What is the Punk Rock Orchestra? The Punk Rock Orchestra (PRO) was created by David Ferguson, the Executive Director of the Institute For Unpopular Culture (www.ifuc.org) almost two years ago.

The hits of classic punk rock form the 1970s-80s have been rearranged for a 50 piece orchestra and seven opera singers. PRO combines thundering symphonic sound and highly entertaining theatrical performance with outrageous costumes and hairdos. This colorful cross-breeding of the rebellious and cool punk rock energy with the classical symphonic instruments and the operatic singing traditions forms an important new musical genre.

In turn, it creates a possibility of getting young people excited about studying and listening to classical music and opera. Not only does the PRO stimulate the expansion of children's cultural education, but it provides a virtually unlimited opportunity for everyone to actively participate. Unlike a rock band that has room for only 3-6 youngsters, a school-based “junior” Punk Rock Orchestra will have room for every single student to play instruments and sing together. PRO’s classical music roots are ageless, so adults are invited to participate as well.

In January 2004, PRO started the 48-track digital recording sessions which were engineered by Skywalker Sound’s audio-wizard Leslie Ann Jones (see picture below)

For a history of Leslie's impressive credits, please see her link: http://www.artistdirect.com/music/artist/appears/0,,450421,00.html

Very appropriately, Leslie happens to be a daughter of the legendary prankster and early-radio star Spike Jones, who conducted his orchestra with a toilet plunger in the 1940s.

Spike’s legacy of making classical music fun and accessible for kids will now be carried on by John Gluck, who bravely conducts with a toilet brush, as the PRO belts out Dead Kennedys’ California Uber Alles.

The Punk Rock Orchestra: Anarchy in the first chair

Hailing from San Francisco, CA the Punk Rock Orchestra is a 50+ piece strong orchestra that plays punk rock tunes you know and love that are specially arranged for symphonic instruments and operatic voice. The orchestra is run under the auspices of the Institute For Unpopular Culture, a San Francisco not-for-profit organization

Punk Rock Orchestra’s set list is a journey through the great punk bands: Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, Sex Pistols, Circle Jerks, Fear, Suicidal Tendencies and so on. All the members are classically trained, many of them by recognized masters of their respective instruments. From mosh pits to orchestra pits, you won't hear anything like this anywhere else.

Members of the Orchestra have played with many local symphonies and ensembles including: San Francisco Symphony, San Francisco Opera, San Francisco Civic, Oakland Civic, Peninsula Symphony, Sacramento Symphony, Stockton Symphony, Napa Symphony, Pacific Wind Ensemble, Deutscher Musik-Verein, Berkeley Opera, North Bay Opera, Berkeley Lyric Opera, Symphony Parnassus, SF Concerto Opera, SF Repertory Opera Orchestra, Community Music Center Orchestra and the San Francisco Composers Chamber Orchestra

Members have also played with such local bands as The Dead Kennedys, The Residents, The Woodyz, The Inciters, Apocalipstick!, Pick-Pocket Opera, Cotton Candy Cabaret and Staranova.

Maximum Rock and Roll, the New York Times of punk, called them "Shocking". The San Francisco Bay Guardian describes their music as "...low brow music on high brow instruments," and Charles Osgood of CBS Radio said "Now you've heard everything."

The Punk Rock Orchestra is the experience of a lifetime. Don't miss them.

Punk Rock Orchestra Press PRO has been getting extensive coverage by nation-wide CBS radio and San Francisco’s local television news, including CBS (Ch 5), ABC (Ch 7) and PBS (Ch 9).

Transcript of CBS Radio Osgood Files - November 3, 2003

I'm Charles Osgood for the CBS Radio Network.

Here is a symphony orchestra with a rather unusual repertoire.

SFX: Punk music

SOT: Gluck: It's the perfect blend between orchestral color, orchestral dynamics and punk rock music. Stradivarius meets Sid Vicious. after this for Walgreen’s. Lots of communities have community orchestras, but only San Francisco has one that plays music by the punk band Fear.

SFX: Music:" Let's have a war, So you can go and die!" :05 The Punk Rock Orchestra is the brainchild of David Ferguson, Director of the Institute for Unpopular Culture. His online ad for classically trained musicians got a huge response.

SOT: Ferguson: "Hundreds of people-bassoon players, tympani players, violin, cello - it was astonishing: they wanted to play punk rock."

SFX: Music The orchestra performs in traditional black, punctuated by pink wigs and slashed T-shirts. Music Director John Gluck, in the do-it-yourself punk spirit, is a self-taught arranger and conductor. Which explains a lot, I think.

SOT: Gluck: “My style of conducting is, like, I learned from Bugs Bunny.”

But the musicians in the orchestra are top drawer. Many of them, like flute and piccolo player Susanne Rublein have day jobs with professional orchestras, but they still hold on to music they grew up with.

SOT: Rublein: “I started on piano when I was about 5, and flute when I was 9, but I always considered myself to be one of those punk rock chicks even though I played classical music.”

SFX: Music: “ I'm governor Jerry Brown, My aura smiles and never frowns, Soon I will be Pres - i - dent,”

The orchestra's repertoire includes classics from the Dead Kennedys, Black Flagg, the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, and more. Not every song is right for orchestral treatment, says Gluck. But when it works, says David Ferguson, it's a revelation.

SOT: Ferguson: "It really comes alive with orchestral color, and when you have opera trained singers being your lead singers, you have a sound that's more like Stravinsky than Johnny Rotten.”

Now, you've herd everything. More details and the band’s history can be found at www.punkrockorchestra.com.

Flavorpill week of May 17th, 2004 issue #107

Death to Electric Guitars!

One shouldn't take David Ferguson too seriously. His Institute for Unpopular Culture and its requisite Punk Rock Orchestra practically legitimize all that is absurdly - and ironically - postmodern. Trust, then, that when Ferguson announces "Death to Electric Guitars!" he hardly means it. In fact, his love for the Dead Kennedys prompted him to rearrange "California Uber Alles" into opera form. Jello Biafra's boisterous rant is now a composition, performed by Ferguson's Craigslist-cultivated symphony of classically trained cellists, violinists, and opera singers. Joining the PRO for this rare performance are Amber Asylum and the Extra Action Marching Band, banging out punk and rock classics on strings, skins, and anything but guitars. (KT)

SF WEEKLY - BEST OF SAN FRANCISCO - MUSIC

sfweekly.com MAY 19-25, 2004 page 221

The House of Tudor (by Silke Tudor)

There are those who believe real art is born out of a struggle against the status quo - that the truly inspired will find a way to express themselves even if it's in the parking lot of the local bowling alley - and there are those who recognize that even "outsiders" like Vincent van Gogh and Darby Crash shared the advantage of benefactors. David Ferguson, founder and executive director of the nonprofit Institute for Unpopular Culture, is of the opinion that artists should not have to cater to public taste and popular opinion in order to survive, and, mad though it may be, he has put money where his mouth is in support of such ignotus art.

Over the last three decades Ferguson has provided encouragement and backing for now-prominent nonconformists such as Divine, Jean-Michel Basquiat, and Nicolino (of the "Bras Across the Grand Canyon" project; created a lecture agency around a roster that included the Black Panther Party, Yippie Party founder Paul Krassner, Whole Earth catalog founder Stewart Brand, and poet Michael McClure; and, through his early punk label CD Presents (rounded in 1978, long before the advent of CDs), left fingerprints on the careers of Johnny Rotten, Lydia Lunch, Henry Rollins, Billy Bragg, and the Avengers. Through the IFUC Ferguson has championed musical animation ambassadors the Sprocket Ensemble, Obie Award-winning performance artist Holly Hughes, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, Swedish-born painter Hawk Alfredson, and the Mission District visual arts center Creativity Explored, which provides a forum for the developmentally challenged.

Last month, the IFUC and its house band, the 40-plus classically trained musicians who make up the Punk Rock Orchestra, provided support for the San Francisco Renegades Drum & Bugle Corps' fifth annual Loud Music Symposium in its conquest of the stately Herbst Theatre. To be sure, creating unholy decibel levels that shook the same stage where the United Nations Charter was signed in 1945 was a strident and stylistic statement in keeping with the spirit of the IFUC. In order to continue in this vein of subtle subversion, the nonprofit must raise funds for its operational costs and yearly allotment of grants.

This year's charity event, "Death to Electric Guitars" brings together three musical group that thumb their collective noses at the favored instrument of mainstream radio: the Punk Rock Orchestra in its first show since recording an album at the Skywalker Ranch under the tutelage of Grammy Award-winning Leslie Ann Jones; Amber Asylum in its last show before entering the studio to complete its latest offering of nocturnal chamber emissions; and the Extra Action Marching Band in its next-to-last show before it is shot into a parallel universe where sound is tactile, hedonism is sanctified, and drunken majorettes rule the world.

"Death to Electric Guitars!" will also feature three IFUC-supported visual artists - Dan Das Mann, Tone Rawlings, and Nikolai Atanassov - whose work will be made available to collectors in the grand lobby

and forum of Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. "It is our aim to subvert all commercial avenues of art exploitation," explains Ferguson. "It's not that we dislike people who own art galleries, we just think there could be a viable alternative." And how.

"Death to Electric Guitars" will be held on Thursday, May 20, at YBCA with a donation bar supplied by Red Bull, Maker's Mark, Kuya Rum, and Lagunitas Brewery starting at 8 p.m.

Tickets are $15; call 978-2787 or visit www. yerbabuenaarts.org.

About David Ferguson and the Institute For Unpopular Culture David Ferguson is a founder and an executive director of the Institute For Unpopular Culture . The Institute is a nonprofit formed in 1989 that has supported emerging artists and promoted artistic attempts to challenge the status quo. By sponsoring "unpopular" artistic visions, IFUC helps to alleviate artists' needs to cater to public taste and opinion in order to survive.

Voted “Best Organization to Support Your Art” in the S.F. Bay Guardian's 1998 “Best of the Bay” Awards, IFUC has supported include Obie-award winning performance artist Holly Hughes, environmental activist Julia "Butterfly" Hill, The Sprocket Ensemble, Creativity Explored S.F., and painter Hawk Alfredson.

David Ferguson, has been an international outsider-culture impresario since the 1970s. The long list of notable dissenters with whom he has worked include Divine, painter Jean-Michel Basquiat, and conceptual artist Nicolino ("Bras Across the Grand Canyon"). Through his seminal punk label CD Presents, Ltd., (founded in 1978, currently classicpunk.com) David produced, managed, and directed the careers of musicians like Johnny Rotten (Public Image, Ltd.), Billy Bragg, The Avengers, Lydia Lunch, and Henry Rollins. David also operated a lecture agency in the 1970s which represented the Black Panther Party, Paul Krassner (founder of the Yippie Party), Stewart Brand (founder of the Whole Earth catalogue), and poet Michael McClure.

Institute For Unpopular Culture Press “Ferguson Finds Unconventional Fits Him Just Right” Lord Martine Friday, March 29, 2002 San Francisco Chronicle URL: sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/03/29/WB128674.DTL

David Ferguson, founder of San Francisco's Institute for Unpopular Culture, not only thinks outside the box -- he crushes it, dances on top of it, reinvents it and calls it whatever he likes. He has spent his life making trouble.

At age 20, this Pisces of solo persuasion traversed to the planet's flower- power apex during the Summer of Love in 1967 and never left.

I recently crashed with San Francisco's godfather of the unorthodox in his North Beach office. At a wobbly oak dining table, amid stacks and stacks of papers, books, boxes, artwork and three lovely office mates, he shared highlights from his rich history with a theatrical bevy of drag queens called the Cockettes, the Black Panthers, drugs' influence on the mainstream, his interaction with punk music's granddaddies and his stint with rock star Courtney Love.

We merely pecked at the many tales stored away in that monster brain of his.

Here are some slivers from our succulent converse:

Q: What was it like then -- the Summer of Love?

A: There was a sense that the world could be changed. What I remember most was the optimism.

A lot of people have carried that feeling throughout their lives. That's what really defines San Francisco as the place the Left Coast ended. So many cultures flourished with that attitude. All the different groups that are all about personal liberation, honesty and tolerance. I think the city still has that in spite of all its fragmentation.

Q: You said that change was part of the agenda back then. Through what vehicles, mediums, did you hope to achieve that?

A: Well, obviously there were political things about opposing the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement. But it seemed that when these people joined together, they found there was something different in their lives than suburban America and conforming to the white bread, typical, television mentality. There was a sense of originality, daring, creativity.

Q: Flashback to when you landed in San Francisco: What happened to you, for you, that made you stick?

A: I was going out to this beach area where you used to have to dump your trash, in this cubical. There were five or 10 of the most bizarre people I'd ever seen in my life, that were completely in drag. They had these incredible outfits on, beards, sequins. They were the Cockettes.

They were hitchhiking back into the city. It was madness to a kid from Florida. So I

asked: "Where do you guys wanna go? I'll take you!"

I found out that they were thinking of putting together a theatrical group at the Palace Theatre here in North Beach. It turned out that I helped them with some business affairs, public relations. . . It was just a swirling bit of madness that I thought was the next chapter after the Summer of Love.

Q: Did you make any money?

A: It wasn't about money. It was about partying. But a few years later, I helped them produce some shows. One on New Year's at Bimbo's in 1972. I think we charged all of $10.

Q: It sounds like you found yourself attracted to show people straight, ahem, away.

A: Well I've always been attracted to the underdog, the outsider. My theory has been -- since I was very young -- that creativity comes from places you'd least expect -- from people that break the mold, that are different; people that are not going to work everyday and obeying all the rules. I've since devoted my entire life to encouraging that in various ways.

Q: How were you making a living at this point?

A: In 1973, I started a counterculture booking agency for college lecture tours. I represented speakers from the radical political community and made commissions from that.

Q: Who did you work with?

A: The Black Panther Party, which endangered my life quite a bit. Those were the days when J. Edgar Hoover was trying to kill everyone associated with this group.

I also represented JoAnn Little from a very famous case from North Carolina.

She was in jail, was attacked by a jailer, fought back and killed him. A black woman defending herself in North Carolina in the mid-'70s was inconceivable. But she was declared innocent. A lot of women's groups were very much into supporting her. Gloria Steinem loved her.

It was a coordination of both cultural and political issues.

Q: So how did you get involved with the punk music scene?

A: I did a show with Iggy Pop at Bimbo's in '75, which the history books might say was the first punk concert here in the Bay Area.

I discovered what later became known as punk, in '77, when I saw the Ramones for the first time. It was eye-opening. I'd worked with rock bands for years, but there was a sense that this was a real subculture that was building itself.

Q: What was the punk music scene like in San Francisco?

A: People were reading about what was going on with the Clash and the Sex Pistols in England. The music was getting played on KUSF -- the college radio station here. So there was a sense of anticipation that those

bands might come to S.F. People, from mostly the art-school culture, were putting together bands. There was a sense of magnetism, that perhaps a new music counterculture would be possible.

Q: And these bands were performing about town?

A: Yes. But the real spark to that was when the Sex Pistols played here in 1978. A band that I was managing, the Avengers, was selected to open for them. That was the Woodstock of punk. People came from all over the country. And I swear, out of the 4,000 to 5,000 people in the audience, I'll bet 1,000 bands were started the next day. So many people I spoke with, in subsequent years, said that that was a night that changed their lives.

Q: CD Presents, then, became your record label?

A: Yes. It had previously been my concert-production company.

Q: What did CD stand for?

A: Well, it's a take off of the 1940 Civil Defense logo.

Q: Talk about some of the bands you worked with.

A: Because we were really the first label in America to take punk seriously,

people called from all over. So we did a series of compilations called "Rat Music for Rat People."

Q: Rats?

A: (Chuckle.) The first album had the Dead Kennedys, Black Flag, the Avengers, Circle Jerks. . . We were getting the founders of the California punk sound. We also did the first recordings for the Butthole Surfers.

I was fortunate to be at the right place at the right time. I was able to give some structure to this thing that was very diffuse. At the time, I was also managing a band from Los Angeles who was having a terrible time getting signed. You might have heard of them -- the Go-Go's.

Q: Of course.

A: But as soon as they went to England and performed with the Specials, they got signed there.

That was typical of the problems of the corporate record industry that didn't understand this new generation of music. They were very resistant. A lot of people -- who were the age I am now -- really put the damper on it in America.

Q: Like who?

A: Bill Graham, who monopolized all the big concert productions, hated punk with a passion -- even though he produced that one concert with the Sex Pistols. He was very offended by it all, didn't understand it, was threatened by it.

Q: Why is it that you get it and so many people of your demographic don't?

A: Well, I suppose it has a lot to do with the study of psychedelics I did in my early years. I'm old enough to have taken those things when they were legal, for the record.

Q: Tell me more.

A: I found those experiences of altered consciousness, an ability to understand reality in a different way. And I looked for answers in places that were not predigested and given to us by our parents and authority figures. It was about exploring the joy of the world as a unique and sometimes dangerous experience.

Much of the psychedelic culture, back then, became art that has made a permanent artistic contribution. Just as in the previous generation, the surrealists were influenced by Freudian psychology and dreams.

This is evidence that very mainstream figures were influenced by outsider culture.

If you're interested in creativity, the only way you can be truly original is if you take risks.

Q: What's your affiliation with Courtney Love?

A: She used to work in my shipping department packing boxes. Also several people from Faith No More and Fat Mike of No FX. It was a coincidence: You pack boxes for CD Presents, and you're a star!

Q: Show me the duct tape.

A: Courtney recorded some early work in our studio; just before she was cast in the film "Sid and Nancy."

Q: What do you think of what her career has become?

A: Courtney is a very interesting character. I think she's done a lot to empower women in the rock 'n' roll world, which is typically a macho culture. She's an artist that has taken her responsibilities very seriously.

Q: You also wove Web with R.E.M. and Chris Isaak?

A: They did their first demos in our studio, too.

Q: Is the music scene in San Francisco at all what it used to be? Talent? Interest?

A: It's a different genre. I don't see too much excitement coming out of the rock 'n' roll motif. But the dance culture, electronica -- between here and London is where that kind of music is really happening.

Q: Now tell me, what is the IFUC?

A: It's a nonprofit established in 1989, sanctioned by the IRS, so contributions are tax deductible -- just like with the Red Cross. Our mission is to help outsider artists and creative people that don't fit the mold that need help with public relations, business, counseling, opportunities, access to equipment, sponsoring with grants and funding for their projects. . . I'm basically -- in a nonprofit context -- carrying on the work I did with my record label, which was in a commercial context.

Q: Does it cost the artist anything?

A: Nothing.

Q: What types of artists do you work with?

A: Musicians, painters, filmmakers, writers, sculptors. . .

Q: What are your criteria?

A: The more I've observed the formal nonprofit culture, I have tended toward rejecting its methodology, which is basically about long involved grant applications, begging for support, placating to politically correct agendas that are very rigid. Everyone has to have the same look, statement, attitude.

So it's absolutely arbitrary. If somebody approaches us, we like 'em, we get along, we're interested in their work -- we help 'em out. It's very informal. Half the time we go looking for artists we've heard about.

Q: What's the process like?

A: One of the projects we worked with was one you wrote about -- Francis Kohler and Todd Herman, two filmmakers from Creativity Explored.

Q: Oh yeah!

A: One of our specialties is to look for innovative ways to help people.

These guys teach at Creativity Explored and made a film on some of their developmentally disabled students. They ran out of money when they hit the editing process. One of the programs we have around here is with the city of San Francisco called Project 20, where people can work off their parking tickets by

donating their services as public service. We found a fellow that was a film editor who had $1,000 worth of parking tickets to work off. It was wonderful, no money had to change hands.

Q: Genius! I don't think as many people know about your organization as should.

A: Well, Martine, I know you can keep a secret. . . . We've tried not to toot our horn too much because we are an all-volunteer organization, and we do have physical limitations.

Q: So you also seek volunteers to join the force?

A: Absolutely. We have some big projects coming up.

Q: Do tell.

A: Art Freedom Day, which is a new concept in entertainment and fund- raising. It incorporates theater, art, movies, performance, music -- but on a grand scale. The idea is to have art that's usually seen by a dozen people available to a much larger audience.

It will be the culmination of all my thoughts, desires and activities; to find a way for people in the arts to be liberated from the constraints. Today, it's about changing the world in other ways than economic -- money should not be the purpose of life and the dictator of social position. Now I don't reject capitalism, I appreciate the royalties that my products give me.

Q: How is IFUC funded?

A: Um, spare change?

Q: What is your budget?

A: Just a few thousand a month will keep us going.

Q: Let's get personal: any pets?

A: None that breathe. Books are my pets.

Q: What was the last book you read?

A: I've been very deeply immersed in the Encyclopedia Britannica.

Q: Reading it cover to cover?!

A: Once I got past aardvark, I was off and running into what I've found to be quite an eclectic experience.

Q: You are a freak! Describe your worst nightmare.

A: Getting up in the morning and going to a job that I could not stand. I've been fortunate that I have not been employed my entire life. I've always been in charge of my own destiny. Even though it's anxiety-producing, I recommend it to everyone.

Q: How would you spend your last $20?

A: Many years ago, when I was making the transition from my record company to the institute, I was falling on somewhat tough times and was evicted from my apartment of

many years. That was the day that I decided to become a philanthropist. The closer I've gotten to the edge, the more I've realized that I can sustain any setback -- as long as my health and sanity are still with me.

Q: So who got that $20?

A: That same day, I remember seeing my old friend Courtney Love on the cover of Vanity Fair. I was shocked because the last time I'd seen her, I had to let her go because she wasn't very good at packing boxes. I bought that magazine in support of Courtney.