in our time by the bards and pot-heads, the jazz hips, those into psychedelics, and those just passing through on the way to the gold-paved streets of the American Dream.53 sanderss idealized goof City, as its name suggests, was a place whose citizens resisted structure and routine in favor of an improvisatory, playful engagement with an eternal present. As he recalls, There was the sense of being sensual all the time without pressures. A whole half-day in book store goof! 15 hours reading kant in kantgoof! 45 minutes in front of the peacock feather vase listening to Varse & beethoven at the same time! lets listen to every Coltrane cut again in Trane-goof . . . Why not waste time for is not time itself the biggest waster of them all?54 sanderss celebration of goof belies his intellectual rigor and work ethic as well as the challenges that the lower east sides countercultural community faced. As sanders suggests, lower east side bohemians often had eclectic tastes and interests that encompassed kant and beethoven as well as Coltrane and Varse. sanders himself earned a degree in classics from New York university in 1964 and frequently draws on an extensive knowledge of egyptian hieroglyphics and ancient greek in his writing.55 For sanders, like many others on the lower east side, goof was a choice, not a necessity born of indolence or skill-lessness. moreover, frequent official crackdowns on the lower east sides radical politics and drug culture meant that a life devoted to goof was actually more stressful and difficult than many less goofy alternatives. sanders reminds us that underneath the goof, of course lay the skree of weirdness, calamity and the secret police.56 To choose a life of goof was to accept the condemnation and misunderstanding of mainstream society, but also to join a new community defined by its opposition to that society. literary scholar Daniel kane, discussing the lower east sides community of poets, writes that the inclusive impulses characteristic of lower east side writers were balanced by strategies of exclusion central to the identity of any community and helped establish the predominantly libertarian and/or politically leftist tenor of the participants in the scene. Although the godz were not much concerned with poetrymcCarthy claims that we were not involved in the lit scene, or politico scene, we were all about music and anarchythey similarly reflected the hermetic ethos of the lower east side by making music that was both inclusive (seemingly anyone,

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regardless of technical skill, could perform it) and exclusive (mainstream audiences found it inaccessible and disconcerting).57 The music prized by lower east side bohemians reflected their sense of themselves as nonconformists and also drew on longstanding traditions in neighboring greenwich Village. perhaps most significant was the urban folk revival, which had flourished in Village coffeehouses and Washington square park since the 1940s, but reached new heights of national popularity in the early 1960s with such performers as bob Dylan and Joan baez.58 The straightforward harmonies, everyman voices and instrumental abilities, and informal stage presence of such performers attracted musicians and audiences in search of an authentic alternative to mainstream popular music and mass culture more generally.59 Critic robert Cantwell argues that the [folk] revival made the romantic claim of folk cultureoral, immediate, traditional, idiomatic, communal, a culture of characters, privileges, obligations and beliefsagainst a centrist, specialist, impersonal technocratic culture, a culture of types, functions, jobs and goals.60 Another genre of music that appealed to the lower east sides counterculture was avant-garde jazz. by the 1960s, downtown clubs such as the Village Vanguard and the Five spot, as well as artists lofts and coffeeshops, sometimes featured musicians such as Cecil Taylor and ornette Coleman, who experimented with free forms, dissonant harmonies, and instrumental timbres that walked the line between pitch and noise.61 As sanderss reference to John Coltrane suggests, 1960s jazz, with its improvisatory, open-ended aesthetic, could be seen as a musical analogue to the aimless pleasures of goof. The loose, unpretentious quality of the godz music has led some commentators to draw connections with folk and jazz. Tom miller, for example, argues that tracks like Where . . . attempted to translate the spirituality of the love supreme/live at the Village Vanguard era Coltrane into the godz basic rock vocabulary. At the same time, miller asserts that Come on girl, Turn on sounds a lot like a jug band and thats the real root of the godz sound. A bunch of musicians improvising within the song structure, rather than taking endless solos.62 The godz themselves acknowledge varying degrees of influence from folk and jazz. kessler describes himself as sort of a rock and roller who was not really part of the folk scene, and says of avant-garde jazz, i liked it a little bit, but it . . . just wasnt my thing. mcCarthy recalls similarly that he never really got into the folk music scene of the early sixties, although his first exposure to bob Dylan at the age of twenty-one was life changing. mcCarthy took a stronger interest in jazz. Tony rella . . . was a high school friend whose parents were into jazz. He would play the latest stuff for me at his house and we would go to clubs like the Village Vanguard and the Village gate to

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hear miles [Davis], Nina [simone], [stan] getz, mJQ [the modern Jazz Quartet] and others. He adds: i wasnt really aware of Coltrane at that point, but the jazz that espdisk was releasing definitely had a heavy influence. it was totally in the face of the kind of music being sold then. i cant say i liked it very much the first time i heard it, and traditional jazz fans really put it down, but after a while, i came to accept its relevance and enjoy the liberation. Albert Ayler, sun ra, marion brown and many others had a profound impact on me because it was a time when i was searching for my true self and was pushing the boundaries in my life. mcCarthys affiliation with esp-Disk led him to form friendships with important avant-garde jazz musicians. He explains that marion brown and i used to get high on the roof of the esp building. . . . The Jazz people dug us because we were improvisational. There was a common ground.63 Thornton, who had gigged in Village clubs before the godz were formed, had the closest connection to the folk scene. He remembers that i started playing at Folk Citythe first Folk City, where bob Dylan played, and John Hammond Jr., and a lot of people. . . . it was a whole change. it wasnt at the brill building, you wasnt wearing a suit, you were wearing jeans and a T-shirt, youre playing for a small audienceand i liked that better, and i still do. The godz first public performance was made possible by Thorntons Folk City engagement. Thornton recalls: The first gig the godz ever didi was saying about Folk City, i was playing there for about six months. . . . i was still living uptown, and they lived here in the Village. so id go visit them at their place . . . wed smoke a joint or two and play our guitars. And one night they said, Can we come over with you and join in? and i said Well, why not, come on. And that was the first night the godz ever played anywhere. . . . larry kessler had a few drinkshe fell off the stage. There was a table in front of us, with people sitting at it [laughs]. Folk clubs thus provided the godz with a forum for their music, even though that music did not conform to the norms of Village folk. in this respect, they resembled the Fugs, the Holy modal rounders, David peel, and other lower east side musicians who stretched the boundaries of urban folk in unconventional ways.64 if cutting-edge jazz was often radically dissonant and urban folk music was often willfully unpolished, both were nonetheless indebted to older, more familiar conceptions of music: the romantic image of the

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self-expressive artist and the modernist notion of progress. Advocates of avant-garde jazz, for example, defended it as a music that lifted the emotional revelation of older jazz forms to new heights, or as an expansion of the harmonic and rhythmic language of jazz by musicians who were ahead of their time.65 even as the hobo personas and vaguely rural accents of folk musicians such as bob Dylan drew on tradition to give their performances an aura of authentic self-expression, their music was associated with a rebellious, progressive youth culture. robert Cantwell describes the folk revival in terms of modernist upheaval as a moment of transformation in which an unprecedented convergence of postwar economic and demographic forces carried a culture of personal rebellion across normally impermeable social and cultural barriers under the influence and authority of folk music, at once democratic and esoteric, already obscurely imbued with a spirit of protest.66 Devotees of urban folk or avant-garde jazz viewed their chosen music both as part of a larger tradition and as creating a new canon of repertoire, techniques and aesthetics. While avant-garde jazz or urban folk musicians might have sounded noisy or incompetent to unsympathetic listeners, this was not necessarily their primary goal. The godz, in contrast, highlighted noise and incompetence rather than stylistic coherence. Their meandering quasi-folk songs and shambolic versions of famous hits botch or reject familiar musical languages without seeming to propose any new language of their own. This approach differentiates the godz from garage-rock contemporaries such as the seeds and Count Five, whose minimal technique, while intentionally antagonistic to convention, nonetheless formed a distinct and influential style.67 The godz are similarly distinct from their successors in punk, probably the most frequently cited example of popular music that intentionally sounded noisy or bad. larry kessler has described the godz as pre-punk, and historians often cite the bands lower east side milieu as central to punks development.68 ethnomusicologist steven Taylor, although he does not mention the godz, argues that the Fugs founded New York underground rock and maintains that the godz lower east side contemporaries the Velvet underground were arguably the most important punk precursor.69 Tom miller points out similarities between the godz and the Velvet underground, including an interest in avant-garde jazz and the use of experimental films during some performances. moreover, the two groups shared what richard Witts calls the punk conviction that virtuosity was arid decoration.70 The godz noisy, off-putting aesthetic also prefigures punk. bernard gendron demonstrates that the praise of shock and assault had entered the nascent discourse of punk by the early 1970s, and punks of that decade certainly aimed to create what Dave laing calls shock effects in their audiences, in part by emphasizing sounds [that] were . . . distorted, dirtied

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and destroyed, so that their meanings were mangled. like the godz, many punks made a virtue of their apparent incompetence, defending their music as self-expression where skill or virtuosity carried with it a suspicion of glibness.71 At the same time, however, most punk clearly stemmed from a broader stylistic tradition that included garage rock as well as influential bands such as the New York Dolls and the stooges. As a musical style, punk was thus at least somewhat familiar to general audiences even if its performers extremism of attitude sometimes caused offense. moreover, despite frequent internecine battles over matters of musical style and anticommercial integrity, punk was supported by a self-identified subculture of musicians and listeners who developed and debated what gendron calls the punk aesthetic in fanzines and at live performances.72 The godz, whose music was eccentric even in the freewheeling context of the lower east side, were isolated by comparison. The fast tempos, power chords, and screeching vocals of punk, along with its safety pins, torn T-shirts, and other fashion accoutrements, added up to a distinct set of musical and cultural practices that could be successfully learned and imitated, and eventually became an unexceptional part of mainstream pop music. As Angela rodel argues, although an aesthetics of technical badness perhaps gave the first generation of punks a fleeting sort of protection against commodification, this is certainly no longer the case. in fact, technical badness has proved not to be bad enough. . . . The rough, raw sound of punk has proven to add to its attractiveness as a commodity.73 The godz, in contrast, never displayed a consistent style that might be easily mimicked. in short, the godz, more than most punk musicians, seem to have succeeded in resisting assimilation into conventional notions of good music. As mcCarthy puts it, nobody was doing what we were doing, and nobody wanted to.74 if only on a conceptual level, the godz music most strongly resembles those punk subgenres such as No Wave and hardcore that emphasize noise and reject mainstream standards of musical skill. No Wave bands of the late 1970s frequently featured amateurish performers. The genres austere, roboticized minimalism, however, contrasts with the more casual, open-ended aesthetic of the godz. gendron writes that in No Wave amateurishness was apparently neither good in itself nor an intended mere expression of the democratic do-it-yourself ideology of rock music. it was rather an occasion for experimentation and the play with cutting-edge timbres and noises.75 At its most extreme, hardcore similarly sought to challenge not only the value attached to virtuosity, but the very boundary that separated musician from nonmusician.76 Anticommercial values informed this resistance to virtuosity. The extreme hardcore bands that rodel describes seek to escape commodification by creating a style of music which, through its very aesthetics,

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is absolutely immune to appropriation. As rodel points out, however, extreme hardcore, unlike early genres of punk, requires a relatively high level of technical skill due to the high speed and rhythmic complexity of many of the compositions. extreme hardcore musicians employ their proficiency to produce a sound as harsh and unpleasant as possible, a form of sonic violence that rodel believes to fight the covert violence perpetrated by mass-mediated music.77 The godz, who lacked both the technical proficiency and the overt aggression of extreme hardcore, seem to invite a less solemn response.78 indeed, we might think of the godz music as a form of play rather than as art in the usual sense. We commonly say, of course, that musicians play music, and this connection has been noted by some of the most prominent scholars of play. Johan Huizinga, for example, writes that music . . . is the highest and purest expression of the facultas ludendi because like play, music is based on the voluntary acceptance and strict application of a system of conventional rulestime, tone, melody, harmony, etc.79 While this restrictive notion of musical play seems to have little in common with the godz chaotic approach, later scholars have expanded on Huizingas work in ways that are more relevant. roger Caillois, in his influential work Man, Play, and Games, describes play as an occasion of pure waste: waste of time, energy, ingenuity, skill, and often of money. Caillois distinguishes between ludus, or rule-bound play like that described by Huizinga, and paidia, a word covering the spontaneous manifestations of the play instinct and describing a practice whose impromptu and unruly character remains its essential if not unique reason for being.80 Paidia and ludus pass into ordinary life as invariable opposites: Caillois gives as an example the preference for cacaphony [sic] over a symphony.81 The point of the godz cacophony, likewise, seems to be the impromptu and unruly character of paidia, rather than more standard values of musical form or expression.

Yowling Freer Than We Ever Dreamed: The Godz Amateurism and Its Influence
The godz playfulness has not stopped some commentators from trying to make sense of their music as part of an earnestly romantic, visionary tradition. Take, for example, marc Crawford, the author of the original liner notes for Contact High with the Godz. Crawford writes: if you want to hear about love and the lack of it by victims unashamed, about hate and too much of it in the world, or the passion of these realistic young men who know dream can be another name for nightmare, then you can say these are your kind of people and make it stick. For it is a new, honest, emotion-ladened telling-itlike-i-feel-it kind of music.82

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That Crawford lavished this overwrought prose on a perplexing album that features few obvious references to love, hate, or passion suggests a strong desire to render the godz explicable within familiar categories of artistic expression. rock critic lester bangs, who provides one of the few extended critical appraisals of the godz in his thoughtful 1971 essay Do the godz speak esperanto?, took a more adventurous view. During the early 1970s, bangs, along with fellow critics including greg shaw and lenny kaye, argued for what steve Waksman calls an early punk aesthetic of musical rawness and maintained that the lack of musical technique could itself be the path to greater expressivity. gendron contends that the praise of ineptness and amateurism was central to bangss punk aesthetic. While bangs typically pointed to 1960s garage bands such as the Troggs and Count Five as the epitome of the punk ethos, he also was attracted to the godz brazen displays of incompetence.83 in his essay, bangs, who dismisses Crawfords liner notes as cornball and superpseudointellectual, describes the godz bluntly as the most inept band ive ever heard. He goes on, however, to ask: Why have they made three albums when so many great, talented, professional, musicianly bands get dumped unceremoniously after one? because the godz are brilliant, thats why, and most talented professional musicianly bands are stupid and visionless and exactly alike. bangs praises the godz for dynamiting all the stupid standards by which esthetic-minded critics and technique-bound musicians sought to raise rock from pigmy squawl to Art-Form. in so doing, bangs writes, the band has turned us all to godz yowling freer than we ever dreamed, and every yowl and squeak and whinny is a hymn of praise to their ancient eminence.84 Despite his overheated rhetoric, bangs is not facetious. For him, the godz appeal isnt what he calls so-bad-its-good or any of that camp-kitsch crap, but rather the sheer audacity and commitment of their performances. He argues, Well, theoretically, anybody can play like that, but in actual practice it just aint so. most people would be too stultifiedafter all, whats the point of doing it if anybody can?and as for you, you probably aint got the balls to do it, and even if you did, youd never carry it through like a true godzly musical maniac must to qualify. Youd just pick it up and tootle a few bars to prove something, and thats entirely different.85 if we look past the half-ironic macho posturing of bangss prose, he makes a good point: most musicians, amateur or professional, probably wouldnt display the godz level of conviction toward such a perverse project. looking back, the bands members reveal a range of attitudes toward musical competence, ranging from indifference to outright resis-

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tance. Jim mcCarthy stresses the bands inclusive emphasis on uninhibited creativity, explaining that our premise was that anyone could make music. He continues: even though the group was inept, that was not our goal. We always tried to make the best music we could, regardless of our limitations. That i believe defines the rock n roll concept. so, we accepted those irregularities as the cost of producing a more honest music. Here mcCarthy suggests that competence was beside the point: the godz did not go out of their way to be inept, but they also did not see competence as more important than authentic, honest performances. He explains that it was meant to be pure gut feeling, emotional expression. sometimes that was pleasant and sometimes not, depending on the subject matter, but it was always meant to be real. To the extent that the band was confrontational, they became so when their self-expression went unappreciated by the audience. We wanted to be taken seriously, and it was when we werent that we became more confrontational, musically as well as personally. Thats not to say we didnt have fun whenever we could. A lot of the music was just for a goof, meant to challenge the listener. mcCarthys insistence that something fun also can be challenging recalls Huizingas argument that the contrast between play and seriousness is always fluid. . . . play turns to seriousness and seriousness to play.86 larry kessler places more stress on the groups provocative, exclusionary side. kessler asserts that we didnt care about being accepted by the public. That sounds nothing like the beatles! No, we dont want it to sound like the beatles. And we couldnt make it sound like the beatles anywaywere not that goodso why even try? We werent going to hire people to play beatles songs and us sing behind themthat was totally out of the question. When i asked kessler if the godz wanted listeners to take their music seriously, he responded: We didnt care. . . . We just said this is it. And people used to tell us, hey, why dont you get a lead guitar player, good bass and this and thathey, fuck you, you know, were doing this ourselves, thats it. . . . We werent ready to make that compromise. To another interviewer, kessler took a characteristically avant-garde stance, arguing that the audiences confusion was a sign of the musics value. i knew that we were doing something artistically correct because there were so many people who didnt understand us, and if they would have understood us, then i wouldve felt that we were wrong. our music needed to grow in peoples minds.87 paul Thornton, who remembers the band as a bunch of rebels, agrees with kessler: we didnt care what the audience [thought], or if there was an audience. The godz took special pleasure in confounding audiences who saw their recording career as a marker of cultural cachet or professional achievement. kessler recalls that the mystique associated with a record deal often prevented employers from actually listening to the godz records, to their eventual

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embarrassment: Nobody ever listened to it first, they just figured that since we had an album, we were just like everyone else! . . . We played the miss greenwich Village pageant! They were trying to get us off the stage and we wouldnt leave!88 This telling anecdote, in which the godz inflicted their spontaneous, noisy presence on a notoriously sterile, artificial eventa beauty pageantand then refused to move, despite protest, evokes the jarring impact of their recordings. The godz recordings, like their live performances, emphasize their sheer physical presence to the exclusion of commercial or aesthetic considerations. As Turino demonstrates, even recordings that are marketed as transparent, high fidelity representations of live performance often employ complex studio production and specialized techniques such as recording individual parts separately.89 The godz recordings, in contrast, rarely appear to involve overdubbing or other studio finesse, and the frequently terrible recording balances suggest that the godz simply turned on the microphones, rolled the tape, and started playing, without any particular concern for artifice, technology, or the listener.90 because the resulting music appears so unlikely to merit preservation and marketing, the real point of the recordings seems to be the bands disregard for conventional standards of competence in choosing to present that music to an audience. The godz unusual career as a band was short-lived. After Third Testament, the godz disbanded for several years. its members concentrated on their day jobs until 1973s Godzundheit, their last official album as a group.91 Godzundheit maintains some of the casual feel of their previous recordings but features more polished performances, some of which include studio musicians. kessler says that on our fourth album, we . . . sort of splintered off and all did our own thing, and then we got people [from outside the godz] that actually were playing our songs. During the same year, mcCarthy released Alien, a solo album that showcases his original songs, his expressive singing, and a skilled backing band that includes piano and organ.92 Tom miller insists that Alien has almost nothing to do with the godz sound, while ray brazen describes it as distinctly un-godz-like.93 mcCarthy, however, rejected my suggestion that the album was more conventional rock music, asserting that i saw it as a continuation and advancement of my work. . . . As i said, we always tried to do the best we could, and if you listen to Alien, youll hear that its pretty loose. . . . my musical direction didnt change, just my presentation concept, which was greatly influenced by Dylan & The band, and maybe a little procol Harum, leon russell, etc. in 1974, Thornton, along with leslie Fradkin and bob unger, released Pass on This Side, an album that miller describes as early 70s mellow rock with occasional vaguely psychedelic overtones and a bit of a country feel.94 From then on, all of the surviving members of the group have remained

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involved with music, even if not necessarily as performers. mcCarthy is a successful photographer who specializes in images of rock, r&b, and jazz musicians. Thornton is a professional actor who also regularly performs at the lower east side bar banjo Jims, where he plays country classics and original material; his most recent album is Godzology, a 2000 collaboration with Fradkin. kessler, who works as a cab driver in baltimore and previously owned two record stores, released the ep Godz Revival in 1996. occasional attempts at a godz reunion have yielded a few live performances and studio recordings, some of which can be heard at the bands myspace page.95 Thus far, however, the bands most lasting legacy has been their 1960s recordings, which were covered on a 1996 tribute album (Godz Is Not a Put-On) featuring such bands as male slut, which included members of sonic Youth, and royal Trux, associated with the widely noted lo-fi movement of the 1990s.96 The godz have been praised by prominent rock experimentalists such as sonic Youths Thurston moore, who told Rolling Stone that his band come[s] straight out of the godz and called Third Testament a great record, and Destroy All monsters Cary loren, who praises the godz hyperbolically as the original primal stew, the team nirvana, the band that threw out the rules, the baby and the bathwater.97 The bands continued influence indicates that their work remains meaningful to musicians seeking to expand the boundaries of rock. of course, the godz were not exactly incompetent musicians like the shower singers and finger-tappers described at the beginning of this article. rather, they were rock and roll performance artists of a sort who chose to display incompetence openly, to uphold the concept . . . that music should be a celebration that everyone could join.98 in so doing, they made a case for the liberating potential of unashamed badness in an era when technical proficiency and expert know-how often were seen as emblems of a failed, inhumane society. if the godz were not political revolutionaries, they nonetheless strove to challenge conventional aesthetics and notions of human creativity. mcCarthy asserts that we were definitely politically aware, though not very active in the streets. We were more into the revolution of the mind and the creative results which we could then share with others. or should i say, subject others to?99 The remarkable hubris of the bands name suggests both the playful good humor of their project and its underlying seriousness. Whether one sees their work as a breath of fresh air in a world of stale music or merely as postadolescent self-indulgence likely depends on ones own views about the role of discipline and talent in music. At the very least, the godz music suggests that we might usefully view musical performance not simply in relation to an ideal of competence, but rather as an ongoing conversation among musicians and audiences about the implications and value of competence itself.

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NoTes
First and foremost, i thank larry kessler, Jim mcCarthy, and paul Thornton for their time and generosity. Flannery burke, Neil lerner, kiri miller, Derek pardue, and American Musics anonymous reviewers each contributed helpful suggestions on earlier drafts. i am also grateful for a National endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, which provided support for my research and writing. (Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the National endowment for the Humanities.) earlier versions of this article were presented at the 2009 annual meeting of the society for ethnomusicology (mexico City), the 2009 performa Conference on performance studies (universidade de Aveiro, portugal), and the 20089 lecture series of the Department of music at Washington university in st. louis. 1. John blacking, How Musical Is Man? (seattle: university of Washington press, 1973), 32. 2. Claude kenneson, Musical Prodigies: Perilous Journeys, Remarkable Lives (portland, or: Amadeus, 1998), 26876; oliver sacks, Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain (New York: knopf, 2007), 95; Adam ockelford, using a music-Theoretical Approach to explore the impact of Disability on musical Development: A Case study, and s. Timothy maloney, glenn gould: Autistic savant, both in Sounding Off: Theorizing Disability in Music, eds. Neil lerner and Joseph N. straus (New York: routledge, 2006), 13755 and 12135 respectively. 3. sacks, Musicophilia, 98119. 4. Thomas Turino, Music as Social Life: The Politics of Participation (Chicago: university of Chicago press, 2008), 97; also see blacking, How Musical Is Man?, 34. 5. blacking, How Musical Is Man?, 34. 6. Henry A. kingsbury, Music, Talent, and Performance: A Conservatory Cultural System (philadelphia: Temple university press, 1988), 79, 74. Turino argues that tying musicality or any ability to innate talent is a hindrance and can be used as an excuse for not participating in activities like dance, music, and sports that, due to their universality in societies around the world, appear to be basic to being human (Turino, Music as Social Life, 99). 7. matthew Wheelock stahl, A moment like This: American Idol and Narratives of meritocracy, in Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate, ed. Christopher Washburne and maiken Derno (New York: routledge, 2004), 221. 8. bruno Nettl, The Study of Ethnomusicology: Thirty-One Issues and Concepts, rev. ed. (urbana: university of illinois press, 2005), 13. 9. Charles keil, introduction, and keil, intro to section 5You Are a musician, both in Charles keil and patricia Campbell, Born to Groove (2006), http://borntogroove.org/ course/ (accessed February 8, 2010). paideia con salsa refers to keils strategy of employing Afro-latin dance-music to teach ancient greek values of music, motion, morality (keil, Appendix bpaideia con salsa: Ancient greek education for Active Citizenship and the role of Afro-latin Dance-music in our schools, in ibid.). Turino contends that music education should serve children not only by providing them with lessons toward some future specialized ability but by making music/dancing with them now as a normal part of family and social life, underpinned by the belief that such activities, regardless of skill level, are valuable in and of themselves (Turino, Music as Social Life, 99100). 10. Christopher small, Musicking: The Meanings of Performing and Listening (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan university press, 1998), 2, 208, 215; Turino, Music as Social Life, 33. 11. small, Musicking, 215; Charles keil, Chapter 26simple salsa, in keil and Campbell, Born to Groove; Washburne and Derno, eds., Bad Music. 12. patrick burke, Tear Down the Walls: Jefferson Airplane, race, and revolutionary rhetoric in 1960s rock, Popular Music 29, no. 1 (January 2010): 6179; steve Waksman,

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Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge: Harvard university press, 1999), 20736. 13. ian macDonald, Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties, 3rd ed. (Chicago: Chicago review press, 2007). 14. This argument was not limited to rock: the scratch orchestra, cofounded by british composer Cornelius Cardew in 1969, was intended to liberate the performer and encourage amateur musicians to make music. Timothy D. Taylor explains that after repudiating avant-garde music, Cardew devoted much of his compositional energy to finding ways of bringing music-making to everyone. Timothy D. Taylor, moving in Decency: The music and radical politics of Cornelius Cardew, Music and Letters 79, no. 4 (November 1998): 556, 570; also see Cornelius Cardew, ed., Scratch Music (london: latimer New Dimensions, 1972). 15. ray brazen, This is the godz Truth (n.d.), The First Church of the Godz, raybrazen. webng.com/godz/godzbio.htm (accessed Jan. 3, 2010), pt. 2. 16. The godz: Contact High with the Godz (esp-Disk lp 1037, 1966, reissued as Calibre CD esp 1037, 2000); Godz 2 (esp-Disk lp 1047, 1967, reissued as Calibre CD esp 1047, 2000); The Third Testament (esp-Disk lp 1077, 1968, reissued as esp Disk/ZYX-music CD esp 10772, n.d.). 17. Jim mcCarthy, e-mail message to author, oct. 4, 2009. unless otherwise noted, all quotations by and biographical information about mcCarthy come from this source. 18. Tom miller, say Clyde, Have You Heard the godz? (n.d.), The First Church of the Godz, raybrazen.webng.com/godz/godzhistb.htm (accessed January 3, 2010), pt. 1. 19. larry kessler, telephone interview with author, oct. 9, 2009. unless otherwise noted, all quotations by and biographical information about kessler come from this interview. 20. paul Thornton, interview with author, New York City, Nov. 8, 2009. unless otherwise noted, all quotations by and biographical information about Thornton come from this interview. 21. A photograph of mustang 45 rpm l363/l365 (paul Thornton, Walk in outer space / baby be my girl) appears in esp-Disk (2010), tangerine.at.webry.info/theme/b8afa02c05.html (accessed Jan. 13, 2011). i have not located a physical copy or an audio file of this recording. Confusingly, a 45 rpm in my collection labeled mustang l363 features a different flipside and lists the performer of A Walk in outer space as eddy lennon, although Thornton is still credited as co-composer (eddy lennon, prima Vera dAmore / A Walk in outer space, mustang l362/l363, n.d.). A photograph of Tru-lite 115 (paul Thornton, im Your rebel) appears in David A. Young, please phil spector: His subjects pay Homage, part 7 (n.d.), Spectropop!, www.spectropop.com/pps/ppspart7.htm (accessed Jan. 3, 2010). im Your rebel can be downloaded at Answer back songs (n.d.), Music Pop Hits, http://musicpophits.com/mainpages/Featurepages/Answerbacksongs. htm (accessed Feb. 8, 2010). 22. Doug lee, A gathering for the godz (2005), Bardo Pond Hummingbird Mountain, www.threelobed.com/bardo/messageboard/message/975/ (accessed Feb. 8, 2010); brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2. 23. brazen, This is the godz Truth,pts. 1 and 2. 24. ed sanders, The Fugs in the 1960s, liner notes to The Fugs, Dont Stop! Dont Stop! (Fugs records CD Fugsbox 9, 2008). 25. [Tony] rettman, only eight posts in and rettman Admits to running on Fumes by Dredging up His past . . . Film @ 11 (2006), 200LBU, 200lbu.blogspot.com/2006/03/ only-eight-posts-in-and-rettman-admits.html (accessed Jan. 3, 2010). 26. ibid. 27. The godz in 1966 by Jud Yulkut [sic], http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= zJabNnpoVQu (accessed sept. 18, 2010). This film appears to be the only extant footage of

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the godz during the 1960s. The opening credits read esp records and Jud Yalkut present the godz, which suggests that the film was made after the band had secured their recording contract. The identification of the apartment as kesslers is from brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 1. in addition to the footage shot there, the nine-minute film includes short excerpts of two live performances, one at an unidentified club and another at a party in an apartment. While all of the original footage is silent, the soundtrack features an unreleased medley of lay in the sun and Turn on, two songs that appear on Contact High. 28. brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 1; rettman, only eight posts in. mcCarthy claims that the band auditioned over the phone for stollman, while kessler remembers that stollman heard the band in person. 29. my source for the date is the Calibre CD reissue of Contact High. 30. rettman, only eight posts in. 31. brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2. 32. rettman, only eight posts in. 33. unlike much of the godz recorded work, radar eyes thus bears a strong resemblance to much 1960s garage rock, which often relied on simple oscillations between two chords (michael Hicks, Sixties Rock: Garage, Psychedelic, and Other Satisfactions [urbana: university of illinois press, 1999], 33). 34. rettman, only eight posts in. 35. The mothers of invention, Freak Out! (Verve lp V650052, 1966; reissued as rykodisc CD rCD 10501, 1995); The red Crayola with the Familiar ugly, The Parable of Arable Land (international Artists lp iA-lp-2, 1967; reissued as Collectables CD Col-CD-0551, 1993). ray brazen writes that the group improvisations on Third Testament were a concept borrowed from the red Crayolas Parable of Arable Land (brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2), but Jim mcCarthy denies the connection, arguing that the concept was larry kesslers as far as i know. since our premise was that anyone could make music, he wanted to bring family, friends, co-workers and others into the studio and let them wail. 36. ray brazen, bertolt brecht and the godz (n.d.), The First Church of the Godz, raybrazen.webng.com/godz/brecht.htm (accessed Jan. 3, 2010). 37. paul Thornton, e-mail to author, sept. 6, 2010. 38. my identification of the melodic instrument as a melodica is based on its timbre and Thorntons suggestion that Jay or larry was playing a plastic flute (paul Thornton, e-mail to author, sept. 8, 2010). 39. The mind: Catchin up with New Yorks godz (2008), www.geocities.com/ sunsetstrip/Alley/6115/godzint.htm?200914 (accessed sept. 14, 2009). 40. rettman, only eight posts in. 41. miller, say Clyde, pts. 1 and 2. 42. Turino, Music as Social Life, 44. Turino describes participatory music as that in which focus is inward among participants, is on the act of doing, and is in the moment, while presentational performance involves clear artist-audience distinctions and preparation of music for maximum interest for others (90). in these terms, the godz seem to have willfully displayed a participatory aesthetic even in presentational contexts where audiences expected more conventional forms of entertainment. 43. brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 1. 44. rettman, only eight posts in. 45. irwin Chusid, Songs in the Key of Z: The Curious Universe of Outsider Music (Chicago: A Cappella, 2000), x, xix, xiv. 46. sumanth gopinath, reich in blackface: Oh Dem Watermelons and radical minstrelsy in the 1960s (forthcoming). 47. Howard brick, Age of Contradiction: American Thought and Culture in the 1960s (New York: Twayne, 1998), 144.

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48. Theodore roszak, The Making of a Counter Culture: Reflections on the Technocratic Society and Its Youthful Opposition (garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1969), 5, 6, 12, 47. 49. Jacques Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. brian massumi (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 1985), 111, 106, 137, 14142. 50. Christopher small, Music, Society, Education: An Examination of the Function of Music in Western, Eastern and African Cultures with Its Impact on Society and Its Use in Education (New York: schirmer, 1977), 94, 214. 51. Christopher mele, Selling the Lower East Side: Culture, Real Estate, and Resistance in New York City (minneapolis: university of minnesota press, 2000), 160. 52. ed sanders, Tales of Beatnik Glory (New York: Thunders mouth press, 2004), 429. other useful works on the lower east side of the 1960s include John gruen, The New Bohemia (1966; reprint: Chicago: A Cappella, 1990); mele, Selling the Lower East Side; and ronald sukenick, Down and In: Life in the Underground (New York: beech Tree/William morrow, 1987). 53. sanders, Tales of Beatnik Glory, 4. 54. edward sanders, 1968: A History in Verse (santa rosa, CA: black sparrow, 1997), 5758. 55. see, for example, the poems Arrows of Translation and report: Council of eyeForms Data squad, in edward sanders, Thirsting for Peace in a Raging Century: Selected Poems 19611985, rev. ed. (minneapolis: Coffee House press, 2009), 16777, 201. 56. sanders, 1968, 5758. 57. Daniel kane, All Poets Welcome: The Lower East Side Poetry Scene in the 1960s (berkeley: university of California press, 2003), xv. 58. robert Cantwell, When We Were Good: The Folk Revival (Cambridge: Harvard university press, 1996), 28690; benjamin Filene, Romancing the Folk: Public Memory and American Roots Music (Chapel Hill: university of North Carolina press, 2000), 20410; David Hajdu, Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Faria, and Richard Faria (New York: Farrar, straus and giroux, 2001), 3336. 59. Turino, Music as Social Life, 157. 60. Cantwell, When We Were Good, 349. 61. Amiri baraka [leroi Jones], Black Music (New York: William morrow, 1967), 9298. 62. miller, say Clyde, pts. 1 and 2. 63. rettman, only eight posts in. 64. on the Fugs, see sanders, The Fugs in the 1960s; on the Holy modal rounders, see richie unterberger, Eight Miles High: Folk-Rocks Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock (san Francisco: backbeat, 2003), 7173; on peel, see peter Doggett, Theres a Riot Going On: Revolutionaries, Rock Stars, and the Rise and Fall of the 60s (edinburgh: Canongate, 2007), 23132. 65. influential 1960s jazz critic Amiri baraka frequently praised new jazz for conveying raw emotional expression, claiming that Coltrane was definitely moving into fresher areas of expression on his instrument or that Albert Ayler wants to play past note and get, then, purely into sound. into the basic element, the clear emotional thing, freed absolutely from anti-emotional content (baraka, Black Music, 58, 126). For examples of the narrative of technical progress in 1960s jazz, see Valerie Wilmers discussion of the further development of harmony in Cecil Taylors music, or her claim that the conversation and the sharing of responsibilities in elvin Joness drum style were precursors of the way drumming would be regarded in the future (Valerie Wilmer, As Serious as Your Life: The Story of the New Jazz, 1st rev. ed. [Westport, Conn.: lawrence Hill, 1980], 46, 157). 66. Cantwell, When We Were Good, 329, 346; Filene, Romancing the Folk, 2067. 67. Hicks, Sixties Rock, 38, 112. 68. brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 1. 69. steven Taylor, False Prophet: Fieldnotes from the Punk Underground (middletown, Conn.:

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Wesleyan university press, 2003), 39. According to Tom miller, the godz once played a show on long island with the Fugs, the Velvet underground, and the mothers of invention (miller, say Clyde, pt. 1). 70. miller, say Clyde, pt. 1; richard Witts, The Velvet Underground (bloomington: indiana university press, 2006), 61. 71. bernard gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde (Chicago: university of Chicago press, 2002), 233, 24546; Dave laing, One Chord Wonders: Power and Meaning in Punk Rock (milton keynes: open university, 1985), 76, 26, 60. 72. laing, One Chord Wonders, 22, 23, 1421; Dick Hebdige, Subculture: The Meaning of Style (london: routledge, 1979); gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club, 22930. 73. Angela rodel, extreme Noise Terror: punk rock and the Aesthetics of badness, in Washburne and Derno, Bad Music, 241. 74. The mind. 75. gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club, 280, 281. 76. steve Waksman, This Aint the Summer of Love: Conflict and Crossover in Heavy Metal and Punk (berkeley: university of California press, 2009), 264. 77. rodel, extreme Noise Terror, 242, 244, 248, 250. 78. Tom miller argues that the godz music was minimalist and primitive, but it had none of the aggression of punk. There were no distorted guitars and the drums rarely played a heavy backbeat (miller, say Clyde, pt. 1). Although the guitars on some godz recordings (radar eyes, for example) are arguably distorted, i agree with millers distinction between punks direct aggression and the godz more elliptical approach. 79. Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (boston: beacon, 1955), 18788. Huizingas notion of ludus seems relevant to a currently popular form of musical play, the video games Guitar Hero and Rock Band, in which players, while they often personalize their performances with creative, deeply theatrical displays, also are required to respond precisely to detailed onscreen notation; kiri miller, schizophonic performance: Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Virtual Virtuosity, Journal of the Society for American Music 3, no. 4 (November 2009): 397402, 4089, 41718. Angela rodel briefly mentions Hans-georg gadamers notion of play in her discussion of extreme hardcore, but does not elaborate on how that genre might be seen as playful (rodel, extreme Noise Terror, 250). 80. roger Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, trans. meyer barash (New York: Free press of glencoe, 1961), 56, 28. more recently, brian sutton-smith has argued for a distinction between play, in which the expected routines or rules guide and frame the action in a steady way throughout, and the playful, which he defines as meta-play, that which plays with normal expectations of play itself, as does nonsense, parody, paradox, and ridiculousness; brian sutton-smith, The Ambiguity of Play (Cambridge: Harvard university press, 1997), 14748. These terms seem to correspond roughly to Cailloiss ludus and paidia, respectively. 81. Caillois, Man, Play, and Games, 53. 82. marc Crawford, liner notes to Contact High with the Godz (esp-Disk lp 1037, 1966; reprinted in Calibre CD esp 1037, 2000). 83. lester bangs, Do the godz speak esperanto? (1971), in lester bangs, Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, ed. greil marcus (New York: Anchor, 2003), 8292; Waksman, Summer of Love, 50, 98; gendron, Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club, 23435. on the Troggs, see lester bangs, James Taylor marked for Death (1971), in bangs, Psychotic Reactions, 5381; on Count Five, see lester bangs, psychotic reactions and Carburetor Dung: A Tale of These Times (1971), in bangs, Psychotic Reactions, 519. 84. bangs, Do the godz speak esperanto?, 8586, 89, 92. 85. ibid., 87. 86. Huizinga, Homo Ludens, 8.

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87. brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2. 88. ibid., pt. 1. 89. Turino, Music as Social Life, 7378. 90. This approach is similar to that of many later punk recordings, for which techniques of recording and of arrangement were adopted which were intended to signify the live commitment of the disc (laing, One Chord Wonders, 53). 91. miller, say Clyde, pt. 2; The godz, Godzundheit (esp-Disk lp 2017, 1973), downloaded at iTunes.com (Dec. 10, 2009). 92. Jim mcCarthy, Alien (esp-Disk lp 3008, 1973; reissued [as godz, Alien] as esp Disk/ ZYX-music CD esp 30082, n.d.). 93. miller, say Clyde, pt. 2; brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2. 94. miller, say Clyde, pt. 2; Thornton, Fradkin and unger and the big band, Pass on This Side (esp-Disk lp 3019, 1974; reissued [as Godz Bless California] as esp Disk/ZYXmusic CD esp 30192, n.d.). 95. paul Thornton and les Fradkin, Godzology (renaissance CD, 2000); The mind; brazen, This is the godz Truth, pt. 2; larry kessler, Godz Revival (lord baltimore records CD lb0037, 1996); The godz, MySpace Music, http://www.myspace.com/ originalgodz (accessed Feb. 8, 2010). For a recent interview and live performance by Thornton, see paul Thornton live at banjo Jims (2009), http://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=tu8ujw3oHhQ (accessed Dec. 17, 2009). For examples of mcCarthys photography, see www.jimmccarthyphotography.com (accessed Jan. 3, 2010). 96. scaredy Cat, stereolab, et al, Godz Is Not a Put-On (lissys lp liss 5, 1996). The godz shoddy production values and sloppy performances presaged lo-fi, whose proponents resisted the glorification of audio fidelity and upheld the flawed performance as a privileged (anti-) aesthetic for what the system supposedly can never tolerate (Tony grajeda, The sound of Disaffection, in Hop on Pop: The Politics and Pleasures of Popular Culture, ed. Henry Jenkins, Tara mcpherson, and Jane shattuc [Durham, N.C.: Duke university press, 2002], 361). 97. michael Azerrad et al, The 100 best Albums of the eighties, Rolling Stone 565 (Nov. 16, 1989): 102; Cary loren, The original primal stew or the Freedom beyond the unknown or son of the godz, or godz, Where Have We Failed Ye? (1997), Perfect Sound Forever, www .furious.com/perfect/godz.html (accessed Dec. 23, 2009). 98. miller, say Clyde, pt. 1. 99. The mind.