Ramsey Kearney TV Spot [Singer of] Peace & Love (Blind Man's Penis) + Trubee Story of Song via: Song-Poem Website

Ramsey Kearney, singer of "Blind Man's Penis"

John Trubee
Peace & Love (Blind Man's Penis)

In five minutes of stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness), I hammered out the following:

"Peace & Love (Blind Man's Penis)"

I got high last night on LSD

My mind was beautiful, and I was free

Warts loved my nipples because they are pink

Vomit on me, baby

Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind

It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind

It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs

And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs

You can fuck them

Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis

And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles

Ramona's titties died in hell

And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind ... etc.

--lyrics by John Trubee, music and vocals by Ramsey Kearney.

John Trubee occupies a special star in the song-poem ouevre. His "Peace & Love" (AKA "Blind Man's Penis") is the most famous song-poem recording of all time. Ramsey Kearney applies to Trubee's dadaist, acid trip manifesto the special sauce which makes this one of the most unreproducible experiments in the history of popular music.

You Too Can Be A Recording Star!
by John Trubee

"Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind." This ludicrous line was invented out of sheer boredom and homicidal frustration as I labored as a cashier in a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1975. I'd scribble some poems and weird phrases on a legal pad to vent my seething anguish. Writing on the job was a kind of self-invented therapy to prevent the onset of mental illness due to occupational stress and severe teenage alienation.

In late spring of 1976, I bought one of those horrible sleazy tabloids you find in supermarkets by the check-out stand. I had to keep up on my UFO sightings and mass hatchet murders. In the back pages of the Midnight Globe, I scanned the ads and saw: "Co-write on a 50-50 basis, earn $20,000 royalties, send your song poems to ..." some outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought to myself: wouldn't it be fun to send these people the most ridiculous, stupid, vile, obscene, retarded Iyrics, to see their response?

I wanted to get an emotional letter from the jerks in Nashville. I wanted them to tell me I was crazy. I wanted them to curse me out in writing so I could show all my friends. Several weeks later I received a letter from Nashville Co-Writers which began:

Dear John,

We have just received your lyrics and think they are very worthy of being recorded with the full Nashville Sound Production. ... I am enclosing a contract of acceptance. Please sign and return along with $79.95 to cover the cost for each song to be completed ...

Aha! They wanted my money. I knew it! But if I send them the money, they would send me a tape and a record of my lyrics set to music. Although $79.95 was a lot to a minimum wage teenager, I signed the "contract of acceptance" and returned it with a check. Several weeks later I received a 7-inch, 45 RPM record that had a label and grooves only on one side. Typed on the white label was "Peace & Love" (John Trubee-Will Gentry). I immediately rushed upstairs and put this little gem on the turntable for a listen. Over the lamest, most minimal country track was some country hack singing the lyrics I wrote. I was stunned. They did change one line, though -- they excised all mention of Stevie Wonder and had the singer croon repeatedly "A blind man" instead. Also enclosed with the disc was a photograph of Ramsey Kearney, the guy who sang the damned thing. Wearing a butterfly-print polyester shirt, Ramsey looked like the perfect man to sing these demented lyrics. Several weeks later, Nashville sent a teeny 3-inch reel tape of the song in extreme stereo -- one channel had only the prerecorded rhythm track while the other channel featured Ramsey singing those idiot lyrics with a little slap-back echo thrown in. For years I had recorded hours of tapes of my teenage band, prank phone calls, studio demo tapes, synthesizer blurbles, and various recordings of an unusual nature. I wanted all this hard work to be heard, and I loved distributing my tapes simply to annoy people and sometimes even to enlighten or entertain them.

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Category: Music

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BLIND MAN'S PENIS SONG-POEM RAMSEY KEARNEY NASHCO TV COMMERCIAL NASHVILLE KROQ SONG POEM plastinia on bemis titties died in hell Nazis want to kill Elvira electric marbles Stevie Wonder penis erect John Trubee nashvegas John Trubee-Will Gentry

FULL VERSION BELOW:

John Trubee occupies his own special page in our song-poem discography, only in part because it doesn't easily fit in anywhere else. His solitary excusion into the form, "Peace & Love" (popularly known as "Blind Man's Penis"), is the most famous song-poem recording of all time, yet it was done -- on the lyrics end, at least -- as a tongue-in-cheek lark. It is the strangely detached, apathetic reading singer Ramsey Kearney gives to Trubee's dada/surrealist account of an acid trip that makes this song work. And work it does -- I'm sure I've listened to "Blind Man's Penis" over 100 times by now and I still haven't found the bottom of its well of delights.

The story of this hilarious record has been told numerous times. Reprinted below is Trubee's own poignant account, slightly modified from the version that appeared in the September 1985 issue of Spin magazine.

You Too Can Be A Recording Star!
Article by John Trubee

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind. This ludicrous line was invented out of sheer boredom and homicidal frustration as I labored as a cashier in a convenience store in Princeton, New Jersey, in 1975. I'd scribble some poems and weird phrases on a legal pad to vent my seething anguish. Writing on the job was a kind of self-invented therapy to prevent the onset of mental illness due to occupational stress and severe teenage alienation.

In late spring of 1976, I bought one of those horrible sleazy tabloids you find in supermarkets by the check-out stand. I had to keep up on my UFO sightings and mass hatchet murders.

In the back pages of the Midnight Globe (not the National Enquirer, as erroneously reported elsewhere -- was it Time?), I scanned the geeky little ads and saw: "Cowrite on a 50-50 basis, earn $20,000 royalties, send your song poems to ..." some outfit in Nashville, Tennessee. I thought to myself: wouldn't it be fun to send these people the most ridiculous, stupid, vile, obscene, retarded Iyrics to see their response?

In five minutes of stream of consciousness (or unconsciousness), I hammered out the following:

Peace & Love

I got high last night on LSD
My mind was beautiful, and I was free
Warts loved my nipples because they are pink
Vomit on me, baby
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he's blind, it's erect because he's blind
Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind
It's erect because he is blind

Let's make love under the stars and watch for UFOs
And if little baby Martians come out of the UFOs
You can fuck them
Yeah Yeah Yeah.

The zebra spilled its plastinia on bemis
And the gelatin fingers oozed electric marbles
Ramona's titties died in hell
And the Nazis want to kill everyone.

Stevie Wonder's penis is erect because he's blind ... etc.

I wanted to get an emotional letter from the jerks in Nashville. I wanted them to tell me I was crazy. I wanted there to curse me out in writing so I could show all my friends.

Several weeks later I received a letter from Nashville Co-Writers which began:

Dear John,

We have just received your lyrics and think they are very worthy of being recorded with the full Nashville Sound Production. ... I am enclosing a contract of acceptance. Please sign and return along with $79.95 to cover the cost for each song to be completed ...

Aha! They wanted my money. I knew it! But if I send them the money, they would send me a tape and a record of my lyrics set to music. Although $79.95 was a lot to a minimum wage teenager, I signed the "contract of acceptance" and returned it with a check. Several weeks later I received a 7-inch, 45 RPM record that had a label and grooves only on one side. Typed on the white label was "Peace & Love" (John Trubee-Will Gentry). I immediately rushed upstairs and put this little gem on the turntable for a listen. Over the lamest, most minimal country track was some country hack singing the lyrics I wrote. I was stunned.

They did change one line, though -- they excised all mention of Stevie Wonder and had the singer croon repeatedly "A blind man" instead.

Also enclosed with the disc (actually an acetate) was a photograph of Ramsey Kearney, the guy who sang the damned thing. Wearing a butterfly-print polyester shirt, Ramsey looked like the perfect man to sing these demented lyrics.

Several weeks later, Nashville sent a teeny 3-inch reel tape of the song in extreme stereo -- one channel had only the prerecorded rhythm track while the other channel featured Ramsey singing those idiot lyrics with a little slap-back echo thrown in.

For years I had recorded hours of tapes of my teenage band, prank phone calls, studio demo tapes, synthesizer blurbles, and various recordings of an unusual nature. I wanted all this hard work to be heard, and I loved distributing my tapes simply to annoy people and sometimes even to enlighten or entertain them. I am a music fanatic, a recording fanatic, and I needed to get this material out. It was my response to a world that seems always to have told me that I am small and worthless. Putting out music for the hell of it was my way of giving the finger to a universe indifferent to my existence.

In December 1982, I received a call at work from Ron Stringer, guitarist for the Fibonaccis, an L.A. art band. Earlier that year at a gig at Al's Bar, I had given him a John Trubee sampler cassette, which contained my Nashville prank song, "Peace & Love." Ron evidently played the tape for record producer Craig Leon, who was helping the Fibonaccis release their song "Tumors" on vinyl. Craig liked "Peace & Love" so much that he wanted to release it as a 45.

Craig managed to have the record pressed by Enigma, whom I had never even heard of. I got 50 free promo copies of the record. We didn't discuss any specific deal. Any sort of greed, bitchery, money hassles, or small-minded haggling might have discouraged Enigma from marketing my record. I felt that they were doing me a favor by bothering to press it and give me some free copies. In retrospect, this attitude is one of profound naiveté borne of youthful inexperience.

When I drove to Torrance one night after work to pick up the 50 copies of my beautiful record, some guy from Greenworld came up to me and, referring to the 250 copies they had pressed, said, "We already invested $20 in this record, and we don't want to have anything more to do with it." Great. I spend years of my life playing music, studying music, using all my spare moments working on my music to agonizingly drag it into the world to give to people, and I still get the callous snub from the typical idiot in the music business.

The records were in plain white sleeves and had blank white labels. For $16 I had four rubber stamps made at a stationery store so I could stamp each record with the pertinent information. I also bought several hundred plastic record sleeves from a local Licorice Pizza and designed and photocopied my own little cover to insert along with the record.

With my original 50 copies, I did a promotional mailing to Dr. Demento and various radio stations, not expecting any response whatsoever.

I sent a copy to Los Angeles TV vampiress Elvira, a.k.a. Cassandra Peterson, who at the time hosted a show at progressive radio station KROQ-FM in Pasadena. She sent a postcard explaining that she'd attempt to play the record on her show, but she wasn't sure she would be able to due to the offensive lyric content. I basically shrugged it off, put her postcard in my files, and forgot about it.

That Sunday, Zoogz Rift, in whose band I played bass, called and told me to quickly turn on KROQ. I did, and sure enough, they were playing my song. The enlightened and godlike DJs at KROQ thereafter regularly played it.

Enigma re-pressed the record, adding it to their catalogue and christening it with the new moniker "A Blind Man's Penis," even designing a groovy little label for it. Matt Groening devoted his entire Sound Mix column in the Reader, a weekly Los Angeles tabloid, to the convoluted story of how "A Blind Man's Penis" came into existence.

I'm currently working on my second Enigma LP with my band, the Ugly Janitors of America. You, too, Mister Composer/Musician, can put out records if you bother to go to the trouble of sending obscene lyrics and suicide notes through the U.S. Postal Service, as I did. The obsolete and reactionary machinery of the music industry needs the irreverent pranks of ugly outsiders if it's to survive its rapidly calcifying descent into hermetically sealed grayness and keep alive a spark of that rebellious, independent, antiestablishment spirit of rock 'n' roll!

Ramsey Kearney, singer of "Blind Man's Penis"

Remembering Bubbles the chimp and Michael Jackson's other exotic pets | L.A. Unleashed | Los Angeles Times

Remembering Bubbles the chimp and Michael Jackson's other exotic pets

8:09 PM, June 29, 2009

In the wake of Michael Jackson's death, many have posed questions about the singer's former pet, Bubbles the chimpanzee. 

Bubbles was, of course, part of Jackson's entourage -- and of his mystique -- in the 1980s.  He accompanied Jackson to events and in the studio during the recording of his "Bad" album.  When Jackson toured Japan, Bubbles was there. He even learned how to Moonwalk (sort of).

Of course, as with many elements of Jackson's life, it's hard to separate fact from fiction.  The star reportedly rescued a young Bubbles from a cancer research center in Texas in 1985.  The chimp eventually faded from public view, with few references made to him until Jackson's famous television interview with British journalist Martin Bashir, "Living with Michael Jackson," which aired in early 2003.  In the interview, Jackson told Bashir that Bubbles had become aggressive as he aged, and had been sent away over fears that he would harm Jackson's youngest child, Prince Michael II.  

Bubbles had apparently been living with his longtime trainer, Bob Dunn, since at least as early as 2002, when Dunn spoke with People Magazine.  "Bubbles is an adult chimp and a wild animal," Dunn told the magazine. "We don't let him out to play." 

The trainer did say, however, that Jackson and his children had been to his Sylmar ranch to visit the chimp.  "The last time Michael visited, Bubbles definitely recognized and remembered him," he told the Telegraph.

In late 2003, a report surfaced that Bubbles had attempted suicide but "was rushed to the hospital in time."  (No further details, or even confirmation that the attempt happened at all, were forthcoming.)  And then, once again, the chimp returned to a life of relative obscurity. 

In 2005, Dunn stopped working with great apes and sent the ones still living on his ranch, including Bubbles, to a the Center for Great Apes, a nonprofit sanctuary in southern-central Florida.  The sanctuary's website describes the chimp, now 26, as charismatic and "able to throw sand with amazing accuracy."  It sums up his character in three words: smart, distinctive and tender. 

A representative for Jackson contacted the sanctuary after Bubbles arrived, suggesting that the star would like to visit his former pet.  (The sanctuary is closed to the public, so special arrangements would have to be made for such a visit.)  But, sanctuary director Patti Ragan told People in a recent interview, Jackson never made it to Florida.  Bubbles doesn't seem to mind, though -- after all, chimps are ill-suited to life with humans, and his new home affords him the opportunity to interact with other chimps, notably his best friend, Sam.

Sanctuary staff haven't attempted to tell Bubbles about his former owner's death.  "We haven't said anything to him yet," Ragan told People.

As for Jackson's other animals -- he kept tigers, giraffes, reptiles, birds and other exotics at his Neverland Ranch -- they seem to have been scattered to the four winds.  The AFP reports:

While Bubbles remains high-profile, animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said it was hard to track down most of Jackson's former pets.

Lisa Wathne, PETA's specialist in captive exotic animals, voiced particular concern about two of Jackson's orangutans sent to a private owner in Connecticut and reptiles at a roadside zoo in Oklahoma.

She said Jackson's case showed why wild animals should not be kept as pets.

"All too often even people who start with good intentions, as Michael Jackson certainly did, don't have the ability to properly care for these animals," she said.

"And unfortunately in Michael Jackson's case he did apparently run into financial problems that ultimately led to his animals being disbursed to places all over the world. We don't know, frankly, where most of them ended up."

Two tigers, Thriller and Sabu, now reside at Tippi Hedren's Shambala sanctuary in Acton, north of L.A.  Thirteen Chilean flamingos ended up at the Cape May County Zoo in New Jersey.  Giraffes went to a sanctuary in Lake Powell on the Arizona-Utah border, but faced eviction earlier this year. 

As recently as a few months ago, Jackson's fascination with exotic animals was still causing controversy and making headlines.  When reports suggested that the star's planned London concert series would include animals like elephants and panthers, PETA complained, telling music magazine NME that "exotic animals belong in Africa, not the O2 Arena among screaming fans, bright lights and stage explosions."  The animal rights group later backed down when it said it had been told no animals would be used in the O2 concerts.

For a look backward at Jackson's exotic-pet history, check out Discovery's Born Animal blog. 

-- Lindsay Barnett

Photo: Artist Jeff Koons' statue "Michael Jackson and Bubbles," which sold for $5.6 million at auction in 2001. Credit: Sotheby's

Remembering Bubbles the chimp and Michael Jackson's other exotic pets | L.A. Unleashed | Los Angeles Times

25 Bizarrely Sexy Mannequins

25 Bizarrely Sexy Mannequins - Bula or not?

Clever Burglar - Remembered to spray paint the camera :)

Clever Burglar - Remembered to spray paint the camera :)

Elvis: Uncle Vester + Dr. Nick's Cadillac Douche

Elvis: Uncle Vester + Dr. Nick's Cadillac Douche
Video sent by mrjyn

Birth Sep. 11, 1914
Death Jan. 18, 1997
He was the longtime guard at the gates of Graceland and fans would stop by and ask him questions about Elvis.

"Uncle Vester" Presley 84 year-old uncle of Elvis, worked at Graceland, but adamantly refutes that he had a sister called Dixie Greenwood who claims was his grandmother. According to Greenwood, Dixie was Vester and Vernon's (Elvis' father) sister, who contacted syphilis and died in a mental hospital, never to be spoken of again.

"This Greenwood is in no way related to me or Elvis... She ain't got no Presley blood in her, that's for sure," says Vest.

Elvis's uncle Vester Presley, was a teenager before he owned his first pair of shoes.

Vester Presley came every Monday night to the Coliseum for a long time and he used to bring Lisa Marie to the wrestling matches when she was four or five years old.

"Dr. Nichopoulos would give Elvis this stuff, or he'd say, 'I'll buy a drugstore.'"

In September 1974, Elvis bought his Uncle Vester a gold Coupe de Ville with a black top: VIN 6D47S5Q101075. He also gave an affidavit stating that the dent on the left front fender was from where Vester shot off his gun while staying at Graceland.

A Cadillac Fleetwood Brougham was a gift to the infamous Dr Nick in Sweden in 1989.

Elvis: Dr. George 'Nick' Nichopoulos 'NOT GUILTY!' Auction

Elvis: Dr. George 'Nick' Nichopoulos 'NOT GUILTY!' Auction
Video sent by mrjyn

Elvis: Dr. George 'Nick' Nichopoulos 'NOT GUILTY!' Auction

For sale: a doctor’s memories of Marilyn and Elvis

Posted by admin in Tuesday, June 30th 2009      

Author: By Guy Adams in Los Angeles

The grisly selection of memorabilia and medical paraphernalia includes personal effects that belonged to Presley’s physician, George “Dr Nick” Nichopoulos, such as a “nasal douche” which the so-called King of Rock ’n' Roll used to treat his sinuses and irrigate his throat before each concert.

The two-day sale in June includes a number of items from a separate collection of Monroe’s property, including two bricks from her house, signed exchequers, alcohol receipts, an umbrella and a dressing gown purported to be the last garment she wore before she died from a drug overdose, which is expected to fetch $6,000 (£3,745).

It also contains guns, jewelery and four bottles of medication Dr Nichopoulos issued on 15 August 1977, the day before “The King” died on the toilet from a prescription drug overdose.

Those products were at the center of an investigation that saw Dr Nick charged and acquitted of over-prescribing controlled substances to the singer in the months before his death.

They formed part of a traveling collection at local casinos but Dr Nichopoulos, 81, is no longer able to continue touring, so is selling 45 of the items through the California memorabilia company Julien’s Auctions. The collection is expected to sell for between $200,000 and $400,000.

“Elvis was a very big giver, and he gave a lot of things away,” Dr Nichopoulos told Bloomingdale yesterday. “[The collection] kind of describes Elvis in a way: some of his interests, like he loved guns and sheriffs’ badges and books and religious things and jewelery. It gives you an idea of some of the things he was interested in.”

Though Las Vegas and restraint are not often associated, the sale has been criticized in some quarters for overstepping the boundaries of taste.

Priscilla Presley, Elvis’s wife from 1967 to 1973, said she was “very disappointed” in Dr Nick’s decision to sell the items: “That a doctor could betray a patient who trusted his professional advice, trusted his integrity, trusted his right to privacy, but mostly his loyalty, is beyond my comprehension.”

All shook up: Elvis’s pills

Twenty-four hours before his death Elvis was prescribed a pack of 50mg Beneficiary tablets, one of the oldest anti-histamines taken for allergies such as hay fever. Did Elvis suffer from allergies? Or did he just enjoy the woozy feeling induced by the powerful sedative effect common to all first generation anti-histamines?

In the 1970s, anti-histamines were used, and abused, as sleeping pills and as part of a cocktail with alcohol and other recreational drugs. Elvis also used a nasal douche to irrigate his sinuses and treat his throat. In heavy overdose Benadryl can cause a heart attack.

New Article Sources News - For sale: a doctor’s memories of Marilyn and Elvis