Sonic Colonic (1 of 2)

Part I: Meet the Band

My band will blow your moist panties clear off. You heard me. Don’t even come to the show if you don’t want to be assaulted with the sonic force that is….’Jack Toffleday and the Busted 3’. Well that is our working title anyway. We believe and invested heavily in innuendo. Or you might say, “In your end ho”, which is the title of one of our songs. Our first album, “Splatter Zone”, is pretty much done and ready to be pressed, we are just having some artistic differences with our label concerning the album cover.

How loud you ask? We play a mix of very loud or very fucking loud.

Our drummer, who I will call “Drums”, has a set-up that would make any 80’s butt-hair rocker jealous. Double bass drums, six toms, seven crashes, high hat, snare, those wind chimey things, and of course, a cow bell. He uses a mic on all his drums, just so he can be louder if he needs to. Our bass player, who I will call “Bass”, could join Rush on a moments notice. He drops bombs with 200 watts through a 4x12 bass speaker cabinet.

Also, we have another guitar player, who I will call “Nigel”. Nigel’s 100 watt head, and arsenal of pedals, sizzles through a 4x12 Marshall half-stack that only goes to 10….but trust me, this rig means business. We also have a guy who blows the sweet sounds on old sax-a-ma-phone. I will call him “Getz”. Getz can never hear his instrument when he plays. So he blows as hard as he can for as long as he can, and then tries not to pass out. How is supposed to be heard in the mix? Turning up his microphone to ear-splitting levels seems to be the only answer. Because there is no damn way Drums, Bass or Nigel is gonna turn down. Trust me. Me and Getz have tried. That dog just won’t hunt. They play with the god-given American right of a space shuttle launch. And they like it that way.

For those of you not in the business, our musical gear is enough to fill Key Arena without a lick of trouble at all. And then there is me. How many watts do I usually play my guitar through? 8 tiny little watts. 8 watts into a 1x12. That is it. That is all I have ever needed until this band. But that amp is now dead. The band ate it. It tried to keep the pace but then “rattle-rattle-chatter-clatter-boom-click-clang”….gone. Ok, you get the point. WE ARE LOUD.

For further proof, please see this hearing damage chart developed by the Scientific Community:

The music? The music is good. It rocks. It sways. It will duck, dodge, grab, and release without hesitation. Not overtly, but simply complicated tight changes that reside in weird time signatures. I have to say, it really is fun to be in a band again. I need the release. If I had to sum up our genre it would best described as the love child of an Acid-Metal-Jazz- Rush-Led Zep-Rare Earth orgy. Get it? One of these days I will link a sound file.

We play in a smelly basement practice space that we share with the brother of Jimi Hendrix. Not an important fact, but for some reason this is first thing people say when describing us. Celebrity is so powerful in the mind that just being associated with a non-celebrity who is associated with a dead celebrity is like, wow, man.

Second thing you must know is that Drums has the poorest, worstest, baddest communication skills seemingly to ever take on human form. And a complete misunderstanding of what you and I, dear reader, call reality. These are two critical points you must remember, because Drums was the only point of contact for the upcoming series of events to be detailed in Part II. However, God bless his good intentions, for he is the ultimate optimist. Oh, the first thing to know is that we play at two volumes, loud and very fucking loud. Did I mention that?

So you got the idea? What would you expect if we should up with all our gear at your party? A nice sonic kick in the teeth, right?

Stay tuned my friend for this is only the setup for Part II: Curtain Call, which will depict the events that took place on Saturday, October 20^th, 2007, at the Montlake Community Center, Seattle, WA….Our first show.

Ask and yea shall be turned away......

I guess you heard about my trip to Phoenix? Yeah, I pretty much fell off the blog-o-wagon there for a minute…..my mind went blank, my body numb, a brown haze of nothingness paralyzed and mystified me all at once…I must have driven close to one of those Game Stores right when a 10year old kid cast a spell of ‘infinitus comas’ in a Magic the Gathering game…sure the kid was frustrated because the spell missed by a mile, but did he ever wonder where the stray bullet/spell landed…well now he knows. Right here. Not so much here…but here.


Either that or I was poisoned in Phoenix…..that’s it!

While spending a weekend “in country” trying to get my fortnightly craving of In and Out, drinking as many free iced concoctions Paper Tiger* and her family would buy me, swimming in toxic levels of chlorine, and wondering why no one else was naked and throwing random items at our condo from the well-past-closed pool, I was defenseless. Mr. Bucket took his opportunity and crippled his foe…..Oh sure, he is complaining on his site for lack of competition, but what would you expect? After dosing me with anti-blog-bugs in the desert, ala Jim Morrison, Mr. Bucket waged his assault of # blogs in the last month. For shame. For shame.
The Inter-Council of Blog-Undoing-Thoughts-Theories-and-Sanctions is on notice my friend.

But what did you expect from a manic-depressive, ego-centric, Debbie-downer, paranoid-delusional writer? Prolific accounts of a prolific nature? Come on now, if it is repetitious foam from the mouth you want, I think I still have some love letters from high school, or excerpts from a diary that read like a Christmas list.

So what have I been doing for the last month? I don’t want to give it all away at once, but lets just say everything is par for the course. And by par for the course, I mean the course is Hell, and par is Dante’s lost circle. Right. Example? Sure, why not.

I decided that I needed to get some help. We have a pretty nice Employee Assistance Program, or E.A.P., at work, so I thought to myself…Self, I said, maybe you could benefit from a fresh perspective. And maybe, just maybe, your friends would like to hear about something other than the usual “the hole of my life just keeps getting bigger, I mean I dig, and dig, and dig, but for some reason it just keeps getting bigger, and I don’t understand” speech. But keep in mind, this was a pretty big step for me. Four years in the making. Not that I am so fatalistic.................

The E.A.P. has a list of ‘medal, the rapists’…I mean, mental therapists, so I choose one at random, or at least I thought it was random. I picked one that looked appealing because she practiced in the area, two blocks from my house, and for some reason, I was more comfortable seeing a woman (maybe it stems from the ‘ol turn and cough doctor reflex). Her name was listed as “Elizabeth M.” lets say. So “Elizabeth” and I exchanged info over the phone. I told her my name was “William”. We set up a time and checked insurance and all was good. I was under instructions to show up a few minutes early to fill out some paperwork and what-not, so I did. I filled out everything very carefully. I wanted her to know I was serious. Good penmanship is a sign of sincerity in my world, because everything is such an effort.

I hear the creaking of stairs overhead….she must be coming down. The door swings open. I look at her. She looks at me. FUCK. She is HOT. Not only is she hot, which I swear was the first thought that crossed my head, she is somehow familiar. She has a look of shock and panic. I return the look. The conversation goes as follows:

“Elizabeth”: ‘I know you.’
“William”: ‘Yeah, I know you too.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘We can’t do this.’
“William”: ‘Yeah, I know.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘I hope you find the help you need.’
“William”: ‘Ok then. Bye.’
“Elizabeth”: ‘Bye.’

I dropped my well-groomed papers in the chair, secretly hoping she would pick them up, call me, and ask me out (never happened by the way).

Turns out “Elizabeth” and “William” have a history and mutual friends…. We even shared a Moroccan dinner at one of said friends 30th birthday party, and “Elizabeth” and “William” spent a long night dancing at a party-barn and sharing quiet night moments together at the same friends house. For those of you keeping track at home, the mutual friend of “Elizabeth” and “William” is known for her new-aged practices, her healing touch, her status as the holy grail, and her recent move to the LA area….oh, she sings and paints too. And logs.

Why did I keep using “proper names”? Well, see I know her as Beth. She knows me as Bob. We didn’t link the two names over the phone. Ramparts.

So with my last ditch effort to concede to the world that I need help, reaching up with my last bit of dignity to someone for some balance in the great maelstrom that is my head…..and…WHAM-O…..hit with another slap in the face… from a victim of the despair no less. What is the world trying to tell me? That my life is just a vessel for classic cruel jokes, one after another? Side by each?

I am pretty sure I can share this information, because there was no client/doctor privilege established. I mean, other than that night at the party-barn………know what I'm sayin?



*Paper Tiger is the new official name for Downtown Tiger aka Fighting Tiger. If you need explanation, just head to Lexington, KY. They can tell y'all about it.











P.S. A Super-Booo-per Ex-Stab-a-ganza!

Arrive San Diego: 11:30 AM Friday, Oct. 26
Depart San Diego: Monday.

Wierd times, but by far the cheapeset option.