{"id":30180,"date":"2025-11-26T05:30:43","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T10:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/?p=30180"},"modified":"2025-10-19T13:53:24","modified_gmt":"2025-10-19T17:53:24","slug":"mcluhan-an-amazing-musical-anomaly-in-1971-and-today-part-one-of-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/2025\/11\/26\/mcluhan-an-amazing-musical-anomaly-in-1971-and-today-part-one-of-two\/","title":{"rendered":"McLuhan: An Amazing Musical \u2018Anomaly\u201d in 1971 and Today (Part One of Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"

The following is an edited and expanded version of a feature that was originally published in The Tonearm<\/b><\/i><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"One of the strangest albums of the early 1970s is also one of the unlikeliest. Released on Brunswick Records in 1972, Anomaly<\/i> is an album full of bizarre musical twists and turns, a sonic excursion that takes the listener on a trip through many styles of music, styles that by all rights don\u2019t belong on the same record. But in the hands of a group named after a famous philosopher and media theoretician, somehow it all works.<\/p>\n

The four lengthy pieces on Anomaly<\/i> travel through myriad musical textures. There\u2019s vocal pop reminiscent of the Association. There\u2019s powerful fusion along the lines of King Crimson or Centipede. There\u2019s progressive rock with horns, the likes of which would impress fans of Frank Zappa. There\u2019s wild, atonal free jazz a la<\/i> Albert Ayler. There are snatches of melodies from film and theater. And there are spoken-word passages suggesting an unholy meeting of the Fugs and Firesign Theatre. Sometimes these disparate pieces are crammed into a single song. It\u2019s wicked, wickedly funny and\u2026 weird. True to its name, Anomaly<\/i> is like nothing else.<\/p>\n

Calling their band McLuhan, the Chicago musicians who made Anomaly<\/i> held on just long enough to make their sole record, then broke up, leaving behind a fascinating minor masterpiece. Yet few listeners knew of Anomaly<\/i>\u2019s existence, much less heard the music on the record.<\/p>\n

But the story wouldn\u2019t end there. Decades later in the Internet era, buzz about this rare and strange album began to circulate. Sensing an opportunity, a label in Europe re-pressed Anomaly<\/i> without the group\u2019s knowledge or consent. That led to more discussion of the album and its unique charms. Then something even more unlikely happened: Most of the original group got back together, playing the music they had recorded in the early \u201870s. Eventually the group arranged a limited-run vinyl reissue of the album, and in 2025 Think Like a Key Music licensed Anomaly<\/i> for its first-ever CD release.<\/p>\n

Today, McLuhan includes original members Neal Rosner (bass) and Paul Cohn (clarinet, flute, saxophone and woodwinds) and Tom Tojza (keyboardist on Anomaly<\/i>). At shows, the band performs Anomaly<\/i> in its entirety along with new music composed by Rosner in a style that complements the music from the band\u2019s all-too-brief early \u201870s incarnation. Paul Cohn spoke with me about the improbable saga of McLuhan.<\/p>\n

How did you end up in a group like McLuhan, making this strange music?<\/b><\/p>\n

I started playing clarinet when I was eight years old. My dad bought me a clarinet and got me lessons from a guy down the street named Bob Gordon; he taught me how to read music. I went from there to a Polish wedding band that somebody got me into, and then when I was about 12 or 13 I joined a bar mitzvah band called the Sophisticates. Neil was my next door neighbor, and was trained in music; he had a tremendous gift. He knocked on our door after we started developing, and he said, \u201cMaybe I can help.\u201d We told him, \u201cWe need a bass player,\u201d so he learned the bass.<\/p>\n

[A few years later] Neil and I were playing and performing together in this other band called The Seven Seas, doing Burt Bacharach, a lot of that kind of thing. We had a female singer, and the group was rehearsing in my basement at one point.<\/p>\n

Dave Wright was a trumpet player; we were both in the band at the University of Illinois at Chicago. I brought him into the group. But there were some disputes going on in that little band. And when the group broke up, Dave said, \u201cI have this idea, if you guys want to work on it.\u201d And so we launched this McLuhan thing. We were developing it in rehearsal, and then performing it at fraternity parties, college events and that type of thing.<\/p>\n

There was a guitar player at that time named Mark Rabin. He was someone I knew from the South Side of Chicago; I grew up at 100th and Calhoun. He lived the next street over at 100th and Hoxie. I ran into him on campus and he said, \u201cI play guitar.\u201d So he joined. But he was breaking his guitar at every performance, emulating [Pete Townshend].<\/p>\n

And then we got this job, Monday nights at the Wise Fools Pub.<\/p>\n

How did audiences react to McLuhan\u2019s music? <\/b><\/p>\n

I have memories, especially of Wise Fools Pub. We developed a following there pretty quickly. One of the songs on Anomaly<\/i> is \u201cWitches Theme and Dance.\u201d It\u2019s a sarcastic thing that Dave had; it\u2019s about the McCarthy era, witch hunts, all things that kind of parallel today. I remember playing that piece, and at the end we speak\/sing the lyrics: \u201cIf you understand this song, then you might just sing along. And for those who cannot hear us\u2026\u201d I distinctly remember being lit up because of the enthusiasm of the crowd. It was going over very well in that scene.<\/p>\n

But we never were promoted. Maybe we would have caught on if we had been promoted, but we did a bad job connecting with promoters. Coming out of Wise Fools Pub could have helped launch us, but we didn\u2019t have time on our side.<\/p>\n

How did the band wind up on Brunswick Records?<\/b><\/p>\n

There are a few different theories about why Carl Davis of Brunswick came to our performance at Wise Fools Pub and then invited us to do the album. But the one that I think is accurate is this: at that time, my mother was working for some attorneys. One of those people knew someone at Brunswick; maybe they were doing work for them.<\/p>\n

Brunswick was mostly soul music: the Chi-lites; Tyrone Davis, that type of thing. So we didn\u2019t fit in there. But they came to the performance and apparently [liked us]. Bruce Swedien was looking for something a little more\u2026 expansionary, and so they pushed it through. We got a phone call. Maybe a week later, I was walking down Michigan Avenue to Brunswick Studios!<\/p>\n

The group was on the verge of breaking up when you went in the studio with producer Bruce Swedien. That makes the resulting album even more remarkable. What was the studio experience like?<\/b><\/p>\n

It was tremendous. I remember little things; there\u2019s one part in one of the tunes that I\u2019m doing, and they had me play it slow on the flute and then they increased the speed so it sounds like a piccolo. And some of the trumpet sounds like it\u2019s 16 trumpets!<\/p>\n

When it was time to go into the studio, we didn\u2019t know what happened to Mark [Rabin]. So a guy named Stoney Phillips came in and did a great job. Our keyboard player, Marvin Kraut never recorded on the album, either. Marvin wrote \u201cSpiders (in Neal\u2019s Basement)\u201d \u2013 we named it later \u2013 and I think he went to Canada because of the draft; I\u2019m not sure. We were all about 20 years old, and the war was going on.<\/p>\n

But the whole thing that happened in the studio launched [the music] further in terms of what it was during the performances. When we first started doing this concept, we were showing the movie Bride of Frankenstein<\/i>. We were using different electronic devices that made my flute sound like a bassoon, and things like that.<\/p>\n

Then at that critical point where we were all going separate ways, we were able to get into that studio with none other than Bruce Swedien, who went on to record Michael Jackson [Three of Swedien\u2019s five subsequent Grammy Awards were for his engineering work on Jackson\u2019s Thriller<\/i>, Bad<\/i> and Dangerous<\/i>.] So we were very lucky the way these pieces all fit. It was miraculous; we were only in the studio for three days, and then done.<\/p>\n

To be continued\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is an edited and expanded version of a feature that was originally published in The Tonearm. One of the strangest albums of the early 1970s is also one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":30184,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,56,64],"tags":[5786,5785],"class_list":["post-30180","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-interview","category-prog","category-reissue","tag-anomaly","tag-mcluhan","cat-41-id","cat-56-id","cat-64-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30180","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30180"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30180\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30186,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30180\/revisions\/30186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30180"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30180"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30180"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}