A late hippie, tireless worker, multifaceted talent, volcanic genius, Mark Kramer established himself in the 1990s as the last of the great psychedelic musicians. But he is also something more: within him lives a Renaissance spirit that perhaps never fully found a way to express itself. His New York studio, home to his Shimmy-Disc label, became one of the headquarters of 1990s underground music.

Raised on Long Island and trained in classical music, he moved to Woodstock in the late 1970s to study composition at the Creative Music Studio under Carla Bley and LaMonte Young. Gaining a reputation as a prodigy of electronics and �tape loops,� Kramer contributed to the legendary album of the Swollen Monkeys with Ralph Carney. More importantly, after being converted by listening to Brian Eno�s early records, he met another crazy hippie, Eugene Chadbourne, who was working as an assistant. The two were perfectly matched: united by surreal humor, anti-conformist attitudes, and an anti-materialist vision of life. Chadbourne invited him to join him and another reckless young musician, John Zorn, in a country & western trio for guitar, organ, and saxophone.

The project failed, but Chadbourne still had the satisfaction of playing country music for the new wave audience with Shockabilly, a trio featuring Kramer on organ and David Licht on drums. Between 1982 and 1984, they recorded the EP The Dawn Of (Rough Trade, 1982) and the albums Earth Vs (1983), Colosseum (1984), Vietnam (Fundamental, 1984), and Heaven (Fundamental, 1985). Original tracks included Party House III In 3D (1983) and How Can You Kill Me (1985). Kramer played only a supporting role and eventually ended up in a dispute with the leader.

Meanwhile, Sanders and Kupferberg decided to reform the Fugs. Kramer had met them in Woodstock in 1979 and gladly agreed to join, as well as produce the solo album of the latter. After playing bass briefly with the Butthole Surfers, he felt ready for the next step: he purchased a studio on West Broadway, founded Shimmy-Disc, and formed Bongwater with performance artist Ann Magnuson.

Magnuson, from West Virginia (where she had gained a reputation as a heavy marijuana user and regular of the underworld), had studied drama in Ohio, apprenticed in New York �off� theaters, and eventually became manager of Club 57. There she created a fertility sketch for twelve percussionists (the Pulsallama) dressed in toilet paper. Some of the women continued performing under that name in local clubs, while Magnuson continued her performance art career. It was in that capacity that Kramer met her. From the start, Bongwater was primarily a Kramer-Magnuson duo.

Bongwater allowed Kramer to fully express his taste for the bizarre, his love for the psychedelic era, and his desire to experiment in the studio. Magnuson added a touch of psychoanalysis with her intellectual monologues.

Around the same time, B.A.L.L. was formed. The original idea was to have a band that performed only live and truly played rock music. The experiment lasted only a couple of years (and four albums), and after yet another quarrel, Kramer gained a reputation as a �difficult� character. But no one disputes his main issue: he has no interest in financially exploiting his ideas or those of his partners. In an increasingly materialistic society (and rock industry), Kramer�s life is not easy. The idealism of the Sixties lives on in his art and his life.

Kramer later reunited with Ralph Carney (ex-Tin Huey) and Daved Hild (ex-drummer of the Girls) for Happiness Finally Comes To Them (Shimmy, 1987).

The following year saw Roll Out The Barrel (Shimmy-Disc) with Jad Fair (Half Japanese).

Bongwater debuted in 1987 with the EP Breaking No New Ground (Shimmy-Disc), which primarily revealed their criminally inventive approach to covering classics. Their covers are often unrecognizable after the surgical treatment applied by Kramer�s unhinged mind. Original tracks showcased Magnuson�s vocal skills, a limited contralto but a daring melismatic acrobat, able to sing freely over amorphous accompaniment. Barely Coping is a kind of instrumental jam elevated by her sensual, psychedelic moans, reminiscent of an abstract Grace Slick. Supporting them were Licht and guitarist Dave Rick (from Phantom Tollbooth). Guests included Fred Frith, Samm Bennett, and Chris Cochrane.

The following year, Bongwater abandoned half measures and carved the double album Double Bummer (Shimmy-Disc) into the leader�s impenetrable madness. It is one of modern rock�s boldest works, a direct descendant of Freak Out and Trout Mask Replica, though more sprawling than both. It contains thirty mostly brief tracks, with the usual abundance of radical covers. Guests included Don Cherry and Gary Windo. Kramer ran rampant in the studio, stacking effect-laden harmonies, while Magnuson expressed her anarchic nature through absurd vocal evolutions and theatrical monologues (the housewife�s dream in Joy Ride catapulted into the improbable Iranian torture camp in Decadent Iranian Country Club, the furious tirade against Frank, the feverish murderous account of His Old Look, or the horror nursery rhyme of Bruce).

The highlight, however, is Kramer�s Dadaist pastiches, saturated with psychedelic moods: chaotic aggregates of sounds and choruses like Homer; paradoxical collages of alien riffs, witch-like solfeggi, angelic choirs, and radio interference like Jimmy; messy mixtures of driving hard rock riffs, manic distortions, frenzied screams, stick hits, and all sound-producing objects like Lesbians Of Russia; operatic black holes, blues-rock jams, and �funny� electronic noises like Pew. Heavy use of studio manipulation gives the tracks the quality of streams of consciousness, sometimes hypnotic, sometimes traumatic.

Numerous �documentary� inserts transform some pieces into actual �covers� of speeches, events, or happenings (Number is a series of electronic variations on a Luther King speech). Many tracks are Fugs-like satires (the exotic trance of Bullaby), but distorted by a sense of the grotesque related more to punk cynicism and violence than innocent variety show antics. The album is above all a tribute to psychedelic culture, pushing its practices to extremes.

The 1989 album Too Much Sleep, more subdued and conventional, evokes Jefferson Airplane rather than the usual parade of covers, with moderate tape usage. Magnuson grows further as a singer and actress, shaping another terrifying domestic vignette like Psychedelic Sewing Room. Stripped of noisy embellishments, Kramer�s compositions often reveal themselves as simple nostalgic ballads (The Living End, the title track, He Loved The Weather), all eccentrically arranged (the first in pow-wow rhythm with Hare Krishna choir and political speeches, the second drowned in trumpets and children�s voices, the third a quasi-religious litany with funky guitar and girls� choral rap). Almost all tracks are sung by a chorus, which may be the two leaders themselves, a layered single voice, or a larger ensemble; this is the fundamental trick of the album, giving all compositions an idyllic tone. The duo achieved formal perfection.
While the music is less wild, the satire is invigorated: Talent Is A Vampire (still a rap-like nursery rhyme), Teena Stays The Same (fast blues with Hawaiian guitar), and No Trespassing (1930s lullaby with fairground organ) are apocryphal chronicles of contemporary society. Even better is Mr & Mrs Hell, a highly original sound and vocal sketch. Kramer drowns melodies, or fragments thereof, in a chaos of harmonic oddities, and Magnuson proves to be the most evocative among them. The vocal harmonies of the pair are the only truly period element, but that alone transforms everything else into something timeless, a formidable time machine that systematically miscalculates time. The work, though less ambitious, may even surpass the previous double album.

In 1990, Kramer focused on B.A.L.L. and The Sound Of Music, again in collaboration with Jad Fair, as well as his numerous production projects.

Bongwater returned in 1991 with The Power Of Pussy, a sort of concept album on the social aspects of sex. The work belongs more to Magnuson than to Kramer. She dominates with her hyper-realistic theater, claustrophobic atmospheres, terrified monologues, and scenes dense with urban angst (Chicken Pussy, Nick Cave Dolls, Obscene). The climax of the album is the nine-minute Folk Song, a tragic summation of her �poor Laurie Anderson� artistry, a folk ballad worthy of the Greenwich Movement sung like a Renaissance madrigal. The rest of the album resembles a mosaic of small intellectual novelties, making music with raw materials. The original pretext of Bongwater, the most spacey psychedelia, still represented by sketches like Great Radio, pales somewhat in comparison to the power (however grotesque and farcical) of these little morality plays.

That year, among many parallel activities, Kramer also wrote and performed the music for Real Men (Shimmy Disc, 1991) by John Hall.

The Big Sell-Out (Shimmy Disc, 1992) is at once the most accessible and the most satirical Bongwater album, a return to the style of Too Much Sleep, although it arrived at a time (1992) when the first signs of dissent were emerging (Rick had been replaced by Randolph Hudson, Magnuson was busy with a sitcom for a major TV network, and had become a respected contributor to various magazines).
The lyrics are almost entirely autobiographical for Magnuson, but the album is unmistakably Kramer�s, reflecting his post-psychedelic sensibility, ironic melodicism, hypnotic vocal harmonies, and �Sixties� cadences; that is, the cheerful hippie ditties of Ye Olde Backlash and Schmoozedance, along with his demented novelty songs worthy of Zappa�s �freak� tradition, in sharp contrast to the domestic dramaturgy of his partner: the Chinese ballet of I Wanna Talk About It Now, the strident soul of Over The Credit Line, Magnuson�s Slick-inspired roars, and the blues-jazz of Flop Sweats for a Japanese soprano wail. Kramer also provides his artistic counterpart with some of the most evocative accompaniments of their career during two of her monologues: overlapping guitar solos for Celebrity Compass and a �Parisian� waltz (accordion and barrel organ) for Holding Hands. Perhaps influenced by the new guitarist, the album�s sound is edgier than usual. Kramer is at the height of his melodicism.

By this point, however, the differences of opinion between the two leaders had become irreconcilable: the purely psychedelic album Back To Our Roots, the anthology Big Band (a selection of their best tracks rearranged for a small jazz orchestra), and the work The Final Flood would never see the light of day. Magnuson sued Kramer to claim 50% of the rights to Bongwater�s works and returned to her performance career, creating monologue-works like �You Could Be Home� from 1990 (which incorporates Folk Song), expressing the fears and disappointments of the generation raised in the 1960s and thrown into the crises of the 1990s.

Bongwater would remain one of the fundamental (and most fun) experiences of the 1980s, one that taught how to make great music with minimal means, one that emphasized studio sound over live performance, genius over instinct.

Magnuson, coming from the Broadway musical and theater scene, would later record The Luv Show (Geffen) before dedicating herself to television.

Almost self-excluded from nearly all the projects he launched, Kramer found solace in the triple autobiographical album The Guilt Trip, released in 1992 after years of gestation. The work shows that Kramer was not merely a shrewd entrepreneur exploiting the talents of his partners; rather, the thirty-six songs (many instrumental) serve as his definitive testament to how one can mediate between avant-garde and pop (or vice versa), how psychedelic rock laid the groundwork for such an operation, and how a restless psyche can manifest itself without resorting to confessional music, transforming it into neutral sounds. Like Jackson Pollock�s murals, the album aims to convey everything through abstraction.
The Ouverture condenses the musical synthesis and tragicomic mood of nearly all of Kramer�s art: the theme might be that of a surf instrumental, yet it is weighed down, slowed, and repeated until it takes on dark and stormy tones. The same can be said of the solemn, martial crescendo of the title track, featuring pop-leaning organ, a �Ravelian� bolero snare, and a �cosmic� synth to darken everything. Kramer�s inscrutable instrumentals (and near-instrumentals) constitute an art of their own: Hello Music (one of the masterpieces), Wish I Were In Heaven, Thank You Music, The Well Hung Jury reference traditional genres but immerse them in alienating, often minimalist or even homey arrangements. The goal is, of course, to generate dreamlike effects, but the dense lexical apparatus often seems overwhelming, risking emotional collapse due to information overload.
On top of that, Kramer indulges his guitar desires in a whirl of Clapton-esque wah-wah, Hendrixian glissandos, Page-like riffs, along with demonstrative numbers: jazz-inflected flubs � la Henry Kaiser (The Murder Of God), neurotic Neil Young-style distortions (I've Seen The End), acrobatic rock and roll (My Friend Daniel), Wagnerian �frippertronics� (The Maximus Poems), culminating in the dizzying, verbose solo of Ball Five, the zenith of his megalomania. (Kramer would later be sued for failing to disclose that most of the guitar was played by Randolph Hudson).
Whatever device he employs, Kramer can freely pursue the right thread in the immense tangle he has created, endlessly lose himself in a labyrinth of sounds ranging from the dark mass of The Seven Seizures to the majestic hard rock chimes of Mudd Hutt Four (a miniature compendium of references).
Vocals largely take a back seat, though hypnotic Roger-Waters-like chant in Welcome Home, languid nostalgic melody in Stupid Summer, and Wyatt-inspired agonized, dreamlike register in Not Guilty reveal some truths behind this partisan self-parody.
Formally, all tracks are essentially novelties: from the rhythmic nursery rhyme of Wisdom Sits to the almost Western fatalistic grandeur of Won�t Get Far Without Me, from the 78-rpm-style demented chorus of I�m Your Fan to the power-pop of Next Time Try Compassion.
The stylistic palette is vast. Always skillfully orchestrated (baroque organ, romantic sonata, African tribalism�), the songs are the result of careful editing, often evoking Half Japanese and Residents crossed with Jonathan Richman.
Monumental and �larger than life,� despite its twists and discontinuities, Guilt Trip remains a unified project, whose guiding principle could be self-indulgence, chosen as an allegory of the human condition.
Taken together, the episodes of this crucible form a broad social fresco, so that the album functions as a sort of Tommy for Generation X, in which there is no story to tell, only an existence to capture. There are no new stories to tell�they�ve all been told�nor new lives to live�they�ve all been lived. Kramer describes himself almost reluctantly, almost desperately seeking something else to do. He describes himself because he finds nothing better to do or say. Introspection is no longer the height of communication; it is its minimum. It is the most impersonal way to make personal art. In this sense, the album title is ironic: if there is one thing that can no longer exist, it is guilt.

Who's Afraid (Shimmy Disc, 1992) documents a collaboration with Daevid Allen, old guru of the Canterbury school of jazz-rock (Soft Machine, Gong). All the music is by Kramer, and it is the most psychedelic and pastoral work of his career, yet another tribute to the �flower power� era (especially More And More and Quit Yr Bullshit).

In 1993, the Captain Howdy project was born, which released two singles: The Best Song Ever Written and Tattoo Of Blood. Tattoo Of Blood (Shimmy Disc, 1995) is the full album.

Kramer then teamed up with Dogbowl for Hot Day In Waco and Gunsmoke, and helped the legendary Hugh Hopper of Soft Machine record A Remark Hugh Made (Shimmy Disc, 1994).

Immediately afterward came a collaboration with Kim Fahy and Jamie Harley of the Mabuses (formerly Assassins), Egomaniacs (Shimmy Disc, 1993), which followed the same eccentric pop direction as their only album, particularly in its Syd Barrett imitations (Indeed This Is The Creep). At thirty-five, Kramer�s activity was still in frightening expansion.

Kramer revisited the 1987 idea and recorded another album with Carney and Hild: Black Power (Shimmy, 1994).

Secret Of Comedy (Shimmy Disc, 1994), marked by glam-pop, and Music For Crying (Creativeman Disc, 1995), featuring a host of guest stars and several covers, are the solo albums through which Kramer continued his saga.

Let Me Explain Something To You About Art (Tzadik, 1998) contains three movements of what appears to be a colloquial opera in the vein of Robert Ashley, with two elderly American Jews discussing their lives over gently looped samples of acoustic instruments

Other than as a psychological masturbation in the style of Philip Roth's anti-heroes, Songs From The Pink Death (Kitting Factory, 1998) is not very interesting or entertaining.