David Ferguson (impresario)
Encyclopedia
David Ferguson is an international outsider-culture impresario, activist, music producer and concert promoter. Over his career – most of which has been spent on the West Coast—he has worked with musical acts such as The Avengers
The Avengers (band)
The Avengers are an American punk rock band formed in 1977 in San Francisco, California. Penelope Houston, who has also been a folk musician, is their singer.-Original history:...

, John Lydon
John Lydon
John Joseph Lydon , also known by the former stage name Johnny Rotten, is a singer-songwriter and television presenter, best known as the lead singer of punk rock band the Sex Pistols from 1975 until 1978, and again for various revivals during the 1990s and 2000s...

 (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), Billy Bragg
Billy Bragg
Stephen William Bragg , better known as Billy Bragg, is an English alternative rock musician and left-wing activist. His music blends elements of folk music, punk rock and protest songs, and his lyrics mostly deal with political or romantic themes...

, Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop
Iggy Pop is an American singer, songwriter, musician, and actor. Though considered an innovator of punk rock, Pop's music has encompassed a number of styles over the years, including pop, metal, jazz and blues...

, Bad Brains
Bad Brains
Bad Brains is an American hardcore punk band formed in Washington, D.C., in 1977. They are widely regarded as among the pioneers of hardcore punk, though the band's members objected to this term to describe their music. They are also an adept reggae band, while later recordings featured elements of...

, Black Flag
Black Flag (band)
Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established by Greg Ginn, the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes in the band...

, and The Butthole Surfers and visual artists Vaughn Bode
Vaughn Bodé
Vaughn Bodē was an artist involved in underground comics, graphic design and graffiti. He is perhaps best known for his comic strip character Cheech Wizard and artwork depicting voluptuous women. His works are noted for their psychedelic look and feel...

,Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...

, and Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...

. Ferguson worked with multi-discipline artists such as avant-garde musician and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch and the psychedelic drag queen
Drag queen
A drag queen is a man who dresses, and usually acts, like a caricature woman often for the purpose of entertaining. There are many kinds of drag artists and they vary greatly, from professionals who have starred in films to people who just try it once. Drag queens also vary by class and culture and...

 performance group The Cockettes
The Cockettes
The Cockettes were a psychedelic drag queen troupe founded by Hibiscus in the late 1960s in San Francisco's North Beach neighborhood. The troupe performed outrageous parodies of show tunes and gained an underground cult following that led to mainstream exposure.In 1971, over differences in...

.

The San Francisco Chronicle
San Francisco Chronicle
thumb|right|upright|The Chronicle Building following the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake|1906 earthquake]] and fireThe San Francisco Chronicle is a newspaper serving primarily the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California, but distributed throughout Northern and Central California,...

 referred to Ferguson as the "godfather of the unorthodox", adding that Ferguson "...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." The East Bay Express
East Bay Express
The East Bay Express is an Oakland-based weekly newspaper serving the Berkeley, Oakland, and East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area...

 wrote, "David Ferguson's life story reads like an encyclopedia of the underground."

Ferguson founded and presently heads the Institute for Unpopular Culture
Institute for Unpopular Culture
Institute For Unpopular Culture is an alternative and outsider culture organization based in San Francisco, California.-Funding:IFUC is a Private Foundation. It no longer accepts tax deductible donations in the USA....

, a San Francisco-based arts organization. Through IFUC, Ferguson has maintained his involvement in anti-war protests, an activism which dates back to his student days at the University of Miami in the 1960s.

Early career

Ferguson was co-leader of the Union of Students to End the War in Vietnam
Vietnam
Vietnam – sometimes spelled Viet Nam , officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam – is the easternmost country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It is bordered by China to the north, Laos to the northwest, Cambodia to the southwest, and the South China Sea –...

 and his activism lead to discussions of disciplinary action, the outcome of which is not clear. Ferguson had also arranged for Pop Art icon Andy Warhol to speak at the campus in 1968, an event that led to a professional association between the two.

Ferguson moved to San Francisco in 1969 where he met the performance troupe The Cockettes, for whom he later produced and promoted live shows. Even in tolerant San Francisco, The Cockettes' performance antics presented thorny PR issues. A member of the group wrote about a tactic Ferguson used to sneak the troupe and its outrageous stage behavior by wary club owners:
Ferguson formed a lecture and appearance scheduling enterprise in 1973. Through the agency, he maintained an association with the Black Panther Party by representing Black Panther Party
Black Panther Party
The Black Panther Party wasan African-American revolutionary leftist organization. It was active in the United States from 1966 until 1982....

 then-chairperson Elaine Brown. The agency also scheduled lectures for Jo Ann Little
Joan Little
Joan Little is an African American woman whose trial for the 1974 murder of a white prison guard at Beaufort County Jail in Washington, North Carolina, became a cause célèbre of the civil rights, feminist, and anti-death penalty movements. Little was the first woman in United States history to be...

,Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner
Paul Krassner is an author, journalist, stand-up comedian, and the founder, editor and a frequent contributor to the freethought magazine The Realist, first published in 1958...

,Jerry Mander
Jerry Mander
Jerold Irwin "Jerry" Mander is an American activist and author, best known for his 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television...

,and Beat
Beat generation
The Beat Generation refers to a group of American post-WWII writers who came to prominence in the 1950s, as well as the cultural phenomena that they both documented and inspired...

 poet Michael McClure
Michael McClure
Michael McClure is an American poet, playwright, songwriter, and novelist. After moving to San Francisco as a young man, he found fame as one of the five poets who read at the famous San Francisco Six Gallery reading in 1955 rendered in barely fictionalized terms in Jack Kerouac's Dharma Bums...

. "Ferguson's personal punk legacy includes helping promote concerts in the early 1970s for Iggy Pop and The New York Dolls."

CD Presents

In 1979, Ferguson co-founded CD Presents as a concert promotion company. Ferguson's concert promotion career took an important turn when he was asked to produce West Coast shows for Public Image Ltd.
Public Image Ltd.
Public Image Ltd are an English post-punk band formed by vocalist John Lydon , guitarist Keith Levene and bassist Jah Wobble, with frequent subsequent personnel changes. Lydon is the sole constant member of the band....

 during PiL's first two American tours (1980 and 1982). The 1980 show in Southern California proved not only a memorable event in PiL's career:
It also marked the first concert appearance of Los Lobos
Los Lobos
Los Lobos are a multiple Grammy Award–winning American Chicano rock band from East Los Angeles, California. Their music is influenced by rock and roll, Tex-Mex, country, folk, R&B, blues, brown-eyed soul, and traditional Spanish and Mexican music such as cumbia, boleros and norteños.-History:The...

, known at the time as a Tejano mariachi wedding band.

In keeping with the group's image, PiL balked at major label promotion to back its tour, insisting instead on working with smaller, independent promoters. This led to the band's association with CD Presents, an informal partnership that put PiL and Ferguson on a collision course with music industry powers, most notably Bill Graham
Bill Graham (promoter)
Bill Graham was an American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death.-Early life:...

, head of the San Francisco-based Bill Graham Presents.

Graham held a virtual monopoly on concert promotion in Northern California and he stepped in on more than one occasion to postpone the San Francisco PiL show, ultimately maneuvering to persuade city officials to terminate the concert all together. This battle played to Lydon's own reputation as an anti-establishment hell raiser: "We've got to play this gig," [Lydon] exclaimed. "It's everything we came here to do on this tour. We gave them six gigs for these two, and we'll see which ones come off the most successful. That's what they're really afraid of." Fearing riots if the PiL show was cancelled, city officials authorized CD Presents to proceed with the concert.

Either through the label or through its distribution system, CD Presents recorded, released or distributed the music of nearly 3,300 artists. In 1983, the label released a compilation of The Avengers
The Avengers (band)
The Avengers are an American punk rock band formed in 1977 in San Francisco, California. Penelope Houston, who has also been a folk musician, is their singer.-Original history:...

' material popularly known as The Pink Album. Additionally, CD Presents released records from D.O.A
D.O.A. (band)
D.O.A. is a hardcore punk band from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They are often referred to as the "founders" of hardcore punk, along with Black Flag, Bad Brains, Teen Idles, and Minor Threat. Their second album Hardcore '81 was thought by many to have been the first actual reference to...

, Butthole Surfers
Butthole Surfers
Butthole Surfers is an American alternative rock band formed by Gibby Haynes and Paul Leary in San Antonio, Texas in 1981. The band has had numerous personnel changes, but its core lineup of Haynes, Leary, and drummer King Coffey has been consistent since 1983. Teresa Nervosa served as second...

, and Tales of Terror
Tales of Terror (band)
Tales of Terror was a Sacramento punk rock band which was active from 1982 until 1986. The band released a self-titled LP in 1984 on the label CD Presents. The LP is rare, and no CD version has been released. Tales of Terror played sleazy, sloppy, raucous California punk in the vein of the Stooges...

. CD Presents released the San Francisco group The Offs
The Offs
The Offs are a punk/ska band from San Francisco, started by guitarist Billy Hawk and singer Don Vinil, and later joined by former Hot Tuna drummer Bob Steeler and a rotation of horn players including Bob Roberts, Richard Edson and Roland Young...

' First Record (1984) with a Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat
Jean-Michel Basquiat was an American artist. His career in art began as a graffiti artist in New York City in the late 1970s, and in the 1980s produced Neo-expressionist painting.-Early life:...

-designed cover.

During the 1980s, CD Presents released three volumes of punk recording compilations titled Rat Music for Rat People (1988), a collection of songs previously released by Go Records! in 1982, featuring a number of the era's most notable punk bands: The Avengers
The Avengers (band)
The Avengers are an American punk rock band formed in 1977 in San Francisco, California. Penelope Houston, who has also been a folk musician, is their singer.-Original history:...

, Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys
Dead Kennedys are an American punk rock band formed in San Francisco, California in 1978. The band became part of the American hardcore punk movement of the early 1980s. They gained a large underground fanbase in the international punk music scene....

, Black Flag
Black Flag (band)
Black Flag was an American punk rock band formed in 1976 in Hermosa Beach, California. The band was established by Greg Ginn, the guitarist, primary songwriter and sole continuous member through multiple personnel changes in the band...

 w/Henry Rollins
Henry Rollins
Henry Rollins is an American singer-songwriter, spoken word artist, writer, comedian, publisher, actor, and radio DJ....

, Circle Jerks
Circle Jerks
The Circle Jerks are an American hardcore punk band, formed in 1980 in Los Angeles, California. It was formed by Black Flag's original singer, Keith Morris, and future Bad Religion guitarist Greg Hetson. They were among the preeminent hardcore punk bands of the L.A. scene in the late 1970s.The band...

, The Subhumans, and D.O.A.
D.O.A. (band)
D.O.A. is a hardcore punk band from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. They are often referred to as the "founders" of hardcore punk, along with Black Flag, Bad Brains, Teen Idles, and Minor Threat. Their second album Hardcore '81 was thought by many to have been the first actual reference to...

Vol. 2 (1984) showcased a number of Texas punk bands including, The Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, The Dicks
The Dicks
The Dicks are an American punk rock band from Austin, Texas, originally formed in 1980. They initially disbanded in 1986 before reforming in 2004...

, MDC
MDC (band)
MDC is an American hardcore punk band formed in Austin, Texas in 1979. The band were subsequently based in San Francisco, California, and are currently based in Portland, Oregon. MDC originally formed as The Stains before changing their name...

 along with the Southern California hardcore band, Minutemen
Minutemen (band)
Minutemen were an American hardcore punk band formed in San Pedro, California in 1980. Composed of guitarist D. Boon, bassist Mike Watt and drummer George Hurley, Minutemen recorded four albums and eight EPs before Boon's death in an automobile accident in December 1985...

. Rat Music, Vol. 3 (1987) featured The Adolescents
The Adolescents
The Adolescents are an American punk band formed in 1980 in Fullerton, California. It is a punk supergroup, made up of early members of Agent Orange and Social Distortion. They are often credited as one of the leading bands of the 1980s hardcore punk scene....

, Naked Raygun
Naked Raygun
Naked Raygun is a Chicago-based punk rock group. Initially active from 1980 to about 1992, Naked Raygun had several short-lived reunions afterwards and a full-time reformation in 2006....

 and Mojo Nixon
Mojo Nixon
Mojo Nixon is an American musician, known for playing psychobilly music...

. Vol. 3 also was one of the earliest records of producer/engineer Sylvia Massy
Sylvia Massy
Sylvia Massy is an entrepreneur, record producer, and studio engineer in the United States. Massy is perhaps best recognized for her work on 1993's Undertow, the full-length double platinum-selling debut for Los Angeles rock band Tool.-History:...

 (Johnny Cash
Johnny Cash
John R. "Johnny" Cash was an American singer-songwriter, actor, and author, who has been called one of the most influential musicians of the 20th century...

, Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Red Hot Chili Peppers is an American rock band, formed in Los Angeles in 1983. The group's musical style primarily consists of rock with an emphasis on funk, as well as elements from other genres such as punk, hip hop and psychedelic rock...

, and Tool
Tool (band)
Tool is an American rock band from Los Angeles, California. Formed in 1990, the group's line-up has included drummer Danny Carey, guitarist Adam Jones, and vocalist Maynard James Keenan. Since 1995, Justin Chancellor has been the band's bassist, replacing their original bassist Paul D'Amour...

's Undertow
Undertow (Tool album)
"Disgustipated" is track 69 on most pressings in North America . It also appears as track 39, track 10 or as a hidden track following "Flood" on track 9...

), who mixed and engineered a number of the tracks. radiostarstudios.com/massydiscography

CD Presents released albums from artists in other genres besides punk, including the avant-garde musician, poet and actress Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch
Lydia Lunch is an American singer, poet, writer, and actress whose career was spawned by the New York No Wave scene...

 and electronic
Electronic music
Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology. Examples of electromechanical sound...

 and the experimental
Experimental music
Experimental music refers, in the English-language literature, to a compositional tradition which arose in the mid-20th century, applied particularly in North America to music composed in such a way that its outcome is unforeseeable. Its most famous and influential exponent was John Cage...

 post punk act Minimal Man
Minimal man
Minimal Man was an American industrial and experimental rock project, formed in 1979 in San Francisco, California. The group was founded and led by Patrick Miller, a visual and sound artist who moved to San Francisco in the late 1970s...

.

Institute For Unpopular Culture

In 1989 Ferguson founded the Institute for Unpopular Culture
Institute for Unpopular Culture
Institute For Unpopular Culture is an alternative and outsider culture organization based in San Francisco, California.-Funding:IFUC is a Private Foundation. It no longer accepts tax deductible donations in the USA....

 (IFUC) as a non-profit organization to support artists outside the mainstream art world. "It is our aim to subvert all commercial avenues of art exploitation," Ferguson said. "It's not that we dislike people who own art galleries, we just think there could be a viable alternative." IFUC's stated mission is to discover and mentor outsider artists and creative people by assisting with public relations, business, counseling, opportunities, access to equipment, and funding for their projects.

Ferguson founded The Punk Rock Orchestra, a 50-plus member collaboration which recasts punk songs in an orchestral format. The orchestra has been featured on NPR
NPR
NPR, formerly National Public Radio, is a privately and publicly funded non-profit membership media organization that serves as a national syndicator to a network of 900 public radio stations in the United States. NPR was created in 1970, following congressional passage of the Public Broadcasting...

 and CBS Radio's
CBS Radio
CBS Radio, Inc., formerly known as Infinity Broadcasting Corporation, is one of the largest owners and operators of radio stations in the United States, third behind main rival Clear Channel Communications and Cumulus Media. CBS Radio owns around 130 radio stations across the country...

 The Osgood File
Charles Osgood
Charles Osgood is a radio and television commentator in the United States. His daily program, The Osgood File, has been broadcast on the CBS Radio Network since 1971. He is also known for being the voice of the narrator of Horton Hears a Who!, an animated film released in 2008, based on the book...

. The PRO was voted San Francisco's Best Local Band in 2005 by readers of the SF Weekly
SF Weekly
SF Weekly is a free alternative weekly newspaper in San Francisco, California. The newspaper, distributed throughout the San Francisco Bay Area every Wednesday, is published by Village Voice Media, a 16-paper alt weekly newspaper chain that also includes the New York City Village Voice and the Los...

.

The Institute has supported and been associated with a number of artists, including Obie-award winning performance artist Holly Hughes
Holly Hughes (performance artist)
Holly Hughes is an American lesbian performance artist. She began as a feminist painter in New York but is best known for her connection with the NEA Four, with whom she was denied funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, and for her work with the Women's One World Cafe. Her plays...

 and graffiti artist Barry McGee
Barry McGee
Barry McGee is a painter and graffiti artist. He is also known by monikers such as Ray Fong, Lydia Fong, Bernon Vernon, P.Kin, Ray Virgil, Twist and further variations of Twist, such as Twister, Twisty, Twisto and others.-Life and career:McGee graduated from El Camino High School in South...

 (a.k.a. "Twist"). Clinton Fein
Clinton Fein
Clinton Fein is an artist, writer and activist, noted for his company Apollomedias controversial website Annoy.com and its Supreme Court victory against Janet Reno, United States Attorney General, regarding the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act in 1997.This victory, a landmark...

, founder of Annoy.com. Interns from the IFUC offered legal research in support of Fein's successful legal case against the U.S. government (ApolloMedia v. Reno) which challenged the constitutionality of the 1996 Communications Decency Act
Communications Decency Act
The Communications Decency Act of 1996 was the first notable attempt by the United States Congress to regulate pornographic material on the Internet. In 1997, in the landmark cyberlaw case of Reno v. ACLU, the United States Supreme Court struck the anti-indecency provisions of the Act.The Act was...

. IFUC has sponsored William Noguera, an artist who, since 1983 has been on death row at California's San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison
San Quentin State Prison is a California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation state prison for men in unincorporated San Quentin, Marin County, California, United States. Opened in July 1852, it is the oldest prison in the state. California's only death row for male inmates, the largest...

 and now creates photorealistic
Photorealism
Photorealism is the genre of painting based on using the camera and photographs to gather information and then from this information creating a painting that appears photographic...

  pointillist paintings with a rapidograph pen.
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