#tom potts

Mother-Daughter / The Residents 1977

Joe Potts / Slimy Adenoid and the Pablums

Joe Potts - Mother-Daughter

Slimy Adenoid and the Pablums - The Residents

"Mother-Daughter" is an abrasive collage of '70s sunshine pop chants and groans that sound like the cookie monster in a pit, played over the ambience of a crowded subway.

"The Residents" is actually a song with a ramshackle drum beat going on as somebody mumbles a tribute to the Residents.

Other noises come in from other directions.

There's even a chorus: "Oh yeah, I told you 'bout the Residents."

Le Forte Four, one of the most radical groups in the experimental scene. Los Angeles, CA, an improvisation supergroup featuring underground legends Rick and Joe Potts. Le Forte Four, founded by the teenage Le Forte, four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts, and Rick Potts, soon joined by Tom Recchion of the Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS met in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and the Poo-Bah record store in old Pasadena.

Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS independently released records and periodicals, organized performances, and connected with fellow outsiders through correspondence in the years leading up to punk. Their uninhibited and egalitarian ideal of DIY music making and distribution would influence generations of underground artists.

Pioneers of sampling and the "do-it-yourself" aesthetic, anticipating practices that would become common in experimental and punk music, one of the first groups in the Los Angeles experimental scene, a member of LAFMS, active since 1973.

Projects related to the LAFMS scene include groups such as Smegma, Doo-Dooettes, and Airway ("Live at LACE" Airway), all fundamental to understanding this experimental and improvised soundscape of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Considered a supergroup of improvisation that mixed sound collages, lo-fi electronics, TV recordings, homemade synthesizers and rudimentary recordings, tape music, sampling, advanced rock, musique concrète, cartoons, and chaotic performances, paving the way for punk and independent experimentalism.

Main members: Chip Chapman Joe Potts Rick Potts Susan Chapman Tom Potts

Bikini Tennis Shoes (1975) – first release, a landmark of experimentalism.

L.A. Free Music Society Live at The Brand (1976) collaboration with the Doo-Dooettes

Spin 'N Grin (1981)

Le Forte Four, one of the most radical groups in the experimental scene.

The Los Angeles Free Music Society Los Angeles, CA, an improvisation supergroup featuring underground legends Rick and Joe Potts. Le Forte Four, founded by the teenage Le Forte, four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts, and Rick Potts, soon joined by Tom Recchion of the Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS met in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and the Poo-Bah record store in old Pasadena.

Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS independently released records and periodicals, organized performances, and connected with fellow outsiders through correspondence in the years leading up to punk. Their uninhibited and egalitarian ideal of DIY music making and distribution would influence generations of underground artists.

Pioneers of sampling and the "do-it-yourself" aesthetic, anticipating practices that would become common in experimental and punk music, one of the first groups in the Los Angeles experimental scene, a member of LAFMS, active since 1973.

Projects related to the LAFMS scene include groups such as Smegma, Doo-Dooettes, and Airway ("Live at LACE" Airway), all fundamental to understanding this experimental and improvised soundscape of Los Angeles in the 1970s.

Considered a supergroup of improvisation that mixed sound collages, lo-fi electronics, TV recordings, homemade synthesizers and rudimentary recordings, tape music, sampling, advanced rock, musique concrète, cartoons, and chaotic performances, paving the way for punk and independent experimentalism.

Main members: Chip Chapman Joe Potts Rick Potts Susan Chapman Tom Potts

Bikini Tennis Shoes (1975) – first release, a landmark of experimentalism.

L.A. Free Music Society Live at The Brand (1976) collaboration with the Doo-Dooettes

Spin 'N Grin (1981)

Various subsequent albums and collections, including Slowscan Vol. 2 (1985)

Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS) formed in the mid-1970s as a loose-knit experimental music collective and multimedia publishing vehicle.

Founded by teenage Le Forte Four members Chip Chapman, Joe Potts and Rick Potts and soon joined by Tom Recchion of Doo-Dooettes, LAFMS incorporated free improvisation, modular synthesizers, tape music, sampling, musique concrète, homemade instruments, noise, mail art and avant-rock in permissive and anarchic sessions at the Raymond Building and Poo-Bah Record Shop in old Pasadena. Inspired by The Residents, LAFMS self-released records and periodicals, organized performances and connected with fellow outsiders via post in the years before punk. Their uninhibited, egalitarian ideal of music-making and DIY distribution would influence generations of underground artists. 

Live At The Brand documents the second performance of newly formed LAFMS core groups Le Forte Four and Doo-Dooettes on July 8th 1976 at the recital hall of the Brand Library in Glendale. Le Forte Four (now joined by Tom Potts) did not actually perform live, but rather created 44 pyramid-shaped headphone helmets with internal quadraphonic speakers and countless wires in order to share their latest tape assemblages with showgoers deprived of sight. The recordings delivered in this Fluxus-inspired manner feature the Buchla synthesizer at nearby CalArts, radio interpolations, group improvisations, addled outbursts and splices from source material lost to time.

Doo-Dooettes – Tom Recchion, Harold Schroeder, Juan Gomez, Dennis Duck and Fredrik Nilsen – performed a series of alternately droning and chaotic duets with guitar, percussion, piano, tape loops and synthesizer, all improvised around loosely structured compositions and culminating in a spontaneous group composition at the end of the program.