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Don joined the Church of the SubGenius as a card-carrying reverend in 1981. The very next year, The Dancing Cigarettes played at the World SubGenius Convention in Chicago, and Sacred Scribe Ivan Stang gave this report in The Stark Fist of Removal:
"The music took a giant step into the underground with The Dancing Cigarettes' inspired performance. They aren't a 'Church Band,' but strong Dobbs sympathizers. Subversive characters. I knew band member Rev. G. Don Trubey from the older days when we were fellow members of a Firesign Theatre support network, trying to push George Papoon— a vaguely 'Bob' like, elusive character himself— for President. The Dancing Cigarettes have a highly original sound that has the frenzy and insanity of a Doktorband, but very tight. Their show effectively builds to a hair-raising peak of fast bulldada. They're serious musicians." { Click here to read selected pages of The Stark Fist that dig into the '82 SubCon. } On February 20, 1983, Don unveiled his SubGenius Trilogy ("Personal Savior Blues," "Dobbstown," "Hymn 999") at ER Night— a music/ film/ rant fest at the Monroe County Library in Bloomington, Indiana. Unfortunately, the set was a fabulous disaster due to the fact that Don'd been up for a solid week on Mother's Little Helper™ and he crashed and burned before our very eyeballs. Over the next few years, Don contributed art and writings to Church publications, but it weren't 'til 1987 that he finally decided to compile and release a tape of Dobbs-specific tunes— including the re-recorded Trilogy. The tape, entitled Post Hip Gnosis, featured the pharyngeal Philo Drummond and several erstwhile Dancing Cigarettes. Then, in 1991, Don was invited to perform at a SubGenius shindig called "'Bob's Bowery Bash" at CB's Gallery, the left wing of CBGB in New York City. Luckily, he had a band at the moment that could play out— Saint Ballantine. So he taught 'em a few of the "psalms" and, for this one shot, dubbed the band: Post Hip Gnosis. { Click on the bouncing "Bob" head for photos. }  Uncle Roy - Jan 2000 |
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POST HIP GNOSIS
60-min cassette or CD Yet another hilarious collection of rants, ravings, and songs from everyone's favorite neo-fanatic religious cult parody, the Church of the SubGenius. Rev. Don Trubey and his pals provide offerings from the Church's bottomless musical collection plate, ranging from pop and electric urban blues to thrash and even a hymn entitled "There's a Pipe in the Sky" (for you infidels, a briar pipe is a trademark of sorts for the Church's diety, J.R. "Bob" Dobbs). Whereas many other SubGenius tapes divide time between "rants" and music, this tape is almost all music. Spoken words are still used here and there, like the nifty use of excerpts from various Jimmy Swaggart sermons played over synthesized dance music. Secular humanists out there will find this tape a real hoot. Bryan Sale - Option Magazine - Sep/Oct 1988 |
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The music is... chakra-chilling in places... eardrum-mangling in others; and, in the unholy mixture thereof, wholly BUTT-NUKING. When you can't dance to it, you HAVE to trance out to it... and vice versa. I can remember a time BEFORE Interim Music [a subsidiary of Foreign Score Corp.], but I don't like to. I much prefer the ideal universe in which it always existed. I can sing along with all the songs; indeed, it's not a choice: I MUST sing along with them. Of course, that may be because I BELIEVE in them. Ivan Stang - Church of the SubGenius - 1988 Click here to check out the Firesign Theatre website. Click here to listen to Rev. Don's "Three Things" (from Bobsongs 8) at Bandcamp. Hymn 999 (a.k.a. "There's a Pipe in the Sky") is also on "Bob"s Punctured Eardrum now available at SubGenius.com. This 22-track CD features the cracked canticles of Brother Cleve Dunkan, Dr. Howll, Glassmadness, D.K. Jones, Mark Mothersbaugh, and The Swinging Love Corpses. The Dobbshead is a trademark of the SubGenius Foundation. The "more-forehead-Dobbs" used on this page— and in The Book of the SubGenius— was created in 1982 by Don Trubey. |
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