The Monster Song

Another embarrassing nugget from my youth. The Psychedelicatessen performing "Monster Song" at our final show, in Stuart, Fla., summer of 1990. That's me on vocals, Jason Emmett on guitar, Zane Hurley on bass, and Marty (don't know his last name) on drums.

After finishing my third year of college, I moved out of the dorms and into a duplex with my friend Bran, and got a job at Pizza Inn, instead of going home to my parent's house for the summer, as I had done each year up to that point. Then I get a call from Zane saying there's this club in Stuart called The Studio that has "punk night," and invites live bands to play there, so they want me to come down and get a set together to play a show there. "Well," I says, "if you had called me a week ago, I'd probably do it, but I have a place here, I have a job, I can't just decide to move down there for the summer." That Monday, I call up to Pizza Inn to get my schedule, and the guy tells me that the schedule is posted on Sundays, and that I was scheduled to work last night and didn't show up, so I'm fired. Did I purposely sabotage myself so I could go play this last show?

At any rate, this wasn't necessarily my favorite of our songs at the time, but it's the one that I think holds up best. Like, if the band got back together now, this is the one old song I'd still want us to play. Plus, it has sort of appropriate lyrics for Hallowe'en season. The first line is from one of those Escape From Witch Mountain movies, or from the trailer, anyway, which probably played during every commercial break of cartoons for a month when it came out, so it stuck in my head.

Zane saw that they had a video screen behind the stage, so he spent the summer making this video mixtape to play behind us. I think that thing with the punks on go-carts is from Joysticks. You can't see it on the video, but Marty is wearing this really silly rubber monster mask and lurking behind the drums.

And yeah, I can't sing.