“Welcome to Teddy’s All Night Interdimensional Portal and Bistro!” Nick Soole’s grin is expansive as he ushers me into a booth. I’m uneasy. One of the booths next to us contains four beings that look like oversized chicken nuggets and they’re eating chicken. Oddly shaped stools line the counter and oddly shaped customers sit on them. In the booth on the other side of us is a giant amoeba wearing a trucker hat. Light from the neon sign out the front – We’re Open 25/8! – reflects off the silver coiffure garnishing the head of our waitress.
Transdimensional travel is rough. Once I’ve finished vomiting into the complimentary paper bag I look up at Nick blearily and ask him why he’s brought me here.
“The robot invasion has already begun! The robots have control.” I retch a little more. Nick takes this for incredulity. “Just turn on commercial radio or TV!”
Slimey Things are a kind of autoimmune response to the automation of music and mentality. Boy bands are replaced by robots, girl bands by fembots and politicians by crackpots, but Slimey Things remain rooted in organic material. Slimey, horrible organic material. In order to fight the scourge of roboticism the Slimey Things are raising an army, if not to destroy the robots then at least to inconvenience them by rusting their hard metal skins.
“We’ve been playing together since 2001, but we didn’t release our first EP, ‘Spacetoast’, until 2005. That’s when Slimey Things really became something tangible. There have been many changes, though none that the audience would notice. Using sophisticated cloning technology we are able to replenish our ranks with exact duplicates of any of our six members.”
I wonder where they’ve gotten this technology. It seems that strange things happen to this band constantly, whether it be the appearance of alien breakfast foods or chance meetings with girls from different planets or parallel universes. To see this band live is an experience none should miss as it is then that the brilliance of the members really shines forth. One saxophone, one bass guitar, one lead guitar, one strange little electric guitar hooked up to machines, one keyboardist and one drummer, all mighty in their proficiency. The music has many strange beats and twists and when playing live they are as tight as a singularity’s sphincter. I would seriously describe it as sci-fi ska bop rock.
Despite the entire band’s amazedness, it is Nick, the Enigmatic Front Man (EFM1000), who carries the show. I must admit his face disturbs me. Entertaining, sure, but I can’t help but think he hides something behind his eyes, some knowledge that would reduce the tiny minds of the rest of us to rubble.
“We’ve done our best to come up with something relatively original but, Oingo Boingo, The Dead Kennedys, King Crimson, Weird Al, Frank Zappa, all those influences are there.” All artists who took much time to develop a following. “I think the music we play is the biggest obstacle to us making a big name for ourselves. We just make the music we want to make, even if it’s the music nobody else would bother to make. I like to think that not everyone makes music with the singular purpose of being signed. We’re just happy to have a following, albeit a cult following. We’re not wannabes, we are what we are. Besides, it’s cooler to be underground than mainstream anyway, isn’t it? ISN’T IT?! That’s what I keep telling myself. Every day. Every futile day.”
Nick is obviously laughing at me behind teary eyes. “Our music is sci-fi rock. Anyone who gives it a good listen comes to focus on those things that we do which are distinctly Slimey Things.” Nick’s long green tongue darts out and snatches up a chip from my plate. I politely ignore it. He is a strange man.
“There are at least a few music makers left in the world, big time and small, who care about originality, innovation and truly attempting to defy convention, and also, thankfully, a handful of people out there who want to hear such music. Fuck the rest. We’ve made a Terminator that hunts only Australian I-dull contestants.”
At this Nick’s eyes swell in his skull momentarily, before popping and being replaced instantly by new, identical ones. Again with the technology. I’m beginning to put the pieces of the puzzle together.
“Is the Spacetoast intelligent?” I ask with growing suspicion.
“It’s sentient, yes. Would we ‘All Hail the Toast’ otherwise?” Nick is looking at me with a predatory grin. Suddenly I understand. The robots, the cloning, the terminators! Nick’s freakish eyes! It’s all the doing of that dastardly Spacetoast! Somehow that evil breadstuff has taken over Nick’s body!
“When the robots take over we’ll be in our bunker, controlling them from afar!” Nick crows. He has read my mind! “As for you, you’ll never leave here alive! Welcome to Teddy’s All-night Interdimensional Portal and Bistro! Come for the good times, stay for all time! Mwahahahaha!”
Damn you, Spacetoast! Damn you, Slimey Things! Damn you all to hell!
For more information on the Slimey Things and their evil machinations, check http://www.slimeythingswebsite.com where you can fund their world domination schemes by purchasing EPs or their twelve track DVD.
