John Corn

From Plastic Tub

Johnathan Eniad Corn was born in St. Petersburg, Florida sometime in the early 1940's and though the exact date is not known, he celebrated March 23rd, 1943 as his birthday. His family fled Soviet Georgia for political reasons and successfully received asylum first in England then in the U.S., finally settling in Florida. John's mother, Lizabeta Kornakovitch, had been a classically trained opera singer until throat cancer cut her career short -- America, it seemed, had little use for a grousy-voiced maiden with a foul temper. Thus, her career in ruins, she turned to drink. Young John's earliest memories were largely those of strife and violent libation, as below recounted to the British Punk Rock magazine Quid, in 1974:

"My mom would just hit on me for hours -- I mean hours, almost without resting. She's bruise her knuckles on my skull and so she'd start whackin' at me with a belt, or whatever. One time she threw a cigarette lighter into my eye. I had to wear a patch for like three months -- I still have problems with that eye. father looked on helpless, often weeping in a manner John later described as "an eyeball staining the air." The elder Corn, Jethro, finally killed his wife Lizabeta after a three-day bender and was sent away to the infamous Raiford State Penitentiary."

Corn the adolescent was captivated by the Beats and Jazz and set off to California after a miserable stint with a foster family in Tampa. He hitchhiked to San Francisco and made a living by busking on the streets. He was a passable guitarist and harmonica player and he often accompanied some of the minor Beats poet at their readings. Over the next few years he hitchhiked his way up and down the Golden State doing odd jobs and drinking heavily. As the hippie culture blossomed, he fell right in with it, blowing his mind on LSD and marijuana, shallow mysticism and anti-establishment gestures. He was arrested in 1969, for example, for pissing on a police horse's leg.

Upon his release, Corn only stayed in California for a brief while, before finding himself first in Taos, then in Boulder and finally all the way back to the Tampa Bay Area. In 1980 he acquired funds from a settlement resulting from a traffic accident which left him with a severe limp. He used the money to set up a small recording studio which catered mostly to the burgeoning underground metal scene, but there were also the occasional New Age flute players and lounge acts.

Corn became something of a fixture on the local scene. Generous yet cranky, exasperatingly unprofessional, he still managed to stay afloat. He is known within AA circles due to the foundation of the Alpha Chimp and Beta Chimp labels in 1996 and 1997 respectively. These labels focused on musical acts of Associationalist character, as well as on propaganda and speeches. He was never really a part of it but he found it "freaky enough to be enjoyable." As he told an interviewer shortly before his death, "Those guys were a trip, man."

Corn died of pancreatic cancer on May 13, 2001.