The Discography of Erika Zann

Erika Zann was born in Germany in 1945 but moved to America with her family shortly afterwards. The family settled in New York but Erika left home as soon as she could and washed up in San Francisco. Friends and associates often commented on her frequent observation that she was “driven to perform” and her short life as a recording artist reveals a fervent struggle to find and innovate an adequate means to address this yearning.

Erika dove wholeheartedly into the San Francisco scene of the mid-60s and her early encounters were ultimately to be her undoing: she fell in with the local Satanist crowd and – after becoming disillusioned with what they had to offer – struggled unsuccessfully to leave the association behind her. While with the local ‘coven’, she participated in the recording of “The Black Mass”, an experimental disc which overlaid readings from G. K. Huysman’s La Bas with vocal stylings, sound effects and musical psychedelia. The record was issued in very limited quantities and is rarely encountered today.

Breaking from the black magic crowd, Erika tried to find a niche for herself in the local music scene. She performed as a back-up singer for several local groups at live performances including The Peace Effect and Paisley before performing solo at a local talent showcase organised by the hippie newspaper, The San Francisco Oracle: this event was recorded and pressed onto vinyl and Erika was credited as “Erika Zam” due to a proofreading error. The record is generally poor in production with many of the tracks recorded live and badly affected by spectator chat and other ambient noise. It is a collector’s item nowadays and rarely found.

Shortly afterwards, Erika encountered local musician Tommy Jade and he invited her to join his new band, an outfit keen to cash in on the psychedelic influences of such bands as Pink Floyd, The Jefferson Airplane and the newly-formed Grateful Dead. They called themselves The Electric Commode, a title which Erika herself found somewhat childish but which she was prepared to put up with in order to gain recognition as a performer of some talent. After all, The Electric Flag and The Electric Prunes had secured recording contracts with those names, so why not them?

The new group found a home for itself in a run-down night-spot called The Purple Blob, a sleazy bar and drug connexion run by one Pete Muzio, who tailored his venue to suit whatever fad had precedence at the moment. Muzio signed the ‘Commode on as the house band at a fraction of the going rate and left them to find their own way musically. Their first few nights comprised uninspiring covers of other band’s work and some extended psychedelic jam sessions. Soon however, Tommy was bringing new arrangements and new musicians to the gigs and a distinctive style began to emerge.

Unfortunately for Erika, greater exposure simply meant that her past was quicker to catch up with her. The band line-up changed from a motley crew of potheads and acid droppers into a dedicated cadre of the same black-mass groupies that Erika had been trying to avoid. The scuttlebutt had it that Erika had left owing the coven money but there were other more disturbing rumours circulating also. During this time Tommy’s drug use escalated wildly, although money for such drugs was in short supply, and his creative control was increasingly taken over by third parties, often not present at the performances. Inevitably it all came to a crashing end: a fire broke out during a weekend event while The Electric Commode was on stage; the only casualties were Pete Muzio, Tommy Jade and Erika Zann. The Purple Blob was condemned shortly afterward and torn down.

The group died with them. In the aftermath, many audio aficionados attempted to track down recordings of the nascent group and put together a tribute album to the ‘Commode. Invariably it was discovered that, while there were many surreptitious audio grabs to choose from, none of them had managed to capture the ethereal growl which had become the group’s trademark. The group’s musical arranger and advisor – an elusive entity known only as “Hot Planetary” – could not be contacted for his input and the whole effort was quietly shelved.

In the early ‘Eighties, a sound engineer by the name of Spencer Wade discovered the recordings in an old sound studio undergoing renovation and took another swing at producing the material. In doing so, he tracked down several individuals who still remembered The Purple Blob and The Electric Commode, trying to learn the secret of the group’s sonic format. One of these acquaintances remembered Tommy discussing the mysterious Hot Planetary as “a black man; not a Negro, just black” and recalled that the group performed with a bizarre array of musical props, most of which were simply stage dressing. Some of these fans had thought that Pete Muzio was the instigator of the sound, since most of the band members seemed to be at a loss to account for it. With the aid of almost twenty years of technological advancement, Wade was able to filter several of the tracks and pull a ‘ghost’ of the striking sound from behind Erika’s strident Yma Sumac-like vocalisations. The sound can be likened to someone lying full-length across the keyboard of a great church organ, mashing all of the keys at once and it adds a predatory menace to the arrangements. It can be best heard on three of the tracks: “Free Born”, “Illimitable Black” and “Remember September, True ‘Nember”. Wade released a vanity pressing of these and other tracks under the title “The Electric Commode – Live at the Purple Blob, 1967”; like the rest of Erika’s recordings, it remains a little-known, rarely-encountered curiosity of the psychedelic music era.

(Source: James Wade, "The Silence of Erika Zann")

English; The Electric Commode; Vinyl recording, 1967 (released 1982); 1/1d2 Sanity loss; Cthulhu Mythos +1 percentiles; 1 week to study and comprehend

Spells: None; however, a failed Luck Roll while analysing the music has a 10% chance of attracting the attention of the Outer God, Tru’nembra.