Chapter 5
Unfortunately, the boys could play. But it was difficult to decipher their intentions.
At times it almost seemed as if the dingy conglomerate was doomed to buckle beneath itself. Yet that sensation waxed and waned with the verses in their scattershot catalog. The set began with a hearty quake of raucousness. It was an ode to Dionysus (called “Bacchus Backscratch”) but there were no words to it. It began with a cagey electric riff from the skinny greaseball named Stopp and dangled on the edge of the shaggy guy’s drum kit. Since the two had worked previously on such rhythm-savvy savors of the West Coast, it seemed an appropriate camaraderie. But then Brick set in with a strangely out-tuned alto saxophone and the band really got weird. What seemed a setup for a seventies’ class of
