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WALLS OF GENIUS BIO Walls
Of Genius began to form in the fall of 1982 when two former
members of a recently disbanded experimental punk/new wave band
called Rumours Of Marriage started getting together to jam and
party—not, heh-heh, necessarily in that order!
Taking their cue from the final sessions of their former
band, which had continued to jam and record after the decision to
disband had already rendered their setlist obsolete, Evan Cantor
from Boulder and Ed Fowler from Denver eschewed structured songs
for free-form fun and experimentation, including and involving
whoever was around in the merriment and recording whatever they
did as new original material, as opposed to mere practice.
Furthermore, while they played bass and lead guitar
respectively in the deceased band, they now expanded into and onto
whatever else was at hand, from flutes and percussion to toys and
old records, and everyone else in the room did likewise.
Since the lineup forever changed, they considered it a new
“band” every time Cantor ran the recording equipment, with
names like the Dirt Clods or the Psychotic Bozos.
Cantor then rummaged through the raw material and edited
the best parts onto a 90-minute “greatest hits” cassette—and
a project was born! Before long, aspiring punk “singer”-songwriter Little Fyodor became involved and the three began to find they were taking it seriously enough to warrant a unified name. Walls Of Genius was the title of the first tape they considered to be a bona fide release, and it was then chosen to be the name of the umbrella organization for all these myriad “bands.” “Walls Of Genius Presents—Strange Rituals!” was what it said on the flyer for their first live performance. Eventually, Walls Of Genius became the one name of the band, though it always was as much a project or even an underground cassette label as a band in the strictest sense. Evan, Ed and Fyodor were the three core members (the Head Moron and Assistant Head Morons respectively!), though any particular piece could involve any one, two or three of them and/or various and sundry others. Ultimately,
Walls Of Genius produced thirty cassette-tape releases as a band
or label (or somewhere in between) by the time they ceased
operations in the spring of 1986, and the majority of these tapes
were a full 90 minutes long! This output included eight releases by sister bands, two
compilations and two tapes of recompiled previously released
material, but the rest were comprised entirely of new and
authentic Walls Of Genius material which included free
improvisations, overdub projects, tape collage mixes and even some
actual songs, both originals as well as covers, the merry
troupe’s unabashedly crazed and demented treatments of which
became one of their endearing hallmarks.
While WoG were serious about making good music, their
endeavors were informed by a sense of irreverence and zaniness
that was rarely far from the surface and was often splendifurously
front and center! It’s no exaggeration to say that WoG quickly became one of the more well known outfits of the then burgeoning world-wide underground cassette network, a loose-knit group of musicians around the globe who released their music themselves on cassette tapes with varying degrees of ambition, often more interested in trading their work with each other than selling it. This kind of activity continues to this day, of course, and some credit R. Stevie Moore with starting it in the late sixties. But history will show that its first big burst of activity happened in the early 80’s when WoG was an integral part of it, becoming known for their humor, their prodigious output, cheeky marketing gimmicks such as Cantor’s Certificate of Genius (anyone could be certified a Genius for the asking!), and of course for their music, which received a grand multitude of reviews of all sorts in the equally burgeoning underground press of the day. Among the many favorable reactions was a rave review in the young Option Magazine by Richie Unterberger, who has since written about Walls Of Genius for the All Music Guide online (http://www.allmusic.com/) and in his 1998 book, Unknown Legends of Rock ‘N’ Roll. Little Fyodor has recently begun to reissue some of these classic cassettes on CDR. http://www.grantrproductions.com/pages/fyodor.html Little
Fyodor
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