Here
you will see my designs created to accompany the eventual release of the
recorded works of King Mummyhead. The liner notes reproduced below
will explain something about the King Mummyhead Experience. There
are not yet any audio tracks of King Mummyhead available online.
above:
prototype for limited edition cassette case
below:
three collector cards to be included with limited edition EP
below:
liner notes to accompany Me Am Your Lon Chaney 4-song EP
I'm
not exactly sure how he found me but he did. However, the population
of downtown Gloucester, Massachusetts being what it is, I was not particularly
surprised when an unannounced visitor arrived at my studio with his head
swathed entirely in bandages. Known as the heroin capital of the
East Coast during the 1980s (beating out even New York City for smack per
capita (or crack per head)), Gloucester continues to be a bustling seaport
whose streets attract and retain all manner of transients: the homeless,
alcoholic, schizophrenic, mentally and physically defective, moronic and
hopelessly brilliant bottom-feeders (some of whom I number among my friends).
At times, it seems, they converge en masse. But when this character
looking like a Claude Rains-style burn victim with a secret explained that
he knew me, knew my work, knew about Oltgasm and knew that we should work
together I was surprised. He peered over my shoulder but never even
entered my studio. Reaching into his coat pocket he removed a fistful
of grubby and disheveled audiocassettes. "We share" was all he said
as he pushed them to my abdomen. And he left.
What? We
share what? I looked down at the bundle of cracked plastic and magnetic
ribbons. The cassettes I was left holding had unnamable debris lodged
in them, the tapes themselves were unwinding, stretched and broken.
All of them were worn and caked with dirt like Iíd never seen before.
"Old as the hills" is the phrase that comes to mind. All of them
had had markings on them at one time but only three were at all legible:
one read "KING MUMMYHEAD", another seemed to read an even more deteriorated
version of the same and one was dated 4/13/70. Upon closer examination
I found that only two of the seven tapes were in playable condition.
What I heard
(and what you will hear) is raw-edged, direct and desperate. Not
virtuoso by any means, but quite the opposite; utterly clumsy without apology,
without remorse. This is like Hasil Adkins and Rob Zombie kicking
the shit out of Tom Waits on a rainy night in a urine-drenched alley.
The raps of KING MUMMYHEAD are comprised of simple dadaist boasts, old
movie titles, quotations and other snippets of cultural ephemera.
If the nearly illegible date is any indication, he laid down his pharaonic,
blues-based backwoods raps long before the urban upsurge that has increasingly
dominated pop music over the last 20 years. He could almost be considered
an inspirational underground figure except for the fact that (Iím quite
certain) no one has ever heard of him.
"We share," he
had said. Upon listening I understood. We share a rough-hewn
braggadocio, a posture, and a collage aesthetic: his is sonic and verbal,
mine is visual and textual. We share obsession: my art and his music
are about the same things. Not merely about Chaney, Lugosi and cultural
mythology, but moreso about those alternating glimpses that flicker in
a darkened room, those glimpses that afford a brief breathless glance into
the depth of the human soul in all its humor and terror. Moments of both
identity and mystery. Charisma and decay. And those more predictable
pairings as well: life and death, black and white, shadow and light.
I also understood
him to mean that we would share. In return for the tapes I would
give him something; which is, of course, my custom. He knew that
given my history as a collaborative artist obsessed with the imagery about
which he writes and sings, it would only make sense that I design the packaging,
the look of how KING MUMMYHEAD is unleashed upon the world.
About KING MUMMYHEAD
I know nothing more. I saw him on one other occasion and was able
to show him the beginnings of this project. He seemed pleased to leave
it in my hands and left me no way of contacting him. I am unsure
how much, if any, of his recorded material is at all current or what he
expects to achieve with its release. I donít know if he has an archive
of material and/or will continue to record.
Iíve presented
his work in the best way I know how, in a way that is true to both mine
and KING MUMMYHEADís vision as I understand it. Enjoy.
Haig Demarjian
December 2000
