Exclusive Interview with ‘KONGRESS’

Kongress was founded in 1975, but it flourished thanks to the late, great magician Geoffrey Crozier conjuring ghosts, VON LMO, Master of Reverse Trapology, Robert Crash/Renate Twin Towers of Teutonic Guitar Power, Frank Stokes stabilizing the Bass Bottom, and Master of the Unheard of, Otto von Ruggins, Saving the Musick World with his Keyboard Wizardry! Marilyn, the next bad girl, came after Geoffrey (when VON LMO left). The improv format changed from 30-minute segments to 2-minute bursts. John Holmstrom of Punk Magazine once dubbed Kongress “The Most Dangerous Band in the World”!

Summer Days is a groundbreaking release of what Coney Island Mermaid Parade observers have been seeing for more than 30 years, most of which I have been videotaping, and was made available on 8/22/22 by Tik Tok via their US.soundon.global distribution service. This video is a MUST SEE! Check out the single and the exclusive interview below:

1. Can you tell us a bit about where you come from and how it all got started?   

KONGRESS: My sister opened my eyes to Rock & Roll by watching Dick Clark’s Friday Night Countdown when I saw Jerry Lee Lewis singing ‘Great Balls of Fire’, jumping on the piano & playing with his feet. My father was a pretty good guitar player, as later in life after he retired to Florida, he would write the charts for a musical band to play from. My mother even played an accordion on some occasions. The only music scene was me carrying a battery operated phonograph to the schoolyard where I would play my record collection, including eventually singles from England. 

2. Did you have any formal training or are you self-taught?  

KONGRESS: I began taking piano lessons with a piano teacher just around the corner sometime under 10 years old for a few years, but I hated sight-reading notes and didn’t practice much, so I eventually stopped. I guess you might say I was self-taught, but while working for the US Postal Service, I became the ChoirMaster for the Christmas Performances. I could read music well enough to teach each section their parts by playing the notes. Later, I created instrumental versions of some 23 Christmas Carols that I made CDs of & gave them to students at Christmas, when I moved on to teaching high school students English. When the students would ask me if I rapped, I would tell them, ”Once a year, at Christmas (I wrapped)!” Eventually, I was blessed to be one of 11 Pilot Teachers from across the country to teach The History of Rock & Roll using Little Steven (Van Zandt’s) curriculum @ teachrock.org I would hold my daily bag of nutrient pills up & tell my students, “I take anti-aging nutrients so that I’ll be around 100 years from now, when the World is ready for my Musick.” 

3. Who were your first and strongest musical influences and why the name ‘KONGRESS’?  

KONGRESS: The first record I ever bought was Quarter to Three by Gary U.S. Bonds. That’s what got my record collection started, but it wasn’t until I encountered The Beatles & The British Invasion at age 15 that I got a jolt of electricity. It was between Christmas & New Year’s Eve of 1963 that I road my bike past the usual record store which didn’t have I Want to Hold Your Hand that I went over a mile to where my 6th grade Substitute Teacher told me his father had a record shop. It was dark outside, but I found the record I couldn’t find elsewhere. I went home and immediately played the ‘B’ side – I Saw Her Standing There – a tradition I had long started from my early record collection days to see how good an artist was by playing the ‘B’ side – The Beatles were great on the ‘B’ side!. So, The Beatles were first, but other British Invasion acts were even more exciting for me – The Dave Clark 5, The Rolling Stones, The Pretty Things, THEM, The Kinks , The Zombies & The Animals (I fell in love with The House of the Rising Sun). This caused me to take my Christmas Club money out and purchase a VOX Organ with a Powersonic Amplifier. That amp had a lightning bolt display that flashed the louder I played. So began my love affair with visual displays, both onstage and in videos. I remember one day while studying for a History test, I played She’s Not There by The Zombies a hundred times in a row over four hours! 

Kongress came about when I began working with VON LMO & we looked for other like-minded individuals. The word ’congress’ means ‘sexual intercourse’ & with a ’K’ it’s perverted (I’m not saying sexual intercourse is perverted, but that the meaning of ‘congress’ is perverted). It’s like when I claim to be ‘Saviour of The Musick World’, I added the ‘k’ to distinguish my ‘musick’ from everyone else’s ‘music’. If you want something ‘different’ from the norm, VON & I wanted to provide that for you.  

4. What do you feel are the key elements in your music that should resonate with listeners, and how would you personally describe your sound?  

KONGRESS: Kongress is now me & whoever comes along for the ride. What I mean by that is congress also has other meanings, one of which is a gathering of people. I have continued on my own out of necessity, as Geofrey Crozier, the Madgician who fronted Kongress in the mid to late ’70s went back home after creating a legendary version of the group which was described by John Holmstrom of Punk Magazine as ’The Most Dangerous Band in the World’. Sadly, about a year after his return to ’Oz’, Geofrey took his own life in the manner of Ian Curtis of Joy Division, one year to the day later. VON LMO went off to create Red Transistor with Rudolph Grey. Later, he simply called his band VON LMO. As for the key elements now, I believe that I have more tools than I have ever had at my command to create the most original & outrageous music & videos that Kongress ever could manage, even with all the other members. Certainly I miss Geof’s costumes, lyrical incantations & unpredictable moments, as well as VON’s ability to push me further into chaos, breaking boundaries & collaborating to make more than each of us could separately – we had a duo for a few years from 2012 through 2017 as Avant Duel, but once again, VON left to start his band again, but he has been having some health issues which make performing difficult these days. I’m not ready to perform until there are enough initiates who have surfaced to make such performing of any consequence, as I have been releasing singles with amazing videos (which can be seen @ YouTube.com/ottovr) to try to gain a larger following of devotees. The sound now is not just the Blocs Wave app, as I added my Hydrasynth at the end of ‘NuSense’ back in April (inspired by events in Ukraine), which was released on TikTok distribution services, unlike previous releases which I used CD Baby for. The rest of the musick came from a 20+ year old Roland Groovebox that was hiding in my closet – one menacing Drums, Bass & Guitar track all together. Since then, I have been using Blocs Wave, but I have plans for other songs I wrote back in the ’60s & ‘70s whose time is coming. My musick is timeless now that I have 128Gb of ram in my Mac Studio to create more elaborate sounds than ever before. I even look forward to collaborating with my son, Philip Faconti & his mentor, Dave Eggar, who is a Grammy award-winning World Class Electric Cello player, on several of those songs created over 50 years ago!

6. What’s your view on the role and function of music as political, cultural, spiritual, and/or social vehicles – and do you try and affront any of these themes in your work, or are you purely interested in music as an expression of technical artistry, personal narrative, and entertainment? 

KONGRESS:

“Talk about big action and songs such as Summer Days hove into mind for they have a progressive and big stage persona. Kongress obviously know this and it means they can extend their presence far and wide, the vocals for one coming across like a deity dishing out the new 10 commandments and while I found the whole effect a bit claustrophobic there is no denying that this is wide-screen industry for those into something a bit more spiritual than is the norm. Big canvas overwhelmed me.” This recent review of Summer Days tells a part of the story as it claims Kongress is ‘a bit more spiritual than the norm’, which is true. One of those songs that I plan to release is my most spiritual composition – Backwards Dog – which is about God. I know a vocalist who has sung this brilliantly in the past, Aristedes DuVal, who I’d love to sing the new version I plan on recording soon. Earlier this year, as mentioned above, I released a single NuSense which was about the situation in Ukraine. I took off all my social media photos & wore a Crusades Helmut in the video to avoid recognition. Two days before the release, I received a review by TurnUpTheVolumeBlog which included a photo of me & stated, “The message is clear – ‘Fuck Putin’!” It sounded like ‘I’ said that, but while my video trashed him in other ways, I wasn’t as crude. I guess I won’t be living forever if I run into Putin or his henchmen. Back in 1988, I wrote The Oliver Twist with an animated video about the Iran/Contra scandal.The next year,I wrote Within & marched with Al Sharpton in my neighborhood over the racial killing of Yusef Hawkins. Two years ago, on Election Day, I released The Ugly American which was about Covid, Racism & the Trump presidency. I just updated my Cybercrazed video which now has Closed Captions (CC) so you can read the lyrics, which includes the lines “See what’s in the future, Changes in the culture…” As you can see, I get involved in controversy & I’m always interested in changing a listeners’ perception of culture when there is an issue that needs some ‘education’ (remember, I am still a teacher at heart). I try to inform my students, even as a sub, about the coming rapid change the Future will bring in the next 10-15 years & advise them on how to get ready. How do I know? I‘ve read The Future Is Faster Than You Think by Peter Diamandis. Students refer to me as a ‘Professor’, a ‘Main Character’ & a ‘Genius’. One even told me, “You’re the best teacher…” to which I responded, ”There are many great teachers in FDR (my school)”, & he repeated, ”But you are the Best!” 

7. Do you feel that your music is giving you back just as much fulfillment as the amount of work you are putting into it or are you expecting something more, or different in the future? 

KONGRESS: I will say this – I LOVE making musick as opposed to music & it continues to excite me because I know what I create has an audience – they just haven’t discovered me yet. I try to write songs that expand boundaries & make videos that are in many ways ‘revolutionary’. The video for Summer Days was described by my wife as Sodom & Gomorrah. I told her it was more innocent & playful, nevertheless when I tried to post it on Vimeo, I had to rate it as Mature. My reward is when I create something special that didn’t exist before it was created. I just had such an experience with my new iPad when I downloaded some 20+ new sound packs last Thursday night (9/29) & started making a new song by selecting Drum parts, then Bass, Guitars & Vocals. All of a sudden I heard a Thunderbolt in my ears as it evolved into six variations by the next morning at school. I knew it was electrifying, but when I played it as the students entered the room on Friday, they immediately wanted to know “What’s THAT?” – It’s called Primal Scream. As great as I felt, it reminded me of when I got my first synth & was playing less than a month later at Shea Stadium’s Avant Garde Festival in 1974. As people swirled around passing by, as soon as I started played my new synth pieces, it was as if I was feeding pigeons. It went on like that all day & similarly, at the New York IMSTA event, where there were reps from major Sofware & Hardware companies just yesterday (10/1), I played this new piece I created with Blocs Wave & they were blown away, asking me what app I was using. It helps bolster my confidence that I have some great musick to be heard & I keep making it with the hope that it will someday go viral. 

8. Could you describe your creative processes? How do usually start, and go about shaping ideas into a completed song? Do you usually start with a tune, a beat, or a narrative in your head? And do you collaborate with others in this process? 

KONGRESS: It varies. Before the newer technology of computers & synthesizers existed, I might start with words or sound. The muse appears in many different forms of inspiration. Nowadays, with Blocs Wave, it can start by just playing around with the sound packs. Collaboration was last a part of the process when VON LMO & I were working together in Avant Duel. He wrote much of the lyrics & played great guitar riffs, but I would also play him something I had created, which had no lyrics, or we would work together to sort the musick out. 

9. What has been the most difficult thing you’ve had to endure in your life or music career so far? 

KONGRESS: There is a certain sadness when members of groups depart, both in the musical sense & the physical (I have lost many former musicians who have played in either Kongress or my earliest bands) – From Down Under, Christmas In July, Funeral of Art & Virtual Reality. Having my VOX Organ stolen was also quite disturbing, as you’d like to think other musicians wouldn’t stoop to stealing your equipment. 

10. On the contrary, what would you consider a successful, proud or significant point in your life or music career so far?

KONGRESS: I feel that being chosen one of 11 Pilot Teachers from across the country to teach The History of Rock & Roll was a blessing & great honor. One of the greatest feelings of late has been my ability to carry on, mostly on my own, as Kongress. The Blocs Wave app has helped me to survive with new inspiration. I released Running With The Wolves in 2021, about 17 years after improvising in a studio with a drummer friend & Sky Saxon, former vocalist of The Seeds. He sounded like Jim Morrison! In my first band, we did Pushin’ Too Hard by The Seeds which is the song that taught me how to solo & about 40 years later I was back full circle in a studio with their singer, making incredible music without exchanging words. That stuff is Magick!

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Photo credits: Otto von Ruggins