The Masked Marauders on Rock Center

                                   Brian Williams, Greil Marcus and Langdon Winner (at the piano)
                                                  Rock Center interview, New York 3/4/14


The Masked Marauders joke/hoax was hatched in the fall of 1969 while I was doubling as a political science grad student and writer for Rolling Stone Magazine.  It began as a fake review written by Greil Marcus (under the pseudonym "T.M. Christian") as a send up of the trashy "super session" rock albums that were flooding the market at the time.  According to the review, the "The Masked Marauders" included the Beatles, Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan and some other well known musicians playing together for the first time at a secret location in Hudson Bay, Canada.  While the idea was obviously absurd on its face, the piece was written in a manner that made the project sound almost plausible.  Soon the possibility that a "Masked Marauders" album might actually exist somewhere became the talk of the music industry.

At the time I had a radio program on "underground" radio station KMPX.  For a hour each Friday afternoon my friend and music writer John Morthland would gather around the microphone, play records, and talk about them.  Just after the "Masked Marauders" review was published, it occurred to me and to Greil: Why not play some cuts from the fictitious album on the show?  We knew a group of Berkeley folk/rock musicians, The Cleanliness and Godliness Skiffle Band, headed by our old friend Phil Marsh, and were also familiar with a fellow who had build recording facilities in the garage of his house.  Hence, on a warm September evening with a lot of beer and maybe some other controlled substances we gathered the group of musicians and pranksters and cut three songs: "I Can't Get No Nookie," (sung by fake Mick Jagger, Brian Vorhees), "Cow Pie," (an instrumental in the fashion of Dylan's "Nashville Skyline" album), and "Duke of Earl" (sung by fake Bob Dylan, again the multi-talented Brian Vorhees).  The first two songs were written on the spot with the musicians locating some threadbare riffs to play and Greil out in the driveway sketching the flagrantly obscene lyrics for the two originals.

The following Friday, John and I went on the air as usual.  At the end of the program I said, "As you probably know, everyone's been talking about The Masked Marauders album reviewed in Rolling Stone.  Many have said that it doesn't exist at all, that the review was just a fraud.  Well, I'm here to tell you that the album does exist and that we've been lucky enough to obtain three cuts from it.  This is the first time these songs have ever been played anywhere.  So, yes, The Masked Marauders are real.  I'm sure you'll agree that they've never sounded better!"  

After we played the songs, the DJ, Tom Swift, opened the phone lines for listener comments.  Several people called in saying, "Long live the Masked Marauders!" "What hoot!" and the like.  Obviously, they'd gotten the joke.

It's a long story from there.  Soon after the radio program the Berkeley musicians along with some friends and with me on piano, finished an LP that was released by Reprise Records under the special "Deity" label.  It sold at a pretty good clip for a while and then dropped like a stone.  Among those taken in by the joke were none other Brian Williams (then ten years old) and his older brother.  For a while the boys apparently believed the record was a genuine recording of the stars mentioned in the original review.  

Recently, Brian Williams, anchor of the NBC Nightly News and host of the TV magazine show Rock Center, produced a segment on the history of The Masked Marauders, thoroughly checking various news stories and background documents from the historical period, interviewing Greil Marcus and me in (appropriately) a New York City recording studio where Mick Jagger himself had once done an album.  Williams presents himself, tongue-in-cheek, as an aggrieved victim of the hoax.  The show aired last Friday and is now archived at this link:

Were You a Believer in The Masked Marauders?http://rockcenter.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/05/17622557-were-you-a-believer-in-the-masked-marauders


For the historical/hysterical record, here are the liner notes I wrote for the album, using the T.M. Christian moniker. 

"Only once in a lifetime does an album like this appear.  Only once in a millennium does it become possible at all.  But like the return of Hegel's Comet every 738 years or the coming of the fresh leaves in the icy breath of spring, it was inevitable.  It had to happen.  In a world shrouded in the pitch darkness of war and political strife, The Masked Marauders stand as a luminescent flashbulb of truth exploding before our eyes.

Super sessions come and super sessions go  Ever since Socrates jammed with Alcibiades and Anthony played with Cleopatra, they have been a mainstay of Western Civilization.  All of them are memorable.  All of them produce music beyond precedent.  For when the gods meet and pool their talents, even if only for a few brief hours, the result is certain to be  a monument to creativity itself.

Sly critics, of course, will continue to scoff.  From their flimsy tin thrones of journalistic cynicism they will continue to exclaim "It's all a shuck" and "What can you expect from prima donnas who've never even rehearsed together?" But truly devout rock listeners will not be swayed by such bitterness.  They know a super session when they hear one.

When I was asked to attend The Masked Marauders' recording session date several months ago, I couldn't believe it was true.  A humble man like myself listening to the spontaneous creations of ... of all those great performers!  It was only as I mushed my dog sled that last two miles from the Hudson Bay Air Terminal to the basement studio of Igloo Productions that I was able to convince myself that a fantastic dream would become a reality.  A meeting of the gods at last!

The sessions went quickly.  After brief troubles with the magnificent 80 track tape machine and some minor adjustments to the microphones, we were off an rolling.  Inspired by the peaceful glow of the aurora borealis overhead, the musicians seem to merge into a single body.  Seldom was more than one take needed to finish a given cut.  Often it required less than that. 

There is an unforgettable story behind each song on this epoch-making album.  "I Can't Get No Nookie," for example, was recorded at 4:00 in the morning after an all night party on the tundra with the local Eskimos.  "Boy, those Eskimo women sure are something," the lead guitarist said to me as he shook the snow from his parka.  He was right.  The title of the song actually refers to one of them -- "Nookie," the lovely girl friend of Nanook of the North who attended the sessions.  Rumors that the title and lyrics contain an obscene reference are nothing more than a vile ethnic slur cooked up by some demented mind.

Looking back on it now, I am certain that the magical element which held it altogether was the incredibly solid rhythm section.  We have all heard the great Memphis sidemen and their compelling beat.  In recent months the Nashville rhythm sections have achieved a long-deserved acclaim.  But compared to the distinctive groove of the Hudson Bay group, all of these seem weak and uninteresting.  These men produce a rhythm which literally jolts the listener with the spirit of that simple, joyous early rock and roll.  It is, unmistakably, the sound of the future -- the Hudson Bay Sound.

Unfortunately, the musicians on this record must remain anonymous.  The web of entangling legal commitments in which they have become enmeshed over the last few years prevent them from revealing their true identities.  But here they are, nonetheless.  The haunting thump-thump-thump of the drums.  The rippling chords of the piano.  The moaning of the harp and dobro.  The familiar voices which shook the foundations of two continents.  Yes, they are all here.

None of them is dead.

Leading experts now estimate that the music business is currently 90% hype and 10% bullshit.  The Masked Marauders, bless their hearts, have gone far beyond that.  Their music needs no hype.  It transcends the very essence of the bullshit for which the public pays millions each year.  Do not be fooled by gossip and idle rumors.  In a world of sham, The Masked Marauders are truly the genuine article.

-- T.M. Christian
 



 

Great U.S. Military Victories of the Past Half Century

I'm proposing a series of historical lectures to be delivered at West Point on the theme: Great U.S. Military Victories of the Past Half Century.  Below is the complete list.

1.  "The Strategy and Conflict in Granada: Defeating Communism in the Caribbean," by retired General V.A. Ganar  






   

In Defense of Heckling

In Defense of Heckling

by:  Langdon Winner 

The noisy appearance of several activists from CODEPINK at last week's Senate hearings on the confirmation of John Brennan as Director of the C.I.A. was welcome for calling attention to the immoral, extra-judicial use of pilot-less drones by the U.S. Government to murder people -- citizens and foreign nationals, adults and children -- that "high government officials" suspect of being associated with al-Qaeda.  But as the protesters were being physically ejected from the room, it occurred to me that they'd also called mind a crucial but widely scorned feature of democratic freedom -- skillfully targeted heckling.

Those who disrupt public hearings, lectures, and other gatherings with shouts and posters critical of dignitaries at the front of room are often derided as enemies of free speech, ones who seek to destroy open discussion of crucial political issues.  Objections of this kind arose during incidents of heckling directed at Mitt Romney and Barack Obama during the 2012 presidential election campaign.  

Thus, at a political rally in Richmond Virginia shortly after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, Romney encouraged the crowd to help by donating to the Red Cross.  But, as one news story reported:  "Amid the applause, ...[a] heckler shouted, “What about climate? What about climate? That’s what caused this monster storm. Climate change.” The man, who was holding sign that read “END CLIMATE SILENCE” was immediately booed and drowned out by “USA” chants. He was escorted out of the event." 

Press coverage of incident lamented the breakdown of respectful civility the speech, but seemed little concerned that, as the heckler pointed out, Mr. Romney had nothing to say about what is probably the greatest crisis facing humanity at present. 

In a similar incident, Barack Obama was heckled during a speech in March 2012 at Ohio State, first by a man shouting and waving a book and later by protesters chanting "block the pipeline,” referring to the Keystone XL project.  Obama's cool, calm response was typical of well coached responses by those who are targets of heckling, namely to stress the crucial need for decorum as well respect for the speaker and listeners in the audience.  "Sir, I'm here to speak to these folks." Obama said. "You can hold your own rally. You're being rude. ... I'm trying to talk to these people."

At one level such criticisms of heckling seem perfectly reasonable.  Indeed, it's clear that open debate and reasoned discourse would suffer if incessant verbal interruptions permanently interrupted or frequently shut down public gatherings.  Yes, there are numerous cases in modern history in which political thugs have busted up the meetings of their opponents through shouting, physical intimidation and worse.  By no means would I endorse malicious behavior of that kind.  But outrages of that sort are not what happens in most instances of heckling in public meetings and speeches.  What commonly occurs is that persons in the crowd speak  out, loudly but briefly, offering relevant, sometimes irreverent, contributions to the discussion, ones at odds with themes the speaker or event organizers hoped to publicize.

But, you may ask, isn’t this unwelcome and destructive?  Doesn't the presence of hecklers in the room threaten the right of free speech?  Isn't that a right we need to defend from any and all kinds of interference? 

My answer is that the right of free speech also includes the rights of listeners to respond vocally to statements and positions they find morally or politically offensive and to do that right on the spot.  Is there an obligation to sit quietly at attention as a speaker offers flagrant misrepresentations of the truth or advocates contemptible positions?  Is there something sacred about the location or vocation of the speaker that imposes respectful, appreciative silence?  Where in the Bill of Rights is a compliant attitude of that sort specified?  Indeed, the first amendment seems to authorize free speech on any and all occasions citizens may choose, perhaps (oh, horror!) on occasions in which others are speaking as well.  Perhaps we should regard appropriate, limited injections of heckling not as a threat or unwelcome annoyance, but as colorful invitations to democratic dialogue.

Three roughly associated events from many years ago helped focus my understanding of these matters.

One was a visit to the Free Speech Corner in London's Hyde Park during on a summer backpack tour of England while I was in college.  As someone in love with politics and political philosophy, I eagerly sought out the fabled place on a cloudy July afternoon and was astonished by what I saw and heard.  There in the plaza were several amateur orators, standing some distance apart, often on flimsy wooden boxes, declaring their views on a variety of social, political, moral, and cultural topics – ban the bomb, animal rights, the best path socialism, post-colonial African movements, and other topics.  As a well-domesticated middle class American, I was shocked to see that the speakers at the front were not the only ones   shouting.   Some of the people in the crowd were vigorously and loudly yelling back.  "Nonsense!" "Not true!" "Aw, you're full of it!"  It was all part of a customary, evidently well choreographed ritual in which the hierarchy that separates speaker and audience simply dissolves.  It's worth noting  that during the afternoon everyone said whatever they wanted.  Everyone was heard, nobody was silenced, for what it was worth.  True, little in the content of the exchanges was particularly profound.  But I came away thinking, "Yes, this is part of what free speech involves."

The second event -- a rather lengthy and complicated one -- was the Free Speech Movement (FSM) at U.C. Berkeley during the fall semester of 1964 an upheaval that happened shortly after my visit to Hyde Park.  The short version of the story is that, responding to complaints about political advocacy on campus, the foppish university administration decided to ban all political speech and was met by stiff student and faculty resistance.  After weeks of demonstrations, protests and the arrest of some 800 students at a sit-in in the administration building, free speech on campus was finally restored.  As I’ve written elsewhere, those events brought profound, lasting effects to my own life and worldview and to thousands of other students as well. 

The third event took place during the next year or so following the victory of the FSM and the rise of increasingly intense, widespread student concerns about the U.S. war in Vietnam.  One evening in the university's Wheeler Hall auditorium, a speaker from a federal government agency, William G. Bundy (brother of McGeorge Bundy, key advisor to President Lyndon B. Johnson at the time), came to explain the Johnson administration's views on the threat posed by what he described as North Vietnamese Communist infiltrators to the government of South Vietnam.  Some months earlier, a State Department document, "Aggresion from the North, a State Department White Paper on Vietnam,” had been released and became the focus of a heated nationwide debate.  That evening, Mr. Bundy defended the report’s findings and offered justifications for an increasing U.S. presence in the war.  For most of the time, the audience in the packed house listened quietly, even pensively to his remarks.  But on several occasions, there were spontaneous shouts from the crowd: "That's a lie!" "Bullsh*t" and the like.  Bundy, a career D.C. insider, one obviously used to polite beltway policy briefings, seemed shaken by these outbursts.

As the heckling continued off and on during Bundy's presentation, his host for the evening, Robert Scalapino, Chair of the Department of Political Science, stepped to the podium and angrily addressed crowd.  Drawing attention to the victory of the FSM, he excoriated those who'd raised their voices, dismissing them as contrary to the renewal of free speech at the university.  The audience seem chastened by his warning and jibes from the audience gradually died down.

Thinking back on its now, it seems to me that what was wrong that night, what was truly unforgivable during the build-up to the War in Vietnam, was not too much heckling, but far too little.  We were too easy on the stuffy, self-assured Mr. Bundy and those like him in Washington as the calamities in Southeast Asia became known.  Students and other citizens should have been tirelessly “in your face” as these policies and military campaigns took shape.  Reading recent histories of the war, Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves most notably, has further convinced me that it was a blunder to heed the advice of those who urged us to be "polite and respectful" in our opposition.  

Much the same can be said about political controversies in our own time.  Was a polite, respectful approach at public gatherings the best way to respond to the Tea Party candidates of 2011-2012 or their eventual standard bearer, Willard “Mitt” Romney?  Obviously not.  Think of the treasure trove of unwitting self-revelations in Mr. Romney’s quest for the presidency that were prompted by hecklers in the audience.  

For example, at the Iowa State Fair in August 2011, Romney tried to explain that, hypothetically, one way to protect “entitlement” programs like Social Security and Medicare would be to “raise taxes on people,” an idea he was trying to refute.  But before he got any further, several voices in the crowd yelled, “Corporations!”  

 “Corporations are people, my friends,” Romney replied, at which point there was raucous laughter, jeering and a loud retort, “No they’re not!” 

“Of course they are,” an obviously flustered Romney replied.  “Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”  (More uproarious laughter from the crowd.)

An interesting question arises here.  Was the American electorate better informed about its real choices in the 2012 election by (1) the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the candidates’ beautifully tailored television advertisements, or (2) the memorable images and statements generated in response to well targeted heckling?  In my view, the answer is perfectly clear.  It's likely that history will record that several of Romney's "off message" comments were the ones ultimately decisive in his defeat, including his baffled retorts to ordinary citizen hecklers, phrases that came to symbolize his irrepressible contempt for the "47%" and more of the nation's populace.

While arguments against the practice of lively, limited, thoughtful heckling are usually offered as a sober, reasoned defense of democracy, upon closer inspection they are often thinly veiled justifications for authoritarianism.  The underlying, unspoken advice by very serious people is this:  Be quiet.  Be compliant.  Don’t speak out.  Don’t question authority.  Put your little minds at ease.  Just follow your designated leaders.  Let them do the talking.  If you must make noise, just applaud or cheer at the designated moment.

My mind swims as I remember the astonishing array of fools, miscreants, looters, and, yes, war criminals for whom my generation has been asked to accord deference and esteem.  Perhaps it was always thus.  On the lecture circuit for has-been dignitaries these days, a reliable rule of thumb is: the greater the crimes, the higher the honoraria, the more piteous the vapors of apology if anyone embarrasses the institution by daring to speak out.

So, I say, thank God for CODEPINK and for all those over the years who’ve relentlessly tried to heckle us back to our senses.  While it's a mode of political expression sometimes prone to excess, abuse and sheer irrationality, on balance the practice of heckling stuffed shirt power holders can be counted among strongest, most colorful, most effective traditions of direct democracy.  We need more of it, not less.

  * * * * * * * * * * * * * 

[In a second segment of these musings, I’ll explore some possible objections to my position, some unfortunate aspects of heckling (especially episodes of backlash), and even some suggestions  for “An Ethic for Hecklers.”  I have no idea when that part will be ready to post.]