John D Morton was one of a very small cadre of musicians who were part of Cleveland’s now legendary underground art-punk scene in Cleveland in the mid 1970s. He was the guitarist and songwriter for one of the most ephemeral of those bands, electric eels, a noisy freeform band whose confrontational act verged on performance art. Although their live performances were said to number around a half dozen, the members colonized other significant underground bands including Pere Ubu, the Cramps, Mirrors, the Lounge Lizards and the Styrenes.
By the end of the 70s, Moton moved to New York where he concentrated more on his visual art in the midst of an exploding art scene that cross fertilized with its downtown music scene. That’s the focus of the book I Am Not Real, just published by Cleveland-based Stone Church Press. It features his work from that early period through today, as well as his poetry experiments in the Japanese forms, haiku and tanka. The topics of both include popculture (robots and B-Movies, his memories of his musician friends who have passed such as Petr Laughner and Golden Palominos’ Anton Fier, and serious topics including addiction, mental health and death.
The book is being published in a limited edition of 500 and can be ordered from Stone Church’s website to ship in October.
stonechurchpress.com/product/i-am-not-real/