In 1993, cyberculture prankster/provocateur/publisher RU Sirius, founder of Mondo 2000 magazine along with composer Scrappi DuChamp, & performance artist Simone Third Arm, recorded an album for Trent Reznor's record label. They had met at Reznor's Los Angeles rental home, the house where the Manson Family killed Sharon Tate & others. Tim Leary had brought RU along to a housewarming party there. RU gave Reznor a demo tape of the band, called Mondo Vanilli. Reznor quickly signed the band to his then-nascent Nothing Records. Unfortunately, this great work of curious & quirky synth-industrial-pop, titled IOU Babe never made it to the record stores. Two decades later, Mondo Vanilli officially released IOU Babe for free online.
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What is the concept behind Mondo Vanili?
Here, in the words of group founder RU Sirius:
"I'm sitting outside at a coffee shop one morning reading the local newspaper and there's a big fuss being made about Milli Vanilli. Their Grammy award had been rescinded because they had been caught lip-synching at their performances. To my Virtual Reality-bent brain, this demand for authenticity seemed completely ludicrous. First of all, this was obviously a prefabricated band making the most absolutely crappy, bland corporate music imaginable, so why did they get a Grammy in the first place… and who fucking cares if they lip-synched?
So I had the concept right then and there...Mondo Vanilli...a Virtual Reality band that would proudly lip-synch, or maybe not even pretend to play live music on stage, perhaps we would exist totally in Virtuality, or else we would do other, more original types of performance to our music. Wasn't a bunch of guys standing around with guitars or synths a really boring old cliché, even if you had a theatrical front man or woman?"
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How this all began.
Once upon a time, there were some bizarre mid-80s songs riffing on the Beatles (Negativland) all about the 20th anniversary of the summer of love. They fell into the hands of Mondo 2000 magazine & in a deconstructive burst of creativity, became a flexi-disc inside the print magazine. Almost.
Then the same creative team decided to do "something disrespectful & different " to the industrial / acid house music of the mid-90s. R.U. Sirius's original band The Merry Tweeksters got reincarnated into Mondo Vanilli while resurrecting some lyrics from Sirius's forgotten '80s band The Party Dogs. Sirius was joined in this mind-bending mix by a performance artist named Sim1 3Arm & a cool music composer Scrappi DuChamp.Then Trent Reznor gets involved.
Reznor's label ultimately signed Mondo Vanilli but then refused to release their album, I.O.U. Babe. Nearly 20 years later that lost album re-surfaced on the web, crashed all the servers, & then continued falling through time.
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More from Sirius:
"It was about three months after I'd quit MONDO 2000 (1993). We (Mondo Vanilli) headed down to L.A. with a demo tape & this very fun, very silly little Xeroxed package offering music industry behemoths the opportunity to get in on the cutting edge of cyber-absurdism.
We were going to stay with Timothy Leary in Beverly Hills. We had a whole lot of really amazing music industry connections to look up because of connections I had made at MONDO 2000. We were going to talk with Al Jourgensen. I also had heard from Billy Idol, who was just starting work on his infamous cyberpunk thing. So I had his phone number to plan a visit.
I called Casey Cannon, a MONDO friend from L.A. who at that time, she was making most of those short two-minute previews you see in movie theaters (her husband Van Ling was with Lightstorm & was James Cameron's go-to guy on the new technology). She told me that we had to go to Trent Reznor's party that night. Reznor had just rented 10050 Cielo Drive, the house that had been occupied by Roman Polanski & Sharon Tate where Sharon & all those other people were slaughtered by the Mansonoids. This was to be his housewarming party.
I called the number I got from Casey. I got an answering machine. I was able to leave the message that I was staying at Timothy Leary's house. Howdy, neighbor! A couple of hours later, Tim came out of his office. He said was talking to Peter Christopherson (Coil, Throbbing Gristle). We were invited to Trent Reznor's housewarming party (in a bit of synchronicity, this underground theater group was putting on a play based on a conversation Leary had with Charlie Manson when he was in prison & there were posters and flyers for it around the house).
Just before we were about to head to the party, Tim came out with a mint dish filled with pink ecstasy tabs, offering them around. Simone (Third Arm, another member of Mondo Vanilli) took one but Scrappi & I refused.
But something about the historical resonances nagged at me. What would the small town freak who I had been back in the 70s think about refusing a hit from Timothy Leary before heading up to the infamous Manson horror house to a rock star party. After a few minutes I snuck over & pocketed two hits. I went in the bathroom, broke one of them in half & took it.
I must have had an empty stomach because it came on quick & rather strong for a low dose. Reznor's new home was only a few blocks from Leary's, but it was on some windy roads. Getting there became interesting when a red Ferrari started tailgating us & then this guy began gesticulating wildly out the window. He cut in front of us and made us stop. Out popped Gibby Haynes, shouting, wanting to know if we knew "the way." He didn't even have to say the way to what. He let us get in front again & we made our way to the Reznor party.
On arrival, an enthusiastic Gibby jumped out of the car to meet Tim. He was bragging that the red Ferrari was on loan from Johnny Depp. With the ecstasy coming on, the entire L.A. hip culture started to seem like a serene glittery playground filled with happy children playing grownup. I settled into a comfort zone. The world was a friendly place.
The rest of the night was the usual party / ecstacy blur. The last I saw of Trent, he was waving around a baggie of mushrooms & heading into a room with one of the party girls. Maybe that's why he liked the Mondo Vanilli tape so much that he called the next day to offer us a recording contract."
Gimme Helter
Thanx!
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Enjoy,
NØ
