23 Years of Hernia Milk and Ergot Dreams:
A Retrospective of Caroliner and its Homage to a 19th Century
Singing Bull
Echo de Pensees Sound Series in conjunction with
The Museum of Viral Memory presents, 23 Years of Hernia Milk and
Ergot Dreams, the first ever opportunity to see the internationally
recognized band Caroliner’s extensive ephemera (propitious
props, salutary sets, corrupting costumes, random releases, maligned
missives, reviled relics and loquacious lyric books) collected
in one place!
Caroliner was formed in San Francisco in 1983 when
a ragtag band of temporally misplaced troubadors ran afoul of an
astrally displaced gang of misbehaved minstrels. Initial violence
blossomed into corporate confusion when deep inside a mold induced
hallucination they co-copyrighted the original songs of a singing
bull, Caroliner, who was tragically killed and eaten by its starved
owner in the mythic age of 1833.
Taking ergot-poisoned pills through a Wisconsin
death trip, the group began recreating their hallucinatory dream
state through hypnotic sound, flamboyant costumes, and glowing props.
Two decades later they are still digging through Caroliner’s
prodigious aural droppings with day-glo miner’s helmets and
home made shovels of calcium welded bone. The sounds a heady mix
of toxic shock and shocking talk, folk confusion and percussing dissolution.
For Hernia Milk and Ergot Dreams Marcella Faustini
and Sarrita Hunn have dug through the group’s checkered past
and black-light warehouse to choose the cream of the crop of 23 years
of Caroliner props, costumes, instruments, records, books, flyers
and assorted other detritus.
The show closed on January 13th with Caroliner’s first
performance in years.
23 Years of Hernia Milk and Ergot Dreams exposes
Caroliner’s tragic trail of tears through the American dream
and across the world.
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