{"id":240,"date":"2013-07-02T03:18:38","date_gmt":"2013-07-02T03:18:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/?p=240"},"modified":"2013-07-02T03:19:35","modified_gmt":"2013-07-02T03:19:35","slug":"test-for-lafms-about","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/?p=240","title":{"rendered":"Biography of LAFMS"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Free Music Society is not one group per se but rather a loose collection of several like-minded noise anarchists from the mid-\u201970s who found commercial rock too boring, slick, and predictable, and set out to reinvent improvisation and sound experiments with a DIY ethic. Inspired by Zappa,\u00a0Captain Beefheart<\/a>,\u00a0John Cage<\/a>, the Residents, and free jazz, the LAFMS was an underground avant-rock movement and a record label that presaged everything from punk to plunderphonics, while their utterly unconventional approach denied them any chance of mainstream success. As their movement spread, they became a lightning rod for art-damage, weird-music lovers everywhere.<\/p>\n

In the summer of 1973, the threesome of\u00a0Rick Potts<\/a>, Joe Potts, and Chip Chapman started to record material under the name Patients in East L.A. These were tape experiments and improvised playing mixed with early sampling from television cartoons as well as Chapman\u2019s extensive record collection. By 1974, they changed their name to the Los Angeles Free Music Society to do the album Ka-Bella-Binski-Bungo, however by the time the album came out, in 1975, it had been renamed Bikini\u00a0Tennis<\/a>\u00a0Shoes and the group was now\u00a0Le Forte Four<\/a>\u00a0with the addition of Tom Potts. Unbeknownst to them, during this time another gang of semi-musicians with a similar experimental bent gathered in the evenings at the\u00a0Poo-Bah Record Shop<\/em>\u00a0in nearby Pasadena. Tom Recchion, who worked at the store, had formed Two Who Do Duets with Harold Schroeder in March of 1975, and later that year the group transformed into\u00a0the Doo-Dooettes<\/a>\u00a0with the addition of Juan Gomez. Others of the Pasadena crowd included Ace Farren Ford and the Professor (who performed as the duo Ace & Duce), Dennis Duck, Richard Snyder, Fredrik Nilson, and Billy Bishop. Members of the avant-rock group\u00a0Smegma<\/a>, who had already been around for a couple years, were also part of the Pasadena crowd before they moved to Portland, OR, near the end of 1975. When Recchion arrived one evening with\u00a0Le Forte Four<\/a>\u2018s Bikini Tennis Shoes LP, the impressed Pasadena contingent realized they were not alone, and immediately joined the LAFMS umbrella as a way to get their own recordings released, and soon\u00a0Le Forte Four<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0the Doo-Dooettes<\/a>\u00a0were double-billing live.<\/p>\n

In 1976, Joe Potts decided to put out a various-artists compilation with an open invitation, selling space on the record at two dollars for every 15 minutes as a way to allow others who couldn\u2019t afford their own record to release material. This compilation, I.D. Art, featuring both LAFMS artists and others, came out later that year. This led to several Blorp Essette compilations set up along similar lines in 1978 and 1980, further widening the LAFMS web and their attitude that anyone should have the right to be on record. New projects were also formed out of the pool of LAFMS compatriots, from Joe Potts\u2019 live noise-overload project\u00a0Airway<\/a>, formed in 1977; to\u00a0John Duncan<\/a>\u2018s CV Massage a couple years later; and even more groups in the 1980s like\u00a0Solid Eye<\/a>, Monique, Human Hands, Dinosaurs With Horns, Foundation Boo; as well as solo efforts by\u00a0John Duncan<\/a>, Joe Potts, Tom Recchion, Dennis Duck, Fredrik Nilson, and Chip Chapman. Though nothing has been released on the LAFMS label since the mid-\u201980s, many of the participants carried the spirit of the movement onward. It can\u2019t be denied that their influence has carried forward through punk in the late \u201970s to the cassette-tape trader movement of the \u201980s, while much of their own music is still as unsettlingly weird as it was in the mid-\u201970s. ~ Rolf Semprebon, Rovi<\/p>\n

from \u201cThe History of Rock and Roll\u201d (online)<\/p>\n

The Los Angeles Free Music Society, formed around Tom Recchion in 1972, was a collective of underground artists loosely inspired by Frank Zappa and Captain Beefheart (but also all jazz and classical avantgarde movements). Le Forte Four, who released four lunatic electronic-folk albums starting with\u00a0Bikini Tennis Shoes<\/strong>\u00a0(1974), Doo-Dooettes (two albums), Smegma (one album) and Airway (one album) were some of the performers devoted to free improvisation, abstract cacophony and demented chanting.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Los Angeles Free Music Society is not one group per se but rather a loose collection of several like-minded noise anarchists from the mid-\u201970s who found commercial rock too boring, slick, and predictable, and set out to reinvent improvisation and sound experiments with a DIY ethic. Inspired by Zappa,\u00a0Captain Beefheart,\u00a0John Cage, the Residents, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[37],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=240"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":243,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/240\/revisions\/243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/smegmamusic.com\/site\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}