Monte Cazazza


Monte Cazazza

Performance artist from San Francisco, musician, pervert, expert. He's the one who coined the industrial slogan for TG's Industrial Records.

AXIS ARCHIVE - MONTE CAZAZZA

Abridged discography:

TO MOM ON MOTHERS DAY	7"	IR 005	1979

SOMETHING FOR NOBODY	EP	IR 010	1980

MONTE CAZAZZA LIVE	C60	IRC 28	1980

CALIFORNIA BABYLON	LP(Subterranean)1982

STAIRWAY TO HELL	SS(Sordide Sent)1982

THE WORST OF...		CD	Mute	1992

from the desk of Monte

Excerpt from New Wave #13:

Monte is a necrophiliac in action. Rather than stifling his nightmares, he throws them in the face of the world. At the College of Arts and Crafts in Oakland, his first sculpture consisted of a cascade of cement that blocked the entrance of the school. He was dismissed the next day.
Passing from hospital into prison, he surfaced with pornographic collages in San Francisco. In 1971, invited to a weekend of conferences on art in the woods, he brought along an armed bodyguard and garnished the food with arsenic. At breakfast he dropped bricks painted with the word "Dada" on the feet of people convened to eat. And at the dinner table he burned the partially decomposed, worm-infested body of a cat. His bodyguard blocked the exit and several guests fell sick from teh stench.
In 1974, Genesis and Cosey were fascinated by a photo showing Monte covered with blood on the cover of Vile Magazine. Together, they fabricated the famous Gary Gilmore Memorial card, posing blindfolded on electriv chairs. It was reproduced on T-shirts. Six thousand copies were sold in Britain; it was the cover story of the Hong Kong Daily News.
In 1977 Monte entered the studios of Industrial Records to record "Plastic Surgery", "Busted Kneecaps", "Fistfuckers of America", "Hate", and "To Mom on Mother's Day", his first 45 (out of print). A film was made with TG where Monte and a 14-year-old boy were electrocuted. He playes also in the film Deccadance of Kerry Colonna with razor blades.
Monte seldom goes out, except on Halloween when he goes out with a cheap plastic mask, a green army bag filled with livers and hearts (like Hermann Nitsch) and the head of a body mannequinn (used by medical students to learn mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.