Enigma, Calamity, and Venus in the Nude
Tav Falco is a spiritual force. His art gives a glimpse of the true nature of the American South and is a distillation of the “dark waters of your unconscious”(Commercial Appeal, May 18, 2019). You can only taste it in sips from his albums and video appearances. I could go on and on in abstractions but when you start to engage him, you’ll know what I mean. He cracks open the muggy delta air and shows you how to breathe it in.
He is one the progenitors of the purist rock n roll aesthetic and scholarly engagement with its freak nature. Nothing would be the same without him.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered Falco is an Arkansas native. In fact, he had early experiences as a disruptive performer in in Fayetteville. This came from reading his excellent study of Memphis, Ghost Behind the Sun, Memphis: Splendor, Enigma and Death.
There are only a couple of pages on his time in Fayetteville. I think it is important for you to the story know if you live in this town. Below this paragraph, I summarize and quote from Falco’s book.
Falco begins his recollection of his time in Fayetteville with his first encounter with Randall Lyon on the 4th floor of Humphrey’s Dormitory. Lyon was an army intelligence officer, who was in between deployments in Southeast Asia, who exuded a “bohemian sophistication and an aura of blithe erudition”. He read poetry, psychology, as well as astronomy and lauded the excellence of Fillipino rock n roll bands he saw while he was overseas. He was also editor of a literary publication called the Prevue at the University of Arkansas. Falco says he was one of the first to be “psychedelicized” at the university (57).
Lyon and another student finagled the university into having the architect Buckminster Fuller to speak on campus. They also brought Allen Ginsberg to perform HOWL at the Student Union. Falco and other students promoted the event with hand screen printed posters. Lyon performed at Student Union on the same date. Ginsberg called his poetry, according to Falco, “as ‘modern freak brain original’”(58).
Falco admired another campus resident named Bill Barth. Barth “’rediscovered’ the bluesman Skip James” and brought him into the forefront of the folk-revival at the Newport Folk Festival. Barth also played with John Fahey on his recording Vol. 3 The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites. Falco writes that Barth also appears on Death Chants, Breakdowns and Military Waltzes (58).
Nearing the end of Falco’s stint in Fayetteville he collaborated with Lyon, Ron Robran (“who stalked campus in a long black cape”), Allen Barger (who constructed the set), and Dr. Benway who played the skipper is a of the ship-wreck scene from William Burroughs’ The Nova Express. The performance was condemned by the theater department and made the troupe’s precarious existence even more uncertain (58).
The exploits of Fayetteville burgeoning bohemian community, comprised of Falco, Lyon, and Barth as well as other students from the theater and art departments, would come to a head in a calamitous performance which ended up propelling the three figures on to Memphis. There, they would become influential forces in the avant-garde incorporation of performance art and blues revival, which would result in some of the most powerful forces in rock n roll like Falco’s band, Panther Burns. I would try and summarize the final performance in Fayetteville, but there is no way I can do that justly. Here it is in Falco’s words:
“In a farewell burst of histrionic art, we staged a Happening just a few yards off campus. It was staged upstairs at the U-Ark Bowl entr’acte the gig of an RnR band from Memphis called, Moloch. As Ron Robran had erstwhile hung himself before dinner party guests at his rooming house apartment in his own farewell gesture (Ron always had a true flair for the dramatic), we eschewed the theater dept., and drew our thespians and mimics from the art department instead. We further enlisted the talents of go-go dancers who had come with the band from Memphis. I appeared with a huge EYE painted on my chest, wearing a black top hat with large gold hat band emblazoned with the logo that read: FUCK OFF. We reproduced the shipwreck scene from the University Theater scenario: with fingers being chopped off as drowning people were clawing madly at the sides of the lifeboat. The finale featured a blond Venus from the art department elevated on an artist model’s dais, wrapped only in a full-length mink coat, which she flamboyantly shed at the appointed moment. Chaos broke loose in the steamy room, but at the height of the frenzied ovation, a posse of city police and sheriff’s deputies came crushing through the front entrance, somehow tipped off that our so called, and by now notorious, ‘mime-troupe’ was performing in the nude. As the fuzz in through the front entrance, our troupe managed to hightail it out the back door, down the fire escape, and out into the frosty night air of Washington County – some of us never to return.” (59).
Buy Ghosts Behind the Sun, Memphis: Enigma & Death
Tav Falco’s Website
Tav Falco – Panther Burns Facebook
