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David Ferguson is an international outsider-culture impresario, activist, music producer and concert promoter. Over his career – most of which has been spent on the West Coast -- he has worked with musical acts such as  The Avengers,   John Lydon (a.k.a. Johnny Rotten), Billy Bragg,  Iggy Pop, Bad Brains, Black Flag, and The Butthole Surfers and visual artists Vaughn Bode, Jean-Michel Basquiat,  and Barry McGee. Ferguson worked with Pop-Art icon Andy Warhol and produced and promoted multi-discipline artists such as avant-garde musician and spoken-word artist Lydia Lunch and the psychedelic drag queen performance group The Cockettes.

The San Francisco Chronicle referred to Ferguson as the "godfather of the unorthodox", adding that Ferguson "...not only thinks outside the box—he crushes it, dances on top of it, reinvents it and calls it whatever he likes. He has spent his life making trouble." The East Bay Express wrote, "David Ferguson's life story reads like an encyclopedia of the underground."

Ferguson founded and presently heads the Institute For Unpopular Culture, a San Francisco-based arts organization. Through IFUC, Ferguson has maintained his involvement in anti-war protests, an activism which dates back to his student days at the University of Miami in the 1960s.

Early career


Called a "hellraiser" by the University of Miami paper, The Hurricane, Ferguson was co-leader of the Union of Students to End the War in Vietnam. Before his anti-war activities led to his expulsion from the university, Ferguson arranged for Pop Art icon Andy Warhol to speak at the campus in 1968, an event that led to a professional association between the two.

Ferguson moved to San Francisco where he met the performance troupe The Cockettes, for which he later produced live shows. Even in tolerant San Francisco The Cockettes' bawdy performance antics presented thorny PR issues which Ferguson had to negotiate with wary club owners:

''For nearly 20 years, Mr. Bimbo [Agostino Giuntoli, owner of Bimbo's] had presided over his lavish and busy supper club five nights a week, and he was nervous about renting the place out...In fact, he was so nervous about that prospect that he asked David Ferguson to sign an affidavit of sorts—on the back on an envelope—swearing that he would allow no naked women to perform onstage. It was only after seeing the show that Mr. Bimbo got the joke and realized how funny his prohibition was. 'David,' he said, as he approached the table, laughing. 'I can see that I have to be careful with you. You promised me no naked women, but you said nothing about naked men.''

Ferguson formed a lecture and appearance scheduling enterprise in 1973. Through the agency, he represented the Black Panther Party, and scheduled lectures for Jo Ann Little, Paul Krassner, Stewart Brand, Beat poet Michael McClure, and graffiti art pioneer Vaughn Bode,Ferguson produced or promoted shows for acts such as Iggy Pop and The New York Dolls.

Public Image Ltd. Concerts


In 1979, Ferguson co-founded CD Presents as a concert promotion company, which later expanded into a record label that specialized in promoting, recording and distributing punk music and alternative music.

Ferguson's concert promotion career took an important turn when he was asked to produce West Coast shows for Public Image Ltd. during PiL's first two American tours (1980 and 1982, respectively). The 1980 show at Los Angeles’ Olympic Auditorium show proved not only a memorable event in PiL's career, but it also marked the first notable appearance of Los Lobos, a Tejano music wedding band that Ferguson brought in as a last minute addition to the bill.

In keeping with the group's iconoclastic image, PiL balked at major label promotion to back its tour, insisting instead on working with smaller, independent promoters. This led to the band's association with CD Presents, an informal partnership that put PiL and Ferguson on a collision course with music industry powers, most notably Bill Graham, head of the San Francisco-based Bill Graham Presents and the music industry's most powerful promoter.

Graham held a virtual monopoly on concert promotion in Northern California and he stepped in on more than one occasion to postpone the San Francisco PiL show, ultimately maneuvering behind-the-scenes to persuade city officials to terminate the concert all together. This battle played to Lydon's own reputation as an anti-establishment hell raiser: "We've got to play this gig," [Lydon] exclaimed. "It's everything we came here to do on this tour. We gave them six gigs for these two, and we'll see which ones come off the most successful.  That's what they're really afraid of." Fearing riots if the PiL show was cancelled, city officials authorized CD Presents to proceed with the concert.

Label
Either through the label or through its distribution system, CD presents recorded, released or distributed the music of nearly 3,300 artists. In 1983, the label released a compilation of The Avengers' material popularly known as The Pink Album. Additionally, As CD Presents released records D.O.A, Butthole Surfers, and Tales of Terror. CD Presents released the San Francisco group The Offs's First Record (1984) Andy Warhol's Interview Magazine, May 1985. with a Jean-Michel Basquiat-designed cover.

During the 1980s, CD Presents released three volumes of punk recording compilations titled Rat Music for Rat People. Vol. 1 (1988), a collection of songs previously released by Go Records! in 1982, featured a number of the era's most notable West Coast punk bands: The Avengers, Dead Kennedys, Black Flag w/Henry Rollins, Circle Jerks, The Subhumans, and D.O.A. Vol. 2 (1984) showcased a number of Texas punk bands including, The Butthole Surfers, Big Boys, The Dicks, MDC along with the influential Southern California hardcore band, Minutemen,  The Minutemen once toured with Billy Bragg, for whom CD Presents released his first two albums to American audiences (Life's a Riot with Spy vs Spy and Brewing Up with Billy Bragg). Rat Music, Vol. 3 featured The Adolescents, Naked Raygun and Mojo Nixon. Vol. 3 also was one of the earliest records of producer/engineer Sylvia Massy (Johnny Cash, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and Tool's Undertow), who mixed and engineered a number of the tracks.

CD Presents released albums from artists in other genres besides punk, including the avant-garde musician, poet and actress Lydia Lunch and electronic and the experimental post punk act Minimal man.

Institute For Unpopular Culture (IFUC)
In 1989 Ferguson founded the Institute For Unpopular Culture (IFUC) as a non-profit organization to support artists outside the mainstream art world. "It is our aim to subvert all commercial avenues of art exploitation," Ferguson said. "It's not that we dislike people who own art galleries, we just think there could be a viable alternative." IFUC's stated mission is to discover and mentor outsider artists and creative people by assisting with public relations, business and counseling opportunities, access to equipment, and funding for their projects. Since its founding the Institute has supported and been associated with a number of artists, including Obie-award winning performance artist Holly Hughes and graffiti artist Barry McGee (a.k.a. "Twist").

Ferguson founded The Punk Rock Orchestra, a 50-plus member collaboration which recasts punk songs in an orchestral format. The orchestra has been featured on NPR and was voted San Francisco's Best Local Band in 2005 by readers of the SF Weekly.

IFUC also sponsored artist Clinton Fein, founder of the controversial website, Annoy.com. Interns from the IFUC offered extensive legal research in support of Fein's successful legal case against the U.S. government (ApolloMedia v. Reno). The case challenged the constitutionality of the Communications Decency Act of 1997.

IFUC has sponsored of William Noguera, an artist who, since 1983 has been on death row at California's San Quentin State Prison and creates photorealistic paintings with thousands of ink dots with a rapidograph pen. Former IFUC chief financial officer Cassandra Richardson has exhibited Noguera's work after starting her artist representation enterprise.

Activism
'''In 2002, Ferguson was invited by prominent activists Medea Benjamin and Andrea Buffa, of Code Pink and Global Exchange, to participate in the founding of United for Peace and Justice, a coalition of U.S. anti-war organizations. Through his media coordination efforts, Ferguson helped initiate the first public demonstrations against the Iraq War.'''