Fantasy Christmas Party Guests #5: Dock Phillip Ellis, Jnr

Guest Number Five: Dock Ellis

The final guest to show up before we plop the prawn salads on the table is perhaps surprisingly a baseball player. But I’m not inviting him to discuss his athletic achievements per se (although there would seem to be many). In fact, despite the fact that I did live in the city where he made his name, or perhaps because of this, I’d like to sit down and pull a cracker with him because of one particular sporting accomplishment: throwing a no-hitter on acid.

It’s perhaps enough to say that playing any sport involving solid spheres hurtling around at high velocity whilst tripping is tricky enough. But considering a no-hitter statistically happens, on average, twice a year and usually once in a pitcher’s lifetime, this says something about a) the man, or b) the drug.

There’s plenty of stuff about Dock’s infamous achievement whilst pitching for the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1970 already on the web (including an ace animation). Essentially, the story goes that he visited a lady friend in LA thinking he had a day off and dropped acid and then, on realising his error, jumped on a flight to San Diego, scored some speed and had the game of his life. He claims that the ball changed size throughout the game and that at one point president Nixon was on the field.

That alone is reason enough to have him over, but a quick look into the life of Mr. Ellis, who ended up as a drugs counsellor who died of alcohol related illness, and you’ll notice that he shares a certain something with the rest of the guests: a wilfulness and contrary nature that may have hindered their careers – or possibly defined them.

Dock was also known for being maced for trying to get into Cincinnati’s stadium without ID and subsequently trying to hit every player on their side while playing them two years later. He insisted on wearing hair curlers to training and is said to have never played a game in the majors without being high one way or another.

So sit down with the masked comedy soul singer, the arch-antagonist civil rights wrestler, the proto-Ziggy Mateus messiah, and the lonely communist cowboy and have a slice of turkey. Merry Christmas!

Fantasy Christmas Party Guests #4: Dean Cyril Reed

Guest Four: Dean Cyril Reed AKA Red Elvis

So the dinner party is warming up, three guests are already tucking into some mince pies and cheeses on sticks. Next to arrive is an all-American singing and acting sensation with over 18 films and 13 LPs under his belt, but unless you’re from the Soviet Bloc you may not have seen or heard any of them.

Our Dean was a handsome young buck from Denver, Colorado with initial plans to be a local TV weatherman until he set his sights on greater glory and stardom in Hollywood. He had some minor success there with some heartthrob hits but he was impatient and distrustful of the machine. But instead of going all Charlie Manson, Reed noticed that his tunes seemed to be going down well south of the border. Reed began working the South American markets of Argentina, Chile and Peru where he was amassing popularity and became increasingly politicised.

He began speaking out against poverty and promoting the tenets of international communism. He then moved to Italy and starred in spaghetti westerns and began touring the Soviet Bloc. The people there were enomoured with him in a way he was never received at home. A particularly popular trick was washing out the “blood of the Vietnamese” from the US Flag and then hanging it upside down. Eventually he moved to a ranch East Berlin given to him by the state in exchange for community projects. The whole time, his act remained stubbornly old fashioned and quintessentially American.

In 1986 Dean went on American telly’s 60 Minutes to bang on about what a good idea the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan was and how the Berlin Wall was errectected in "self-defence". Anyone who’s ever watched Rocky IV can imagine that that went down like a shit sandwich with bum gravy. But the real tragedy, however was that his popularity was waning on the other side of the wall, as disillusionment with the system and a love of David Hasselhoff would eventually lead to the fall of communism in Europe.

Poor old Dean was found floating in the lake near his ranch in East Berlin. Some said he was taken out by the CIA, KGB or the Stasi, but the truth seems likely he just offed himself by driving after munching sleeping pills. It seems a shame really that he never seemed to get in step with anyone. It just goes to show that Dylan was right when he said: “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”

Fantasy Christmas Party Guests #3: Brian Maurice Holden

Guest Three: Brian Maurice Holden AKA Vince Taylor

The third person picking up a present from under the tree was born in Middlesex, raised in New Jersey, reinvented himself as the leather clad proto-punk rock’n’roller in London, was adored in France and died in Switzerland.

I first heard of Vince and his band the Playboys via the wireless in ‘97. I was living in a rented room in an old lady’s house in Norbury. It was cold and Mary Anne Hobbes was interviewing Bowie for his 50th birthday. He was talking about his influences for Ziggy Stardust. He mentioned a time in the late '60s when Vince was spreading a map out over the rush hour Tottenham Court Road pavement explaining to Bowie where all the aliens would land and assuring him he was a Sun God. The Rise and Fall, you see…

Vince’s rise came courtesy of his sister marrying one half of the cartoon empire Hanna-Barbera. Joe Barbera agreed to take Vince’s unique take on the first wave of rock’n’roll back to the UK. The problem was that Vince's take on the scene, although it captured all the swagger, attitude and style, displayed very little actual talent – at least in the traditional sense. He was one of the first performers in Britain to jump on the piano, writhe on the floor, scream at the instruments, wave a chain around, wear make-up and simply go a bit mental - well a lot mental. His far-out and unorthodox stage gyrations and increasingly erratic and paranoid antics could be quite unsettling for the the audiences at the time, indeed even for his band members. He had a habit of going AWOL and was evidently an "unconventional" timekeeper. But he still managed to cut some fine records. His '59 b-side ‘Brand New Cadillac’ has been covered by The Clash among others.

His career in France began in the early '60 after he was fired by The Playboys but still impressed the French audience. He had a period of success there apparently fuelled by pot, booze and speed, even supporting the Stones in Paris. By '65. However, the story goes that he visited the UK for a party for Bob Dylan and dropped his first hit(s) of acid and never really came back. Evidently he returned to Paris for a show unwashed, wired, wrapped in a sheet drinking Mateus Rose declaring to an audience: "You think I'm Vince Taylor, don't you? Well, I'm not, my name is Mateus, I'm the new Jesus, the son of God."

Welcome to the party Brian. The Mateus is in the fridge.

Fantasy Christmas Party Guests #2: Rock Brumbaugh

Guest Two: Rock Brumbaugh AKA Sputnik Monroe

As you might have spotted, we at Toxic Towers are inviting a selection of people to dinner for a Yuletide feast and second up is Mr. Brumbaugh from Kansas.

As a young man in the early ‘50s Brumbaugh started fighting in carnivals, state fairs and rodeos. When there wasn’t much call for a boxer or wrestler he would goad members of the public into taking him on by hitting on their ladies or simply punching them in the face. Antagonism became something of an artform as he reinvented himself as the androgynous Pretty Boy Rocque. This involved him wearing pink tights and shoes with sequins and most dangerously of all in the South at the time; growing his hair long. He said of having long hair in 1951: 'all you had to do to get into a fight was get out of the car.'

As time moved on Brumbaugh began to wrestle professionally and it was his shenanigans in Memphis, TN that has garnered his invite to the Toxic Towers Christmas bash. Evidently on the way to the auditorium one night, he picked up a female black teenage hitchhiker and decided to ask her to escort him to the ring. This enraged the all-white audience. so being the arch antagonist he took it upon himself to go one further and kiss the girl. Someone in the audience, desperate for the most damning insult they could think of called him Sputnik insinuating he was a communist. And so the persona of Sputnik Monroe was born.

The second of our guests to have a white streak in his hair, Sputnik Monroe took the multi-racial angle and ran with it for a few years. At a time with Memphis’ Ellis Auditorium was strictly segregated and Brumbaugh would head on down to Beale Street to hand out tickets to his friends in the black community, he would then bribe doormen to let black people into the white areas, thus integrating the venue. He then to took the unconventional step of teaming up with a black tag partner, Norvel Austin. The effect of this made him a bad guy to whites and a good guy to blacks.

Whether he intended to, or was just being very good at winding people up, he may have put some of the first chinks in the armour of segregation in Memphis. Certainly it has been said that it was a way of black and white musicians beginning to talk to each other which may have paved the way for mixed-race bands like Booker T & the MGs. I suppose we’ll never know, but if he’s invited to dinner for nothing else, it will be for uttering the maxim: “Win if you can, lose if you must, always cheat, and if you have to leave the ring, leave tearing it down.”

Fantasy Christmas Party Guests #1: Harmon Bethea

Jesus the Magic Carpenter was born on December 25th approximately 2009 years ago, right? And we all know from our reading that Jesus’ birthday means one thing and one thing only: Parlour Games!

So as a treat for all you Parlour Game fanatics, we at Toxic Towers are playing a special seasonal version of the classic: Who Would Be Your Ideal Dead People To Invite To A Dinner Party. Instead of using our stock answers (which we keep to maintain my pseudo-bourgeois exterior, whilst talking to other people who’d rather talk about tits and football but figure this will make them more interesting) we’ve decided to go for five people that have been on our minds over the last twelve months. We think they’re all dead, corrections welcome. OK, here we go...

Guest One: Harmon Bethea AKA Maskman

No-one really knows what went on in the DC abode of veteran R&B performer Harmon Bethea the day he decided to don an oversized Lone Ranger mask and dye a white flash in his hair, but he did and his band went from being the plain old Cap-Tans to the altogether more mysterious Maskman & The Agents.

The Maskman made some big enough tunes with a voice not too unlike some up-tempo Otis Redding tracks. But the lyrics are the reason he’s having a turkey dinner in my brain this Christmas. The Maskman AKA The Love Bandito liked to declare to the world that he had, ‘$50 shoes and boogaloo suit and crazy hats’ because ‘girls like it like that. He seemed to have a fascination with women who wore wigs (in the song 'Wigs') and sung of his disappointment that the civil rights act didn’t extend to banning cockroaches from buses (in 'Roaches').

But he really came into his element with the ’68-’69 singles ‘One Eye Open’ and ‘My Wife, My Dog and My Cat’. It may be that Bethea invented a sub-genre of soul, that could be called "pussy whipped funk". ‘One Eye Open’ is a grooved out little ditty about a schoolteacher called Melinda claiming to be teetotal until he gets her to the big city and marries her. At which point she starts coming home tore up and sleeping with her fists balled up. The Maskman’s buddy on the record asks him asks him if he still sleeps with her, and he declares that he has to sleep with one eye open or risk of losing his life (hence the song title). She puts glue in his gravy to make him shut his mouth and variously tries to poison him, but still the Maskman stays.

This is topped by ‘My Wife, My Dog and My Cat’ whose sound is more akin to something out of Eric and Ernie’s That Riviera Touch than anything approaching serious soul. This time his wife is a nightshift nurse who has allied herself with the family pets to stop Maskman putting on his $50 shoes and his crazy hat and going round his buddy Bill’s apartment. Of course, Maskman can't resist a party and he's soon there to witness "a table full of booze, all kinds of food" and girls "as fat as country possums stuffed with sweet potatoes in mini-skirts and crazy sweaters'" Maskman declares suddenly that he wants a sandwich and the girls start doing a dance called the squeeze yer knees. Just as he's about to join in, you guessed it, the wife and the pets burst in and take him home.

Hopefully he can stay a little bit longer at the Christmas party.