Avant Duel | Kongress | Interview | Otto von Ruggins
Otto von Ruggins, self-proclaimed Master of the Unheard of, has been actively making music for decades now. He was part of Kongress, a strange hybrid experimental band that formed in 1975. Ruggins was also involved with several other projects that we will discuss in the following interview.
Ruggins was the keyboard player for the amazing occult punk group Kongress. Some of his latest work is with VON LMO, also a member of Kongress, in a project called Avant Duel. They were together on and off over the last few decades.
Where and when did you grow up? Was music a big part of your family life? Did the local music scene influence you or inspire you to play music?
Otto von Ruggins: I grew up in Brooklyn, NY living with an older sister who played piano, so we had a piano in our house. I began taking piano lessons with a piano teacher just around the corner sometime under 10 years old for a few years, but I hated sight-reading notes and didn’t practice much, so I eventually stopped. My sister opened my eyes to rock ‘n’ roll by watching Dick Clark’s Friday Night Countdown when I saw Jerry Lee Lewis singing ‘Great Balls of Fire,’ jumping on the piano and playing with his feet. I just read the current manager of the Houston Astros, Dusty Baker, had the same experience upon seeing Jerry Lee Lewis on Dick Clark. He also smoked a joint with Jimi Hendrix, as well. My father was a pretty good guitar player, as later in life after he retired to Florida, where he would write the charts for a musical band to play from. My mother even played an accordion on some occasions. The only music scene for me was the one I created by carrying a battery operated phonograph to the schoolyard where I would play my record collection, including, eventually, singles from England. Ironically, while I was writing this, the ‘Great Balls of Fire’ legend, Jerry Lee Lewis, passed away on 10/28/22. His Quote of the Day, listed on Turn Up The Volume Blog is “If I’m going to Hell, I’m going there playing the piano.”
When did you begin playing music? What was your first instrument? Who were your major influences?
The first record I ever bought was ‘Quarter to Three’ by Gary U.S. Bonds. That’s what got my record collection started, but it wasn’t until I encountered The Beatles and The British Invasion at age 15 that I got the jolt of electricity. It was between Christmas and New Year’s Eve of 1963 that I rode my bike past the usual record store which didn’t have ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ that I went over a mile to where my 6th grade Substitute Teacher told me his father had a record shop. It was dark outside, but I found the record I couldn’t find elsewhere. I went home and immediately played the “B” side – ‘I Saw Her Standing There’ – a tradition I had long started from my early record collection days to see how good an artist was by playing the “B” side – The Beatles were great on the “B” side. So, The Beatles were first, but other British Invasion acts were even more exciting for me – The Dave Clark Five, The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things, Them, The Kinks , The Zombies and The Animals (I fell in love with ‘The House of the Rising Sun’). This caused me to take my Christmas Club money out and purchase a VOX Organ with a Powersonic amplifier. That amp had a lightning bolt display that flashed the louder I played. So began my love affair with visual displays, both onstage and in videos. I remember one day while studying for a History test, I played ‘She’s Not There’ by The Zombies a hundred times in a row over four hours!
What was the first song you ever composed?
I remember something that was Stones’ influence called ‘I Can’t Be Satisfied With You’. This was even before I bought the VOX Organ. I have blackmail tapes of these early efforts which were done with me banging a beat with a Mag-Power football game stick on my mother’s plastic covered pillows from the couch. Melody came later. There are lots of crash and burn recordings I need to destroy!
What was your first band?
My first band happened when a stranger named Tony Travis (I named him “Travis”) found me at a summer church bazaar with my white fur coat and Beatle boots on. He had heard that I had a VOX Organ and wanted me to play in his band, which very quickly became ours and then mine. I gave it the name From Down Under. Not having any concept of Australia being referred to as such, I was thinking of something coming up from The Underground, which frankly, didn’t exist in my mind. We played a few high school dances with the lineup change after my father cancelled our New Year’s Eve gig because it didn’t pay enough. I remember getting a Cabaret license to be able to play in clubs and we played one such club that my father drove us to in his open back Volkswagen truck. Eventually, through some lineup changes and name changes – Christmas In July played a performance in a local park on a stage, giving me a taste of “fame,” as some female with her friends stole my fancy red, white and blue striped shirt, only to return it later with a stack of cards her relative printed for us with a psychedelic logo and my musical name at the time – Denver Ruggins! Next up was Funeral of Art when I had a concept that I wanted to play onstage with a cauldron so I could burn famous works of art and make a statement about how overpriced they were. I wanted rich people to donate their artworks, particularly the Picasso painting Three Musicians, which still hangs in The Museum of Modern Art in NYC. The plan was to make copies of the art to burn and keep the originals! We eventually went off to London, as Funeral of Art, to follow Hendrix’s game plan of conquering a smaller territory and returning triumphantly back to America. It didn’t work out, as I was purchasing my traveller checks the day after Hendrix died. I had seen him at the legendary Cheetah Club in NYC, playing as Jimmy James and The Blue Flames on my birthday in 1966. There was no stage and he was about three feet away with his hair slicked back and the band wearing the same jackets. He played with his teeth, behind his head and rolled around on the floor playing while the band members moved mic stands out of his way – a very special experience. The next year I saw The Jimi Hendrix Experience at Central Park opening for The Rascals. I thought this might be the same left-handed guitarist, even though his hair was now frizzed and he had two white sidemen with him. When I heard ‘Wild Thing,’ I knew it was that same showman, back from England. While we were in England, we managed to make some demos that sound dated now, but back then they were damn good. We were told to go home, as we couldn’t stay in England – the British are very protective of their music makers, wanting no foreigners taking away such jobs, even though we had a British/American guitarist.
Tell us about your connection with The Vagrants?
I became aware of The Vagrants when Tony Travis told me they were playing at a bar just a few avenues away from my home. In fact, my father used paint signs for the bar when I worked there and once I gave the owner his signs when he came to pick them up. I even remember delivering signs to the Walker Theater the day The Dave Clark Five were appearing there to screaming girls (including my wife who loved Denny Payton before she met me), whom I walked by lines of with the signs. So, I saw The Vagrants at the club and befriended the drummer, Roger Mansour, who was really into The Who and British bands, so we hit it off. Eventually, I was invited to Charles Lane after Leslie West and their keyboard player left. They had a new guitarist, Tommy Cosgrove, who sounded like Stevie Winwood when he sang the two songs I wrote (‘Drink It’ and ‘Moon of the Black Magician’), which were recorded with Eddie Kramer at a studio on W. 57th Street, along with Tommy’s original, ‘Everybody In The Congregation’. I played with The Vagrants at Ungano’s in NY’s Upper Westside for a few weekends. I even played at a local high school, FDR, where I would later teach The History of Rock & Roll some 50 years later using Little Steven (Van Zandt’s) curriculum, as one of 11 Pilot Teachers from across the country. The Vagrants gig was short-lived, as I was replaced by Moogy Klingman. I never got copies of those recordings, which were great songs, quite well done.
Tell us about the formation of Kongress.
In 1975, VON LMO and I got back together after our Funeral of Art London recordings which ended with us taking some time off from working together. The word congress has several relevant meanings which motivated the choice – one is “sexual intercourse,” which with a “K” perverted that meaning (not the idea of sexual intercourse), while another definition is a “coming together of people” (as well as bodies). This dealt with the concept that Kongress might be any group of musicians at any time, whether recording or performing. Lots of musicians spent some time in Kongress. The name even survived the time spent with Geofrey Crozier as our Lead Madgician. He had his own name, Koagula, but he agreed to keep it as Kongress. Even after VON LMO and Geofrey Crozier both exited the band, after Marilyn joined, taking us from improvs to songs I had written, she disapproved of a new member who played an electric violin. She said it made her want to climb the walls. I told her it would look great on stage, but she departed in the middle of two sets at Max’s Kansas City when we opened for The Heartbreakers. Between sets, I placed a poster with a perfect quote from Aleister Crowley on the tables of Max’s to explain the situation —
Kongress Dictum
The Sun moves in space without interference. The
order of Nature provides an orbit for each star. A
Clash proves that one or the other has strayed from
Its course. But as to each man that keeps his
true course, the more firmly he acts, the less likely
Are others to get in his way. His example will
Help them to find their own paths and pursue them.
In 1979 you released Talk Talk b/w Tough Guys Don’t Dance single for Starborn Records & Tapes. What do you recall from it?
I had someone who was interested in my music out in CA and he arranged for Brian Ross, producer of The Music Machine recordings, to release the single on his Starboard label. In fact, I even decided to put a version of ‘Talk Talk’ on the “B” side to incentivize Brian Ross to take a vested interest in its success, but ultimately, as a single, it got lost in a world of albums and EPs. I had just read Norman Mailer’s Tough Guys Don’t Dance in less than a week and was impressed enough to use the title for inspiration of a song with that title. It was 1985 and I was still working with Marilyn, a vocalist from Kongress days who came after Madgician Geofrey Crozier. I remember sampling lines she sang into my Prophet 2000 sampler so I could overdub her throughout the song by playing the parts on individual keys to make the song more interesting. I even hand delivered a copy to Norman Mailer’s home in downtown Brooklyn which led to me receiving a personal note stating that he was shocked to see that I had used his title for my recording. He expressed that he didn’t think I had the right to do that, as well as the fact that the music had already been chosen for the film and he would wait to hear from me. I responded simply by stating that titles cannot be copyrighted and that he should check with The Library of Congress!
Is there any more material left unreleased?
There’s enough material unreleased that I am considering someday releasing a Limited Edition Box Set with four vinyl records and a DVD of my videos. I keep discovering new music that I don’t even remember playing, like earlier this year I found a cassette labeled ‘Otto von Ruggins Instrumentals 2000’. When I played it I was blown away, as it was me playing “techno,” which I don’t even remember doing, although I used to think that if I ever did so, I would take it to another level, which is what I heard. I still can’t find the original recordings, which might have been prior to 2000 when I was working in MIDI on a PC, as I started digital recording with a Mac in 2001. I went through an 85 song folder of “Instrumentals” and didn’t find the basis for that tape, but I found some great tracks which will someday get released if I live long enough to get it done. I know this much – which synths I used – a Voyetra Eight, Sequential Prophet VS, Roland D70, Roland JD-800 & Roland MC-505 Groovebox, which I recently took out of my closet to provide the menacing music for my ‘NuSense’ by Kongress release back in April of this year.
“Kongress performed a momentous display of pyrotechnics at CBGBs”
Where did you play as Kongress? What are some of the highlights?
We started at The War Memorial in Brooklyn, NY. It was an indoor space and they kept telling us to get lower. Next we found ourselves in CBGBs on Christmas Eve. We did a few other gigs there, but Hilly, the owner, wasn’t too receptive. We went a bit further uptown to Max’s Kansas City and that became our home base, as we played there well over 20 times. The highlights worth mentioning are that on December 26, 1976, Kongress performed a momentous display of pyrotechnics at CBGBs. Hilly came up to the stage and waved his arms for us to stop. He was met with flashpots exploding , as the first row of tables had been cordoned off to avoid getting too close to the explosions. I made like I was complying by turning on my Echoplex into loop mode so it kept playing and I turned the volume up. Prior to that, a flare attached to a microphone fell to the floor and Hilly picked it up, holding it like the Statue of Tyranny. One of our roadies wrapped it in a wet towel and ran out the back with it. It led to our being banned for a year. When we returned, my wife was with us onstage and Madgician Geofrey Crozier had returned to Oz, where sadly, he would take his own life. Waiting in the wings was Marilyn and the musick changed from 30 minute improvisations to two minute outbursts with many songs written with her in mind so they would be sung from “her” perspective.
How did your project with Robert Crash come about? Tell us about Rescue 1 and the release of ‘Movie Viewers’…
I remember first meeting Robert Crash through a Village Voice ad in which he claimed he was a guitar player with 150 years experience. He came to see us at an East Village gig. He wound up going out to California where he experienced a speeding ticket on the freeway, describing the police vehicle as “a UFO light”, which I later used in a track that needs to see the “light” of day, ‘Entry Control,’ which I wrote back in February 1981, years later. The lyrics read as if they’re describing the circumstances of our recent pandemic. Eventually, Robert made his way back to New York in 1976, as we began courting Geofrey Crozier. Peter Crowley, who booked the bands at Max’s Kansas City, took a liking to Kongress, dubbing me ‘The East Coast Eno,’ which was meant as a compliment I’m sure, but I felt I had a more aggressive style than Eno with my EML Electrocomp 101 synth back then. More recently a live review of ‘Summer Days’ described me as being the offspring of David Bowie and David Byrne (as if I was their child)! Back then, Crowley showed me pictures of Geofrey in full costume from his previous performances at the Olympia in Paris. I was determined to make musick to his visuals. I met with him and he accepted the invitation. Our first gathering of the “new” Kongress, took place on my birthday, July 24, 1976 at WRC, a downtown recording studio that gave me free reign after I was their first paying customer, as the owners took a vested interest in my career, allowing me to play whenever it wasn’t booked. Along with me on the EML Electrocomp 101 synth & Farfisa Organ, VON was on drums, with Robert Crash on guitar and Steve Mecca on bass.
About a half hour into our improvs, in walked Geofrey Crozier who took the microphone and announced, “We arrive, we arrive…we’d like to make our presence known.” What followed is a memorable first attempt at making magical musick that night.
I have two stereo cassettes of the event waiting for release when the timing presents. Unfortunately, that night, LMO went home and tried to drop kick one of his neighbors from the roof of a car. He broke his leg and was incapacitated until a return gig at CBGBs on 12/26/76. That was the gig that got us banned for various offenses of temperament & occultism. Meanwhile, Robert Crash, just before a gig in November, after great improvs, bowed out & cut himself out of Kongress. It was about four years later he returned and found a temporary residence in my basement while he bought some recording equipment that we began what would become our Rescue 1 project Movie Viewers. We eventually moved the basic tracks into Sorcerer Sound, off Canal Street in NYC, where we finished the EP that Charles Ball had been chosen to produce by an independent label, Plexus. Robert was largely responsible for the two videos – ‘Movie Viewers’ and ‘Chateau 19’ – which resulted, though I certainly am visible in both, along with my three daughters making their video debut, under the supervision of my wife, Celia.
I didn’t participate in the remixes that Robert chose to make on his own, as he didn’t like the producer’s mixes. Eventually, the Dutch partner suggested releasing both mixes on a double groove EP, which also contained 4D Glasses. It was pretty exciting to work on the cover art with Nicholas Bergery, who helped us by sharing a technique of taking slides through a color printer and switching from one slide to another to obtain dual imagery that would be seen differently through the two colors of 3D glasses. The “4D” effect includes those two views plus both eyes seeing elements of the cover imagery raising off the EP, as well as the view without any glasses for a total of 4 Dimensions! We never played live, but it was a great accomplishment, although MTV, which had only about 500 videos at the time, turned our two videos down. I delivered them to MTV and what I observed through the window of the goings on behind the glass gave me the premonition that we were dealing with the PTA Mothers who would never approve of our creations. Although Robert Crash & I have never worked together again, he went on to write the “B” side of ‘Sweet Dreams’ by The Eurythmics, as well as working with Robert Plant on one of his solo albums.
“VON LMO had been away in prison and he showed up driving a Cadillac car the wrong way down my corner street”
What led to formation of Avant Duel?
VON LMO had been away in prison and he showed up driving a Cadillac car the wrong way down my corner street. It rekindled the great collaborations from the past and led to our greatest work together – ‘Beyond Human’ by Avant Duel. He had been writing while in prison while I was learning my equipment and we put together that classic CD. It was Avant Garde with artwork for every song in a digital booklet, which I colorized with a special process using an old Mac program, Kai’s Power Tools as a plugin for Photoshop. We worked out the musick in a variety of ways, mostly with his lyrics. It’s now 10 years old, but still sounds like it came from the Future.
On the back cover of the CD is an astrological rendition of the placement of the planets on 12/21/12, which was the date of the Mayan Calendar debacle. One track, ‘Dark Rift’ is so frightening, I had to flip VON LMO’s vocals backwards to avoid their message. Now, it sounds like either a Russian or German rant. LMO starts the song with an organ solo before I beat the drums into submission, while I turn his words backwards.
Not sure how you get to hear the lyrics, but I guess you can create an audio tape of the CD or digital file and then play it backwards to get the message.
Tell us about ‘Summer Days’, your latest release…
I came across the handwritten lyric sheet for ‘Summer Days’ sometime this July and remembered the song which was written a whole lifetime ago in the style for a ‘60s group (April 28, 1967). I played the music on the piano and decided to revamp the musick with something more modern. I also envisioned the video I would make as an homage to the participants in the Coney Island Mermaid Parade who have ushered in 40+ years of Summers on the last Saturday of June by baring their souls (and more) to entertain the masses. As the video came together, I felt like I had choreographed the dancers to move to the rhythm of the beat for me to capture on the videos I took of over two decades of Mermaid Parades through various starting locations and different cameras through the years. It took over a month to put it all together for a late summer release through TikTok’s SoundOn worldwide distribution service on 8/22/22. I had some great instrumental segments I created with an iPad app, Blocs Wave (my band now), which gave new life to the musick, as well as the lyrics. I tried to get a friend who was a better vocalist than I to sing the song, but it was not to be, as I took on the task of singing the lines I wrote, “I have been waiting so long, to sing this song…” I got some very positive reviews about the musick, the video and even my vocals, which one SubmitHub blogger refused to post other than to me. The commitment was only for at least 10 words of response, but here’s what was written, “Talk about big action and songs such as ‘Summer Days’ hove into mind for they have a progressive and big stage persona. Kongress obviously know this and it means they can extend their presence far and wide, the vocals for one coming across like a deity dishing out the new 10 commandments and while I found the whole effect a bit claustrophobic there is no denying that this is wide-screen industry for those into something a bit more spiritual than is the norm. “Big canvas overwhelmed me,” — mp3hugger (Aug 31, 2022) I was in awe of the accolade for my vocals…”the vocals for one coming across like a deity dishing out the new 10 commandments!” My wife depicted the video as Sodom & Gomorrah, but there was a Portuguese writer who declared the video an “Historical Document of Art.”
Are you working on something new as well?
I just got a new iPad Pro and downloaded some 20+ new sound packs in early October. I started making a new song by selecting Drum parts, then Bass, Guitars and Vocals. All of a sudden I heard a Thunderbolt in my ears as it evolved into six variations by the next morning at school. I knew it was electrifying, but when I played it as the students entered the room, they immediately wanted to know “What’s THAT?” It’s called ‘Sugar Daddy’ (Primal Scream). As great as I felt, it reminded me of when I got my first synth and was playing at Shea Stadium’s Avant Garde Festival in 1974. As people swirled around passing by, as soon as I played my new synth pieces, it was as if I was feeding pigeons. It went on like that all day and similarly, at the New York IMSTA event, where there were reps from major Software and Hardware companies just yesterday (10/1), I played this new piece I created with Blocs Wave and they were blown away asking me what app I was using. It helps bolster my confidence that I have some great musick to be heard & I keep making it with the hope that it will someday go viral.
What else currently occupies your life?
I’m an avid San Francisco Giants Baseball fan, even offering my services to be their manager under the previous ownership. I even received a letter from Bob Lurie on the raised Giants logo letterhead thanking me for wanting to become a member of the organization. Eventually, they won three World Championships last decade and after the last one, I got to hold the trophy when they brought it to NY for old New York Giant fans to see up at The New York Times office where my son-in-law was working. I have a mostly political blog on DailyKos.com where I have written some 24 stories.
Thank you. Last word is yours.
Thank you for this opportunity to tell my stories, even though much remains untold. I have shared the answers to your questions for your readers, whom I will share what I told my students in my History of Rock & Roll classes – “I take anti-aging nutrients so I will be around 100 years from now, when the World is ready for my musick!” I hope that day comes for all of us, as I have engaged a Life Extension doctor who treats me with the drug Rapamycin, which has increased the lives of every species it has been tried on and I am the human Guinea Pig, along with other brave humans taking these steps to live longer until 2045. That’s when Ray Kurzweil, head of Google Engineering, claims “Man will become Immortal.”
Klemen Breznikar
Headline photo: Kongress behind the Elgin Theater in 1977
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