Samuel Shepard Rogers III
(November 5, 1943 – July 27, 2017)
"was an American playwright, actor, director, screenwriter, and author whose career spanned half a century.
He wrote 58 plays as well as several books of short stories, essays, and memoirs.
He won 10 Obie Awards for writing and directing, the most by any writer or director.
Shepard received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979 for his play Buried Child
and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor
for his portrayal of pilot Chuck Yeager in the 1983 film The Right Stuff.
He received the PEN/Laura Pels Theater Award as a master American dramatist in 2000":
New York magazine described Shepard as "the greatest American playwright of his generation."
Shepard's plays are known for their bleak, poetic, surrealist elements, black comedy, and rootless characters living on the outskirts of American society.
His style evolved from the absurdism of his early off-off-Broadway work to the realism of later plays like Buried Child and Curse of the Starving Class "
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Shepard
"Between 1967 and 1970 he was part of the New York psychedelic rock group
The Holy Modal Rounders as drummer,
participating in the recording of two albums of the band Indian War Whoop released in 1967 and The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders in 1968."
"Shepard accompanied Bob Dylan on the Rolling Thunder Revue of 1975
as the screenwriter for Renaldo and Clara that emerged from the tour.
However, because much of the film was improvised, Shepard's work was seldom used. Rolling Thunder Logbook, his diary of the tour, was published in 1978.
A decade later, Dylan and Shepard co-wrote the 11-minute song "Brownsville Girl", included on Dylan's 1986 album Knocked Out Loaded and on later compilations."
_____
" The Holy Modal Rounders
was an American folk music group, originally the duo of Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber, who formed in 1963 on the Lower East Side of New York City.
Although they achieved only limited commercial and critical success in the 1960s and 1970s, they quickly earned a dedicated cult following and have been retrospectively praised for their groundbreaking reworking of early 20th century folk music as well as their pioneering innovation in several genres, including
freak folk and psychedelic folk. "
'In 1964, the Rounders made history with their self-titled debut, which included the first use of the word "psychedelic" in popular music
Weber grew up in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he met musicians Michael Hurley and Robin Remaily, both of whom would later collaborate with the Rounders "
"Terri Thal, Dave Van Ronk's first wife, thought the songs they wrote were "brilliant" and subsequently became the band's first manager.
Peter Tork of the Monkees was an early fan, reminiscing the duo was "absolutely hilarious" and brought "a whole new level of authenticity" to the scene.
Sterling Morrison of the Velvet Underground similarly praised the Rounders, saying that "the Fugs, the Holy Modal Rounders, and the Velvet Underground were the only authentic Lower East Side bands "
"In 1963, the duo was signed to Prestige Records by Paul A. Rothchild for two albums.
Recorded the day before John F. Kennedy's assassination,
their first album The Holy Modal Rounders was released in 1964 "
"The duo's arrangement of the traditional song "Blues in the Bottle" opens the album and went on to be covered by the Lovin' Spoonful and the Jim Kweskin & the Jug Band.
(Stampfel and Antonia would go on to write the liner notes for the Lovin' Spoonful's 1965 debut album Do You Believe in Magic, where the Spoonful's version of "Blues in the Bottle" was released.
"Euphoria," written by Robin Remaily, was also featured on their debut and was soon covered by the Youngbloods and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band."
On February 24, 1965 at Ed Sanders's bookstore Peace Eye, the Fugs performed their first gig, which was attended by Andy Warhol, George Plimpton, William Burroughs, and James Michener.
The Holy Modal Rounders were also hired to perform and joined the Fugs onstage during their set.
Richie Unterberger retrospectively reflected that "no acid folk album mixed inspiration and lunacy in as downright deranged a fashion as The Moray Eels."
The album opens with "Bird Song," which was written by Antonia and notably included in Dennis Hopper's 1969 counterculture film Easy Rider and its soundtrack.
While in California, the band played a number of notable shows, opening for
Pink Floyd in August in San Francisco,
opening for Ike and Tina Turner in Los Angeles
and performing a set on the sketch comedy television show Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in October
They continued playing shows of high notability after leaving California, opening for
the Velvet Underground in Boston in January 1969
playing at Carnegie Hall with the Byrds
and the Flying Burrito Brothers in September 1969,
and sharing a bill with the Grateful Dead, also in September 1969.
"Not long after the band returned to New York City in early 1969, Shepard left the group to focus on a movie meant to star the Rolling Stones.
While Michael McCarty, a friend of Annis,[58] replaced him on drums that year,[67] Shepard remained an occasional associate of the band.
In November 1969, Shepard played drums with the Holy Modal Rounders at his wedding.
In March 1970, Shepard's play Operation Sidewinder premiered and included music written and performed by the Holy Modal Rounders.
A double bill performance of Shepard's The Unseen Hand and Forensic and the Navigators in April 1970 had the Rounders play a set during the intermission with Shepard on drums.
In the same year, Shepard played a gig with them, after which he met soon-to-be lover Patti Smith for the first time"
In Nashville, the band recorded their 1971 album Good Taste Is Timeless, which saw the band move away from the psychedelia of their past two albums.
Not long before the album's recording, Robin Remaily joined the group as a multi-instrumentalist while n
bassist Dave Reisch replaced Annis in February 1971
after the album's recording.
Later in the year, the band relocated to Boston, Massachusetts,where they added saxophonist Ted Deane and replaced McCarty with
drummer Roger North (previously of Quill and inventor of North Drums)'
In 1975, Dave Reisch helped Stampfel (without Weber) form the Unholy Modal Rounders.
The band featured Stampfel on fiddle, Paul Presti on lead guitar, Charlie Messing on rhythm guitar, Kirby Pines on bass, and occasionally Jeff Berman on drums.
The group joined
Michael Hurley,
Jeffrey Frederick,
and the Clamtones in the studio to record the collaborative 1976 album Have Moicy!
but because they were newly formed at the time, only Stampfel and Presti went to the studio to represent the Unholy Modal Rounders.
Rock critic Robert Christgau was an early fan of Have Moicy! and ranked it his favorite album of the year for his ballot in the annual Pazz & Jop poll.
Richie Unterberger noted in 1998 that Have Moicy! was "one of the most critically acclaimed folk records of the last 25 years."
The Unholy Modal Rounders would break up in 1977 "
1969, the Holy Modal Rounders' "Bird Song" was included in Dennis Hopper's film Easy Rider and the movie's soundtrack. According to Stampfel, the song caught the attention of co-writer Peter Fonda who thought it would be perfect for the movie.
However, it has also been reported that it was Hopper who first heard the song. The soundtrack charted at number 6 on the Billboard Top Ten and went gold.
"early 1974, the Rounders' version of "Boobs a Lot" bubbled under Billboard's Hot 100 at 103. Sales were driven by a number of radio shows playing the song, including Dr. Demento's.
From 1971 to 2022, Demento played it 167 times."
Much has been made of the band's legacy as a cult act. Rolling Stone magazine dubbed the Holy Modal Rounders
"one of rock's greatest cult bands."
Music journalist Greil Marcus used the Holy Modal Rounders as the earliest example of old-time music being reinvented with modern aesthetics,
commenting that they were "incapable of taking anything seriously, but nevertheless [got] to the bottom of folk songs other people sang as if they were obvious."
The band has frequently been lumped into what Marcus coined as "old weird America,"
The band's two psychedelic albums are also of historical significance, with the 1983 edition of The Rolling Stone Album Guide calling Stampfel and Weber the "cocreators and lone practitioners of the genre known as acid folk
Robert Christgau had similar high praise, believing that the Holy Modal Rounders, like Bob Dylan, "greatly transcend" the New York folk scene they began in and that "next to Bob Dylan, Stampfel is the closest thing to a genius" to come out of the 1960s folk revival.
Christgau also praised Weber, calling him an "ace guitarist" who "can just not give a fuck while remaining both charming and musical."
The list below is adapted from the list the documentary The Holy Modal Rounders: Bound to Lose provides during the credits.[115] Intervals for Tyler, Remaily, Deane, Reisch, North, and Shepard are included in film.
Peter Stampfel – vocals, fiddle, banjo (1963-2003)
Steve Weber – vocals, guitar (1963–2003)
Lee Crabtree – keyboards (1967)
Sam Shepard – drums (1967–1970)
Antonia – songwriter
John Annis – bass (1968-1971)
Richard Tyler – piano (1968–1985, died 1985)
Michael McCarty – drums (1969–1971)
Robin Remaily – vocals, guitar, mandolin, fiddle (1970–2003)
Dave Reisch – bass (1971–2003)
Ted Deane – saxophone (1971–2003)
Roger North – drums (1971–2003)
Luke Faust
(1972)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holy_Modal_Rounders
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fugs
"The Fugs are an American rock band formed in New York City in late 1964,
by the poets Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg,
with Ken Weaver on drums.
Soon afterward, they were joined by Peter Stampfel and Steve Weber of the Holy Modal Rounders.
Kupferberg named the band from a euphemism for fuck used in Norman Mailer's novel The Naked and the Dead."
"Some 1969 correspondence, found inside an
FBI file on the rock group the Doors, called the Fugs
the "most vulgar thing the human mind could possibly conceive".
They have been derided for their scatological lyrics.
But, Tom Robbins wrote of them in 1968, "Incongruously… this trio of hairy gross ginch gropers is the most intellectual, sophisticated and literary ensemble in rock."
The Fugs have been labeled avant-rock noise music."
In 1968, they toured Europe twice: in May to Denmark and Sweden where they wrote the song "The Swedish Nada"
and played with Fleetwood Mac, Ten Years After, and The Nice
Their participation in the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam's 1967 March on the Pentagon, at which they and others purportedly attempted to
encircle and levitate the Pentagon,
is chronicled in Norman Mailer's book The Armies of the Night. A recording of this event is featured on the Fugs' 1968 album, Tenderness Junction, entitled "Exorcising the Evil Spirits from the Pentagon Oct. 21, 1967"
They learned that a group of promoters were planning to stage Woodstock '94 that August near Saugerties, about 8 miles from Woodstock, and that this festival would be much more tightly controlled and commercialized than the original. Consequently, The Fugs decided to stage their own August 1994 concerts as "The Real Woodstock Festival", in an atmosphere more in keeping with the spirit of the 1969 festival.
The basic Fugs roster of Sanders, Kupferberg, Taylor, Batty, and Petito performed in this series of concerts with additional vocal support from Amy Fradon and Leslie Ritter and also with appearances by Allen Ginsberg and Country Joe McDonald.
"In 2008 their song "CIA Man"
was featured during the end credits for the movie
Burn After Reading,
directed by the Coen brothers.
In 2009, Kupferberg suffered two strokes"
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