Gerry And The Holograms
Gerry And The Holograms was the creation of Christopher Paul Lee who worked as C.P. Lee (19 Jan 1950 – 25 July 2020) and John Scott. The former had previously created the dada comedy group Alberto y Lost Trios Paranoias which spawned a short lived Pythonesque TV series called Teach Yourself Gibberish; the latter, as 48 Chairs, had provided the musical backing for John Cooper Clarke's Psycle Sluts.
The eponymous song was from the fourth release for their own Absurd Records which was collectively entitled Meet the Dissidents after The Residents album Meet the Residents. The next, The Emperor’s New Clothes (1979), was described as a conceptual ‘anti-record’ as the disc was glued into the cover thus rendering it unplayable.
Zappa played Gerry And The Holograms during a show on WPIX in New York on 19th and again on the 20th November 1979. He would play it again during Star Special while a guest DJ on BBC Radio 1 in 1980.
C.P. Lee had auditioned as a singer for Zappa:
Zappa was playing Wembley Arena and was looking for a replacement singer for Napoleon Murphy Brock. I was approached to go and do a rehearsal with Zappa on the afternoon of the gig. I'm trying to think of the date but it was probably synchronous with us doing 'Gerry & The Holograms' which became one of Zappa's favourite tunes, along with other John Scott tunes by 48 Chairs. I went along, sang and we all agreed that I sounded too much like Frank Zappa. Also, I knew that I'd have to leave the Albertos to do the gig and we were doing very well at that point. Also, notoriously, he would get rid of everyone every two years and I would have just been the bloke who was on a couple of Zappa albums. He barely said a word actually, a very interesting bloke.
When he said, "What numbers do you know?" and I said, "'Camarillo Brillo'", and he said, "Okay, let's hit it." I just couldn't get my own voice out because I've heard him so often, but it was fun. Then later we heard the Radio 1 show he did of his top 20 records and we heard, "And here's a little group from Manchester, England..." We just couldn't believe it because he couldn't have known that that was me, so it was a fantastic accolade.[1]
C.P. Lee later worked as a writer and broadcaster. In 2003 presented a radio documentary for BBC Radio 4 on Lord Buckley.
