kelcema

By 1991, some history of this largely unknown band of friends was required. Dr. Hugh Jampton, who was leading the research project on Origins of Unknown Order of the Arrow Lodges at the time. Dr. Jampton spectulated:

The original Kelcemites were a stationary people who, realising that their civilisation could not stand still for ever, began to go for short walks - not the "traveling" as we know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back. They must have taken to motion, in much the same way as penguins were at that time taking to ledges, for the next we hear of them they were going out for the day (often taking lunch or a picnic). Later - we don't as yet know how much later - some intrepid Kelcemites began to go away for the weekend, leaving late Friday and coming back Sunday. It was they who evolved simple rhythmic forms to describe their adventures.

A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering that were no managers or agents, and the further the Kelcemites traveled the more adventurous their music became, and the more it became, and the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.

But as the Kelcemites began to go further and further in their search for musical inspiration they found themselves the object of interest amoung many less developed species – Section Chiefs, Staff Advisors and no-fun adults. To the Kelcemites, who had only just learnt to cope with Advisors, Camp Directors and Scout Executives, it was a blow from which many never recovered. They became District Executives or TV rental salespersons.

But a tiny handful survived - the last of the Traveling Kelcemites - and the adventures gathered here represent the popular laments, the epic and heroic tales which characterise the apotheosis of the elusive Kelcema Spirit. The message of the adventures travels, as indeed they traveled and as I myself must travel for further treatment. Good listening, good night and Let Thy Kelcema Done…

-Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, Faculty of Sleeve Noteds, University of Krakatoa (East of Java)

By 1995, Dr. Jampton's work had been expanded, and more and more professors and doctors were offering their opinion on the origins of the mysterious Kelcemites. On the final Issue of the Beaver Chips Professor Tiny Hampton wrote:

The etymological origins of the Traveling Kelcemites have aroused something of a controversy amongst academic circles. Did they, as Professor "BOBBY" Sinfield believes, originate from the various Kilcema Fairs which travelled Europe in Medieval times, titillating the populace with contemporary ballards, or rather, were they rather derived from “YE TRAVELLING KELLYCEMITES”, who were popular locksmiths during the Crusades used to picking or unlocking jammed chastity belts (rather like today's emergency plumbers.) Dr. Arthur Noseputty of Cambridge believes they were closely related to the Strangling Dinglecema, which is not a Group but a disease, an unpleasant form of bellybutton-rot; arguing that a “KELCEMA” is often used as an expression for a piece of crud found in the crevice of an ancient pair of y-fronts; but I think this can be discounted, not only because of his silly name but also from his habit of impersonating Ethel Merman during lectures. Some have even gone on to suggest tenuous links with the Pillsmas, the group who invented Flour Power.

Dim Sun, a Chinese academic, argues that they may be related to “THE STROLLING TELCEMA”, Queen Elizabeth the first's favourite minstrels, and backs this suspicion with the observation that the Traveling Kelcemites ia `an obvious anagram of "V. CEMING KELA’S THEATRE", clearly a reference to the closing of Shakespear's Globe theatre by Viliers during an outbreak of plague. This would account for the constant travelling. Indeed, many victims of plague and St. Vitus dance literally danced themselves to death, and it is this dancing theme that resurfaces with The Kelcema Twist. Not a cocktail but a dance craze, reminiscent of The Kelcema Quadrille made famous at Bath in 1790 by Beau Diddley, and the Kelcema Waltz, which swept Vienna in the 1890's.

One thing, however, remains certain. The circumambulatory peregrinations of these itinerant mundivagrant peripatetic nomads has already disgorged one collection of popular lyrical cantata, which happily encapsulated their dithyrambic antiphonic contrapuntal threnodies as a satisfactory auricular experience for the hedonistic gratification of the hoi polloi on a popular epigraphically inscribed gramophonic recording. Now here's another one.

-Tiny Hampton (Professor "TINY" Hampton is currently leading the search for Intelligent Life amougst Rock Journalism, at the University of Please Yourself, California)