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Adam Parfrey:<\/strong><\/p>\n \u00a0Being edgy, cruising on the event horizon between\u00a0 extreme kulture and downright madness was something Adam consistently sought and attained.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n I’m very sad that my friend Adam Parfrey has passed.\u00a0 He reportedly died on May 10th, but there is no comment on his facebook page as to tthe cause of death.\u00a0 His publishing companny, Feral House, was in Los Angeles for many years.\u00a0 I had actually met him before he founded FH when he was connected to AMOK Books, which dealt in books that were on the fringe of pop culture, conspiracy,\u00a0 psychology, crime, and the bizarre.\u00a0 Their catalogs, if you can find one, are a treasure of information and knowledge.<\/p>\n For a while,in the 1990’s AMOK had an open bookshop at1764 N. Vermont Avenue in Hollywood.\u00a0 \u00a0 I remember it to be a small shop, kind of long and narrow.\u00a0 They might have split the rent at one time with a notorious group, the Man-Boy outfit.\u00a0 This may certainly have run off some customers.\u00a0 I remember the Man-Boy section ran along the north wall of the store, and I was personally put off by the display.\u00a0 Anyone actually putting into practice what they were promoting could find themselves in prison for a long time. Maybe Adam and his partner just needed someone to share the rent, but also maybe Adam just did it to attract a bunch of publicity; it is still something of a mystery to me. Adam would push boundries and do things for effect and attention.*\u00a0 This includes some vaguely anti-semitic things at times,like publishing a novel by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Adam’s mother was Jewish, so it just sounds a little weird, and he didn’t believe in any of it, but was a master at publicity and marketing, especially to the youth market of pop culture. Being edgy, cruising on the event horizon<\/em> between\u00a0 extreme kulture and downright madness was something Adam consistently sought and attained.<\/p>\n I helped with research on Bill Nelson’s important\u00a0Hollywood’s Hellfire Club<\/em>, finding some treasure troves of material for the book. During this time\u00a0 I also helped Adam obtain a painting he badly wanted from the estate of one of the prominent members of the Bundy Drive Boys, it was an original John Decker. Although there are no acknowledgements of any of this in the book, I got lucky and was able to track down a large cache of material on the Bundy Drive gang.\u00a0 I prowled through some garages and estates in the Hollywood Hills and was able to supply a great deal of material to Bill Nelson for the book, including a scrapbook of Sadakichi Hartmann on his famous “Perfume Concerts” in New York at the turn of the previous century. I believe Bill gave this to Adam and it may still be in his collection.\u00a0 If anyone at FH finds it, send it to UC Riverside, it belongs in the Hartmann archive.<\/p>\n John Decker<\/p><\/div>\n When John Decker’s house in Brentwood was going to be demolished a big celebrity bash was held by the worman who lived there, who I think was Decker’s assistant.\u00a0 Invitations were sent only to the big celebrities, of course leaving out booksellers and researchers. My solution to the invitation snub was that I crashed the party with actor Jed Rowen (The Ghastly Love of Johnny X).\u00a0 I wrote about the evening, with a lot of photos of the event, on What Up Hollywood, click here<\/a> if you want to know about Decker’s great pad.\u00a0 An update to the story concerns the front door, which is pictured.\u00a0 It was hand made by Decker.\u00a0 The woman who sold the house took it with her, and before she died of cancer a couple years ago she sold it. The purchaser was a Hollywood author and collector, so it is in good hands, saved from the wrecking ball..\u00a0Click here<\/a> to see the photos Jed and I took, including those of the front door.<\/p>\n Adam was somewhat eccentric, which is why and how he managed to build the greatest backlist of popular culture I’ve ever seen.\u00a0 The folks writing these books were usually on the fringe<\/em>, and Adam could relate to them on an equal and intellectural basis\u00a0 He truely enjoyed the company of many of his authors.\u00a0 He was genuine and treated them as friends, building trust.\u00a0 He was greatly respected by the authors, and they delivered the quality that he sought.\u00a0 I really don’t think any modern day publisher, no matter how much money they have, can ever match the incredible line-up of titles at Feral House.\u00a0 Take a look through their titles on the FH website.\u00a0 As long as you live, you will never see a better list in the genre.\u00a0 I wonder where the company goes from here?\u00a0 Since Adam moved away from L.A. a few years ago I haven’t heard much about who, if anyone, has been groomed to carry on.\u00a0 Doing daily business routine is not what is important.\u00a0 Who can connect to the authors, who can dig out the great stories, who can push for quality?\u00a0 Adam did it instinctivly, smoothly, beautifully.\u00a0 He loved his authors and they loved him.\u00a0 (With a few exceptions, even Adam could screw up once in a while and act like a dick, but hey, who hasn’t done that?}<\/p>\n One of the edgy events that Adam put on was at the old Silent Movie Theater on Fairfax Ave. in Hollywood.\u00a0 It was to launch Timothy Wyllie’s book “Love, Sex, Fear, Death, The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment.”\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>Included at the event was a re-inactment of one of the religious group’s occult rituals..\u00a0 The Theater was packed and Adam at his best.\u00a0 Timothy Wyllie sold and signed a lot of books.\u00a0 It was one of the strangest events I’ve ever been at, but a complete success for Adam and FH.<\/p>\n Adam Parfrey, Paul Hunt,\u00a0 and filmmaker John Aes Nihil at the Tim Willie Event.<\/p>\n The problem the last few years was that Adam had moved to the boonies in Washington State to grow his own food in case some of the dire predictions in his conspiracy books were actually going to come true. He had also recently married, I don’t know if his new bride pressured him to move or not.\u00a0 I tried to dissuade him of this in the strongest terms I could.\u00a0 I even wrote him a personal letter about it.\u00a0 Adam had become L.A.’s Bad Boy Publisher.\u00a0 The new media loved him.\u00a0 He or FH were constantly featured on the pages of Los\u00a0 Angeles publications.\u00a0 His books pushed the envelope and that prompted more interviews.\u00a0 He held Salons<\/em> at his house, events like the one at the Silent Theater, and was himself sought after by the media for interviews.\u00a0 My view was that if Adam moved out of Los Angeles to rural Washington, then he would no longer be L.A.’s Bad Boy, he would become just another out of town publisher, albeit a great one.\u00a0 Eventually, the media would forget about him to some extent.\u00a0 If you’re\u00a0 an L.A. boy then by God you had better be living in L.A.\u00a0 The City is a possessive mistress.<\/p>\n So Adam moved anyway.\u00a0 The media frenzy cooled.\u00a0 He was no longer on the cover of the Weekly or other local publications.\u00a0 I think the event with Tim Wyllie happened shortly after his move, but he came back to L.A. to launch the book.\u00a0 The truth is that Port Townsend, Washington is not L.A.\u00a0 It may have its own charms, but\u00a0 turning your back on L.A. is like spurning a woman.\u00a0 No good will come of it, and Adam’s spell on L.A. was broken.\u00a0 Like it or not, L.A. is where it’s at..\u00a0 This is one of the\u00a0 centers of the universe in a literary sense.\u00a0 It’s a huge book market.\u00a0 It’s buzzing with literary activity.\u00a0 The filmmakers are here, musicians are here, authors are here. His many friends wanted him to stay in L.A.\u00a0 We loved him and didn’t want to lose him because he was an important part of our lives as well as a focal point of cultural activity.\u00a0 But Adam ditched it all for some peace and quiet, a change of lifestyle, and to grow vegetables.\u00a0 (Personal Disclosure: Don’t send any vegan hate mail.\u00a0 My girl friend and I are in a community gardern and we grow vegetables here in L.A\u00a0 And BTW, we are not waiting for armageddon, we are eating all the little fuckers now.)\u00a0 We have to respect his decision, but I also think it may have long-term played a role in his death.\u00a0 He had certain health issues.\u00a0 L.A. is world class in medical help.\u00a0 He was famous for over-working and not taking care of himself.\u00a0 I think if he had paid more attention to his health, been in Los Angeles to take advantage of the great medical facilities here, he would possibly still be alive instead of dead at 61. That’s just my opinion, subject to change if I hear further information about the cause of his death.**<\/p>\n I remember a really funny incident.\u00a0 We had a book shop in Burbank called Movie World.\u00a0 One day I happened to be in there instead of down at Atlantis where I normally hung out.\u00a0 In comes Adam.\u00a0 I took him out to the lobby of\u00a0 the shop and showed him this enormous pile of\u00a0 thousands of 8 x 10 photos that my partner had just dumped on this cart.\u00a0 I knew Adam was always looking for movie stills of his father, whom he revered.\u00a0 I reached into the massive pile, grabbing a batch of the photos, and on top was a great photo of\u00a0 his father in a movie scene. (The only photo of his father in the entire pile.)\u00a0 Wow, was Adam happy.\u00a0 What a one in a million coincidence!\u00a0 He was also happy about\u00a0 the price:\u00a0 25 cents!<\/p>\n Adam Parfrey zipped through our lives with a quiet intensity.\u00a0 A tornado was usually following him, throwing out some of those classic titles that blew our minds and expanded our consciousness.\u00a0 Rest in Peace friend Adam Parfrey.\u00a0 You are still L.A.’s bad boy in my book of life.<\/p>\n \n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feral House the Greatest Popular Culture Publisher by Paul Hunt Adam Parfrey: \u00a0Being edgy, cruising on the event horizon between\u00a0 extreme kulture and downright madness was something Adam consistently sought and attained. I’m very sad that my friend Adam Parfrey … Continue reading ![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bookstorememories.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/download-1.jpg?resize=197%2C256\")
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Adam was in the used book business at one time, so we shared a lot of insight.\u00a0 He too had wrestled with mounds of rejects from the Goodwill and other charities.\u00a0 An interesting experience only known to a few in the entire world.\u00a0 He was a frequent visitor to my book shops, and we had some great conversations. For a while Adam operated out of an office in downtown Los Angeles.\u00a0 He eventually moved to the Silverlake area into an iconic structure that served as his office as well as appearing to be a Kultural Church.\u00a0 It was one of the coolest buildings in the City, in an area of previous metaphysical activity<\/em> and a fitting place for the House of Adam.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/bookstorememories.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/330px-Leopold_von_der_Decken.jpg?resize=330%2C450\")
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