Orgone Research

Around Thanksgiving 1993 the sideshow was in Dallas, TX. It was kind of freaky, as it had recently snowed, and there were still traces of snow on the ground. It was a surreal setting for performing on stage and celebrating Thanksgiving.

Part of my act was lighting a string of firecrackers on my bare chest. I’m afraid I can’t claim to have invented this act; I read about prankster and artist Joe Coleman doing this spontaneously in bars, just to shock people. I thought it would be adaptable to sideshow, so I became the first performer to do it in a sideshow setting. Some years later I met Joe Coleman at a COCA event here in Seattle. I told him that I had adapted his stunt for sideshow. His response was wordless; he took the cigar he was smoking out of his mouth, grabbed my hand and deposited ashes into my upturned palm. I still don’t know if this was a “fuck you” or a “good job, guy.”

The string of firecrackers had to have some sort of backing, or else they would totally tear up your skin. I had an old piece of Kevlar that I had obtained through dumpster diving. It must have been resin impregnated, as it was already stiff. I cut it to fit just slightly smaller than the outside edge of the firecrackers, so the audience couldn’t see it. The firecrackers would be taped to the Kevlar, and the Kevlar would be taped to my skin. Eventually I realized that even a thin sheet of ABS or polyethylene would do the same thing, and I’ll bet that’s what most of the performers who do this stunt today use.

Even then, some of the firecrackers would explode near my chest, and would leave burns and abrasions. But what really worried me was if one should go up my nose and explode. Thankfully that never happened. The greatest part of this stunt was doing it inside morning drive-time radio studios. I would have a tee-shirt on and wait wordlessly until the end of the program. Then I would whip off my shirt and light the firecrackers before anyone could do anything about it. Some of those morning drive-time radio DJs had the biggest egos I’ve ever seen…

Doing this stunt meant that I had to have a dependably functional lighter with me. I don’t smoke, but to this day keep a disposable lighter in a belt pouch with me at all times. This behavior seems to confuse a lot of people. Being sort of a pyro anyway, I kind of liked it, and would collect more butane lighters then I could possibly ever need. I still have many of them.

During our short stay in Dallas, I scored big time, by finding the coolest lighter case I had ever seen:

I regret that over time it’s become a bit mangled, as I used it continuously for a while there. It’s one of those things that should have been put away in a safe and never touched except while wearing cotton gloves.

My last tour with the sideshow was in 1994 in Scandinavia. We performed in Stockholm, and it just so happened that ZZ Top was in town at the same time, promoting their new album “Antenna”. I had actually met Billy Gibbons in 1992 in Texas during Lollapalooza. I was standing around in a hotel bar when Marky Ray, at the time a technician with Ministry, walked up to me and said “Billy Gibbons wants to see you”. Wow! I walked up and said hello, and he asked me for one of my condoms. He took one out of its package and unrolled it. He then proceeded to do a magic trick with it, making it appear as if it went from his mouth to his ear through his head! Bested in a condom stunt by Billy Gibbons!

Billy came backstage before our show in Stockholm. He spoke to us at length about sideshow, and it was obvious that he really knew his stuff, and had lived through the golden age when sideshows regularly toured the South.

Perhaps the greatest moment of this episode was when I asked Billy; “what’s that Pearl Necklace song all about?”

After our show, all three members of the band came backstage. I pulled out the lighter case I bought in Dallas and showed it to Dusty. He instantaneously fell in love with it, and wanted to buy it from me. I could tell he REALLY liked it. But I loved it too, and I wouldn’t budge. In a way I’m glad I kept it, because now, after all these years I can photograph it and share the photograph with everyone. But I also regret not having giving it to Dusty, that would have been cool, too.

Years ago, I went with my friend Kim Thayil down to the Showbox to catch a performance by Leif Garrett. I think Kim mostly wanted to join up with Krist Novoselic, who I think was going to be there. Kim and I ended up being late, and it seemed to me that the show also ended early.

This would have been in the mid to late 90′s, and I think Leif Garrett was involved in some sort of musical comeback at the time. Kim, Krist, Krist’s girlfriend Darbry, and Leif Garrett all roll down to a bar nearby after his show ended. I think Jeff Gilbert was there as well. Jeff ended up co-owning Seattle’s fabulous Feedback Lounge. I mostly ended up talking to Darbry, as I was impressed with how smart she was. But of course I was fascinated with meeting Leif Garrett; how could a guy like that possibly match what his public image was in the 1970′s? I hardly remember what we talked about, except his retelling of some sort of Hunter S. Thompson anecdote involving drugs; cocaine I think.

But it all got sort of weird and memorable when the subject of conversation turned to cell phones and microwaves. Seemingly out of nowhere, Garrett tells me what sounds like a landmark urban legend; that if one places two Nokia brand cell phones together when both are broadcasting, that enough heat will be generated to melt the phones. “Dude, they run on microwaves, it’s like a microwave oven” was his technical explanation.

I countered that a microwave oven produces on the order of a thousand watts, whereas a cell phone transmits in milliwatts, a MILLION fold difference in power. Now I must admit, These days I’d probably do some fact checking if I was to seriously assert something like this. But given the circumstances, I would probably say the same thing again.

I can’t remember his response, and knowing me I probably argued with him about it for a while. I never met up with Leif Garrett again, so my memory of him has this strange twist associated with it. Later, I saw an episode of Behind the Music about him and learned of his drug-crazed history. He seems to have hit a rock bottom some time back which was chronicled here.

I wonder what brand of cell phone he uses…

This is a list of the live concerts I’ve seen in my life, as best as I can remember.

1. Buddy Rich, Late 1970′s, Missoula. I went with my father. Later I read a Rolling Stone magazine interview with Rich in which he discussed music but not the details of his life-changing UFO sighting…

2. Van Halen, March 29, 1979, Missoula. I know this date, as I went with my friend Dave Peterman, who kept better historical records than I did. I didn’t wear earplugs, and it was extremely loud. My ears rang for two days afterwards. Perhaps the best part was when David Lee Roth told the crowd that Missoula was the “rock and roll capital of the world.”

3. Molly Hatchet, late 1970′s, Missoula. Again with Dave Peterman, we went more for the opening band, the Heartbeats. We helped “roadie” the Heartbeat’s equipment for a show they played later that night at the Trading Post Saloon.

4. Cheap Trick, July 17, 1980, Missoula. This was not long after the Who tragedy in Cincinnati, and there was no more festival seating. The floor had chairs, but everyone stood up on them. A drunk girl standing behind me fell forward and tore my favorite shirt, a yellow Chouinard Patagonia climbing gear shirt that featured an image of the Great Wave off Kanagawa. Moral: Always bring earplugs, and don’t wear your favorite clothes…

5. Eric Clapton, March 10, 1981. Dave Peterman and I drove to Great Falls to attend. Driving back, we listened to Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music. I remember being amazed that colored stage lighting could cast colored shadows.

6. Fishbone, Mid 1980′s, Missoula. Very loud. Very distorted.

7. Frank Zappa, 1984, Los Angeles. Wow! Very “tight” show, but I was not really familiar with his music.

8. Grateful Dead, 1984, Southern California. I was never a big fan, but I still liked them. They didn’t play particularly well that day.

9. Green River, Mid 1980′s, Missoula. I had known Bruce and Jeff before they moved to Seattle to “make it big”. When they came back, they had long hair and cool rock star clothes.

10. Pat Travers, Mid 1980′s, Missoula. I went with my friend Andrew Ward to a show at the Carousel lounge. Travers’ career was in a bit of a slump at that point…

11. Miles Davis, late 1980′s, Seattle.

12. Tony Williams, late 1980′s, Seattle.

13. Mother Love Bone, 1990, the Central Tavern, Seattle. I think this was their last show before Andrew Wood died on March 19, 1990.

14. The Cult, 1990, Seattle. Ian Astbury’s voice was shot. He mentioned the tragedy of Wood’s death.

15. Alice in Chains, late 1980′s or early 1990′s, Seattle. Early on in their career they came across much like an ordinary bar band. At that point they seemed much like all the “hair metal” bands I’d seen in Missoula at the Trading Post Saloon.

16. Lollapalooza, summer 1992. Everything changes here, as all of a sudden I see all this fantastic music up close and personal. Early Pearl Jam shows were outstanding. I became friends with Kim Thayil and started to tag along with him to see various shows from the side stage throughout the 1990′s.

17. Nirvana, 1993, Seattle. This was a performance recorded in a waterfront warehouse for a forthcoming MTV new years show. They played songs from In Utero, and not so much Nevermind. A good show, but I was not blown away. I went backstage, but didn’t get to meet Kurt. While watching from the back of the hall, I turned around and noticed that Tad Doyle was standing behind me…

18. Iggy Pop, 1993, Europe.

19. Lenny Kravits, 1993, Europe.

20. Lori Anderson, 1993, Europe. I met her in the hotel lobby.

21. The Kinks, 1993, Germany. They played in a tiny club that we had performed at the night before.

22. Tad, 1993, Crocodile Café, Seattle. I hosted the record release party for their album Inhaler. The original idea was to fill the place with balloons inflated with nitrous oxide, but that plan was abandoned at the last moment.

23. Soundgarden, 1994, Vancouver BC. Those guys liked me, but not the gal I was with. Very uncomfortable.

24. Ministry, 1990′s, Key Arena, Seattle.

25. Alice in Chains, 1990′s, Key Arena, Seattle. I think the Screaming Trees performed as well.

26. Cheap Trick, 1990′s, Seattle. Some asshole in the crowd threw a powerful firecracker that exploded near Bun E. Carlos. Carlos ran offstage screaming and cursing.

27. Yoko Ono, 1990’s, Crocodile Café, Seattle. Her son Sean was on guitar, and at one point Kim Thayil came on stage and performed as well.

28. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Seattle, mid 1990′s. I was actually there to hang out with Marky Ray, who was managing the backing band, the Toadies. I think I met Krist Novocelic at that time. Believe it or not, I never saw much of the Chili Peppers during Lollapalooza in 1992, as our bus usually had to leave before they started playing.

29. Parliament-Funkadelic, mid 1990′s, Seattle. I spent most of the evening in the Paramount theater bar.

30. Black Sabbath, mid-1990′s Seattle. This was probably my favorite rock show of them all. The sound quality was really good, the performance was great, lighting and staging was outstanding; everything was just right. We had hoped to meet the band, but we were told that Ozzy was not feeling well, so it didn’t happen.

31. Wang Chung, 1997, Seattle. They opened with To Live and Die in LA, which is probably my favorite song of theirs. After the show, their road manager asked people in the crowd at the Ballard Firehouse if they wanted to meet the band. So a bunch of people went backstage and met them! I had Jack Hues sign my jacket.

32. Bare Naked Ladies, late 1990′s, Seattle. This was the first concert I had been to in which there was no smoke in the auditorium! It really blew my mind! A gal I had been involved with knew Kevin Hearn, so we were able to hang out with the band after the show. As clean and wholesome a situation as you could get!

33. Ministry, Aug 20, 1999, Seattle. I remember the date because it was my birthday. I hung out backstage with the band for a while. Later Al brought me on stage and wished me a happy birthday.

34. Chris Cornell, late 1990′s, Seattle. I had his solo album so I was familiar with the songs. His show was quite good.

35. Megadeath, 1999 or 2000, Seattle. I Met Dave Mustaine through Kim Thayil. When Mustaine learned I was a pharmacist, he asked me about Zithromax…

36. Megadeath, One or two days later in Vancouver, BC.

37. David Lee Roth, 2001, Bumbershoot festival, Seattle. I liked the show, but rock music and live concerts had changed by this time. Being outdoors, the Sound Pressure Levels had to be monitored. Too loud and it would be some sort of legal violation. People in the audience made cell phone calls. I went home with a funny feeling…

38. Jet, 2004, Seattle. I went with Jan Gregor, the sideshow’s original road manager. An Englishman named “Iron John” was Jet’s road manager, so we were “comped” in. Their single “Cold Hard Bitch” had a video associated with it that I had seen. Other than that I was not familiar with their music, but it was a good show.

That’s about it for arena rock shows, there might be some that I’m forgetting. I used to hang out in bars quite a bit, so I’ve seen lots of bands perform there too. Some that I remember are the Presidents of the United States of America, Nashville Pussy, Motorhead, Rage Against the Machine, (they once opened for us), KMFDM (VERY loud), Horton Heat, The Fastbacks (many times), A Doors cover band whose name I don’t recall, Bjorn Again, which was an ABBA cover band, and the Butthole Surfers.

Last June I posted a video to YouTube showing how to use carbon fiber to create “ball lightning” or plasma in the microwave oven. I fully recognize this is an esoteric thing, and as with most esoteric things there is some sort of convoluted history that leads up to it. As they say about movies and video games these days, there is a “backstory”.

When I was growing up, my mother was quite fascinated with UFOs, Bigfoot, and ESP. We would often have issues of Fate magazine around the house, books on UFOs, and I think at least one of Charles Fort’s books.

Sometime when I was in high school, I encountered one of the first skeptical books I ever read. This was famed UFO skeptic Philip Klass’ first book on the subject: UFOs-Identified.

It was interesting not only because it exposed me to the process of critical thinking, but also because I’d never heard of something so exotic as “ball lightning” before. As I understand it, as time went on Klass placed less and less emphasis on ball lightning as a prosaic explanation for UFO sightings. But I never followed the UFO subculture very much; I was always more fascinated with Bigfoot. But the concept of ball lightning always stuck with me, and eventually led to my own experiments and discovery that carbon fiber makes an excellent material with which to initiate a plasma.

By a strange twist of fate, later in life I actually met Philip Klass! Back when I was a sideshow performer, I would often room with Tim Cridland, AKA Zamora the Torture King. I was always impressed at his extensive contacts with people doing and investigating all sorts of odd and esoteric things. Remember, this was 1992 and 1993, before the World Wide Web, which made Tim something of a master of the old school technique of writing letters and doing research by “snail mail”.

And so it was that the sideshow was performing in Washington D.C. Tim rather casually tells me he is going to go interview Philip Klass. I’m impressed! I grovel and genuflect and ask if I can tag along. Everything seems casual, so indeed I’m allowed to come along. We arrive at Klass’ rather modest brownstone and are let inside. Tim was doing an interview for his fanzine called Off the Deep End. I took photographs, but sadly they didn’t come out. I seem to remember requesting that Philip pose with my Leatherman tool!

Soon it came time for Klass to walk his dog. Tim and I join him. Frankly I don’t remember much of the entire event, but I do remember the following two situations. One was Philip pointing at an airplane that was taking off from a nearby airport, which I believe was Ronald Reagan Washington National. Klass made the point that aircraft are the shape they are for a good reason; disk shaped aircraft are intrinsically unstable in flight. The classic disk shaped UFO is not aerodynamic.

The second event was genuinely memorable. Philip Klass was the first human I ever witnessed who picked up his dog’s “solids” with a plastic bag over his hand, everted the bag, then discarded it in the trash. I was simultaneously fascinated, repulsed, intrigued, and “weirded out”. Growing up as I did in Montana in the 60’s and 70’s meant stepping in dog feces all the time. It was a real bummer if you happened to be wearing shoes with a tread pattern which required an improvised tool, usually a stick, with which to pick out the offending matter. When I was a kid, no one ever picked up after their dogs. Consequently, I believed that life inevitably entailed stepping in dog shit from time to time, much like how life entails catching colds from time to time. We used to let our dog Lancer run free just like many people did back then. When Lancer was younger he would occasionally drag home a large bone or chunk of animal carcass during the fall hunting season. He must have grabbed them from dumpsters or hunter’s garages. We euphemistically called them “trophies”.

Sometimes when things change you simply don’t notice the change. When I moved to Seattle in 1987, I didn’t even realize that I wasn’t stepping in dog shit anymore. Nowadays there are laws enacted whereby dog owners must pick up after their dogs. I remember a time back in the 1980′s where there was a little broom and dust pan combination called a “Pooper Scooper”. I would see them advertised, but I never saw anyone actually use one. It surely would have been weird and inconvenient to carry a “Pooper Scooper” around with you when you walked your dog. Now everyone seems to use the everted plastic bag.

I have to wonder if this progressive social behavior is not tied directly or indirectly to the proliferation of polyethylene shopping bags. If my memory serves me, the whole “paper or plastic” thing became popular in the late 1980′s and early 1990′s.

I’ll bet that if plastic bags didn’t become so popular that we would all be stepping in dog shit on a regular basis.

Again, one more reason to venerate plastic! Hail polyethylene!

At the end of November 1999, the World Trade Organization held a conference here in Seattle. The proceedings lasted several days, and generated huge street protests. Some called it “the Battle in Seattle”. At the time I was working as a pharmacist on Capitol Hill, rather removed from the fracas which was occurring mostly downtown. But several protestor-police altercations happened on Capitol Hill as well. As I recall, I was assigned to work the evening shifts for the first two nights of the conference. Our store stayed open until 9:00 pm.

At around 7:00 on both nights, my manager approached me and told me to shut down the pharmacy. Evidently she had received word from the police that protestors were coming up to Capitol Hill from downtown, and that businesses should close to be on the safe side. I was more than happy to comply and get the heck out of there!

As I recall, the third day of the conference I had off. That afternoon and evening I was going to help my friend Kim schlep gear to the Showbox, a venue downtown he was scheduled to perform at that night. It was a one-off performance called the “No WTO Combo”, which consisted of Jello Biafra, Kim Thayil, Krist Novoselic, and Gina Mainwal, a drummer who had previously worked with Novoselic.

I picked up Kim in the afternoon and we drove to Belltown to a practice space to meet the other members of the band. Loud helicopters circled over the downtown area. Jello wasn’t there, but the rest of us huddled around a small TV which was tuned to a local news program. The vibe on the TV news was tense, as was the vibe in the room. On the TV, images of downtown chaos played endlessly. Kim was close to bailing on the whole thing, as one TV camera located near the Showbox seemed to indicate there was teargas still in the air. It seemed foolhardy to walk right into what might be a genuine riot. None of us were sure that we were even going to be allowed to enter the downtown area.

Krist started arguing that it really wasn’t that bad, that he lived downtown, and that what we were seeing on the TV “wasn’t real”. At this point I began to seriously question Krist’s judgment, as it was obvious from the live TV broadcasts that downtown was still in chaos. I began to wonder if Krist wasn’t like some of the Missoula hippies I was exposed to growing up; living in a new-age fantasy land of his own making, oblivious to the harsh reality around him. My mind was tipped more toward Kim’s vaguely paranoid and cynical risk assessment. Yet we all sat around watching the TV, deciding whether to go to the Showbox or not.

Being that this was December 1, the sun set early that day. The practice room had a western exposure, and we could look out the window towards the setting sun. At least Belltown was calm. Suddenly I had a genuine epiphany: As the sun set, the shadows grew longer in the real world out the window. But the shadows on what was purported to be “live” TV coverage were not! The TV stations were “looping” a few minutes of footage shot earlier, again and again, and calling it “live”! Suddenly Krist’s pronouncements about the TV coverage made complete and total sense. I was seeing the truth of his crazy “new age” viewpoint with my own eyes! The local TV news was lying to us after all!

So we set out to the Showbox. Kim and I took a big loop around downtown, and came up 1st Ave from the South. There were no police checkpoints, no tear gas, no protestors, no chaos at all! We parked and moved his gear into the venue.

Soon enough Jello arrived. I had been a huge Dead Kennedys fan back in the 80’s so it was a trip for me to meet him. He had gained a few pounds over the years, and no longer looked like the hungry hardcore punk of his glory days. I chatted briefly with him, and I remember him telling me that Levi’s had made an offer to use “Holiday in Cambodia” in a Dockers ad. I was most impressed at his refusal to sell out for a few dollars.

I helped move equipment onto the stage, thus fulfilling my “roadie” obligations. Soon the crowd began coming in. I recognized a gal I’d spoken to before, and started talking with her. Neither of us could remember where we originally met. As it turned out, she was friends with local Seattle comedian Cathy Sorbo. We had met some time before at Cathy’s baby shower. For a time she wrote a gossip column for the Stranger, a weekly Seattle newspaper, and had done an impression of Courtney Love for the local TV show Almost Live. We met again in early January 2001, where I made the egregious faux pas of telling her that she reminded me of an old girlfriend of mine. Later I read about our encounter in her Stranger gossip column, where she compared me to a dog lapping up antifreeze. I didn’t quite get the analogy at the time, and I still don’t. At the Showbox she was escorted by a man that I believed to be an out-of-town protestor. I spoke to him only briefly, as he had an overwhelming body odor.

Despite all the alleged chaos downtown, the show was well attended, probably because of the draw of three veteran rock stars on the same bill. Eventually the lights dim, and the band hits the stage. Now to my way of thinking, when an act first hits the stage the audience is primed; they’ve been waiting for hours for this moment, and they want action! Think of Led Zeppelin in the movie The Song Remains the Same; they open the show with Rock and Roll, not Going to California.

So the “No WTO Combo” hits the stage, and Jello begins to talk. Kim, Krist, and Gina wait in place while Jello delivers his leftist spoken-word diatribe. In my mind this was a total buzz-kill, a self-centered and narcissistic indulgence, especially considering who he was sharing the stage with!

But eventually the music started, and it genuinely rocked! If I remember correctly the first tune was a new one, a dig at Microsoft, called “Electronic Plantation”. Jello’s play on words was that Microsoft’s employment policies created “serfs” so he “never wanted to hear serf music again”…

And then a Dead Kennedy’s song; Let’s Lynch the Landlord, I believe. At some point someone in the crowd handed Krist a gas mask. Krist put it on and continued playing.

I think the band played only 3 or 4 songs, but thankfully it was all recorded. I remember Kim contacting me later to ask how I wanted to be listed in the liner notes to the forthcoming CD. “Matt Crowley”, “Matt ‘The Tube’ Crowley”, “Tube”, or something else? Eventually I got a copy of the CD, but I loaned it to a gal at a pharmacy shortly before I quit, and I never pursued getting it back.

All in all, the whole experience was genuinely surreal. I’m glad I was there.