Loeb & Leopold

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Loeb & Leopold were name-checked on the cover of "Freak Out!" (1966) under the heading "These People Have Contributed Materially In Many Ways To Make Our Music What It Is. Please Do Not Hold It Against Them".

  • FZ in 1968 (source unknown); "You know, Memories Of El Monte was co-written by Ray Collins and myself, and a long time ago, 'bout the same time Memories Of El Monte was written, he and I worked at The Troubadour on 'talent night' as Loeb & Leopold. And we went down there and were singing songs about pimples and all kinds of other far out things that seemed like uh, well, that was the basis of some of the things The Mothers eventually wound up doing."
  • C. R. Zappa in My Brother Is an Italian Mother (Jazz & Pop), 1968: "During their stay in New York, the Mothers successfully performed for six months at the Garrick Theatre doing a cleverly animated, pornographically delightful musical review. Some people liked it so much they came back repeatedly. Two Long Island school boys, affectionately dubbed Loeb and Leopold, held ticket stubs for some sixty-five performances. A classic study in compulsive behavior."
  • FZ in "The Real Frank Zappa Book" (1989): "There were two suburban Jewish guys who attended the Garrick shows relentlessly. They called themselves 'Loeb & Leopold' (not the real 'Loeb & Leopold,' but an incredibly lifelike simulation). They came to at least thirty shows. At the end of our run they came backstage, opened up their wallets and, with tears in their eyes, showed me all their ticket stubs. They loved the Garrick shows. One of the guys - I'm pretty sure his name was Mark Trottiner - liked to run up the aisle, jump on stage, grab the microphone out of my hand and scream into it as loud as he could. Then he would fall on the stage, roll over like a dog and urge me to spit Pepsi-Cola all over his body. What a crowd-pleaser. Ten years later, I was doing a Halloween show at the Palladium, and I looked out into the audience and thought I saw him. It had to be him. I said, "Aren't you the guy who used to -?" It was him. He grew up to become a record distributor in Queens."

Anyway, the "real" Loeb & Leopold were mid twentieth century "thrill killers" famed for cooly plotting unmotivated murder, probably for shock/dada value. They were homosexual lovers convicted of some gruesome murder in the thirties. Subjects of Hitchcock's film "Rope" (though they're renamed).