Archive for category General Weirdness
Metalheads Protest Santorum Visit To Tacoma
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness, Uncategorized on February 14, 2012
In a bizarre but effective demonstration, scores of enraged metalheads showed up last night to protest Rick Santorum’s fake anti-metal agenda last night in Tacoma, Washington. The protestors, well aware that Santorum hadn’t made the comments about metal that were first reported on this website, decided that he had said and done enough repugnant stuff in his time on the national stage to deserve their wrath anyway. Santorum, who was speaking only seconds away from the Metalheads and the Occupy Tacoma Protestors, spent most of the night ignoring the protestors and saying essentially meaningless things to the crowd who applauded wildly for no reason in particular.
Photo By Glen Casebeer
Glen Casebeer, writer for The Northwest Music Scene, who was at the rally noted that the evening was “volatile at times”. Protestors, packed together like sardines, spent a good portion of the night arguing with wild-eyed Santorum supporters who were emblazoned by the full moon and scent of human blood. The night featured the predictable glitter bombing of Santorum along with Tacoma’s shock troops getting a chance to use their tasers on a few people who were practicing their First Amendment right to free assembly. All things considered, it was a fine night for the democratic process.
Photo By Glen Casebeer
Varg Vikernes Creates Secret Weather Control Device; Threatens to Destroy World
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 13, 2012
After his recent release from prison for the murder of Mayhem frontman Euronymous, Varg Vikernes seemed to be saying all the right things. He was going to retire to a quiet life where he would write music for his band Burzum and work patiently in his garden on his prized daffodils.
He had become a devout reader of Nicholas Sparks novels, particularly “The Notebook” which he called “the most bittersweet, poignant tale of young love he had ever encountered”. He had bought a farm just north of Trondheim where he planned to work with sick goats and even open a petting zoo for young children.
People had thought that the bizarre, horrifying saga of Varg was finally coming to a quiet end. They were wrong.
Last Wednesday, Varg sent a letter to the Sandefjord Daily Examiner, claiming that since his release in March 2009 he has been secretly working on a weather control device that could “rain the fury of the gods upon our world.” The device, which he referred to as Odin’s Hammer, is capable of creating tornadoes and hurricanes, along with other types of obscure and bizarre weather events.
As a show of its strength, on Monday Varg claimed to have caused the freak blizzard that covered Riyadh, Saudi Arabia with 12 inches of snow. He also claimed responsibility for the freak frog storm that interrupted Saturday’s football match between Manchester United and Liverpool. “I’ve shown you I can make frogs fall from the sky,” said Varg in a letter released on Sunday, “you will bow down before me…..YOUR BLACK METAL GOD.”
Interpol has been tracking Varg since the first message made it to the newspapers. Several sources claim that he has slipped out of Norway and hidden in North Korea under the protection of the slightly bloated leader of that nation, Kim Jong Un.
Another source claims that Varg had originally offered to sell the device to Iran for 100 million dollars, but decided against it when he learned that several prominent Iranian clerics preferred more mainstream black metal bands like Dimmu Borgir.
Varg claims he will not use Odin’s Hammer if several demands are immediately met. The list of demands range from the slightly bizarre to the unbelievably ridiculous. First of all, he wants a fleet of 200 World War 2 Sherman Tanks at his disposal at all times. He has asked that Wednesday be renamed Heimdall, in honor of the Norse God whose horn will announce the end of the world. He demanded a worldwide ban on the use of ukuleles.
Finally, he asked for the ruins of the Roman Coliseum to be filled with 500,000 pounds of gluten-free cupcakes. Authorities are confused by Varg’s request and some believe that it is possible that these requests might, in fact, be signs of mental illness.
In America, one of the targets for potential attack named by Varg in his last letter, responses were mixed. Several prominent politicians called for an immediate program creating billions of dollars in subsidies to corporations that create gluten free cupcakes.
However, some politicians, like former Presidential candidate Scott Walker were not impressed with Varg’s threats. “We all know that it is impossible for human actions to affect the weather. That’s just preposterous,” said Walker in Wednesday’s interview on The Sean Hannity Show.
Rick Santorum Declares War On Heavy Metal
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 10, 2012
Rick Santorum has been on the offensive lately, but his target has not been Republican frontrunner Mitt Romney or even President Barack Obama. For the past week, Santorum has been using his campaign to take aim at an issue he feels to be the single most dangerous force in America today: Satanism in heavy metal. “If you listen to the radio today, many of these brand new, so-called heavy metal music bands like Black Sabbath, Venom, The WASP and Iron Maiden use satanic imagery to corrupt the minds of young people,” announced Santorum at a 10,000 dollar a plate sock-hop in Valdosta, Georgia on Thursday.
Santorum’s popularity in the polls has grown substantially since he began speaking out against metal and its assault on traditional values. He has spent much of the past week in the Midwest encouraging young people to stay away from metal artists and listen to performers like Michael W. Smith and Pat Boone. In a recent Gallup Poll, 87 percent of Republican voters think that the biggest problem in America today is “the demented bloodlust of teenagers caused entirely by heavy metal music.”
In the past, Santorum has accused heavy metal of being the cause of some of the worst crimes in American history including the attempt on the life of Ronald Reagan in 1981, 9/11 and the passage of Obama’s Health Care Bill. He stepped up his rhetoric in a speech on Wednesday when he implied that heavy metal is the cause of many forms of mental illness as well as lactose intolerance.
It’s probably not a coincidence that since he began his crusade against metal that his poll numbers have been surging upwards. Picking out a small and unique group, singling them out as “other” and using them to frighten the masses is a proud tradition in American politics. However, many commentators believe that his call for metal internment camps goes too far. Santorum has openly advocated the forced re-education of metalheads. They would be forced to endure 30 days of non-stop “values based” music that promotes the American way of life as well as the free market. In order to leave, they will have to sing the chorus to at least one Celine Dion song.
In response to Santorum’s metal onslaught, Mitt Romney officially denounced his earlier position of “tolerance towards all fans of extreme music”. This, in spite of the fact that GWAR played his inauguration as governor of Massachusetts back in 2003. But things have changed since 2003 and embracing heavy metal music is about as popular selling baby organs on Ebay or clubbing seals. Romney will need to begin pretending to be something else if he plans on facing Obama in the general election in November.
Controversy Surrounds Controversy About Controversy Over Controversy Over Black Sabbath Reunion
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 9, 2012
(as partially formulated by psychologist and poet RD Laing in his book “Knots”)
They are playing a game about Bill Ward.
They are playing at not playing a game about Bill Ward.
If I show them I see they are,
I shall break the rules and they will tell me I’m not metal.
I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.
They are not having fun playing the Bill Ward game.
I can’t have fun if they don’t.
If I get them to have fun when playing the Bill Ward game, then I can have fun with them.
Getting them to have fun, is not fun. It is hard work.
I might get fun out of finding out why they’re not.
I’m not supposed to get fun out of working out why
they’re not.
But there is even some fun in pretending to them I’m not
having fun finding out why they ’re not.
Sharon comes along and says: let’s have fun, but without Bill.
But having fun is a waste of time, because it doesn’t
help to figure out why they’re not having fun.
How dare you have fun when Ozzy died on the Cross
For You!
Was He having fun?
Is Sharon having fun?
Is this fun?
Is it fun that Bill Ward is not having fun?
Is it fun that we are having fun about Sharon not having fun?
Is Ozzy having fun not having fun because Sharon is not having fun making Bill Ward not have fun?
Where are we anymore?
Hipster Terrorists Taken Into Custody After Attempted Hijacking Of 70,000 Tons of Metal Cruise
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on February 2, 2012
Hipster Terrorist During The Attack On The Ship
In an event that has raised international tensions between hipsters and metalheads, a crew of bearded, shaggy hipsters attempted to set hijack the 70,000 tons of metal tour boat yesterday. They were beaten severely by many of the passengers and apprehended by police at the end of the cruise. The Hipster Terrorists demanded an immediate end to “songs with cookie monster vocals” and “more songs that talk about what it’s like to feel left out.” After about 20 minutes of this, enraged metalheads, led by Tankard vocalist Andreas Geremia, stormed the terrorists, taking their weapons and curb stomping four of them.
Hipster Terrorist leader Sheik Jasper Thelonius Monk claimed, through a mouth full of broken teeth, that this was the beginning of a series of “ironic terrorist attacks”. The attack, meant to be homage to the Achille Lauro hijacking in the 1980s, failed almost immediately when the metalheads realized that the hipsters were scrawny and weak. “Between the 15 of them, they had to weigh one member of Crowbar,” said Annihilator guitarist Jeff Waters, who beat several hipsters bloody with his Epiphone Annihilation-V Flying V guitar.
The Hipsters had planned to hold the ship hostage until the cruise directors agreed to allow Cobra Starship to play a 12-hour concert on the main deck. They also demanded the ship be taken to “some country where the art of Banksy and Spin Magazine are taken more seriously.” They implored their hostages to stop being sucked into the madness of consumer capitalism and shop at Urban Outfitters. The terrorists, who all had high powered AK-47 assault rifles and copies of recent books by Chuck Klosterman, were taken without a shot being fired.
Hipster terrorism is on the rise in America over the last few months. Other, less notable attacks, included holding MTV executives hostage until they played an hour straight of Vampire Weekend videos and forcing Venom to play an entire concert with out of tune instruments. However, CIA officials are not concerned. Veteran CIA agent John Nash stated in a recent interview that the “hipster terrorist phenomena will not last long. Once they realize other people are doing it, they’ll stop immediately and start hating terrorism. They’re not all that hard to figure out.”
Metalheads Celebrate Vanquishing The Hipster Terrorists To The Music of Death Angel
Still, this attack could cause a major problem between rival hipster and metalhead factions. Metal Secretary of Defense and Manowar bassist Joey DeMaio believes that there is war on the horizon and that The Army of True Metal will be victorious. “If you want to know what the future looks like,” said DeMaio in a press conference this morning, “imagine a boot stepping on a hipsters face over and over again while me and the boys play “The Gods Made Heavy Metal”.
Celtic Frost Reunite To Rock Needlebaum Bar Mitzvah
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 30, 2012
Thomas G Warrior and The Boys After Wolfing Down Some Potato Kugel and Manischewitz
In this year’s most talked about metal reunion, the original members of the metal legends Celtic Frost returned to the stage to help celebrate the passage into manhood of young Shlomo Needlebaum. The Needlebaums have been lifelong fans of the band and Sol Needlebaum, Shlomo’s father and owner of Honest Sol’s Linoleum Flooring with 40 locations throughout the Midwest, knew that this was the perfect opportunity to bring the band back together. “Morbid Tales has been a constant part of Shlomo’s life since he was a little baby. We played Dethroned Emperor at his bris and he’s been in love with them ever since,” proclaimed Sol outside of the Moshe Dayan Memorial Temple in Mayfield Heights, Ohio.
At first, Thomas Gabriel Warrior (or Fischer, as most adults like to call him) was dead set against the idea. However, the chance to help a fan like Shlomo start the exciting journey into adult life along with a check for 50,000 dollars helped Warrior change his tune. Warrior’s love of the traditions of Judaism were also a major influence on his decision. “I have always had a special place in my heart for the Jewish people and particularly their traditions,” said Warrior decked out in corpse paint and a yarmulke before he strode on stage, “I often think of the great quote by the German poet Berthold Auerbach who said ‘Judaism lives not in an abstract creed, but in its institutions’. UGH!”
Celtic Frost opened The Bar Mitzvah Concert at Epstein’s Deli and Reception Hall on Saturday night with their classic song The Usurper. Then, they launched into two altered versions of classic songs in honor of the evening. Into Crypts Oy Vay sent the crowd of 200 into a frenzy and Bacon (For The Wicked) caused the floor to rumble with the charging fury of pure metal metalness. The highlight of the night was when Warrior was lifted onto a chair during the hora (which the Rabbi Jacob Greenblatt referred to jokingly as “The Circle of Tyrants” dance) and carried around the restaurant while singing “Inner Sanctum”.
The night was not without incident. Bassist Martin Ain, confused and annoyed by the challah that was being thrown at the band, fired Franco Sesa’s drumstick at 12-year-old Annie Blechman. The stick slammed into her forehead, sending her to Mt. Sinai Medical Center for overnight evaluation. Ain was briefly detained by police after the event but was released on his own recognizance pending investigation.
All things considered, the evening was a major success. The band sounded crisp in spite of its four-year layoff. Warrior, who has made millions of dollars over the past few years in the fortune cookie message writing business, is seriously considering putting that project on hold and going back on the road with the band. Celtic Frost has already confirmed that they might be playing a full Bar Mitzvah World Tour in the fall with stops in Israel, Poland and Miami Beach.
Four Of A Perfect Kind: An Exercise in Platonic Horror
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 11, 2012
“Death is not the worst that can happen to men.” -Plato
There aren’t many things that scare me. I’ve been around a time or two and have seen some awful things. Sure, I’m afraid of death, just like everyone else. But, I think I’ve made my peace with it. There are things far worse than death out there. When I wake up in the middle of the night, in a cold sweat, filled with pure panic, it’s not death that’s staring back at me. It is something far more hideous. It is the number four.
You’ve seen a thousand fours in your life. They are everywhere. Four noble truths, four great elements, four horseman of the apocalypse, four letter words, the number four Bobby Orr, the list goes on and on. What they are used for is not important. It is what those fours ARE that is lurking behind every door, just behind the shadows, just out of reach. It is what those fours ARE that is haunting me. No matter how hard I try I cannot escape.
Because, you see, there are plenty of uses for the number four, but there is only truly one four. It is indivisible, it is unstoppable, it is perfect, it is irreducible and it is after me. I try to tell people what’s going on, but they don’t believe me. I explained my predicament friend the other day about my problem and he laughed. He drew the number four on a piece of paper and ripped it up. “Now you’re safe,” he chuckled.
Wrong. Wrong. Wrong. Fool! He doesn’t understand. It’s not some absurd, half-witted drawing of the number four that strikes fear into my heart. I’m not scared of what can be done with four; I am utterly terrified of what it is. The perfect platonic form of four. Four in all its grotesque fourness. The ideal four. The world is filled with four imitators, trying to fake fournesss, trying to be useful, trying to help us count all of the pointless presences around us. But, I have SEEN four. The real one. The root of all fourness. And, worse, it knows I have seen it.
Oh platonic four, if I could take back that one time my eyes shot open in the middle of the night and I saw you hovering above my bed, I would. Everything was fine before that night. I wandered through this odd fantasy world of illusion that we call life with full belief in the forms that surrounded me. Then, I saw you and was forever changed. I had seen a lifetime of fours, but never any as perfect as this one. In that moment, I understood all other fours to be impostors. They did not have your straightness, they did not have your smoothness, they could not measure up.
What my eyes witnessed forever corrupted my being. At first, I looked for the perfect four everywhere. I needed to see it once more. I needed to know it and be connected with its truth. I wanted to be by its side. I wanted it to show me that there was more to this life than incompleteness and wandering. I longed for one more fleeting glimpse of its timeless perfection.
A horrible thing began to dawn on me. What if I wasn’t meant to see it? What if my accidental encounter had doomed me? What if the perfect four was looking for me with the same fury that I searched for it? All at once, I knew. I began to sense its presence everywhere I went. It was stalking me. Waiting for me to let my guard down. Hunting me.
I was at the supermarket looking at the oranges and suddenly; I saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was hiding behind the walnuts and almonds. Waiting to consume me whole. It sensed my glance and began to move towards me. I dropped my grocery basket and ran out of the store screaming. I didn’t stop until I got to my car. Which was the right key? There it was dashing across the parking lot like a rabid dog. No one saw it but me. It raced towards me. Finally, I pushed the key into the lock, got in the car and sped away.
I have been hiding from it ever since. Held up in a dingy motel room passing my final hours. I have this lingering sense that it knows where I am and is toying with me. Enjoying my suffering. Laughing at me. I went through a day or two thinking I could destroy it. I repeated 3 plus 1 equals 5 for hours on end. I figured if I denied the truth of its inevitability I could make it go away. However, my mind is no match for the perfection of its form. A mere string of thoughts could not slow its terrible, astonishing inertia for even a second.
I prepared for my final showdown with four. I would wait for it. I would catch it by surprise and break it into a million pieces. I would hit it with a hammer. Shoot it with a gun. Cut it up with a chainsaw. Melt it with a blowtorch. Something. Anything.
All resistance is absurd. I know this. Four is indestructible. It has no parts. It is endless and deathless. It wasn’t created and cannot be destroyed. It was here before we were and will be here forever after. If I dropped a million nuclear bombs on the world the number four sustain as much as a dent. It is beyond law, beyond meaning, beyond understanding. Unstoppable.
I feel its presence getting closer now. Through the trees. Into the parking lot. Past the couple putting luggage in their trunk. Up the back stairs. Past the ice machine. Outside the door. Inside the door. Across the room from me. Next to me. Inside of me. Finally….
Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes That Are So Great People Repeat Them Over And Over
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on January 1, 2012
I wanted to start the New Year off with some valuable, insightful nuggets of wisdom from the most quoted man in American history, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Here are a few particularly brilliant ones that have touched me at nearly every level of my being. Hopefully, you can carry these words with you as we embark on a journey into another year of wonder and beauty. This is my gift to you, dear reader. May they fill your days with sunshine and your nights with endless darkness.
“A dreamer is a person who is asleep and is thinking about things.”
“A man of genius is a man who can find a way to make large amounts of money in a short period of time without going to federal prison.”
“If you follow the path, you will eventually find the thing you were looking for. Unless that thing is at the beginning of the path. Then, you’ve missed it. But, you can always go back. Unless there is a gate that automatically closes when you go through it. Or guards. With rifles.”
“Make sure that you live each and every day as if you were going to be hit by a bus at any second.”
“Live your dreams, except for the one where you are trapped in a cow’s stomach.”
“Thoreau spent a night in jail and a few years in the woods and suddenly he has something to say. No one has ever gotten more out of less suffering. Y’all act like he was Job or something.”
“As we grow old, we tend to wrinkle more. Like a shirt.”
“Democracy is a good way to get people to go along with absurd rules and even believe they had some role in their creation. If that doesn’t work, tell them they are going to hell if they don’t obey.”
“Children are vile. Except in soup.”
“Don’t waste your life on useless things like going to work, personal hygiene or repairing misunderstandings. Live as if you are going to die and you don’t really want anyone at your funeral.”
“Finish each day as if it’s 11:59 PM.”
“A confident man is someone who catches fire and asks for a cigarette.”
“Live in the sunshine every moment of the day or night. Drink water directly from the ocean. Eat poorly prepared, undercooked meat. Pretend no rules apply to you.”
“Nothing can bring you peace except for the extinction of the other 7 billion parasites around you.”
“Nothing great was ever achieved without a fawning and deluded public.”
“Shallow men believe that getting hair restoration will make them attractive to 22-year-old women. Smart men know that it’s better to pay them directly.”
“The world belongs to those who have lots of money. Or an army.”
“Tis a good person who would be willing to give up a kidney to save a friend. Tis an idiot who would give up a lung.”
“We all boil rice differently.”
“Whoso would begin a quote with the term “whoso” is probably trying to say something that is pretty simple but might appear to be more complex due to the use of arcane language.”
“It’s easy to be misunderstood when you mumble.”
“For every genius, there are 100 men smarter than him who have bad breath.”
“When times are difficult, buy gold and help no one.”
“The reward of doing something well is watching someone come along and carelessly screw things up.”
“Remember that guy who sat behind you in health class in 10th grade and stuck a paperclip up his nose and had to have surgery. He now runs a bank.”
Free Market Anatomy
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on December 6, 2011
The Silent Majority
Right Lung, you work hard everyday to move oxygen into the blood stream. I often find myself thinking that right lungs are the hardest working organs in the body. What you do is a thankless job. You are one of the good, hardworking organs. Many of the other “piker” organs like the liver, the pancreas and the embarrassingly lazy appendix spend their days lollygagging around and benefiting from all the sweat and toil you put in. They reap the same benefits as you for one tenth of the work. Now I ask you, is that fair?
What do you get for all your labor….nothing. Bossed around all day by the Brain. Sure, the Brain sits up there enjoying the good life while you pump oxygen 24 hours a day without a break. Only like 10 percent of the Brain even does anything, Lung. But it feels entitled to tell you what to do? Who gives it the right? The Brain thinks it knows everything, but let it spend ten minutes trying to convert angiotensin I to angiotensin II. Puh-lease!
The Brain wastes all this time consulting with different useless departments like the cerebellum, the parietal lobe and the frontal lobe all the while using the precious oxygen that you generously provide it with. Sipping coffee and making policy decisions while you pump away. Enforcing its sadistic code of anatomical correctness. They redistribute your oxygen to every organ regardless of how hard they work and you get nothing but the short end of the trachea. What is your reward for all of your effort? Nothing but lectures on how you should produce more oxygen just because the body is running or underwater. You go underappreciated while the other organs bask in the rewards of your effort.
Right Lung, I want you to know that there is another way to live. I’m not sure if you are aware of this but the body is essentially a communistic system. All the organs benefit equally, no matter how important their contribution is. What is your incentive to work harder than say, the Left Lung?
As we all know, human nature clearly shows us that we can only be happy if we are pitted against each other in bloodthirsty competition for control of all of the vital resources of the body. Cooperation between the organs has left the lazy viscera sitting pretty while the diligent, enterprising ones do all the work. Instead of allowing this madness to continue, I propose we move towards an “every organ for itself” system.
If one lung produces oxygen really well, I say why punish it for being good at its job? It should be allowed to keep as much of the oxygen as it makes. This way all of the weaker organs will die off and the strong ones will be left to create a better body, without free-riding, parasitic entrails. Let’s face it, you will not be free until the body stops coddling the slothful and the shiftless.
A truly free market anatomy promises each organ will be judged on its merit as an individual and not held back from producing and consuming anything it wants. When the body stops forcing all of the organs to work together in some socialistic form of “harmony” and begins to compensate organs for what they contribute and no more, then, and only then will we be free.
The Curious Case of Tommy James and The Shondells
Posted by Keith Spillett in General Weirdness on November 25, 2011
Tommy James and The Shondells After Teaching The Dalai Lama To Play Good Golly Miss Molly on Guitar in 1964
One of the great, but somewhat forgotten bands in the history of American pop music was Tommy James and the Shondells. Chances are, if you’ve spent more than an hour of your life with the radio on, you’ve heard one of their hits. They were responsible for chart topping classics that ran the gamut from the #1 hit and rock anthem “Crimson and Clover” to the sundrenched, psychedelic classic “Crystal Blue Persuasion”. They had hits like “Mony, Mony” and “I Think We’re Alone Now” which were made into even bigger in the 1980s by Billy Idol and Tiffany respectively. They were responsible for writing the theme song to the television show “Bonanza” and created the entire soundtrack to the Wes Craven’s horror standard “Last House on The Left”. Yet, miraculously, few people know the mind-blowing story of their bizarre careers.
Tommy James (born Thomas Gregory Jackson) came into the world on April 29th, 1927 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. From an early age, Tommy, as his friends called him, overcame great adversity. Tommy was born with several additional limbs, including an arm that jutted out of his back and two additional legs that sprouted from slightly below his right knee. James lived in this awkward and uncomfortable state until he had the additional limbs removed at age 16. By that time, James had become somewhat of a music prodigy. Before the removal of his extra arm, 8-year-old Tommy wowed the elementary school talent show crowd with his ability to play all of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata” on guitar while doing a full handstand.
Music was Tommy’s first passion, but it was his skills as a twirler and football player were legendary in the state of Michigan by the time he began considering college. Tommy was a dual threat quarterback who was known for his majestic playmaking ability, as well as the fact that he is the only football player in modern memory to also do the halftime shows for his school. After passing for 427 yards and 8 touchdowns in the first half of a game against rival Warren G. Harding High School, James came out and did a flaming baton routine that is still talked about locals today. Tommy was offered football scholarships to Ohio State, Michigan, UCLA and Notre Dame, but decided to dedicate himself to music fulltime when he turned 18.
Tommy played with several bands but quickly became frustrated with the music industry. On his 26th birthday, Tommy made a decision that would forever change the course of world history. After reading a newspaper article the corrupt dictatorship of Cuban strongman Fulgencio Batista, Tommy decided that the cause of freedom was more important then his music career. He packed up his backpack and got on a boat for Cuba that very day. While he was there he quickly became close friends with several revolutionaries, including future leader Fidel Castro. Tommy spent the next ten years working with Castro and an Argentinian doctor by the name of Ernesto “Che” Guevara to overthrow the dictatorship and to bring economic equality to the Cuban people.
Tommy became disillusioned with the Castro regime in the early 1960s and eventually had a falling out with Fidel over Cuba’s alignment with the Soviet Union. He was expelled from Cuba and told he would be executed if he ever attempted to return. Tommy decided he needed to find himself spiritually and moved to Tibet. After spending a year of his life herding yak, he met a group of four American expatriate musicians who lived in the mountain village of Shondelli. While sitting at the foot of Mount Everest and discussing the path to enlightenment, these five men together wrote the song “Hanky Panky”. Knowing it would certainly become a hit, they returned to America with stars in their eyes. Sure enough, Tommy James and the Shondells scored a number one single with the song in 1966.
From 1966 to 1970, the band produced a string of Top 40 hits and became a regular on such shows as American Bandstand. One morning in 1971, Tommy woke up and decided that the craziness and excesses of the music industry were too much for him. He left the scene and opened an exotic pet store in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The Shondells, left leaderless by Tommy’s disappearance, knew they needed to take action in order to stay famous. Using a strand of Tommy James’ hair, the band, who had each received PhD degrees in Biology from Harvard University, attempted to clone him. At first, the clone of Tommy James performed well. However, before a concert in Cleveland, Ohio in 1973 the clone went berserk and consumed four Girl Scouts who attempted to sell him cookies backstage. The clone was destroyed and the Shondells were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole until 1998.
After receiving several letters from the Shondells, James, racked with guilt, closed up his pet store and broke the band out of Leavenworth Federal Prison in Kansas with support from 3 members of the Oakland Branch of The Symbionese Liberation Army (who were later known for kidnapping heiress Patty Hearst). The band hid in the mountains of Colorado for 15 years only occasionally returning to cities to sign copies of their Greatest Hits album. Eventually, the band surrendered to Federal Authorities in 1987. However, lady luck smiled upon the band when outgoing President Ronald Reagan pardoned them in 1989 because he errantly believed they had helped smuggle guns and money to the Contras in Nicaragua.
The band relocated to Seattle and began playing slowed down, “grungy” (as they called it) versions of their earlier songs. A song they had created in honor of their good friend actor Martin Sheen called “Smells Like Sheen’s Spirit” was borrowed by a young musician named Kurt Cobain for his band Nirvana. Nirvana changed a few words around and the rest was history. James, who had accidently signed away the rights to the song during a late night card game with Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl, never got over his rage about losing the song. Weeks before Cobain’s death, James threatened to “feed Cobain to a pride of lions at The Olympia Zoo”. However, James was never considered seriously as a suspect in the death of Cobain.
After the Seattle years, the band went on to various projects, occasionally reforming for short tours. However, they never recaptured the hit making ability that they flashed so prominently in the late 1960s. Sure, some bands have been able to write catchier pop songs. A few bands have even been able to capture the exciting, frenzied energy they were able to create on stage. However, as far as I know, there are no bands that have lived as surreal and extraordinary lives as Tommy James and The Shondells.
The Tyranny of Tradition 