NOTE: The guest writer for this ICFMB is none other than the inimitable "Hot Dog Jim" Sturdevant, who wrote this while he served as Tailothepup's road manager from August 4th to August 12th, before leaving due to "irreconcilable differences" with the band (something about constant demands for an "ion cannon"). Matty Boy Anderson will be back as soon as he takes his head out of the freezer and stops blubbering about how no one visits his website anymore.

Well! What a week it's been. This week has had thrills, it's had chills, and even the occassional spill. There have been highs and there have been lows. But when all is said and done, when all the chips are counted, one can, at the very least, say that it has been a week. No, no one is disputing that.

I formally met Tailothepup at a party a couple of weeks ago, where they were holding court with a gaggle of diverse musicians, running through a mysterious set list that lead singer Five Sixseven would intermittently produce from his pocket. I recognized the two members of Tail because they were the only ones not sitting on the floor. Sixseven was clad in his best Acapulco shirt and lab coat, while Wampus favored the traditional look of suspenders, slacks and bowtie. Sixseven addressed the handful of fans in attendance. "This love song goes out to all you lovers in love out there," he muttered, and I knew straight off that they were about to launch into "Love Song", having heard it on a local 300-watt radio station while vacationing in Greenland last month. Towards the song's end, as Wampus began furiously riffing, Sixseven fixed his gaze upon me and shrieked, "CAN YOU ROCK LIKE THIS?"

Some eight hours later, I cornered the two boys, now partying in a downward fashion, and told them how impressed I was by their musical stylings.

"You were?" Wampus queried, a look on his face usually reserved for deer caught in oncoming headlights.

I had heard that Tail had a reputation for being jokers, so I laughed and reassured them. Sixseven pulled a baby's pacifier out of his mouth long enough to ask me a question.

"We've been wondering, since you saw the whole show," Sixseven said, his voice hoarse from yodeling, "Wamp and I have been having an argument. Could you tell us what we played?"

I laughed uproariously, thinking that the rumours of these boys' thumbtack-like wit were certainly true, when I realized they were staring at me in dead earnestness. Their faces were blank with a terror of unknown origin. "We did play, right?" Wampus asked, his eyes seeming to tear up.

I went on to assure them that they did in fact perform, beginning their night of inspired madness with an authoritative cover of DEVO's "Auto Modown", segueing deftly into their own "Gum" (which drew an enthusiastic response, prompting Sixseven to proclaim "Thank you. We are Rock Stars. Thank you."). In addition to their own material, they also performed covers of "Message In A Bottle", "Help! I'm A Rock", "Reelin' In The Years" (a song they cannot play sober), and "Pensacola" (for nearly twenty minutes, outclocking Soul Coughing's version by at least fifteen minutes).

"Wow," Wampus said, his cheer returning. "We played for a while." He and Sixseven then began a deluge of shrieking, donkey-like giggling. It was then that I told them that I wanted to be their road manager, and spread the gospel of Pup to the far corners of this great Earth.

"Uh... sorry, dude... we already have one," Sixseven informed me politely, swigging from a bottle of what appeared to be Windex. I was crestfallen. Then Sixseven turned to Wampus and said, "Right, Walter?", to which Wampus replied, "That's affirmative, Donald."

Now I was confused. I knew from a cursory reading of Dave Marsh's 14,000-page Pup biography ...And Then God Said Screw All These Other Rock Bands, Here's Tailothepup, Which In Many Ways Is Better that Wampus was born Wampus, and Five Sixseven had his name tattooed on his frontal lobes to ensure against confusion. What were these other names they were calling themselves? After some rigmarole, I ascertained that Tailothepup were in fact convinced that they were Steely Dan founders Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, except for those rare times when Sixseven becomes convinced that he is Christ, and gads about the room telling everyone how lucky he feels to be Christ, holding his arms outstretched in a cruciform fashion. I knew that in this band, this miraculous union of two, there were fires waiting to be stoked. I ignored their shenanigans and assigned myself the position of manager anyway. "Great," said Sixseven, "we're gonna be in Atlanta on the 11th, and we could sure use you. Right, Walter?"

And so, I arrived at Banzai Studios on the 11th in the afternoon, hoping to corral the band and make our way to the sunny cement shores of Atlanta. Instead I found chimps. Lots and lots of chimps, and probably more than one marmoset. They were all over the sound boards, tearing chunks of acoustic foam padding from the walls, and generally acting unruly. I found Tailothepup in the backyard, where they had filled a child's plastic swimming pool with Michelob Lite, and were now sitting in it (except for Sixseven, who was face down in it).

"Are they done mixing the album yet?" Wampus asked me, looking up from the reflector he used to tan his face. "Ah... is that what they're doing?" I replied, confused. "Yeah. You'd be surprised. They do a better job than most humans do, plus they don't drink nearly as much beer. Too bad Phil Spector didn't know about it. Let It Be would have definitely been a better album." I was so perplexed that I didn't realize that Tailothepup had yet to finish their album, and we would have nothing to sell in Atlanta to the screaming hordes. I also didn't notice that Sixseven had been face down in the beer for several minutes now. Finally he came up for air, his wiry, multicolored hair launching a thick stream of beer onto my sportcoat as he flipped his head skyward. "You should try this shit!" Sixseven announced with great aplomb. "It's GREAT!"

After a couple of hours, the album, the first ever from Tailothepup, Starter-Kit, was done. I was alerted to this fact when Sixseven thrust a copy into my face with tremendous force, shouting "BAP!" in a pseudo-ghetto tone that reminded me of his stint as lead G in the white rap group Honkies Cashing In On Urban Culture, back in the late '80s. Though blood began to spurt from my nostrils, Sixseven continued to savagely smack me in the face with the tape, until finally Wampus emerged from the front door and said, "Whoa! Take it easy, Five! That tape's for Mike Patton. Don't fuck it up." At this point Sixseven stopped, but only before shoving me into the backseat of a tiny car driven by Aami, a Pup fan (or "Puppy") and sometime band member who was to be our transportation to the city, and whom I can rightly say is an extremely tolerant young woman.

As we began our journey, I quickly learned that Tailothepup speaks their own language, made up almost completely of inside jokes. After the first two hours I stopped trying to ask Wampus what "Put a hammy in your jammy on the slammy in the yammy" meant, or "Flapple Lapple", or any other of the crazy nonsense that seemed to spew from the boys' mouths non-stop. I also learned that Tail loves to eat, and both members are almost always chomping away on a hero sandwich or some such nourishment. I soon realized that Tail had instead actually molded huge piles of drugs to look like food, and were eating it.

At some point during the trip we listened to Starter-Kit. I was pleased to discover that it was not indeed the "concept album" Pup had conceived, wherein there would be 254 songs at one second long each, followed by 254 more 1-second songs played at a slightly lower volume, and so on, ad infinitum. It is a very good listen. "And we're proud to say," Wampus announced, "not one note of it was played sober." Sixseven turned the volume up on "D-Humanised", one of his favorite songs. "Where else can you hear a bottle cap being scraped against a broken autoharp in today's music?" he asked, as I clenched my teeth involuntarily. Where indeed?

As we reached Atlanta, things took a bad turn. First, Sixseven created a "hand signal" that represented Tailothepup's logo (it is reproduced at the bottom of this page). He then proceeded to gesture this "hand signal" to passersby, provoking several unpleasant incidents. "I'm promoting our band!" Sixseven said with a grin as he flashed the signal, while a bullet glanced off the car's hood.

The second bad thing was partially my fault. In my vigor to manage Pup, I had misunderstood them. They were not, in fact, going to Atlanta to play a show, they were going to see one, namely Mr. Bungle, one of their favorite bands, to whom they hoped to give their tape. "I want to vomit on Mike Patton," said Wampus with a smile. "I love him that much. I've eaten extra helpings, too, so maybe some of it will hit Trey Spruance." "It's the best way to make an impression," Sixseven added. Sadly, Tail had bucked the conventional wisdom of ordering tickets, and so upon arriving at the Cotton Club, we were promptly turned away.

Upon hearing this news, Wampus grabbed the nearest dumpster and hurled it at a crowd of tattooed, over-pierced hipsters, mashing them to a jelly. "GRAAARRGGGHH!" he exclaimed, pounding his fists into the masonry of the building until bits of bloodied brick flew in all directions. Sixseven curled into a fetal position on the soft sand of the parking lot and began to suck his thumb and weep softly, and despite this the other excluded patrons continued to ask him if he had any extra tickets. I stood dumbfounded. Clearly this show was beyond all importance to the Pups. It was as though the Pope had been turned away by God. Sort of. Wampus continued to beat his knuckles into the wall. "If... only... we'd had... an ION CANNON," he blurted between punches, "this NEVER... WOULD HAVE... HAPPENED!"

However, cooler heads finally prevailed, and while the band continued their inappropriate caterwauling, Aami managed to get the copy of Starter-Kit to someone involved with the show, using her feminine wiles. She even spoke briefly to Mr. Patton himself. (Very briefly.) When all had calmed down, we also met a very nice couple, one of whom is in a local surf band called The Penetrators. We spent the remainder of the night placing our posters up all over Little Five Points. We were dismayed to discover that an asshole in human form was putting up posters over the ENTIRE BOARDS where we placed our humble flyer, with the aid of a can of spray adhesive. Having run out of flyers (Sixseven had printed up a whopping twenty-five earlier that day), we had no choice but to shoot the offending vandal repeatedly in the calves and thighs with a .22 Wampus kept for fending off the band's evil twin, Pupehtoliat.

Eventually we made our way back to one of the band's "safehouses", where friends of the Pups produced an unusual recreational device, which bore several tubes. Little, if anything, is remembered after this point.

And here we come to the end of our tale. We eventually made our way back to Savannah, hindered only slightly by a flat tire and an unpleasant incident involving a pterodactyl. Instantly upon reaching Banzai Studios the boys were back at work, laying down tracks for their next album, For No Apparent Reason, due next summer. Strangely, Tail has plotted out their albums, complete with names like Generica, Rockamundo and The Coming Of Prog until around the sixth or seventh. "That's when we're going to do the 254-song album," claims Sixseven. This Saturday, the 14th, will be yet another blowout show, this time at the Tailothepup compound, a sort of farewell party for Wampus, who will leave next week for several months to study the traditional gug music of the Eskimos in Alaska. I, for one, cannot wait to see them live once again. I plan to be Pup's manager for a long time to come, if they'll have me. I strongly urge you to purchase as many copies of Starter-Kit as possible- these fellas are on to something big. Jog in the park to it. Make love to your woman to it. If you don't believe me, check out their Home Page, where short samples of their fantastic musical stylings can be found. Now and for the millennium:

Can you rock like this?

"Hot Dog Jim" Sturdevant, Savannah, Georgia, 12 August 1999, 4:34 pm

Tailothepup can rot in the bowels of hell, for all time, for all I care. Don't ever mention that name to me again.

"Hot Dog Jim" Sturdevant, Savannah, Georgia, 12 August 1999, 4:37 pm