Flaming Pablum: "Mood Music For Urban Chaos": The Myth & Mission of Missing Foundation

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"Mood Music For Urban Chaos": The Myth & Mission of Missing Foundation

There are a handful of bands I tend to write about here, more often than not – notably Cop Shoot Cop, Killing Joke, SWANS, The Plasmatics and a few others. But there’s one other band I’ve devoted a comparatively exhaustive amount of posts to, and that’s Missing Foundation.

By my count, I’ve devoted no fewer than 14 posts (see below) to MF, over this blog’s (almost) two decades, which is kinda striking, considering they’ve always been something of a niche concern, comparatively speaking. Suffice to say, beyond the scope of his musical output (which is stylistically much wider than the layperson might imagine), Peter Missing – the man behind the logo, the lore and the loud roar of vintage Missing Foundation, has always fascinated me. The mere fact that his notorious insignia can still be found painted, scrawled, etched, carved and hastily scribbled across Lower Manhattan facades to this day is testament to the impact of his art and its accompanying associations.

But Peter doesn’t live here anymore. He is currently residing in Germany, but still making art and music, albeit with sort of a different approach than before, as I discussed on this relatively recent post.

But while the Missing Foundation that was routinely banned from practically every live music venue in New York City for blithely violating codes, arguably inciting riots, wreaking havoc and causing no end of wanton property damage may be gone for good, their legend continues to loom large for those of us who still remember their mysterious reign of mayhem. For many, Missing Foundation continues to singularly represent a period in downtown Manhattan that has, in the ensuing decades, simply gone missing.

I seemed to miss it when it originally aired last year, but a podcast called Shoe Leather did their own episode on Missing Foundation, and even reached out to Missing to see if he wanted to participate. He didn’t, suggesting he’s not interested in revisiting the past. Oddly enough, around this time last year, Peter Missing actually reached out to me to see if I’d be interested in doing an interview with him. We got as far as me emailing him proposed questions. He acknowledged receipt, but said it might be a while before he got around to answering them, as he was recording, at the time. I never heard back, although perhaps he understandably just didn’t dig my line of inquiry, given that this blog is almost entirely about revisiting the past. I could still hear back, I suppose. We’ll see.

Hear Shoe Leather’s account of the Missing Foundation saga here:

Here in 2024, meanwhile, you can still avail yourself to the totality of Missing Foundation’s robust catalog on Bandcamp, which is in diametric opposition to the struggle to find MF’s albums back in the day. They weren’t exactly readily available at your local Crazy Eddie’s, if you know what I mean. Additionally, if you peruse eBay within any frequency, you might notice an uptick in Missing Foundation ephemera (signed posters, artwork, etc.) up for auction, although I’m not sure if those are sanctioned by Mr. Missing or not.

Peter Missing does occasionally reappear in New York City. I captured him at work on a mural on Houston Street in 2016...

With no patience for nostalgia, Peter Missing continues to make music. His latest project is a collaboration with a composer named Bert Olke who goes by the nom-de-plume Hackbert. Their project is called Remove the Shadows and was released earlier this year. Here’s a taste of that…