A Mump a Day: Lance Loud!

Lance Loud is the reason I moved to New York; he's the inspiration for nearly everything I've done since high school. Why? You may recall the world's first ever "reality show" on PBS in the early '70s - "An American Family." That was Lance's family - the Louds of Santa Barbara, CA. This was such a ground breaking thing, not only for television, but for sociology and culture, that Margaret Mead actually chimed in for PBS at the end of the whole thing with her commentary.

So, when the particular American Family at the center of all this are people from your neck of the woods, who were at the same ballet school as you, where the boys in the family had a band named after the family (Loud! - much better than, say "Van Halen," don't ya think?) AND their everyday lives were on television and those television cameras were all over the community, there is no doubt that they will make an impression on everyone, local and remote, whose paths they crossed.

But Lance inspired me because he was always LANCE LOUD! Yes, the exclamation point is important. He was famous simply for being himself, Lance Loud and nothing else as much as for what his family unwittingly became. Lance and Kristian Hoffman high tailed it out of California and headed straight to NYC where they became the toast of Lower Manhattan and eventually conscripted Andy Warhol into the Mumps fan club by association and photo opportunity.



I'm pretty certain that future interior design guru to the stars, Brad Dunning, who in punk rock days was not only Lobotomy's art director, but ran Contempo Trends as well as the Mumps Fan Club designed this flyer...



Anyone who's ever seen the Mumps will tell you that their live show was a non-stop affair. Lance never stopped moving, dancing, leaping and even did calisthenics as part of his choreography!



And there was that dance that punctuated "Crocodile Tears"



And the bicep-flexing for "Muscle Boys"



This is Lance after he shed his "ghost" costume for a "punk-in" one at Mumps' Halloween gig, opening for Devo.



The tributes to Lance will never end. I loved him like a brother. He was funny and he was bitchy. He was way way ahead of his time. He was smart, yet did plenty of things he shouldn't have done with the full knowledge of their consequences. He was Lance Loud! until the end.

Here's how I like to remember him - all fabulous and with me and Pleasant



Herb Wrede photo courtesy of Trudie Arguelles