In the Spirit of Crazy House:
Coming to your town December 7, 2023

Move Over Pearl Harbor! MAKE ROOM FOR DADA.

THE STORY OF HOW A COLLEGE RADIO SHOW STARTED SO MUCH NONSENSE

ISBN 9798989609703 (ebook) ISBN: 9798989609710 (pbk.)

It was not exactly George Orwell’s vision of 1984, but we were still pissed that we missed the sixties. As to what came afterward, don’t blame us. We are Generation Jones. We did not get the cheap houses or cheap essential scenery. We did not have a five-year-plan and were propelled against our will on this aimless and pointless journey. That is why we don’t really have a clue what this book is about because it wrote itself. We were simply the chosen medium to disseminate the utterances of the Sibylline Oracle also known as “Nostra-dumbass.” He may be a dumbass, but he’s our dumbass!

Mothra and Sloth were on-air pseudonyms at Madison, New Jersey’s ten-watt radio station, WMNJ. We had an audience of one loyal listener. There was no way we were handing over our real names to Mark Zuckerberg. In 1998, while preparing a serialized version of this book for the Seattle zine Sacred City, we noticed that our college yearbook quotes contained the words, “Come as You Are” and “Nevermind.” Sounds like a lot of supernatural baloney?

We could not predict the future, but in 1984, “Nevermind” was from the Flipper song, “Brainwash.” And “come as you are” was from the very silly liner notes on the back of a third-rate album by King Size Taylor and the Dominoes, which was a blatant attempt at manufacturing a subculture called “Gonk.” The shallowness of it spoke volumes and resonated with us.

We washed up in Jersey City, NJ because it was a land that seemed untouchable by the forces of gentrification which had already overrun Hoboken. The collective name, “Jersey City Mods” was coined because Mothra read the words of the prophet [“Paddington Mods”] written on a Tube station wall. It was a holy revelation that there were still people calling themselves “Mods” in 1982. “We can be the Jersey City Mods,” she said. What tended to get lost on the uninitiated was that Jersey City was a little bit disco, and we were a little bit rock and roll.

With Steve Dahl’s “Disco Demolition Night” still a recent memory, we were not enamored of the eighties. It comes as a shock to those who see it as the greatest decade ever. But rest assured, it was no Hot Tub Time Machine. To us it was dominated by the likes of Don Henley, Quarterflash, Journey, and Toto too!

While sitting around waiting for the nineties to happen, we did our best to resurrect the sixties. We were on a low budget. But never let it be said we were totally out of touch with the times. Sloth landed at Tower Records and Mothra at a documentary film distribution company. Our entertainment needs were covered with a seemingly endless supply of CDs and videos. 

But was that enough? It seemed worlds were colliding left and right after a Crazy Uruguayan law student stopped in for a visit. Not only did he give the Crazy House its name, he forced us to try Cisco, aka “Liquid Crack.” It went well with our drugs of choice at the time, psychedelics and “schnicken.” It was a heady mix and the party seemed to go on forever.

We had had enough early clues to the new direction by September 1991. We found ourselves in Barcelona just before the 1992 Olympics. The town was covered in a cartoon drawing of a Pyrenees sheepdog named Cobi. At first, we hated him, but once we started to use “cobi” as an adjective a savior was born. We celebrated the anointing at the Karma Bar off the Ramblas. Meanwhile in Sacramento, Sloth saw Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” for the first time. 

Wait a minute! Karma and Nirvana? Isn’t that just about as magical as the merger of peanut butter and chocolate? Supernatural perhaps? Baloney perhaps not.

And that is where the real madness began. So come with the not-so-gentle people and take a magical journey back in the mists of time to the “weird years” between the sixties and the nineties. If you’re a card-carrying member of Generation Jones (meaning you like the Beatles and the Sex Pistols), this is your safe space….d’ye know what I mean?

A warning to the wise: If you are seeking a cautionary tale of repentance and redemption, you won’t find it here Columbus! All of life’s questions can be summed up this way: “When does any party start? When you get there!”

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