Crawdaddy! The Magazine of Rock

Our world is teeming with mysteries both complicated and confounding. Was there ever a “lost” city of Atlantis? Will we ever prove the existence of extra-terrestrial life? What the holy living hell are the writers of The Office huffing this season? Seriously, did you see that wedding episode? Holy Mother of God, was that painful. I’m pretty sure that “mental picture” gimmick gave me swine flu. Also, why would a paper company have a haunted house for area children? Way to lay some lazy groundwork for a series of uninspired “wacky costume” jokes. And that “viral video” thing with Kelly, Andy, and the new receptionist just makes me want to drive to Memphis and blow up Graceland (which is the ultimate way to express your dissatisfaction with a prime time sitcom).

The aforementioned mysteries, however frustrating, pale in comparison to the ultimate riddle plaguing our great land at the moment. It concerns a group of artists from the West who rose to prominence in the early days of a period I like to call “Bonzo’s Time.” Their product was complex in architecture yet simple in delivery; occasionally, it was clad in spandex and soaked in beer. It pleased many, though, like a sweet-smelling rose or warm open-mouthed kiss from a teenage runaway in the bathroom of a Wichita bus station. A few years ago, this group cast out one of their own for reasons unexplained, leaving him to roam California’s purgatory with nothing more than his stylish mullet, ever-present five o’ clock shadow, and novelty bass guitar shaped like a bottle of Jack Daniels.

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