RockIsBliss

Does anyone here remember ‘Magic Terry and the Universe’ ?
Not much is known about this band and I can’t find any recordings or even a photo ????

According to a Ben Edmonds (MC5) interview the band was founded in 1968 by Terry Rabinowitz aka Magic Terry and Billy Squier who went on to have a long career as a rock singer and guitar player.
The other members were Chip Carrigan (guitar), Mike Martuscello (drums) and Jeff Lyall aka Klaus Flouride (bass) who later joined the Dead Kennedys.

Their rehearsal studio was in a basement in New York and they played at the Boston Tea Party in July 1969. They were supposed to play for 4 nights before the band ‘Ten Years After’ but Magic Terry mooned the audience at the end of their set on the first night so they got fired and that was it.

MTU only lasted a year and a half and was very different from the other bands, kind of a first attempt at marrying poetry with hard rock.
Magic Terry was primarily a writer and instead of singing he recited his poetry while the band played loud psychedelic rock written by Billy Squier and Jeff Lyall.
Terry was an intense person and a fearless artist who would get very agitated on stage in front of a puzzled audience who probably didn’t know what to think of this strange proto punk band.

According to Jeff Lyall’s interview Jim Morrison stopped by their rehearsal studio in New York and was so inspired by their style that he later ripped off one of Terry’s songs “Of American and the Whole Western World” and turned it into the hit song “An American Prayer”.

Columbia and Atlantic offered them a recording contract but they refused both offers.
John Cale also showed interest and wanted to produce their first album after coming to their rehearsal studio but the band imploded before their visionary contribution could be captured on an album that would have been produced by the Velvet Underground’s very own John Cale.
We know that people from Elektra, Atlantic and Columbia stopped by their rehearsal studio so there must be some demo tapes somewhere, or at least some photos.

The only thing I could find is a spoken word album of poetry released by Terry aka CT Rabinowitz in 1981 and recently uploaded to YouTube

The song untitled “The Nights” has been sampled by DJ Shadow on his 2011 album “The Less You Know The Better”.

I wonder what Don Law’s words mean on this poster for a The Who show (see photos)

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