"If jazz is dead it’s because Fred Lane personally killed it. Ran it over with one of them old-timey lawnmowers. Bludgeoned it to death on Dean Martin’s cinderblock cufflinks, he did. Placed the hit from the payphone across the street from the Max Ernst exhibit."...-from
Cool & Strange #28
High unexplainable weirdness from Alabama! A mutant big band strangled and bled, led by a misonthropic mustachio man named Fred Lane. Fronting such bands as
Ron ‘Pate’s Debonairs and
The Hittite Hotshots, Fred Lane crooned his way through such classics as "Fun in the Fundus", "From the One Who Cut You", "French Toast Man". He soon disappered and later resurfaced as T.R. Reed, whirlygig sculptor.
"From the One Who Cut You" & "Car Radio Jerome" were released by Shimmydisc in the mid-eighties, and according to the Shimmydisc website, only "Car Radio Jerome" is still available. "From the One that Cut You" is the superior of the albums, the music and lyrics much more strange and obtuse than the more straightforward "Car Radio Jerome". But if you stumble across either, you must buy!
Previous to these two albums, Fred Lane & gang produced the
"Raudelunas 'Pataphysical Revue"('75). Sort of a vaudeville talent show featuring a variety of acts...
Anne LeBaron's "Concerto For Active Frogs"; Mitchell Cashion's charming setting of Julius Caesar's "The Chief Divisions Of The Peoples Of Gaul"; Industrial noise from The Captains Of Industry; and some incompetent flailing by
The Blue Denim Deals Without The Arms.
Here is an MP3, from the "Pataphysical Revue", of Fred Lane's version of "My Kind of Town", complete with horn farts, late lunches, and botched jokes. This album has recently been reissued on CD and is available
HEREFred Lane with Raudelunas Pataphysical Revue - My Kind of Town MP3
Raudekunas website (learn the whole confusing Fred Lane mythology)
