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The Retarded Dogs - 'Harmonica Song (excerpt​)​'

from Various Artists - Towson​-​Glen Arm Freakouts: 1992​-​1999 by Nuns Like To Fence

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about

February 1993
(produced by The Retarded Dogs, originally released by Jon Woodstock on the various artists tape "Bomb Droppings", August 1994)

The Retarded Dogs hold a special place in my heart and in the development of Towson-Glen Arm as they were the first of many acts to be led by the trio of Jon Woodstock, Cory Davolos, and myself, as well as the first group to prominently feature my creative contributions. For about 5 years Woodstock, Davolos, and I had a blast experimenting with multi-media art as a weird form of musical context...

...As the The Retarded Dogs, we played one May 1st '93 gig at my mom's house. By the time of that show we'd grown into a very large group with some members merely serving as comic relief running around waving picket signs that bore messages like 'Free Fat Albert!', ‘Turkey Bowl’, and other nonsensical yet loving stabs at activist culture. Other side players for The R.D.'s served as percussionists banging out rhythms on rusty old hubcaps, trash can lids, pieces of office furniture, etc. while still other R.D.'s blew the jug or played tambourine and new years eve noisemakers. Some of the side players in The Retarded Dogs included Dulaney High School students Melissa Fatto, Dave Richardson, Paul Petersan, and Devon Till. In addition to his harmonica work and strange penchant for muscle man posing, Till also served the crucial purpose of physically picking up his band mates in order to throw them into the air as they played.

Another important auxillary Retarded Dog was the mayhem master Scott Makowske. During most of our set Scott sat next Woodstock's drum kit in a chair with a brown paper bag over his head. We never acknowledged him, all freaking out around him and just treating Scott like an inanimate object until we started to play one piece that actually had a count-in for an intro. When I yelled '1,2,3,4!' Makowske instantly ripped the bag off of his head, jumped up off of the chair and into the audience, slammed into a few styrofoam ceiling tiles then hit the ground rolling around, screaming and slavering, occasionally biting the clothing of an audience member and actually biting the skin of Devon Till's arm before careening into the mic stand to perform some startling vocals in a noisy improvised composition quite similar to the music that Jon, Cory, and I would later make as Big Huge Fucking Machine.

A'lot of the chaos of that Retarded Dogs concert can be found on this recording of 'Harmonica Song' even though it was done at a practice session... - Mike Apichella

(a much longer version of this article and more info. on performance artist Scott Makowske can be found in the 40 pg. booklet which accompanies the cassette version of Towson-Glen Arm Freakouts)

credits

from Various Artists - Towson​-​Glen Arm Freakouts: 1992​-​1999, released February 28, 2013

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