Fifty Foot Hose
Encyclopedia
Fifty Foot Hose is a psychedelic rock
band that formed in San Francisco in the late 1960s, and reformed in the 1990s. They were one of the first bands to fuse rock
and experimental music
. Like a few other acts of the time (most notably the United States of America), they consciously tried to combine the contemporary sounds of rock with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas.
Cork Marcheschi (born 1945) grew up in Burlingame, California
. In his teens, he performed with the Ethix, who played R&B music in clubs around San Francisco and in Las Vegas, and released one experimental and wildly atonal single, "Bad Trip", in 1966, with the intention that the record could be played at any speed. Interested in the ideas of experimental composers like Edgard Varèse
, John Cage
, Terry Riley
, and George Antheil
, he constructed his own custom-made electronic instrument
from a combination of elements like theremin
s, fuzzboxes, a cardboard tube, and a speaker from a World War II
bomber.
David and Nancy Blossom brought both psychedelic and jazz
influences to the band. Together, the trio recorded a demo
which led to a deal with Limelight Records
, a subsidiary of Mercury Records
. They released one album, Cauldron, in December 1967. It contained eleven songs, including "Fantasy", "Red the Sign Post" and "God Bless the Child", a Billie Holiday
cover. It was an intriguing mix of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with fierce and advanced electronic sound effects. "I don't know if they are immature or premature", said critic Ralph J. Gleason
.
The record sold few copies at the time, although the group had a small but intense following in San Francisco and also toured with other acts including Blue Cheer
, Chuck Berry
and Fairport Convention
, when the band was augmented by Robert Goldbeck (bass). They broke up in late 1969 when most of its members joined the musical Hair
, Nancy Blossom becoming the lead in the San Francisco production and later singing in Godspell
. Larry Evans returned to his hometown of Muncie, Indiana where he fronted several club groups until his death in 2008.
, Chrome
and Throbbing Gristle
, and Cauldron was reissued on CD. By this time, Marcheschi had become a respected sculptor, specializing in public work using neon, plastic, and kinetic characteristics.
In 1995, Marcheschi reformed the group for live performances in San Francisco, with a new set of musicians. These performances led to the release of the album Live & Unreleased, which was followed in 1997 by a new studio album, Sing Like Scaffold. On the latter album, Fifty Foot Hose essentially comprised Marcheschi (on echolette, twin audio generators, squeaky stick, white noise generator, theremin, spark gap, and saw blades), Walter Funk III (jokers Ulysses and Cupid constructed by Fred 'Spaceman' Long, Bug (Tom Nunn), vocoder, Hologlyphic Funkaliser and other electronix), Reid Johnston (guitube, guitar, tools, horns, harmonium, hardware, bikewheel), Lenny Bove (bass, electronics, vocals), Elizabeth Perry (vocals), and Dean Cook (drums).
Funk and Johnston subsequently formed the avant-garde electronic band Kwisp
, the first of whose two albums also featured Marcheschi.
In 2006 Marcheschi, Funk, Johnston and Konstantine Baranov (producer of Sing Like Scaffold), known as CWRK Musical Environments, installed a public sound installation in an atrium in Hong Kong.
Psychedelic rock
Psychedelic rock is a style of rock music that is inspired or influenced by psychedelic culture and attempts to replicate and enhance the mind-altering experiences of psychedelic drugs. It emerged during the mid 1960s among folk rock and blues rock bands in United States and the United Kingdom...
band that formed in San Francisco in the late 1960s, and reformed in the 1990s. They were one of the first bands to fuse rock
Rock music
Rock music is a genre of popular music that developed during and after the 1960s, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States. It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, itself heavily influenced by rhythm and blues and country music...
and experimental music
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...
. Like a few other acts of the time (most notably the United States of America), they consciously tried to combine the contemporary sounds of rock with electronic instruments and avant-garde compositional ideas.
The 1960s – the original group
The original group comprised three core members: founder and bassist Louis "Cork" Marcheschi, guitarist David Blossom, and his wife, vocalist Nancy Blossom, augmented by Kim Kimsey (drums) and Larry Evans (guitar).Cork Marcheschi (born 1945) grew up in Burlingame, California
Burlingame, California
Burlingame is a city in San Mateo County, California. It is located on the San Francisco Peninsula and has a significant shoreline on San Francisco Bay. The city is named after diplomat Anson Burlingame. It is renowned for its many surviving examples of Victorian architecture, its affluence, and...
. In his teens, he performed with the Ethix, who played R&B music in clubs around San Francisco and in Las Vegas, and released one experimental and wildly atonal single, "Bad Trip", in 1966, with the intention that the record could be played at any speed. Interested in the ideas of experimental composers like Edgard Varèse
Edgard Varèse
Edgard Victor Achille Charles Varèse, , whose name was also spelled Edgar Varèse , was an innovative French-born composer who spent the greater part of his career in the United States....
, John Cage
John Cage
John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...
, Terry Riley
Terry Riley
Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...
, and George Antheil
George Antheil
George Antheil was an American avant-garde composer, pianist, author and inventor. A self-described "Bad Boy of Music", his modernist compositions amazed and appalled listeners in Europe and the US during the 1920s with their cacophonous celebration of mechanical devices.Returning permanently to...
, he constructed his own custom-made electronic instrument
Custom-made instrument
An experimental musical instrument is a musical instrument that modifies or extends an existing instrument or class of instruments, or defines or creates a new class of instrument. Some are created through simple modifications, such as cracked drum cymbals or metal objects inserted between piano...
from a combination of elements like theremin
Theremin
The theremin , originally known as the aetherphone/etherophone, thereminophone or termenvox/thereminvox is an early electronic musical instrument controlled without discernible physical contact from the player. It is named after its Russian inventor, Professor Léon Theremin, who patented the device...
s, fuzzboxes, a cardboard tube, and a speaker from a World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
bomber.
David and Nancy Blossom brought both psychedelic and jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
influences to the band. Together, the trio recorded a demo
Demo (music)
A demo version or demo of a song is one recorded for reference rather than for release. A demo is a way for a musician to approximate their ideas on tape or disc, and provide an example of those ideas to record labels, producers or other artists...
which led to a deal with Limelight Records
Limelight Records
Limelight Records was a subsidiary label of Mercury Records. Originally headed by Quincy Jones, its activities were directed by the producer Jack Tracy...
, a subsidiary of Mercury Records
Mercury Records
Mercury Records is a record label operating as a standalone company in the UK and as part of the Island Def Jam Motown Music Group in the US; both are subsidiaries of Universal Music Group. There is also a Mercury Records in Australia, which is a local artist and repertoire division of Universal...
. They released one album, Cauldron, in December 1967. It contained eleven songs, including "Fantasy", "Red the Sign Post" and "God Bless the Child", a Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday
Billie Holiday was an American jazz singer and songwriter. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and musical partner Lester Young, Holiday had a seminal influence on jazz and pop singing...
cover. It was an intriguing mix of jazzy psychedelic rock tunes with fierce and advanced electronic sound effects. "I don't know if they are immature or premature", said critic Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph J. Gleason
Ralph Joseph Gleason was an influential American jazz and pop music critic. He contributed for many years to the San Francisco Chronicle, was a founding editor of Rolling Stone magazine, and cofounder of the Monterey Jazz Festival.-Biography:Gleason was born in New York City and attended Columbia...
.
The record sold few copies at the time, although the group had a small but intense following in San Francisco and also toured with other acts including Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer
Blue Cheer was an American psychedelic blues-rock band that initially performed and recorded in the late 1960s and early 1970s and was sporadically active until 2009...
, Chuck Berry
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson "Chuck" Berry is an American guitarist, singer, and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. With songs such as "Maybellene" , "Roll Over Beethoven" , "Rock and Roll Music" and "Johnny B...
and Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention
Fairport Convention are an English folk rock and later electric folk band, formed in 1967 who are still recording and touring today. They are widely regarded as the most important single group in the English folk rock movement...
, when the band was augmented by Robert Goldbeck (bass). They broke up in late 1969 when most of its members joined the musical Hair
Hair (musical)
Hair: The American Tribal Love-Rock Musical is a rock musical with a book and lyrics by James Rado and Gerome Ragni and music by Galt MacDermot. A product of the hippie counter-culture and sexual revolution of the 1960s, several of its songs became anthems of the anti-Vietnam War peace movement...
, Nancy Blossom becoming the lead in the San Francisco production and later singing in Godspell
Godspell
Godspell is a musical by Stephen Schwartz and John-Michael Tebelak. It opened off Broadway on May 17, 1971, and has played in various touring companies and revivals many times since, including a 2011 revival now playing on Broadway...
. Larry Evans returned to his hometown of Muncie, Indiana where he fronted several club groups until his death in 2008.
The 1990s – reformation
Interest in Fifty Foot Hose resurfaced in the 1990s, as they became recognized as precursors to the electronic rock sounds of groups like Pere UbuPere Ubu (band)
Pere Ubu is an experimental rock music group formed in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1975. Despite many long-term band members, singer David Thomas is the only constant...
, Chrome
Chrome (band)
Chrome was an experimental rock group founded in San Francisco, California in 1976.Chrome took part of their inspiration for their rough and sometimes chaotic music from proto punk pioneers like The Stooges. The sound of the group was often coarse and featured heavy elements of feedback and...
and Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle
Throbbing Gristle were an English industrial, avant-garde music and visual arts group that evolved from the performance art group COUM Transmissions...
, and Cauldron was reissued on CD. By this time, Marcheschi had become a respected sculptor, specializing in public work using neon, plastic, and kinetic characteristics.
In 1995, Marcheschi reformed the group for live performances in San Francisco, with a new set of musicians. These performances led to the release of the album Live & Unreleased, which was followed in 1997 by a new studio album, Sing Like Scaffold. On the latter album, Fifty Foot Hose essentially comprised Marcheschi (on echolette, twin audio generators, squeaky stick, white noise generator, theremin, spark gap, and saw blades), Walter Funk III (jokers Ulysses and Cupid constructed by Fred 'Spaceman' Long, Bug (Tom Nunn), vocoder, Hologlyphic Funkaliser and other electronix), Reid Johnston (guitube, guitar, tools, horns, harmonium, hardware, bikewheel), Lenny Bove (bass, electronics, vocals), Elizabeth Perry (vocals), and Dean Cook (drums).
Funk and Johnston subsequently formed the avant-garde electronic band Kwisp
Kwisp
Kwisp is a psychedelic rock band formed in San Francisco. They include members of the legendary Fifty Foot Hose, who are best known for their rather large influence on experimental music...
, the first of whose two albums also featured Marcheschi.
In 2006 Marcheschi, Funk, Johnston and Konstantine Baranov (producer of Sing Like Scaffold), known as CWRK Musical Environments, installed a public sound installation in an atrium in Hong Kong.