The Nixxon Story in Five Installments -- Part 4

Even the Ugliest Monkey Can Sire a Fair Haired Homonid!

The first year with the Corpses was the honeymoon! Geniuses to be sure, but a rag-tag enclave of free-spirited artistic rebels the likes of which the world had yet to see. Nixxon once remarked, "...getting them SubG DoktorBand boys focused is kinda like herding cats". So Cecil used technology, his trusty old tool, to bring the group to what could best be described as a kind of "...gelatinous cerebral goo, dripping with the sweet-and-sour of peach jello shots...", entertaining them all the while with his anecdotal forays and curious electronic gizmos. Nixxon taught them many things; he was in turn enlightened beyond his many years and wildest imaginations. Nixxon showed them:

• how to make razorblades sing like a warbling sunday-school teacher
• how to weave decorative doilies and useful items from the clippings of magnetic tape strewn across the cutting room floor
• all about the Internet
• how to teach computers to teach themselves to compose Anti-Music®
• Swillpool techniques that defied gravity and quantum physics
• ...and a host of other diversions.

In turn, the Corpses showed Nixxon:

• secrets of mail-order sacrament dissemination
• where to find half-breed Yeti "groupies", and what to do with them once obtained
• intense, almost-perverse assault jazz techniques that caused vertigo and blindness in the audience
• 'Frop synthesis using only bathroom chemicals and kitchen refuse
• just exactly who the pipe-smoking stranger really was!

Soon it was time for the first gig. A hep cat promoter from Detroit (who just happened to be one of Philo's old school buddies) responded to one of the many mass-marketing tape mailings and was so taken aback by the suave new sounds that he arranged for what has now been relegated to the history books. Packing perhaps 4,000 screaming fanatical zombie followers into a dilapidated factory cum nightclub, The Swingin' Love Corpses jammed their ever-lovin' asses off in a display of fury and compassion, hour after maniacal hour until finally the Vice Squad and at least twenty-five paddy wagons shut down the show -- 11:30 AM the following Sunday morning. The Corpses had strutted their stuff for a solid fourteen-and-a-half hours, and still had two sets left to go! That was just the way it was; a perfect synergy of technological wizardry and creative esprit de corps. Soon the Swingin' Love Corpses accompanied by their newfound member were touring the world: Sri Lanka, Dobbstown Malaysia, Chelyabinsk, Ulan Bator -- places most normal people could not envision as a fertile environment for converts and zealous fandom! As the band grew more ubiquitous, their coffers swelled beyond their means of disposing their swill-gotten gains. Nixxon, inveterate gambler that he was, continuously squandered his portion on ever-increasing complexities of sound manipulation devices. Soon his deranged appetite for layered audio intricacies brooded and hatched the vehicle of his ultimate folly -- and the band's untimely demise.

From the days of League Indigo Nixxon was preoccupied with macabre juxtapositions of traditionalist concepts and bizarre sojourns into the Dadaist absurd. Having been ego-stoked to bloated proportion in Europe, Nixxon was convinced that too much is always better than not enough, particularly regarding sound production. And although the Corpses were wild and unpredictable they were not yet ready to drown in a sea of pure solidified energy wave manifestations. They valued their individuality just a little too much for that kind of self-sacrifice. But not Nixxon. Tormented by the thread of a concept, he doggedly pursued the Swillpool technique he and his bandmates had already refined to more-than-reasonable degrees of bad taste.

Nixxon developed a hair-brained idea: It might be possible to condense so much audio format into a given space and time that it would become more than mere Musique Concrete -- perhaps by taxing the quantum energy flux and forcing a man-made vortex inside a shell of pure audio energy consisting of a mathematical approximation of an all-frequencies white-noise simultaneously peaking at all points on a given spectrum, amplified by infinity-squared one could actually make soundwaves visible -- even solid. Nixxon dreamed of gooey, glowing substance oozing from the seams of the speaker cabinets, foul-smelling little pellets cascading from brass instruments, spherical and toroidal heavy metal alloys stacking up like cordwood around the drums. Ever-increasing rations of 'Frop didn't help Cecil's delusionment much, either. The only problem with the accellerated Swillpool approach was, IT WORKED! Having proven that his overuse of improvisational overindulgence was more than the product of a megalomaniacal butt-insky, he took it further and further. Rehearsals soon became little more than the opportunity for Nixxon to a) cover up everyone else's solos with intense swill, and b) show-and-tell for the nerd geek-boy crowd. Nixxon was so damned proud of himself and the samples of some 27 entirely new man-made elements generated in the passion throes of Swillpool devices that he completely forgot about the one thing that had saved him from loneliness and obscurity -- THE BAND!!!!!!

During a brief sabbatical escape from creativity, the members of the band fretted and commisserated. How would they tell Cecil it was time for him to go? He had given them so much, yet he had become an insufferable techno-turd. The very act of holding a clandestine band meeting without him was the sign there was no turning back. When, to everyone's surprise, Nixxon hailed them over one of the many "secret" encrypted communications channels there must have been much squirming and shifting of eyes to and fro. The serendipitous tragedy that unfolded was a paen and panacea revealing a path not seen. Isis had been spotted near Corpus Christi days earlier, only two miles from the last in a link of over fifty "johns" ritualistically slaughtered in a cult-classic stylized fashion. Nixxon apologized for wasting so much time on the Swillpool device; he deeply regretted squandering the last few months with the band; but now it was time for him to track Isis down and once again attempt to stop her gory bloodbath before more unwitting whore-mongers bought more than they could bargain for! He had to try, or be forever tormented by the tragic results of yet another of his Gilbert Chemistry Set Experiments Gone Bad. Isis must be stopped! Thus Nixxon and The Swingin' Love Corpses parted ways, and the saga of Isis closed a chapter on perhaps the finest hour in mankind's relentless search for beauty and originality.

Stay tuned for the final installment....