Danny Cohen

Beginning around 1961, multi-instrumentalist and musical eccentric Danny Cohen first appeared on the scene fronting the punk group Charleston Grotto. Subsequent years brought a prohibition on his appearances throughout the Los Angeles club circuit once devotees of his cult following allegedly coated the restrooms of one venue in feces—an act traced to his chocolate pudding stage routines performed during the piece “Disco Diarrhea.” Far from a widely known personality, scant biographical material exists about him. His playing surfaces on several broadly circulated recordings from the late 1960s and early 1970s, plus a handful of late-1990s titles issued by the New York City label Tzadik, for which he directed two entries in the Lunatic Fringe series. The year 2004 saw the arrival of his initial non-archival album, Dannyland, through Anti, an Epitaph subsidiary, followed by We’re All Gunna Die in 2005 and Shades of Dorian Gray in 2007.