Olympia Music History Project: John Foster

Portrait by Jack Habegger

It’s been a minute since I’ve put out a new show, and so I thought maybe I’d let you in on what has been keeping me so busy. A couple years ago, I started working on an oral history project funded by the city- appropriately titled The Olympia Music History Project. We (myself, Mariella Luz and Kelsey Smith) have since broken off from the city into our own nonprofit organization, and I’m excited to announce that we are launching olympiamusichistory.org on New Year’s Day, 2025. So let me tell you about what this is: I was a part of a team that interviewed 30 people who were doing significant things in Olympia’s legendary indie music scene between 1980-2002. We spoke with folks from globally revered bands like Bikini Kill, Sleater-Kinney and The Gossip, as well as hometown heroes including Young Pioneers, The Noses, Fitz of Depression, even Olympia’s only known ska band of that era, Engine 54. I’ve learned so much working on this project- and I’ve heard all the interviews several times, because I’m the guy who edited them. Have you ever seen that T-Shirt that says “Reading is Sexy?” That was designed by Sarah Utter, the singer and guitarist from The Bangs. Allegedly Patrick Swayze lived here at some point, but I don’t know if he ever got out to any punk shows. And yeah, Nirvana was a part of our scene for a while too, I forget what happened after they moved to Seattle.  And there were all these festivals- International Pop Underground Convention in 1991, The YoYo A Go Go festivals after that, Ladyfest- which became an international series- and a groundbreaking, grassroots rock opera called The Transfused. All these things happened in that 22-year window.  My interview with a guy named John Foster focuses on a couple of crucial things happening, that the scene- at least in part- owes its existence.  The first one is the enactment of the Green Line Policy at KAOS- that’s KAOS, 89.3 FM, Olympia- a game-changing move making it against the rules to play any less than 80% independently released music. That had a huge impact on a lot of creative people that tuned in. The second is the publication of OP Magazine, a dense zine focused on independent music of every kind, and featured contributing writers like Matt Groening, Eugene Chadbourne, Jonathan Richman, on and on. This magazine was globally distributed from right here in Olympia, and served as a regularly updated encyclopedia of indie music- and where to get it. Basically, it was like a precursor to something in-between Pitchfork and Bandcamp, in the pre-internet dark ages. John Foster was at the helm for both of these endeavors, and he was one of the people I interviewed for the Olympia Music History Project, and here is our conversation, recorded in the historic Rockway-Leland building downtown. Enjoy:

Beyond The Beach: A Conversation with Dean Torrence

By Jack Habegger

Jan & Dean sat high above the surf pack in the 1960’s, breathing the rarefied air that only The Beach Boys were privileged to share. The surf music craze may have been seen as “kid’s stuff” by the record industry, but history has proven that it was a key link between the first wave of early rock and roll and the British Invasion. In 1966, the duo took a hit when band leader Jan Berry was critically injured in an automobile accident and the prospects of Jan and Dean continuing their career were thrown into doubt. Despite huge hits like “Dead Man’s Curve”, “The Little Old Lady From Pasadena”, and of course, “Surf City”, Dean Torrence was facing the very real prospect of a career change. Luckily, he was already enrolled in college and had a back-up plan in an arts career.

Dean Torrence: Jan crashed, and I was out of a job that quickly. I had been going to USC, and I was in the school of architecture and fine arts. I was more in the fine arts part but I still did take architectural classes as well. The stuff that I seemed to have the most interest in was packaging and trademarking and branding of products, and I thought of us as being a product. Well, there was no longer us, Jan was in the hospital, in a coma, and then once he got out of the hospital it was two to three years of rehab, trying to get him back to as normal as they could get him, but I knew it was going to take a while, if ever. We weren’t even sure if he would ever be well enough to ever do music again. So meanwhile, I took my diploma, along with my degree in advertising and design, and just applied it to the music industry.

The young surf musician quickly found himself at odds with the record industry’s out of touch art directors.

D: The art department decides what’s best, and I always found that quite odd because the guys were usually older, the guys in the art department, I just thought they didn’t really have a clue. First of all, they never listened to the music, and their idea of a record cover was somebody’s face on it and some type. I instinctively knew that wasn’t very good, and that the whole idea was to use that space, that 12x12 space, to promote the actual recording artist and try and portray that recording artist, the character of that artist and the essence of what music they were doing, instead of just putting some faces on there that don’t really tell you anything. So that was always a bone of contention, I was always butting heads with the guys in the art department, especially when we started doing surfing songs.

While the band was at the height of their career, Jan and Dean saw themselves as ambassadors for a certain idea of Southern California that the rest of the country was eager to discover. Dean’s desire to give an authentic snapshot of West Coast youth culture pushed him to see the band’s music and image as two sides of the same coin.

D: Once we did records about the Southern California lifestyle and culture, I thought the kids back there in the Midwest, the landlocked places, are going to want to know what it’s like to live in California, specifically in Southern California. We should be showing some of that stuff on our record covers, because that was the only place you could show it in those days. There weren’t videos, there weren’t all those other things going on. So you kind of had to show what you were about on your LP covers. Again, I was always the one that wanted to do photo sessions actually at the beach and not in a photo studio, and go on location. Hell, they didn’t want to go on location, that means you have to drive somewhere. They were lazy, absolutely lazy people. They were used to doing it the way they were doing it, and nobody ever questioned it. I was a troublemaker, because I was questioning it. So we just started to do that, we were into it by maybe two years of trying to push the whole graphic look of our stuff, so I got into maybe two years and I still didn’t have the kind of control that I really wanted, but I was getting bits and pieces of it.

Dean’s frustrations with the industry as a musician put him in a unique position to work with other artists as a designer. He understood that his peers were looking to maintain some control over their image, and he was able to bring their ideas into reality.

D: That was kind of where most of my friends were, in the music industry. So I kind of had a built in clientele. Most of the artists that I knew were all going through what we did, they were very frustrated. They wanted to express themselves, not only musically, they were doing that, but also wanting to express themselves visually. They knew that was obviously very important. So that’s how I started my business, within I’d say about three years when I got my first GRAMMY nomination. Never got a GRAMMY nomination for music, because most of the time we were making music, Frank Sinatra was still the one who was getting the GRAMMY nominations. All the GRAMMYs were still run by 40 and 50 year olds, and they weren’t paying any attention to 20 year olds. So we never actually got nominated for any music, even though we had seven top ten records in a row, but nonetheless. Then I’m in the graphics business, and in three years I had my first nomination, over an album cover. Actually, that was the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. I’m looking at it right here on my wall, so that was 1970. So the first cover I got nominated for was in 1970, then I got nominated the year after that, which I actually won a GRAMMY, for a 1971 album cover. Then I got nominated in ‘75 again, for another Nitty Gritty Dirt Band cover. So yeah, nominated twice, won once for design. Maybe they were trying to tell me something! This is what you should be doing, screw music. I eventually got the art directors all fired. Two of those nominations were with the record company that we were on as Jan and Dean, and the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band were also on Liberty Records, and so the president of the company is kinda scratching his head going “How come Dean can do this and we’ve never had any nominations for anything?” And they started paying attention to graphic design and how important record packaging was. Right about that time, the 70s, some of the best packaging came out because all of a sudden it exploded. Of course, The Beatles helped. The Beatles finally had control over their graphic design, and then of course once that happened, all artists wanted control. It was a whole new ballgame and a lot of the art directors got replaced by younger people, and I kind of started a whole fresh new movement.

That “fresh new movement” included a shift toward the far-out design aesthetic of psychedelia and the hippie counter culture. Dean’s first album cover design was for The Turtles of “Happy Together” fame.

D: I designed a cover for The Turtles. “The Turtles’ Golden Hits”, probably volume one, which had “Happy Together” on it and the rest of their stuff. Very psychedelic. I never understood it, but you know, it was their idea, and that’s what I was there for, letting the artists decide what they wanted to put on it, and I wanted the artists to be happy with it and proud of it. I would suggest things to artists if they tried to do something a little too goofy, that most people wouldn’t understand, so I was kind of a nice balance between what the record company would like and what the artist would like. But I had always hoped to please the artists because they’re the ones that have to live with that album cover for the rest of their lives. And the art director was on to the next cover.

Dean’s work in design extended beyond album covers. Other artists felt comfortable with him enough to throw any idea at him. One such artist was singer-songwriter Harry Nilsson. The brilliantly creative Nilsson was a favorite of John Lennon, and is best known for his string of hits in the ‘60s and ‘70s. Dean felt an immediate artistic kinship with Nilsson.

D: Harry and I were blood brothers. He also was a rebel. Didn’t really like doing anything that the record companies would want him to do, because he knew they were a bunch of fools.

Dean and Harry’s friendship eventually led to collaborating on Harry’s 1971 film, “The Point”.

D: I loved everything about The Point. The movie was inspired by something I did for him for his birthday, actually it was his wife’s idea to animate one of his songs. I just didn’t have the knowledge, I knew how animation was done, but you have to have all the right equipment to do it. I figured I could do clay animation. I told his wife Diane what kind of camera to rent, so she got a 16mm movie camera and put it on a tripod. And I just shot frames at a time, and made the thing. I timed it all out, so that the thing I was doing in clay would match the song. I came pretty close. So I did a whole clay animation to the song “Think About Your Troubles”, and at his birthday party, of course this was a surprise, we showed it and he became unglued! It actually worked, I was so surprised. He was so inspired, he said “I should do a whole concept around this”. And that’s how The Point got started. Then we just decided not to do clay animation, because it didn’t have color to it, so we had a professional animator animate it.

The two men forged an artistic alliance that grew through informal brainstorming sessions.

D: We would just sit around and come up with the concepts for the stuff. I never got any credit for it particularly. I never went into the animation studio, but Harry and I would work on stuff at his house, how we wanted things to look, and then it was given to the animator. I kind of like the animation, kind of not, but it was what the record company could afford at the time, or I think the television network paid for it. But it was good, it was good enough, certainly I loved the music. The music was spot-on. And the concept was brilliant. I thought that animated little movie should be shown to elementary school kids.

The finished film was shown on network television in February of 1971. It is a delightful, modern fable with a great lesson promoting individuality. The accompanying album art presented an opportunity to extend the artistic concept even further.

D: Then, in designing the album cover, of course we had gotten into the concept of The Point and that everything must have a point, so we “spoke in pointillism”, everything had the point in there in any sort of talking and conversing that we did. Just because we enjoyed trying to do it, so of course the album cover needed to be something to do with the point, and my sister and my mom were doing needlepoint. I thought, “There you go.” I let my sister do the cover, and let my mom do the back, and then they’ll get credit in it. I pretty much designed the cover, how I wanted it, and then my sister executed it in needlepoint, did a beautiful job. I have that sitting in my closet, because I don’t want it to get bleached out. The original piece of art, which is pretty neat.

The Point wasn’t the only project Dean worked with Nilsson on that fell outside of the scope of what the average musician was doing. A stunt of theirs that never saw the light of day was a promotional billboard in the desert.

D: Harry wanted it to be on I-5 or whatever freeway goes out towards Vegas. We found a billboard in a spot that would get half a million cars going by it a day, and we thought, “That’s a lot of exposure.” Of course the record company said, “Why do you want to be out there?” Well, the Hollywood ones were ten times more expensive and only a couple thousand people would see them a day. Wouldn’t you want to be someplace where 500,000-600,000 people a day would look at something? We even had– it said “Free records at the next gas station.” People could stop, fill up their tanks, plus get a free record. Because you know, we figured “How many people are actually going to do that?” What if you got one or two a day? The record company could afford to give away one or two records a day, just for the publicity of “check this out.” I’m sure the media, if they knew about the story, would have loved it. That you could actually pull into the next gas station and fill up, maybe you had to fill up, you couldn’t just go into the gas station and get the record, you had to fill your gas tank and then you’d get a free LP. What would have cost the record company? Nothing, and the amount of publicity that you’d get for it would be priceless. But see, record companies didn’t really think like that particularly, believe it or not. It was so abstract to them, but Harry had forced them to do stuff they didn’t want to do, and every time they did it, it worked. Then they’d take credit for it.

Dean enjoyed a successful, albeit short, career performing with Jan & Dean. He shared his journey with bandmate Jan Berry, a close friend as well as collaborator.

D: All the time we were making music together, we got along great. I was his roommate when he kicked his girlfriend out, at the time of his accident. I had been living probably at his house for 2 years or so. For people being business partners for 7 years, sometimes you don’t get along, but we got along great. I enjoyed his company, and obviously he enjoyed mine. He let me move in, gave me a great room right opposite the pool. We hardly ever had an argument. We’d have disagreements like anybody would, the only thing we would ever disagree about is music. Rest of the stuff we pretty much thought the same about. The only time we had any problems about music was I would sometimes tell him the song was ok, I’m not criticizing the song, or even what you want to do with it, in my mind, I was thinking of branding. I don’t think Jan understood branding yet, he would just pick out a song that he liked, and I would say, well, that’s ok but Jan and Dean need to be doing a certain kind of music. Even if there is a song that we could record that we would like personally, it may not be a song that Jan and Dean should be doing. I don’t think he really ever grasped that. He just liked music for music’s sake, and I can understand that, but that doesn’t mean that we have to do it. So that was the only disagreements of musical things that we would do from time to time. I didn’t think that Jan and Dean should be singing ballads, especially after we were doing pretty hardcore southern california, car culture, surf culture songs. We didn’t need to be Frankie Avalon. Leave that to Frankie. We liked Frankie Avalon’s songs, that didn’t mean we needed to be singing them. So again, those battles were just, you know, we’d never get pissed off at it, but I just figured I had time for re-endoctornating him in terms of how to think about branding. I didn’t even know the word branding at the time, but that’s later what I realized was exactly what I was doing. But all the guys, with everybody that was doing the other album covers, then I really got good at branding. Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, everything was always a whole lot of stuff that was brown, dirt brown. You get a certain look, a certain color scheme, and you keep doing it, because the more you do it, people get used to seeing it, and know almost immediately when they see it, oh that’s a Nitty Gritty Dirt Band LP. They can tell by glancing at it. I think I saw that first with Peter, Paul and Mary. I enjoyed folk music, and I liked Peter, Paul and Mary’s stuff, and I noticed they were using the same font, the same lettering, on multiple covers, and I went, boy that’s interesting. They’re treating their career as a real business, with real branding, and they're doing their branding by using that type style, which was kind of a folk, hippie type style. I thought that was really brilliant. So that’s what I wanted to keep doing. I later used the word “continuity” a lot. Put the continuity between the visuals, the spoken word, your liner notes had to look like they came from the same people that decided what the art should be. When we first started, one department did liner notes, another department did the photography, another department did the actual covers, and the publicity department did something totally different. I went holy cow, this is really stupid. Nobody’s talking to one another. You need continuity if you want to brand! It all has to look alike, and every part of it needs to look like all the elements are all the same, and they fit together. So unfortunately, I didn’t get to do it for Jan and Dean, but I got enough stuff done, but not quite what I would have done had Jan not crashed.

While Jan & Dean’s career didn’t last as long as some of their contemporaries, Dean Torrence left an indelible mark on the music industry, both in the spotlight and behind the scenes. This year, Dean celebrated his 84th birthday in his home of Huntington Beach, CA, where “Surf City” is the official town theme song.

Jack Habegger is a regular contributor to Low Profile.

Margo Guryan (Revisited)

Today we’re gonna be digging way back in the archive to episode 4: Focusing on Margo Guryan. This was recorded in early 2019, when I was still figuring out this show’s format.  At that time, it consisted of panelists with a shared interest (Andrew Dorsett and Michael Sean Coleman) nerding out about a favorite artist, and sometimes we’d get the chance to talk to the artist or somebody who was close to them. Margo Guryan passed away three years ago, and at the time of recording she did not agree to an interview, but she and I had some email correspondence that was helpful in researching her, and she put me in touch with her publisher, Jonathan Rosner, who also happens to be her stepson, who joined us about halfway through the show. I’ve re-edited that admittedly rough episode to make it more digestible, and at the top of the show I spoke with Jonathan again about the latest renaissance of Margo’s music- two new reissues, plus a tribute album called “Like Someone I Know" which features Pearl And The Oysters, TOPS, Margo Price, Clairo and many others, available from Sub Pop and Urban Outfitters. The compilation enefits Planned Parenthood!

The High Llamas

Friend of the show Sean O’Hagan returns to the Low Profile to discuss “Hey Panda,” the first release from The High Llamas in eight years. When we last spoke in 2021, he had dropped the High Llamas moniker and forged a new path under his given name, embracing more contemporary influences.  In the years since, he’s recruited Llamas new and old to reroute the course of the band he’s led since the early ‘90s, and invited exciting guest performers to come along for the ride. “Hey Panda” is out on March 29th from Drag City Records. Today Sean explains the process that led to this album, collaborating with Bonnie Prince Billy and Fryars, recent production and arrangement work with other artists, and a bit of the contemporary music he’s been getting into lately.

James Spooner on the Black Punk Experience

Photo courtesy of James Spooner

James Spooner is a writer, filmmaker and visual artist from Southern California. He grew up as one of two black punk rockers in the small town of Apple Valley, and he wrote a critically acclaimed graphic novel about his experience called “The High Desert,” released in 2022, twenty years after the release of his groundbreaking documentary “Afro Punk.” When I read the book, I found it so moving that I immediately reached out to him and invited him to be a guest on this program. James joined me for a live interview in Olympia at the Capitol Theater after a screening of his film, and we discussed his experience growing up as a black punk in the desert, the avenues that led him to direct his first film, being the father of a Gen-Z black punk, his career as a tattoo artist, and his new anthology book “Black Punk Now,” which was edited by Spooner and Chris L. Terry and came out last October.

Brooke Wentz on “Transfigured New York”

Illustration by Camille Morrison

Who smoked more: academics like John Cage, La Monte Young and Vladamir Ussachevsky- or the underground scenesters, like Glenn Branca, Arthur Russel and Laurie Anderson?

Why is turntablist Christian Marclay on the cover of "Transfigured New York," but not in the book, even though she interviewed him multiple times? Could AI design be to blame?

How did the old guard of "New Music" feel about the sudden rise of consumer-friendly music production four decades ago?

In the 1980s, Brooke Wentz hosted a radio show in the middle of the night that focused on experimental music, which was developing all around her in New York City. Over the course of a decade, many of the artists Brooke played on that show would join her in the studio. Her journalism days are through, (now she works on the business side of the industry) but she has just released a book with selected interviews back in the day called “Transfigured New York: Interviews with Experimental Artists and Musicians," available now from Columbia University Press. This may be a bit of a shock to you, but I’ll say it- I’m a big fan of oral history interviews, and I’m a big fan of experimental music. I’m pleased to feature Brooke and her work here today, which includes a couple of clips from her interviews (with Morton Subotnik and John Lurie, respectively). She joins me today from a working holiday somewhere in Mexico.

Blind Boys of Alabama

It's a bonus episode! Here's a little radio piece I made back in January to promote a Blind Boys of Alabama concert here in Olympia.  The gospel singing group has been in existence since 1939 or so, with its members changing over time... you know, like Menudo, The Preservation Hall Jazz Band or the London Philharmonic.  I spoke with Ricky McKinnie, who's been in the group since 1989.  He tells me about his background in gospel music, his own experience of blindness, the group's latest Grammy nomination, and the ins and outs of a group that has been evolving for over three quarters of a century.  Short and sweet, hope you like it!

72. PEACE (Bleeped)

Dick Heaven

Self-Portrait by Dick Heaven

On this very special bonus episode, I amazingly landed an interview with the famously reclusive home recording artist Dick Heaven. How I was able to pull this off is beyond me… he apparently hadn’t conversed with anyone, on or off the record, in a decade and a half. You can imagine my utter dismay when I realized the only time he was available to talk was during my previously scheduled bubble bath! Thankfully, the Los Angeles comedian Aviva Siegel was able to answer the call on my behalf. I knew she was up to the task as I’m a big fan of her Ad Wizards podcast ( @adwizardspod ), and her live comedy show Talkies (you can also follow her on twitter @livinlavivaloca ). While I washed myself clean, Aviva got into the dirt on Dick’s history, personal life and the creative process that gave us classic songs like “Nightmare Brigade” and “If I Wrote the Book.” Dick Heaven spoke to Aviva from his home in rural Western Massachusets.

Low Profile Presents DARKNET DIARIES: NERDCORE

Low Profile presents a collection of music and stories from Darknet Diaries, a strikingly original podcast about cybercrime. After a brief conversation between Markly Morrison and Jack Rhysider, Jack takes the reins and shares his interviews with three purveyors of nerdcore, a sub-genre of hip hop: YTCracker, OHM-I, and Dual Core. All three are skilled at hacking into the mainframe AND spitting legit rhymes about their exploits. (This episode contains some explicit content.)

Links to all of the music featured on this episode can be found on the episode’s original website.

Find more from Darknet Diaries wherever you get podcasts or at darknetdiaries.com

Support Low Profile at patreon.com/lowprofile or venmo @lowpropodcast

Thanks for your time, ears and support!

Dollar Country (bonus episode)

Collage/Photo by Michael Sean Coleman

On this bonus episode we have yet another clash of the podcasts. I had the pleasure of a zoom call and DJ roulette session with the host of Dollar Country, Franklin Fantini, or as his listeners know him, Frank the Drifter. It’s one of my favorite shows, and shares a common mission to this program: that’s to preserve overlooked music history and share it with a wider audience. For Low Profile, that means researching the artists and mining them for their oral history. For Dollar Country, it means sifting through thousands of overlooked country 45’s from the 20th century and sharing the treasure with the listener. Franklin moved to Cleveland, Ohio from his hometown of Lawrence, KS. For the last five years or so, he has been regularly releasing sets of irregular songs, many of which even the most devoted fans of country music have never heard of.
So, you might be wondering, who is Frank The Drifter, and where does he find these nuggets? Can I hear some of them? Why does he do it? Is there no stopping him? Feel free to eavesdrop as a couple of record nerds go head to head. Here goes.

(For an unedited, feature-length video recording of this episode, visit patreon.com/lowprofile)

Dollar Country can be found on apple podcasts, at dollarcountry.org, and on instagram at Dollarcountry. You can support them at patreon.com/dollarcountry

Low Profile receives financial support from listeners like you at patreon.com/lowprofile, where I occasionally share tasty bonus content, like the feature-length video of this interview.

Low Profile also receives in-kind support from the following independent businesses here in Olympia:

San Francisco Street Bakery,

Schwartz’s Deli,

Rainy Day Records,

Old School Pizzeria,

And Scherler Easy Premium Shitty American Lager from Three Magnets Brewing Company.

Looking Back:

A Low Profile Mixtape

Instead of a new episode this time around, here’s some music representing the artists who have been featured on the program so far, from the most recent back to the first episode. Hang out for a couple hours, enjoy the jams, and if you like a song or artist, dig it: There’s a Low Profile episode about them for you to devour. Track listing below.

Low Profile with Markly Morrison

Looking Back Mixtape 4-22-2021

Negativland “Drink It Up”

Alice Stuart “Freedom’s The Sound”

Jeffrey Lewis and the Voltage “Except For The Fact That It Isn’t”

Briana Marela “Give Me Your Love”

Lavender Country “I Can’t Shake the Stranger Out of You”

Oval “Ah!”

The Music Tapes “Please Hear Mr. Flight Control”

Swamp Dogg “Kiss Me Hit Me Touch Me”

The Julies “Boy Wonder”

Karl Blau “Mockingbird Diet”

The Microphones “Between Your Ear and The Other Ear”

Jib Kidder “New Crimes”

David Grubbs “Gloriette”

Donnie and Joe Emerson “Thoughts In My Mind”

Holy Modal Rounders “Random Canyon”

Ashley Eriksson “When The Earth Was Flat”

Eugene Chadbourne “Honey Don’t”

CW Stoneking “On a Desert Isle”

Washington Phillips “Mother’s Last Word to Her Son”

Cornershop “United Provinces of India”

Heatwarmer “American Dog”

Chumbawamba “This Girl”

Nick Krgovich “Country Boy”

Amps For Christ “Sweet William”

Terry Cashman “Cooperstown”

Scott Dunbar “Forty-Four Blues”

Bobby Frank Brown “My Dog Is Every Bit as Good as Me”

Soul-Junk “Soft Adult Contempt”

Susan Cadogan “Love My Life”

Cleaners from Venus “A Girl With Cars In Her Eyes”

Bob Dorough (on a Miles Davis album) “Nothing Like You”

The Gift Machine “Telemetric Mayhem”

Old Time Relijun “Dark of the Male, Light of the Female”

Gary Wilson “Gary’s in the Park”

Margo Guryan “Someone I Know”

Larry Norman “Sweet Song of Salvation”

Klaus Nomi “Just One Look”

Pete Drake “I’m Blue”

The Wurst Nightmare

(BONUS EPISODE)

This episode's featured guests are influenced by people like Jesus, Gandhi, God and Buddha.

About a year ago, I got to have a conversation with two living members of one of the most influential bands of all time. Then my computer completely died, and I lost the entire interview! I was crushed. But to my amazement, earlier this week, I received a package from Ulan Bator, Mongolia containing a cassette tape of our conversation! My voice is coming out of their speakerphone, so sorry in advance about the quality of my voice, but I didn’t talk too much because I wanted to hear the stories about how acts like Metallica, Queen, LAKE, Weezer, Guns N’ Roses, Coldplay, Lemmy Chavitz, and even Bob Marley and the Wailers all became household names thanks to the musical ques they took from a band that needs no introduction:

The Wurst Nightmare.

***This episode contains some strong material and expletives, be advised***

If you like Low Profile, please subscribe, rate and review, tell a friend, blah blah blah.

If you LOVE Low Profile, throw us a bone at patreon.com/lowprofile

Low Profile receives in-kind support from San Francisco Street Bakery in Olympia, WA.

The views expressed on this episode do not necessarily reflect the views of Low Profile or its affiliates.

This podcast will self-destruct.

rage against the marine rare ulan bator footage

Yurup

mr dig

Katja Bilaaf

Dicks 4 Free

BONUS: CapCity Presents (crossover)

On this week's episode, we team up with Andy "Remex" Moreno of The CapCity Presents Podcast for our first ever cross-over episode, where we interview each other! CapCity Presents Podcast is a show that digs into the world of Puget Sound region musicians and beyond, from the lens of Andy's background as a promoter of live entertainment. We discuss life in Olympia, hip-hop, live shows, obsure music and what pickled dishes we'll be trying on our next episode.

CapCity Presents Podcast on Spotify:

https://open.spotify.com/show/1ALd4Mc4SS7lo4ss4q0nLY

CapCity Presents Podcast on Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/capcitypresents/

CapCity Presents Podcast on Anchor:

https://anchor.fm/capcitypresents

Low Profile with Markly Morrison official website: http://www.lowprofilepodcast.com

Low Profile on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/2CzVOYeCKjORh81x5vbtpI

Low Profile on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lowpropodcast/?hl=en

Low Profile on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LowProfilePodcast/

Low Profile on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lowprofile

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If you're still reading this... Yo! Season 4 is going to be LIT. And I mean, literature. I have a bunch of musicians I highly respect helping out with the hosting duties, interviewing our mutual heroes of underground music. Coming your way on February 6th! Look out!

Bonus Holiday Episode (w/Gretchen Christopher)

The Fleetwoods founder presents a new song

For this second holiday 2020 bonus episode, Low Profile brings you a high-profile artist. She has won multiple gold records and is in the Vocal Group Hall of fame. Her name is Gretchen Christopher, and she is one of the founders of 1950s-1960s pop sensations the Fleetwoods, who began their career here in Olympia, Washington. She will be featured in an upcoming episode about the Fleetwoods next season, but today I’m presenting our conversation about her newest single, “Christmas Is You,” which she is sharing here after nearly 40 years in the making. Gretchen tells the story behind the song, along with the story of how we met, just in time for the holiday season.

Recommendations:

To order Gretchen Christopher's most recent album, “Gretchen’s Sweet Sixteen (Suite 16),” which includes a free download of “Christmas is You,” for $16 including shipping and handling, visit GoldCupMusic.com today to hear clips and get your signed copy of the CD.

The Fleetwoods' song that got the world’s attention, “Come Softly To Me.”

Bonus 2020 Holiday Episode (with Steve Hindalong)

Happy holidays everybody! It’s Markly, and I’m happy to bring you this little bonus piece in between seasons. Here’s what’s up: I had the idea to make a special mixtape of non-traditional Christmas music to share with the show’s Patreon supporters, with songs performed by artists who’ve been featured on Low Profile over the past few years. I figured out that almost half of the people who’ve been on this show had something I could include, like Amps For Christ, Nick Krgovich, Klaus Nomi, Bob Dorough, and Ashley Eriksson.  Gary Wilson, Swamp Dogg and Heatwarmer all have entire albums of Christmas music recorded, too. Sut there was still one song in particular that I really wanted to put on this mix, called “Tis The Season of Excess,” a song that is nowhere to be found on the internet but I happen to own a copy of. The only problem with doing that, was that this artist was an outlier- the only one who had never been on the show before. So I reached out to Steve Hindalong, who along with Chris Colbert, recorded this song I’m talking about. I’d never talked to Steve before, and he hadn’t really even thought about this song in the past 25 years, so I sent him the track and then gave him a call so I could find out the story behind it. Here’s my short interview with the award-winning producer and songwriter Steve Hindalong. Hope you enjoy listening to it as much as we enjoyed doing it.​

Recommendations:

Steve has been the drummer, songwriter and producer in alternative rock band The Choir since the mid-1980s.

Below is the cover of the album that originally featured the song we talk about. As of the release of this episode, it is not available online, so keep an eye out for it at the thrift store: