Danny Cohen
Experimental / Pop
THAT DANNY (COHEN THAT IS...)
Swimming pools...movie stars. He grew up in Hollywood, Californye-ay: Eldest son of Gene and Lois; an interior decorator/shoe salesman at the Beverly Hills Saks, and lady continuity sketch artist for Irwin Allen/mural painter for the Griffith Planetarium/L.A.P.D. sketch artist. They had a maid named Julie-Mae, but the boys spritzed the place with ‘smell perfume’ (like rotten eggs), then she got into the liquor cabinet. Her soap operas and R&B, infused the formative Danny with funky absurdity, that influenced Bootsy Collins in the 70’s (he took the master of Danny’s band and dubbed his own voice, as the guitarist married the studio-head’s immigrant girlfriend). The rubber knife spankings and threats of cannibalism from 2 babysitters (the later a 100 year-old witch), gave his sound a dark edge. When teachers ‘rag-shook’ and imprisoned him (in the cloakroom) for getting lost from the lavatory and walking in puddles, he wrote ‘KILL THE TEACHER’ and invented punk-rock in 1961. (He embellished it with operatic caterwaulings, chromatic harmonica and chord organ).
In the late 60’s he accidentally took ‘4-Way’ acid after a joint cured in heroin, then went to see 2001. He became a mystic vagabond for 10 years, changing colleges if a couch was offered in another town. When starving, money would appear on the ground. He found a guru over a buffet and heard the ‘Music of the Spheres’. He was supposed to die, but there was a psychotic blond nympho which spoiled everything. He returned to L.A. to record his travails, as ‘The Museum of Danny’s’ on John Zorn’s Tzadik label (appearing on 2 other Tzadik CDs). Brother-in-law Once Removed Tom Waits is a fan, as is Ray Davies of the Kinks. Now he has attempted a Sergeant Peppers’, going from 4 track to 40. The selections are pathetic laments and inadvertent drool. It was 2 years in the making (as done on ‘spec’), but of this Earth.
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