ONE TAKE ON THE ORIGINS OF PHONY LID
The origins of Phony Lid Publications are kind of shaky. Depending on who you ask, it can get confusing. Basically, it came out of the endless sardonic conversations of Louis Baudrey and Stasia Collins, two unemployed, over-educated transients in the dining room of the only house in a trailer park somewhere in rural north east Alabama.
Despite the lack of a phone, radio, television or car, they were determined to create a new media. It was winter and besides walking to the store for cigarettes in 20ยบ weather, there wasn’t much else to do.
The concept was simple: a magazine with a disposable name characterized by an intelligent irony, self-depracating in all the right places, but with the constant illusion of more than we actually were; a response to the fringe element that exists in contemporary literature… oh yeah, artwork, comics, articles on music, rants, social commentery, short stories and poems... just fill the pages with the best shit we could get our hands on, even if we had to write it all ourselves under a slew of fake names and identities, print the thing up as cheaply as possible to have enough copies to spread around and take over the world.
Of course, it wasn’t as easy as that.
Realizing the lack of motivation or influx of new ideas where they were, Spring showed and they packed the station wagon and set up living in New Orleans. Things picked up from there and the plan began to form.
Some more traveling was necessary, though, and 7 moves, 3 states later (this time in Birmingham, Alabama), they finally got it together and put out Vagabond Issue No 1.
Essentially a collection of the material gathered from artists and writers they had met along the way, it didn’t make much of a ripple but enough positive comments trickled in and it was enough to keep them going. A few months later, Issue No 2 appeared to a more favorable response. But, as the name implies, it was time to move again.
This time the editors parted… Louis made it back to the west coast and Stasia took up residence in the mountains of Tennessee.
The illustrious Phony Lid headquarters is currently located in the heart of downtown Los Angeles. Stasia sends in her daily dose of hate mail and Louis wanders in once and a while, back haunting the streets of San Francisco where the name Phony Lid has its origin:
Several years ago, in retaliation to the slew of bad drugs going around, Louis began advertising a non-existent band, Bunk Acid, through the distribution of flyers on telephone poles, graffiti and drunken persuasion of its validity.
One day, while walking down Haight Street to a hiss of propositions, an old woman passed him and mumbled “lids.”
“That’s just what I need,” he exclaimed. “If I didn’t already have a collection of fake shit already, I can add my first phony lid.”
Whether she was holding true kind or he just made it up, well… memories fade, the name was passed on and ranked highest on the list of potential tags.
Today, Phony Lid Publications offers the best in disposable verse, adventures from the edge, frenzies of vice and other tales of depravity for discerning readers who want to be entertained rather than moralized or bombarded by more rehashed lyrics and trite sentiment.
Get into the muck of it and find out what can be called trash these days.
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