Tagged with " Storytellers"
Storytellers: Hooded Fang
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D.Alex Meeks of the band Hooded Fang (which features prominent members of Phèdre) shares a quick Storytellers with us about the wisdom accrued from growing up on a zoo.
So it turns out I grew up on a zoo. Folks sometimes mentioned this at birthday parties, but otherwise I never gave the fact much particular mind, steeped as I was in the contexts of the thing. A home-video from small times depicts me intently building a tower of blocks, trying to protect the structure from a similarly-aged baby leopard who is quite intent on knocking them over in its young wayward clumsiness. It is evident from the furrowed child’s brow depicted therein that I have never had much patience for wayward clumsiness.
This zoo life established in me an unusual set of notions about how the world functions. From an early age, most of what I learned about sound was from elephants (they also taught me about the danger of crushing and the importance of tenderness), and most of what I learned about secrecy was from a chimpanzee named Dixie, who was like a child to my parents before they decided to make human babies of their own. Dixie, to the best of my knowledge, never told me a single secret, though we tussled in earnest on many an occasion.
I hope to eventually have as much sense as she.
(Curated by Cactus-Mouth)
Storytellers: Lindsay Tuc
“THE AMAZING MOSCATO BROTHERS”—a very short story by Lindsay Tuc.
It might have been 2008. I know for sure it was a Tuesday night. The Walrus and I (I’m serious, everyone calls him that) only ever did acid on Tuesdays, not that we did acid every Tuesday, just that when ever we took acid—it was always on a Tuesday. At the time I drove a 1992 black Mercades coupe and wore a gold watch. I always drove because The Walrus can’t drive, he still doesn’t have a driver’s licence and the world is better off because of that. I am very happy that I am alive and writing this story and I strongly discourage operating a sports car or any other motor vehicle whilst intoxicated.
I dig girls, women too; all sorts of girls. I also dig other things like records but this story is about girls. I can’t remember her name but she was big and dark and South African. We were doing exactly 99 kilometres per hour on the eastern freeway through the pelting rain to meet her and her friend at their town house in Box Hill—we took our hats off to avoid suspicion. The Walrus was text messaging the girls over some dating app I had downloaded for my shiny new iPhone. He loved using the iPhone, and he is good at talking to girls, which was perfect. A perfect storm.
“Moscato!” The Walrus yelled from the passenger seat, directly into my ear, as if he’d been kicked in the nuts. “We need to get some fucking moscato.” We promptly got the off of the freeway. Both of us knew that moscato was some kind of sweet wine and that the girls wanted at least one bottle to drink. We doubled back and slid into Brunswick East like Luke Skywalker diving his X-wing into the death star. “You know what we are” my trusty navigator said as a statement, not a question “the fucking amazing moscato brothers!”—he swears a lot. He went into some dialog about how we were valiant knights delivering sweet wine to two damsels in distress or some of the usual bullshit he spouts; I was concentrating on the road. Somehow we made it to the Railway Hotel in one piece. We strolled into the bottle shop like it was nothing and informed the poor lady behind the counter that we were the official moscato brothers and that we needed two bottles of moscato and a small bottle of whiskey pronto. I paid, The Walrus left a twenty cent tip.
Long story short, as this is a very short story, we made it to Box Hill in high spirits. Beeping twice as instructed we lit a cigarette to share and marvelled at the tonal qualities of a Mercedes car horn. The two South African girls switched the light on and let us in.
“Aaaay it’s the moscato brothers!”
My South African princess was a lot bigger than she looked in her profile photo, her friend was pushing four feet tall at best and wearing a hospital gown and bracelet. The Walrus would like me to point out here that he had no intention of sleeping with either of these girls as he had a girlfriend at the time who was prettier than anyone else’s girlfriend I’ve ever met. That girl could stop traffic, and eventually left him for Jennifer Hawkins’ ex boyfriend. She never liked me anyway, so stuff her.
Sooooooo cuddly… I could have cuddled that girl for the rest of my life and still be happy with my accomplishments. I pushed my head into her massive bosom as she stroked my crotch and sipped moscato and it was fantastic. The tiny girl was on the opposite couch teaching The Walrus how to swear in Afrikaans. The room was littered with African animal plush toys, it was pure bliss. We were on safari. We had reached our destination. Time stopped.
According to The Walrus, the cursing lesson progressed into stabbing lessons as the very small girl in the hospital gown had a knife discreetly hidden upon her person. South African house music that we had never heard before was blaring out of the stereo, which I quite enjoyed until The Walrus suggested that we leave immediately… I suggested that we all get naked. The Walrus had had a knife pressed to his ribs and was bleeding. He stood up screaming bloody murder, pulled out his favourite aluminium knuckle duster and dragged me by the back of my shirt outside to the car. Dude totally killed my high.
Since then I have deleted all dating profiles, sold my car and enjoy cycling, not only for the financial benefits but also for fitness and public safety.
Storytellers: Daniel Bachman
Daniel Bachman tells us the outrageous tales from his month of ups and downs on tour in Europe.
Back in September I had the opportunity to play a month of shows through Europe. I somehow wrangled my sister into joining me on the ride from Amsterdam to Istanbul, taking trains, local flights and a car when a friend could lend a hand. The two of us had done a fair amount of traveling through the US growing up, but aside from a couple of camping trips to northern Ontario as kids, we’d never been outside of the country. Pushing through travel jitters, the flight went quite smoothly, and after a layover in Iceland we finally arrived at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport around 7am. With some solid food in the two of us and adjustments to the time change, we were set for the first week of shows. In that week, we found kind and talented people trying hard to make us feel at home, and put on solid shows. With Germany, France, and Belgium under out belt, we were getting excited. We had this shit in the bag man, no problem. We ate vending machine waffles and European Coca-Cola products all the way into week three, when we hit a snag in moral and energy, and unfortunately found ourselves in wrong place wrong time circumstances.
We were in Paris and had to be in Barcelona the following night for a show. When we stepped off the platform of our connecting train, we were accidentally pepper sprayed by Parisian rail police who were trying to spray some asshole kids punching each other in the face. Coughing, snotty, and blurry we somehow ended up at the station for our sleeper car to Barcelona. The train was quiet until an older gentleman pounded his way into our room, sat down next to my poor sister, and talked to her in a language she doesn’t speak until the sun came up. She didn’t sleep, energy and moral at a low. One more connection and a couple of hours later, we ended up in the town where the promoter was waiting to pick us up. Now, I tend to fall into a pretty heavy tour bubble where current events pass me by (it took my two weeks to hear about the BP oil spill a couple of years ago). So when we got in to Barcelona it was to our surprise that there were metro bus strikes going on. We all cram in to the most crowded train I’ve ever been on, guitars and bags spilling everywhere, and eventually make it to the venue.
The show was in a small packed bar where everyone was smoking hash (a lot of it) and by the time I was done playing my set I was feeling pretty far out, as I stood outside of the venue. I was talking to a guy from Philly about this City Square Festival he was at where people threw pipes and pieces of metal at the crowd to shut then up, when some water balloons fall down from above and hit me on the side of the face. In broken English some guy then said, “I’m pretty sure its not acid.” Thank God he was right, but whatever was in that balloon swelled my face and turned by eye red for the entirety of our 10 our train ride the following day. In the fourth and final week of tour, I had the most intense week of travel I’d ever experienced, with Romanian disco hotels, 5 am taxi rides in Istanbul, and ethanal poisoned liquor in the Czech Republic… but thats a whole other mess.
Can’t wait to go back.
Storytellers: Vyxor
A late 80′s cartoon called Vytor: The Starfire Champion, some fictional characters named Skyla and Myzor Sarcophogus, and a pair of animation-studio-running parents had a lot to do with Tyler Burton’s decision to name his future R&B project Vyxor…
I grew up in an animation studio. Every day after school I was in the animation studio. Late nights at the animation studio, cereal for dinner. Walk past reception, past the darkroom. The storyboards were tacked on every wall, so you could follow the narrative down the hall (the dino dude grabbed his skateboard and gave chase in panel three). Walk through the corrosive cloud spilling out of the ink and paint department, past the clumsy grey-green Moviolas, outside into the parking lot, past the porn studios and the model airplane manufacturer, the budget movie theater and 50′s diner, and into the quiet, comforting mush of the light-industrial enclave of the San Fernando Valley.
In 1989, Vytor the Starfire Champion teamed up with Skyla to defeat Myzor Sarcophogus and reclaim the Saturn Orb. This sci-fi battle for power and peace and one-liners was fought over a period of four episodes and then quickly shut down. Big production costs and no toy deal contributed to an early cancellation. Even the awesome lightning-summoning synthesizer weapon featured in episode #2 couldn’t save it.
The studio quickly moved on to other projects. And I casually watched over the next decade or so, immersed but never a part of the meetings and deadlines, the successes and stresses, the gleefully dirty-minded illustrators and voice actors, the Northridge earthquake, the devastating water damage, the multiple relocations, the dedication of a small team, the steady decline and eventual closure.
I’ve been composing and recording for many years now, but recently my method shifted, and my music changed. Unsatisfied with my standard cache of emotional tropes and genre signifiers, I wanted to create a narrative outside of myself, a separate universe, something cartoonish and a little silly, operating at an exaggerated velocity. A new property with shades of sci-fi, unto itself, and probably no toy deal. I looked back and decided to borrow the Starfire Champion’s name, accidentally tipping over the ‘t’ in the process. I invoked Vytor’s name to summon the promise of an animated epic filled with sky castles and magic orbs, but more importantly, to remember the studio at its best: the positive creative fantasy without the business. The name looks convoluted, but there’s a simple, personal meaning behind it. It gives me the strength to continue working on this musical passion project, which luckily, no one can cancel.
Curated by Speaker Snacks.
Storytellers: Frank Hurricayne
There are people that you meet that are indescribable. The way they speak, the way they think. One of those people for me is Frank Hurricayne. The ultra-positive folk singer from the northeast is a vagabond whose sole mission on this planet is to sing his songs to all. Frank’s unique vocabulary and psychedelic life experiences allow him to create a wild world for the listener to dive into, while simultaneously existing there himself.
This past November, I was fortunate enough to have Frank play at my house in Orlando. Right before his last song, he went off on this story about an experience while he was in the Smokey Mountains. Without me knowing, my roommate recorded it. We have for you a transcribed version as well as the audio for your listening pleasure. Be sure to keep an eye out for Frank, you never know, maybe he’ll pop up in your town someday.
Here is a recording of Frank telling his story:
And here is the transcribed version:
Oh, so I was working spiritual Smokies, oh yeah. The Smokey Mountains. Between Tennessee & North Carolina this holy June. For a month, [I] was working on the spiritual trail, maintaining and stuff.
I met all kinds of psychedelic characters, oh yeah. I met a psychedelic backyard wrestler slash dude that breaks peoples legs when they owe money, oh yeah. Half the time I think he lives in Tampa, FL from what I hear. He might be in the audience tonight, you never know. But then again, he is a seven foot tall, huge motherfucker, backyard pimp. So, I don’t think he’s here tonight. He might be outside the door. You never know. You owin’ any dollars to anybody between here and Austin, TX, oh yeah, you better watch out for Rotten Jim Cotton. He pops mad steroids. He tried real hard to get me to do steroids with him. He’d be like, “that shit gets you hyped! When you doing the steroids and you driving down the street, and somebody like, cuts you off in traffic and you just want to fucking crush their head inside. This shit is fucking awesome man.” I’m like, ” dude, I don’t know if that sounds like something that I want to do my friend.” But, I really appreciate that he was trying so hard. He was cooking up dishes that he called “mac-a-roidy and cheese”. Real hard to get me to do steroids, just mixing it in there. And I was like, “dude, I ain’t down for that.”
Oh yeah, he wore some bad shoes on the hike. He went up and also forgot his tent. On the first night, there was a huge rainstorm, and he slept out of this little tarp with a bunch of holes in it. And he was freezing almost to death. And so I hiked down off the mountain and got him a tent and picked up a whole bunch of moonshine. But the next night when I got back with the moonshine and Rotten Jim Cotton’s tent, he showed me his feet. He had gangrene on his toes. He toes had turned green and black. And they was fucking, the nails was popping off and shit. It was fucking sick. And I said Rotten Jim, I got to doctor your shoes man. So I cut out the fronts out on his shoes and he walked around like that for a few days. But for three days, he was stuck deep in this mountain with the gangrenes toes. We didn’t leave for three days. But he said to make his body heal quicker, he did not eat. He didn’t eat anything for three days and he just chained smoked Buglers the whole time. Reading psychedelic novels. All kinds of things.
He taught me how to play Texas Hold Em’. And I beat him one night in a long game, a couple of hours. He almost crushed my head off like I owed him money or something. Oh Rotten Jim Cotton and me, we was fucking chilling out in Howland at 4AM while shotgunning beers. A true gangsta.
But while I was hanging, there was all other kinds of psychedelic characters, oh yeah. Many different psychedelic peeps. And I was on a break one day, for two days. So, I went down to Hot Springs, NC to play a psychedelic show on a back country porch. At this backyard, there’s this gangsta named Big Ted. He had a moonshine still in his backyard, oh yeah. He was puffing pounds of ganja on stage and chugging all kinds of alcohol and wilding the fuck out on stage. And up pulls the police car to the front of the house. And they see us next to the moonshine still, puffing and performing. Cops get out the car; it was the head sheriff and the deputy. They get out the car and start walking towards us and they stop. We’re still blazing and playing, hoping that shit isn’t going to go crazy. All of a sudden the sheriff goes, “O-ooooooooo!” Then I realized, he was digging the tunes, oh yeah. It was a pretty chill mother fucking joint. So we went on puffing and playing.
The show ended and we was all kinds of mother fucked up. We heard all kinds of psychedelic engines, revving across the rivier. And I said, “what’s going on over there?” They said it was a holy Hell’s Angels rally. And I said, “WE SNEAKING IN THAT MOTHERFUCKER.” And so we went across the river. We walked straight into the Hell’s Angels bike-o-rally, me and like six other people. They didn’t say nothing to us, we just cruised right in. We didn’t have no motorcycles, or nothing. Everybody’s just eyeballing us like crazy, but nobody said nothing. Then all of a sudden, a lightning storm starts striking. Crazy thunder in the air and rain is pouring down. The Hell’s Angels are all popping shrooms and they all have handles of whiskey and there’s all these huge topless ladies everywhere. They losing they minds and the whiskey, everybody is dumping it across their bodies. And the rain is coming down and the shrooms are just popping in. The Hell’s Angels are wilding the fuck out.
I hear off to the side a crazy sound system with some music coming out. I realize that Artimus Pyle, the drummer of Lynyrd Skynard, is playing at the Hell’s Angels bike-o-rally. We go to the huge stage. There’s like a 1,000 Hell’s Angels and big ol’ topless ladies. We are flipping our lids. He plays all the hits like, “Sweet Home Alabam[a]” and “The Ballad of Curtis Lizzzo” and all those holy tunes. And then he comes up on stage, and the rain is at its peak, and the lightning is striking and shit is going crazy and everybody is pouring whiskey on top of themselves still. It was crazy there. The topless ladies are just grinding all over the place. It’s crazy. The bikes are coming through the crowd and revving and shit’s on fire, and shit is going down. And Artmius screams into the microphone and says, “WHAT SONG ARE WE PLAYING NEXT?! FREE BIRRDD! WHAT SONG ARE WE PLAYING NEXT?!”. And a thousand motherfucking topless ladies and Hell’s Angels and me and a couple of gangstas we yell, “FREEE BIIRDD!” And all of a sudden they erupted into a 30 minute version of “Free Bird”. The fucking lighting is striking all over the place, the topless ladies are grinding, and the rain is coming down like crazy. Everybody is losing their minds.
It was a holy time. One of the most spiritual things I’ve ever seen.
Curated by Tiny Waves