Fruit Of The Shroom
These are the nephilim, the great men of old, men of renown. Names had been given unto them, Gog, Magog, and the greatest of them upon the earth, its name was MiniMoog.
I saw this Beast emerging from the oceans of the world. It had the claws of a bear, the wings of an eagle, the teeth of a lion and the eyes of a man, and had seven heads crowned with ten patch cords.
And power was given unto it to subdue the earth with the wind beneath its wings and the roaring of the mouths of the seven heads crowned with the ten patch cords.
Power was granted unto it to blot out a third part of the sun, to consume a third part of the moon, to sweep a third part of the stars from the sky, into the oceans of the world.
And the darkness of the days and the nights of the world was increased by what had been allotted unto the oceans of the world,
And the power of the beast was increased by a third by what had been allotted unto the oceans of the world, fed to the beast through the ten patch cords that crowned its seven heads.
Power flowed into the heads of the beast through the patch cords, and as the time approached that had been appointed unto it, the beast opened the eyes of his seven heads crowned with the ten patch cords.
Two by two opened he them, like unto their kind, opening after the rhythm and music of the sun, and of the moon, and of the ocean, and of the stars.
Bolts of lightning proceeded from its eyes, even as bursts of thunder came from its nether regions, and there was wind, and rain, and every living thing that crawled upon the earth took refuge from the storms.
On the third day, the clouds dispersed, a rainbow appeared in the sky and there was a race of mushrooms grown upon the world. The sons and daughters of the earth gazed upon them,
And saw that the fruit of them was good for eating, and would grant them knowledge, that they would be like unto the beast with the seven heads crowned with the ten patch cords.
And the sons and daughters of the earth took the fruit of the shroom, and they ate, and they knew that it was good. And they became like unto the beast of the seven heads crowned with ten patch cords.
And the beast saw that the time had come that had been appointed unto it, and the beast opened the mouths of his seven heads crowned with the ten patch cords.
One by one opened he them, like unto their kind, opening after the rhythm and music of the sun, and of the moon, and of the ocean, and of the stars.
Unholy joy flowed between the sons and daughters of the goddess, of the earth, and the ocean, and the moon, and the stars, and the sun, and the seven heads of the beast crowned with the ten patch cords. One by one opened every mouth upon the earth, and all began to sing.
Sha na na na, sha na na na na, get a job. I have no idea why the hell I just wrote any of the above, because in fact Tonto’s Expanding Headband played instrumental music, with very minimal vocals. There’s evidence the author of Revelation did mushrooms, and there’s evidence that the auteur of Tonto’s music had an Easter basket crammed with mind candy, presumably located somewhere between his ears.
As for the scriptures above, if you listened to nearly as much twisted music as I do (especially in the Walkman while drifting off to Morpheus), you wouldn’t be particularly offended. If you’re a true alchemist you’ll simply smile and nod and proceed to add a few more paragraphs on your own page, furthering the gnosis.
As for Tonto’s Etc, they were one of the very first synthesizer bands, not quite predating Tangerine Dream but certainly far more advanced than TDream in the 1960s. TDream then were still some sort of rock band, with electric guitar, flute, loose “jam” structures. I have a tape of them in 1968 to prove it. Whereas Tonto’s Etc were all-synth, overdubbing repetitive minimalist patterns of the kind of arid noises that can only be made by really early Moog synthesizers.
These were the museum pieces with vast panels of jacks mounted over the keyboard, connected by patch cords. If you wanted a new sound you couldn’t merely press a button--hell, compared to even earlier knob-twisting models, you were lucky you even had a keyboard. They would emit only one note at a time, and if you wanted a new sound you had to reroute a handful of patch cords.
They wouldn’t stay in tune for more than ten minutes either, which might have something to do with why the Tonto album has ten or so three-minute instrumentals and a lot of the “rhythm tracks” sound like tape loops. (The CD reissue, Tonto Rides Again, adds a couple of outtakes.) But the fact that it’s so utterly analog is precisely what gives it its charm. Sounds like that had never been heard on the earth before, and have never been heard since. One would hope somebody would come along with a digital module for today’s equipment, so as to preserve some of those sawtooth-wave burps and whines for the sonic wonderment of future generations, but most manufactureres are far too busy trying to impress us all the time with ever-more accurate renditions of the inside of a Steinway grand piano.
For all that predigital exotica, this music has always sounded strangely familiar to me. Since the first Vanilla Fudge album was about as hip as my older brother could get (he was more into Johnny Winter), I knew I hadn’t absorbed anything of the kind at home. It wasn’t until I was playing this in the car for the dozenth time that it finally dawned on me--I’d heard it in school. It was the background music for all those educational filmstrips we’d sat through in the 70s.
Ahhhhh...early multimedia, remember? The filmstrip projector combined with the record player, and there’d be a little “boop” after every soundbyte telling the teacher (or some lucky brown-noser) to advance the filmstrip by one frame. There would usually be background music of some kind--and if you were in science class, the music would be...my gawd, it must have been...how utterly subversive...Tonto’s Expanding Headband! And if not that, then I’m sure that’s what they must have been using for Leonard Nimoy’s In Search Of, to say nothing of all those documentary programs on PBS. Remember that, your first softcore porn? Who could forget it, those grainy old movies of a pair of grasshoppers fucking? Remember the music they used to play in the background? Tonto’s Expanding Headband. In these grey days of Just Say No it’s a comfort to me, knowing that somewhere over at PBS and the NEA, somebody is still hip to the fruit of the shroom.
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