Llyn FoulkesMusic Is My Joy

A group of six people and their musucal instruments
Llyn Foulkes (third from left) and the Rubber Band, 1974. Courtesy of the artist. Photographer unknown.

Llyn Foulkes had his own vaudeville band when he was eleven years old. Inspired by Spike Jones, the trumpet-blowing, cowbell-ringing comedic musician and performer, Foulkes built his own musical contraption equipped with horns and bells.1 He studied music in high school, playing drums and the timpani, and began listening to jazz. His musical career developed alongside his painting, drumming in the rock band City Lights from 1965 to 1971 and opening for major rock bands. However, Foulkes disliked the way amplified guitars sounded; looking back to his roots, he built a percussion instrument and formed his own group, the Rubber Band, in 1973 (cartoonist Robert Crumb drew a cover for its record, which was never released).2 The Rubber Band played on the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1974 but broke up in 1977. Foulkes, ever the loner, continued work on his instrument. The Machine, as it came to be known, comprised horns, a xylophone, cowbells, a drum set, organ pipes, and an electric bass string strung horizontally at his foot. As writer Jason Weiss described the artist’s one-man band: “When he plays, Llyn Foulkes is every part of the Machine, his body built right into it.”3

  1. Marilu Knode, “Llyn Foulkes and the American Dream”, Llyn Foulkes: Between a Rock and Hard Place (Los Angeles: Fellows of Contemporary Art, 1995), 12. ↩︎

  2. Jason Weiss, “Llyn Foulkes: Only Listen”, Llyn Foulkes, ed. Ali Subotnick (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2013), 138. ↩︎

  3. Jason Weiss, “Llyn Foulkes: Only Listen”, Llyn Foulkes, ed. Ali Subotnick (Los Angeles: Hammer Museum, 2013), 140. ↩︎