All the good disease names were taken I guess they figured, so they couldn't ever be Anthrax anyhow. However, they also missed out on a lot of medical association convention work and high school proms due to this marketing faux pas.
The first bass player thought he was actually the next Bob Mould , and defected to Minneapolis with his wife on the drunken off hand advice of Dave Pirner, and was never to be heard from again. I seem to recall the drummers were soon realizing the ship was leaking next. One apparently made it to New Zealand safely and got a paying job with The Chills for awhile before breeding & then trying to beg himself onto the Goo Goo Dolls road crew. A percussionist left to become some kind of cane wielding cartoon animator. Another drummer was brought in, already a beaten refugee from Poi Dog Pondering ( I suppose once you've taken orders from that evil beast Frank Orral, you'll pretty much salute a wet dishrag on a stick if the bassist tells you it's a flag). The rest of these guys that Pat cavorted around with were either always working out visa details in Hungary or Germany or one of the lesser evil Slavic countries. Then again it seems they were also spotted moonlighting illegally in the flagship location of a chain of Senegalese Tamarind Whisky bars in some west coast barrio or something like that too. One could never tell with these type of gypsy people...
Pat shuts his eyes to the harsh reality of another sordid
homo-erotic modeling session to earn room and gruel & pirate radio play in a squat
in the wintry city of far off Fluffennutter
As grunge swept the charts, the bands' street cred was irreparably harmed when a leaked translation document showed that the German version of Rolling Stone magazine had called them "a Grateful Dead of the 90's".
The band remained hopeful, especially after one big break involved a stadium tour supporting a French band that was really big in Belgium. The new connections were paying off until the headliners lead singer decided to bludgeon to death his French movie star girlfriend in a Romanian hotel, making for a plot of yet another bad French movie that would haunt the band on European Hotel TV's for years. Fortunately, the band was forced to stop playing the t.v, and returned to playing the squats, playing the tarot, and playing with each others minds.
Eventually court records rveal that even children were involved, but none were Pat's, at least that he knows of, because by then he was a broke pseudo-alcoholic poet gypsy road dog with only partial custody of his faculties. Other than some faded passport stamps & even more faded handstamps, there is very little evidence of this period to go on.
Eventually the band formed their own religious cult for tax dodging purposes, and prayed that the wacky original material about killing the president, plus the random Bob Dylan, Daniel Johnston and Nick Cave covers would crack the charts as a soundtrack to an as yet unmade action adventure teen exploitation type movie about their lives. Unable however to secure releases from the long missing bassists & drummers, they could not sell the film rights, but kept churning out various sundry tunes on at least 5 or 6 obscure labels. They held long group therapy sesions in search of a hit and even brought in Andy Gill from Gang of Four to produce before hiring their own mothers & even more attractive girlfriends to lead the band in tawdry onstage strip teases. These moves never got 'em much airplay or chart action, or even additional chicks. Unbeknownst to the band, it was a period in Europe where Gang of Four were long forgotten, and even thinking about sex, particularly with krauts and M.I.L.F's had become unfashionable at the time.
Pat and our protagonists would forge on, rock a festival of 9000 outside The Palais du Malaise on Thursday afternoon, hit a club and play to 1000 in Farfigneuton that night, and a wild party of 800 punks in a squat outside Rottenburg on the next day and still be playing to 8 folks in a dilapitated movie theater in West Sacto Ca. within the week. In no time at all, they'd go from interviews on international radio to interviews for gigs laying sheetrock. They somehow managed this shtick for over decade until being forced by socio-economic factors, inner strife and child protective services into downsizing their operation.
I'd get all the details & dates straight for ya, but then I'd still have to change the names to protect the guilty, and then again, what's the point?
Well the point is, I guess, weaker poet thinking man's rocker dudes woulda O.D'ed, faded into rehab or blown their pretty little brains out, but our hero Pat Ryan simply survived. He just crept away quietly one day at customs with his dignity wrapped in an old tour t-shirt (hand-stitched by his mother), and the band just rolled on without him. They all got dysentary in southeast asia and a write up in a Thai rock magazine, and Pat, well, he went and got a job.
He was in his mid thirties, and had never sat at a fake wood veneer desk before. Yes, indeed he was born anew.
Rumor says he's somewhere downtown, and I wouldn't be surprised if he's like the quintessential quiet festering accountant guy, with a secret creative life that no one at the office need know about. A proverbial Clark Kent with thick rimmed glasses , hiding his secret powers from the secretaries & middle management types. In fact he's probably web surfing up his name right now and finding this horrible spiel that insists on revealing his depraved destiny and his terrible treasure trove of tales to the world.
I bet he'd even think this was funny, if it wasn't all pretty much fucking true.
"I can see severely now..."
Pat Ryan is a rare creative character, and someone whose talents and charisma lie hidden from public view these days like a guerilla sleeper cell. He's been keeping busy, spider holed, observing the world, working in the lab and waiting to strike.
For sometime now he's been recording & mixing a solo album called "THE CULT INSIDE MY HEAD" that is far more complex and rich in tones & content than the entire ouevre of most of the twee tweedle knobbers and disco dumble dee dee dahs that I hear sputtering on the radio these daze.
Of course I know deep down , Pat's project, like most from unheralded indie warriors, will be commercially doomed, at least until he can get out on the road, and win those bleeding hearts in the nosebleed seats one by one. Unfortunately he's too old for American Idol tryouts, and I doubt Paula Abdul would wanna bump uglies with him. Besides he'd probably engage Paula in some sort of off camera banter about the neo-fascist resurgence in Eastern Europe and completely lose her.
But dammit, why should we punish him for that? He's an old fashioned idea man, and is willing To get up & boogie & shout bam-a-lama if he has too. That courageous boy wonder of so many years ago was born to do it and Amerikkka needs him now more than ever. He has a special wily onstage persona that somehow invokes the terrifying & dramatic spectre of Allan Ginsberg morphing into Joe Pesci doing a Van Morrison imitation at a Lenny Bruce Memorial Pow Wow Can-Can rain dance & seance in the Naropa Institute teacher's smoking lounge. He's like a drunken demon leperchaun on ludes leaping about in high heeled jack boots & rallying Ward Churchill's Bar Mitzvah crowd at the Mos Eisley space station dive bar lounge. I ain't making any of that shit up either you goddamned bored blog reading fools...plus he's sensitive & cute as a button!
anyhow, Pat's revealing tracks from his soon to be released magnum opus one by one and unless you frequent the bars on the wrong side of 12 Galaxies, you might not be hip to this shite yet...
The Cult Inside My Head - Slowly
deal wit it , it's deep y'all...
p.s if ya made it through that, then here's some more mp3'z for ya that'll tell ya where I'm at tonight :
Serge Gainsbourg + Brigette Bardot - Intoxicated Man
Green Day - Blood Sex & Booze
Teenage Head - Ain't Got No Sense
Devo + Isaac Hayes - Huboon Stomp
James Brown - Funky Women
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