Michael Kac of Mandrake Memorial

The following is an interview with Michael Kac of Mandrake Memorial & most recently, Michael Kac & Linda Cohen

Mandrake Memorial used R.M.I. amps &
Electric Harpsochord made by Rocky Mountain Instruments

Geo: When did you start to play keyboards, and guitar? Did you study, and if so w/
who?

Michael: I took my first piano lessons at the age of 7, and continued into my first
couple of years of college. My most important teacher was George King
Driscoll, with whom I studied while I was in high school. I should add that
I wasn't an especially assiduous student in those days - I didn't start to
get serious until later.

I began playing guitar in college, mostly out of self defense. Folk music
was super hot at that time, and I seemed to be the only member of the
freshman class who couldn't at least strum a few chords and sing 'I Am a
Weary and a Lonesome Traveler'. I'm mostly self-taught (I never took
lessons), but people would show me things from time to time. The fact that I
had had formal training on another instrument was a big help.

Geo: Where did you grow up?

Michael: Ithaca, New York.

Geo: Who was in the band, Cat's Cradle with you? And where did the band play?

Michael: The other members were Tony Hughes (guitar), Greg Irons (bass) and Bob
Marquiss (drums). We played in a number of different places, but most
frequently at a coffeehouse called The Artist's Hut (about which more in a
bit).

Geo: What was your take on the scene in Philly in the mid to late 60's &
where did you frequent, (clubs or coffee house)?

Michael: By comparison to New York, LA and San Francisco, Philadelphia was only a
blip on the radar. But there were advantages to being there. One was that
because the scene was small, you could develop a degree of visibility pretty
quickly and there were a lot of opportunities to perform. There was a small
coterie of local bands that more or less rotated through all the main venues
on a regular basis, so getting work and exposure wasn't especially hard.
What *was* hard was getting work and exposure outside Philadelphia!

I probably spent more time in coffeehouses than in any other kind of
establishment. I got my first professional booking, as a folksinger, at The
Artist's Hut, a subterranean dive right out of the imagination of Jack
Kerouac. It catered to the weirdest of the weird (what does that tell you
about me?) and I knew people who were actually afraid to go in the place.
But the owner kind of took me under his wing and that's how I got my start.
And later on it turned into a terrific place to play rock 'n' roll.

Because of my connection to Manny Rubin, I probably spent more time in his
two clubs, The Second Fret and The Trauma, than anywhere else. The Fret was
a Philadelphia institution, and a masterpiece of its kind. It was built into
an old carriage house on Sansom St., with a spiral staircase in front and
real Tiffany lamps, which Manny had bought for a song at an auction in New
York at a time when no one else was interested in them. Of all the places I
ever played in, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, it was my favorite, with The
Artist's Hut a close second.

I should also mention one other place, even though it wasn't a performing
venue. Right around the corner from The Second Fret, just north of
Rittenhouse Square on 19th St., was The Philadelphia Guitar Workshop, a
combined music store and teaching studio that served as a kind of nerve
center for the scene at that time. Everybody hung out there, and it left a
big hole when it closed.

Geo: When did you join Mandrake Memorial, & where was the first gig?

Michael: Well, 'joined' isn't quite the right word. What happened was that in the
spring of '67, after Cat's Cradle broke up and I was looking around for
something new to get into, Larry Schreiber ( who had been CC's manager) got
wind of a drummer in New York in a similar situation by the name of Kevin
Lally. He introduced us and we hit it off well enough to take the next step
and try to form a band. Each of us recruited one other member: Kevin brought
in Randy Monaco and I brought in Craig Anderton.

Our first gig was at The Trauma, but it isn't the most memorable one. There
are two others from the early days that especially stand out. The first one
was in a little club in Allentown whose name I've long since forgotten.
While we were there we got a phone call from a guy representing a company
called Rocky Mount Instruments that was looking to manufacture an electronic
harpsichord for use in rock 'n' roll, and wanting to know if we'd be
interested in trying out the prototype. So he brought it around and we
realized immediately that it gave us something nobody else had.

Then, a little later on, we went on a two-week road trip to Boston durng
which everything that could go wrong went wrong. The club was a disaster,
our truck was vandalized, we were threatened by the locals with every form
of physical violence you can imagine, and Randy came down with mono. But
that's where we met Jay Nelson, a.k.a. Sugar Bear, who became our road
manager and developed a whole following of his own. (He died of cancer
earlier this year.)

Geo: Did you have a special gig w/ Mandrake?

Michael: The one that stands out was from the fall of '67, early in the life of the
group. We were the opening band at The Trauma for a west coast band called
The Strawberry Alarm Clock , whose record 'Incense and Peppermints' had been
a hit not long before. So to begin with, we had the biggest audience we'd
ever played for that weekend. And as luck would have it, the headliners, hit
record or no hit record, were ... well ... not very good. By Monday the word
was all over town that there was this local group called Mandrake Memorial
that had shown up The Strawberry Alarm Clock in front of a gazillion people,
and that was when the bandwagon really started to roll.

Geo: When did you leave & why? If you'd rather not say, that's quite allright...

Michael: Well, it isn't as if there were feuds or incredible acrimony or anything
like that. But we were starting to have disagreements about what direction
we should take and I kept ending up as a minority of one; we were also
having some problems with our record label and weren't sure what we should
do about that. As I was agonizing over the situation, I suddenly realized
that the agony would go away if I wasn't in the group any more.

Geo: When & where was the first gig w/ Linda Cohen & yourself? I think I
saw the two of you @ the 2nd Fret....

Michael: Yes, it was at the Fret, in the late summer or early fall of '69. I remember
two things about the first night. I was more nervous than I had ever been in
my life before we went on to do our first show -- we were doing something
completely unprecedented, and I had no idea how it was going to go over. The
other thing I remember is walking with Linda from her place to the Fret as
people hung out of windows and cheered us on.

Geo: When did you start teaching, and in what field?

Michael: I started in 1972, in linguistics, at the University of Minnesota. I now
teach both linguistics and philosophy (still at Minnesota), including
philosophy of music.

Geo: What's next & new for you Michael Kac?

Michael: Since Linda and I have put the old venture back together, that's where a lot
of my energy is going today. I've also been trying my hand at writing
fiction. And then there's that symphony I keep threatening to write and
never quite getting around to ...

I can be reached via Linda's and my Web site, http://www.kac-cohen.com.
Michael Kac & Linda Cohen have a new CD out: Naked Under The Moon

Naked Under The Moon was Produced by Craig
Anderton, (Mandrake Memorial & EQ Magazine Executive Editor)

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