There are some things they don’t teach you in history class, then there are some things that they don’t teach you in history class because they are too hard to believe even happened, even if they really did. Like Harvey “The Most Hated Man in America” Matusow. I’m sure you’re asking “Who was Harvey Matusow?” Well, not only did Matusow help destroy the lives of countless innocent Americans due to his high livin’ and low-ballin’ work with Joseph McCarthy and the House Unamerican Affairs Committee (who then acted as an ironic scapegoat for after it collapsed, hence his title), but was also a handy entrepreneur in the big-time avant garde art and music circles in England and NYC, was married and divorced twelve times, was the sole person who introduced John Lennon to Yoko Ono (horrors!), did time for perjury in a cell right next to Willhelm Reich (who died a few feet away from him), started the rumor that smoking dried banana peels gets you high (as an act of revenge against Chiquita Banana), turned Robert f. Kennedy onto LSD, wrote one of the first how-to books on computer hacking, worked with the Fluxus group, recorded a you-gotta-hear-it-to-believe-it psychedelic food-centric Jew’s Harp-only album (Harvey Matusow’s Jews Harp Band’s War Between Fats and Thins) in 1969 …and in his later years lived on communes and helped homeless runaways while hosting a Mormon-centric public access TV show in Utah, The Magic Mouse Show, as Cockyboo the Clown (in full clown drag). Some people feel like they’ve looked at life from both sides now …all the time. Matusow was working on his autobiography, Stringless Yo Yo, when he died in 2002. This link includes links galore (and excerpts from Stringless Yo Yo) as well as every single song from War Between Fats and Thins as downloadable mp3s (yep). Of course there is more here. Now this is the guy that someone should have made a black and white, McCarthy-era film about.

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