Yes, just as Satan is known by different names in different cultures and has cloaked himself in varying guises to more befuddle all humanity throughout the ages, so it is with you. Your face changes, your name changes, you have many home towns, but you are always the same: a drunk idiot who, for a lack of anything better to do or the skills to do it with, seems compelled to harangue at some member of the band(usually me)about any of the following topics:

1. What we should change our name to
2. How we should modify our sound to make it more marketable
3. What song we should cover
4. What we should write a song about
5. Who should turn up or down
6. What major label(that you usually have a close personal friend at)we should send stuff to
7. Who in the band should or shouldn’t sing more or less
8. Tacets
9. Reverb or high-end
10. Homophobia

I have, at rare moments in my life, taken advice. I have taken constructive criticism. I always take unsolicited advice very skeptically, however, because the person giving it usually has no idea why I do what I do, nor will he/she be around, in all probability, to see the degradation that their ill-conceived opinion would wreak on the project. Most people giving their opinions in such a way mean no harm-they don’t mean to be stupid and annoying, and so merely deserve to be euthanized, instead of tortured and dismembered. Sound technicians are a different case entirely-they are a subspecies of humanity, a lower life form that would need its own chapter in this section to fully explain. I can remember three specific examples of consultis di moronis that are so flagrant that they should be the specific examples of why people who have opinions should either start a ‘zine or shut the fuck up.

Your name is Razor. You have long, stringy black hair and a sulky, Midwestern scenester demeanor. You saw BJW at Davey’s in KC several years ago, and either at the bar or at Sarah and Ernie’s, you informed Steve that a band like us, that was trying to do the AC/DC thing(?????)needed more tacets. We also needed to change our name to "Winghead", since "Billy Joe Winghead" sounded hillbilly. Your name has been a joke in the van ever since, and we don’t know what tacets are. Fuck you.

I saw Bill at the Hole In The Wall in Austin. He was a well-preserved 40-something that looked like a Native American character actor with feathered black hair, wearing a close-fitting black T-shirt and silver necklace with an eagle feather charm hanging from it. You watched the show intently, and while I was trying to enjoy Stretford’s set you just couldn’t shut up. Right in my face, right in my ear. I needed to ride herd on the band and sit back and let them play Eric Claptonesque guitar and then focus my vocal assaults between jams. I needed to back away from the mic. Nicole Kidman once threw herself at you in a drunken stupor outside the Driskill. You used to manage your cocktail-lounge singing ex-wife. You are a psychic. OK, Bill……channel real hard and envision what finger I’m extending to you right now.

Lastly, the guy who deserves the hottest seat in Hell, the steroid casualty who graced us with his insights after the Fur Shop show in May ’99. You came half-swaggering, half staggering to the stage after the show, and lead with the pronunciation that Blah-Blah Templeton, the President of Warner Brothers Records, had sent you on a mission to find good local bands to give million-dollar record deals to but that you couldn’t get us one unless we played more solos. I pointed at Vegas and told you that we were working in the new kid for just that purpose, and you informed me that no, it was Dan who needed to do solos(of course. the guy with the hair. How foolish of me). You told me to shut up as I was attempting to answer your stupid questions, you told me that there was no way a man my age could be happy with where I was, you called me a faggot and, if I remember correctly, a dumb motherfucker. Yet, after all this, you were surprised that I wouldn’t jump in a plane with you RIGHT NOW to go to LA so Mr. Templeton could give me a million dollars. You were stupefied. Didn’t we know who you were? Goddamnit, you were in Gypsy Rose! You toured with Van Halen!

On the way home, I had to explain to Vegas why killing you would have been a waste of time(It would have made me late for work, and letting you suffer in your delusional existence was far crueler than putting you out of your misery). Vegas then wondered aloud why any man would expend all his energy trying to impress local bands instead of any one of the many fine ladies in attendance that evening. The answer is obvious: The man obviously is the most pathetic of faggots, externally homophobic but secretly wishing to have David Lee Roth’s cream-spitting SM-58 spraying major label goo up his chiseled buttocks. Buddy, I hope someday you are able to impress someone with your massive shoulders and glitzy connections. I hope they go to your apartment and do lots of coke with you while killing time before the next flight to LA. I hope you show them your scrap book of photos with you standing next to Diamond Dave and trading licks backstage with Eddy. I hope you have burly, non-gay man sex, the type only big-time rockers who really appreciate each other as artists can understand. And, just as you are about to climax into the waiting orifice of this person who you have finally convinced that YOU ARE SOMEBODY, I hope you have a cocaine-induced heart attack and die, and that the published autopsy reveals that you had enough sperm in your stomach to make even Rod Stewart feel queasy.