Everbleak rocks: madness and musicality

Music ‘ain’t therapy, mother fucker. Music is God, the Devil, and everything in between.

Little Lenny ‘the hex’ Lennon

The Gimps: a secure wing beat combo, pictured here in a publicity shot from 1970. Formed by Little Lenny ‘the hex’ Lennon (pictured here on snare drum), they played one show in the Everbleak playhouse theatre before disbanding due to ‘musical differences’.

Insanity unlocks all kinds of creativity. It makes fragile minds teeter on the edge and stare into the abyss. That’s where the most powerful and darkest stuff is: at the bottom of the abyss.

And so it was with Everbleak, bubbling away like a cauldron of raw insanity and emotion. Sometimes it threw out the profile of a serial killer, and sometimes it threw out a killer riff.

The music of Everbleak is as original, off-kilter and eclectic as you would expect for something emanating from a hothouse of hormonal lunacy. It only pays passing deference to fashions and trends, because it’s protagonists were either isolated (quite literally in the secure wing) from external cultural influence, or had no interest in the mundanity of the outside world.

Go-go dancing in the nurse’s staff room, 1965. On the piano is Daphne ‘Whisky’ Grayson who later quit nursing to join Waylon Jennings’ touring band.

Bands formed organically with no desire to follow ‘normal’ conventions about line-up or style. They could just as easily team up a Gregorian plain-chant vocalist with a Stylophone player, as they could assemble a regular ‘combo’ of drum, bass and guitar. So, in true Everbleak style, whatever weirdness you can imagine will always be trumped by the surreal reality.

We were going for a New Orleans soul sound, but not one like you’d hear down on Bourbon. We wanted the sound of a soul singer who’d been cursed by voodoo, eaten by a one-eyed alligator, and was having to plead his way out of hell. Ya’know… the sound of him begging and pleading with Lucifer himself. But instead of his voice it was the sitar doing all the pleading, and all the time, the devil would be going ‘no, no, no’ on the bass guitar…

Willie Shaw – founder of the Spunkjet Five

Scarecrows ballroom dancing in the South wing of Everbleak. Every empty hall, corridor and room was a potential stage.

We’ll leave you, once again, in the capable hands of Little Lenny ‘the hex’ Lennon. This quote is taken from a copy of The Everbleak Bugle – a newsletter created and circulated by the inmates (sporadically) over three decades (60’s – 80’s).

We’re lucky. We have all the musical talent under the sun in this place. And what’s under the moon too. Light and dark, y’know? And we have time and space to swing it, man. I mean really swing it’s dick off. Sure, I could use a little whisky from time to time, but at least I got my music. At least I got that.