ANTI© 2004-2021 Cypress Butane, All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places, and incidents are fictitious and are not meant to represent any people, places or incidents from real life. Any resemblance to real incidents is coincidental even if it happened exactly the same way, like the fire Thing.
CONTENTS:
Track 1
Intro: Setting the Needle Spinning
Chapter 1: An Upstanding Learning Environment
Chapter 2: A New Religion is Kneaded
Chapter 3: The Triumvirate
Chapter 4: The Super Secret Experiment Lab
Chapter 5: Leaving Division
Track 2
Chapter 6: Smoke and Mirrors
Chapter 7 : ARCADIA
Chapter 8: Wheels and Gizmos
Chapter 9: A Run for the Border
Chapter 10: Secret Organization
Track 3
Chapter 11: Fire Proof
Chapter 12: Song Fu
Chapter 13: Welcome Back to School
Chapter 14: Gerunding Fun
Track 4
Chapter 15: Mid March: An Ode
Chapter 16: The Else
Track 5
Chapter 17: Variations on a Theme
Chapter 18: Waytressing
Track 6
Chapter 19: Mystery and Wisdom Traditions
Chapter 20: Swim
Chapter 21: The Bridge
Chapter 22: The Love Song of T. Jeremy Davis
Track 7
Chapter 23: Conga-Rats
Chapter 24: Shaking Hands with the Medicine
Chapter 25: Good as New, Like Old Times
Track 8
Chapter 26: For the Record
Hidden Track* * *
This work is dedicated
to whoever loved me when I was dead.
And to the Grim Reaper.
Thanks for the hot dogs and the coffee,
it really got me through.
They say you are what you do,
but we know what else they say.
“This is my condition
Jawbreaker, ‘Condition Oakland’
Desperate, alone, without an excuse
I try to explain, Christ, what’s the use?”
“You say there’s nothing you can do
Well we all know you’re lying.”
– Kind of Like Spitting
And if you gaze for long enough into the abyss…
You just might stare it down.
“Only youth survives.”
– Tim Davis
TRACK ONE
Intro: Setting the Needle Spinning
The night of the show I’m as nervous as a child about to be born. I know it’s
coming, I’ve been preparing for it, but there’s also a whole lot about the situation that I
don’t know. Who will be there when I come out? What will they think of me? Will they buy my demo CD?
We’re all nervous, the four of us sitting there hours before, unable to stop
thinking. All the things we might mess up. Say something wrong, play something wrong, make everything turn into just a show.
We have on our favorite shirts.
We expect an enormous crowd, an instant cult following of hundreds,
thousands, people bootlegging our shows across the country, following us in droves to say: “I was there. I saw them play and for that one moment my life had meaning.”
Sitting there we’re excitedly eating our Taco Bell and devouring conversation about our immersion in master plans… anything but the present stage.
We have five songs.
The moment we found out about the show we had flyers ready, up all over the
city, in the hands of strangers, falling from the sky. We called every person we’d ever known, met, or heard of, any person who had an ear we could line.
We are musical gods. We are warrior poets.
I forgot to bring picks.
We finally know how it feels to kick back behind the stage, waiting to usher our adoring fans to their ultimate destiny,
“It feels like… it feels like, I have to pee, inside my stomach,” Sidney tells us.
We laugh.
“I won’t have that kind of talk in this band, son. Fear is contagious,” I say mock-war-movie.
“Yeah,” Mark adds. “You shut your stomach’s pee-hole or I’ll shut it for you.”
But that’s it. The seal’s been broken.
The eternal seventeen year old question arises:
“Oh man! What are we going to do!?”
“We’re going to do what we always do,” Mark says.
“What?” I ask curiously.
Sidney asks. “Say fuck it?”
“Kick ass and chew bubblegum?” Lane tries.
““Emit howling cries of fermentation and lather?” I suggest.
“Yes, gentlemen,” he says. “We‘re going to Rock.”
