We all need someone more degenerate than ourselves. The most degenerate, without any doubt, is the Great Infamous Singer Lawrence (or Larry) "Wild Man" Fischer. This man is still alive, lives in small decrepit hotels, and is considered by some to be one of our most important contemporary performers. Today, it's extremely hard to find his records. The only CD compilation - by Rhino Records, in a limited edition of 1000 - is long exhausted. In it, the Fischer King accumulates a hundred or so short songs. They are minimalist and stubborn, grotesque and somber; enraged melodies full of strange humility and subtle perversion, where their existence becomes a new challenge and their complaints are lodged with unbridled pride. These songs express a rare and seldom encountered impertinence not seen since the extraordinary "Wolf Man" (who for over a year constipated Freud), or the writings of Robert Walser, or the games of Helmut Döring in "Even Dwarfs Started Small" - the irreducible humanity of a contrarian, through whom we experience the most humiliating situations they encounter. To become the smallest man, to melt into the mineral, the animal or the vegetable. To invite pity and inhabit the grandiose domain of 'Ridicule' becomes the source of a poem, and a political act - freak politics. This poem can be the comical and terrifying "I'm Working For The Federal Bureau of Narcotics', written and sung/shouted a capella by Larry Fischer on his first album:
Johnson loves me
Reagan adores me
Sandry Koufax
Likes to throw fastballs at me.
Wild Man Fischer was discovered by Frank Zappa during the great epoch of Bizarre Records, and he produced his first album "An Evening with Wild Man Fischer" in 1968. Fischer was the revolution. On the cover of this double documentary album - with its baroque production style of songs, conversations, repetitions and testimonies - Frank Zappa wrote: "Wild Man Fischer is a real person who lives in Hollywood, California. He used to be very shy. He didn't have any friends. One day he decided to be more aggresive. He would write his own songs and sing to people and tell them he wasn't shy anymore. When he did this, everyone thought he was crazy. His mother had hm committed to a mental institution twice. Please listen to this album several times before you decide whether or not you like it or what Wld Man Fischer is all about. He has something to say to you, even though you might not want to hear it." Larry wasn't content to just say what he had to say; he screamed it. And, in effect, it is worth listening to him again just because of this. His energy is of uncommon joy.
For there is joy in his aggression (his "loss of shyness"), but it makes
it even less controllable. One morning, Wild Man Fischer got irritated
by his alarm clock and threw it out of the window. He took so much pleasure
in this that he proceeded to throw out all his other belongings. Another
day, again in the grip of one of his regular comic-aggressive fits, he
decided to throw
the toys of Zappa's children - Dweezil and Moon (then still very young)
- into their faces, and ended up having to immediately look for a new producer.
The song "I'm Sorry Frank" still makes us think that behind his real sadness
remains a deep anger - a desire to reactivate the earlier violence that
will always negate any possible apology. As if the only reason to apologize
was to have the pleasure to remind the victim of past events.
One should listen to "Merry-Go-Round" every morning, as well as "I'm
A Christmas Tree" and "It's Hard Business". If you can, find his
albums. Ask for reissues. Insult the record stores that don't have them.
Insult the bootleggers that don't pirate his music. We violently need a
Wild Man Fischer, his not-so-controlled madness, his not-so-naive lyricism,
his not-so-pathetic
violence. Our era will have to hunt his multiple cries through file-sharing
programs such as Kazaa and LimeWire, while we wait for Rhino or Ryko to
reprint his oeuvre (come on, you won't die releasing a few thousand more
copies). Our era will regularly visit the site dedicated to this forgotten
magician: http://home.new.rr.com/tapelists/wildman. May its author be, right
here, congratulated and thanked.
28 February 2003
Doctor Léon Murphy