Smegma.

Smegma is the Pasadena / Portland free-noise collective started on 23 November 1973 at the Adena house in Pasadena, California, by Ju Suk Reet Meate (Eric Stewart, b. 1952), Cheese It Ritz, Chucko Fats (D.K. Fatts), Dennis Duck (Dennis Mehaffey), Amazon Bambi (Amy DeWolfe, also Erph-Puss) and Cheesebro. The band's own self-description on its website: despite having no formal art or music training, several friends decided to experiment with playing “real” music. We tried a “band without musicians” concept, by allowing musicians only for special parts as needed. The only other rule was, “NO HIPPY MUSIC” or any other contemporary sounds. The approach they named primitive suburban folk. The name Smegma was given to the band by Jerry, the first president of LAFMS.

Ace Farren Ford (Ace of Space) joined in early 1974. He had been friends with Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart) since the age of fifteen. I was blessed to have been friends with Don Van Vliet since I was 15, he told The Quietus in the band's 2017 interview. The times I shared in his presence were magic. He inspired me to no end. Through Ford's LA-scene connections the band crossed paths with Wild Man Fischer, the Zappa protégé; sessions on New Year's Day 1975 and a second one some months later produced material released much later as Wild Man Fischer and Smegma Sing Popular Songs (Birdman, 1998). Ju Suk Reet Meate on the partnership: Fischer fit into Smegma in a visceral, pure way, on every level except that he was unbelievably annoying.

Across 1973–1975 the Pasadena lineup grew to include Dr. Id (Mike Lastra; the in-house recordist and the operator of Bub Studios at Bub Manor, the second group house), Dr. Odd, Reed Burns, Tom Recchion (as Victor Sparks; later Doo-Dooettes and a key LAFMS figure), Electric Willy, Paul ‘Pigface’ Rioux and Wild Man Fischer himself. The band's nightly meeting place was the back room of Poo-Bah Records, the Pasadena record store where a loose gang of noise artists congregated. In 1975 Smegma merged with the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS, started 1973 by Chip Chapman, Joe Potts, Rick Potts and Tom Recchion as a multimedia publishing vehicle), and the LAFMS headquarters at 35 S. Raymond Avenue, Pasadena, became the band's main working environment.

In the autumn of 1975 most of the band moved to Corvallis, Oregon, and then on to Portland. The relocation party was Ju Suk Reet Meate, Chucko Fats, Dr. Id, Amazon Bambi and Cheese It Ritz; everyone except Chucko Fats stayed in Portland. From 1975 onward Portland has been the catalogue's base. The Portland lineup added Oblivia (Jackie Stewart, also Rock and Roll Jackie), Danton Dodge, Frank Chavez, D.K. (Big Dirty), Burned Mind, Myrtle Tickner (Charles Nims), Stan Wood and Lee Rockey, and stretches forward to current members Madelyn Villano and continuing contributors from the Pasadena era. The band's position in 1970s Portland sat alongside the city's emerging punk and underground scenes (Wipers, Neo Boys, the Earth Tavern), with Smegma reading as the city's resident free-form weirdos rather than as a punk act.

The band's first studio LP, Glamour Girl 1941 (recorded 1978, released 1979 on LAFMS), is the catalogue's public-facing entry. The record carries Danton Dodge and Frank Chavez as the side-project Gods Of The Pits and remained the band's public reference until the late-1990s reissue programme. Earlier material from the 1973–1975 Pasadena years circulated as private cassettes on Pigface Records (Smegma's own imprint), then went unheard for decades until Alga Marghen began excavating the Ju Suk Reet Meate archive in 2017 with Look'n for Ya, followed by Abacus Incognito (2018) and Infringements. Pigface Records, Tedium House and Gilgongo carry the contemporary catalogue. The 2025 LP Folklore & Concepts (Gilgongo, handmade xerox / collage sleeve from the Ace Farren Ford archives) marks the band's 52nd anniversary and the continued line of Ju Suk Reet Meate, Oblivia, Ace Farren Ford, Dennis Duck and an expanded cast.

The collective's catalogue runs through compilation appearances and collaborative LPs. The 1986 Dom Records compilation Ohrensausen carries the track Wonders Of The Human Body (3:01), placing the band on a record alongside Coil, Asmus Tietchens, Nurse With Wound and H.N.A.S. The 1989 Dom Records LP Smell The Remains extended the Heemann partnership. Smegma Plays Merzbow / Merzbow Plays Smegma (Tim/Kerr, 1996) is the band's collaborative LP with Masami Akita. The Beast (De Stijl, 2003) is the Wolf Eyes joint. Completed Soundtrack for the Tropic of Nipples (2002) is the album shared with Robert Pollard's Antler project. Thirtyyearsofservice (2004) is the collaboration with Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay. Live at No Fun Fest (Qbico, 2006) carries Perry Robinson on clarinet. The 2006 LAFMS / No Fun Productions split with Carlos Giffoni and Metalux placed the band inside Carlos Giffoni's No Fun Festival catalogue. John Wiese, Aaron Dilloway, Jozef van Wissem and many others have sat in.

Richard Meltzer joined Smegma as vocalist in the late 1990s and remained until 2003. Meltzer, the author of The Aesthetics of Rock (1970) and one of the creators of the rock-criticism tradition alongside Lester Bangs, had quietly moved to Portland after his earlier LA stint with the short-lived punk band Vom. I remember going to a house party and seeing Richard doing a reading, and he mentioned the LAFMS people, and I realised he was THE Richard Meltzer, Ju Suk Reet Meate told The Quietus. Meltzer's additions to the band were verbal-stream readings and sardonic ad-libs over the group's improvisations. He left in 2003.

Reception is the route by which the band's audience grew. Nurse With Wound's Steven Stapleton cited Smegma as an influence in the post-1979 NWW List period, and that citation became the catalogue's public route into the European industrial / experimental network. From 2005 onward the band has performed at festivals across the UK and EU, including Cafe OTO in London, Perspectives Festival in Sweden, the LAFMS London weekend in 2010, the Otis Art Institute 24-hour Telethon LAFMS reunion, the Getty Centre performance in Los Angeles in 2011, and PDX POP NOW! in Portland. The current line-up performs roughly one show per year. Ju Suk Reet Meate and Oblivia also operate as a duo under the name The Tenses, a smaller travelling configuration of the same approach.

The Bureau files Smegma as the LAFMS core collective and as the American free-noise tradition's longest-running continuous practice. The catalogue's position is the inverse of the European industrial scene the rest of this archive documents: rather than the disciplined small-edition vinyl culture of the 1980s European network, Smegma have run a household-improvisation tradition for over fifty years with rotating cast, cheap instruments and a stated rejection of conventional musicianship. The band's American peers run through the LAFMS network (Le Forte Four, Doo-Dooettes, Ace & Duce, the 35 S. Raymond Avenue circle), Captain Beefheart (whom Ace Farren Ford knew personally; Van Vliet contributed the cover art to the LAFMS compilation Blorp Esette which carries early Smegma tracks), Wild Man Fischer, the Stooges (via Mackay), Wolf Eyes (the Hanson Records / Aaron Dilloway / No Fun Productions network), and Robert Pollard's Guided By Voices satellite projects.

Citation. Smegma is filed at Tier I as the LAFMS core practice and as the Bureau's entry for the American free-noise tradition's long-running cooperative form. The catalogue's contribution to this archive sits across three planes: the Pasadena 1973–1975 archival material on Alga Marghen (Look'n for Ya, Abacus Incognito, Infringements) as one of the documents of the American 1970s free-noise underground; the cross-tradition collaborations of the 1996–2006 period (Merzbow, Wolf Eyes, Antler, Mackay, Robinson, Giffoni / Metalux) as the catalogue's engagement with the post-1990s American and Japanese noise networks; and the continuous Ju Suk Reet Meate studio output from 2009 onward as the catalogue's ongoing daily practice. Folklore & Concepts (Gilgongo, 2025) is the catalogue's most recent statement.