As has so often been the case, the members of the Funhouse Stripper found each other through the course of a tragedy. That event took place four years ago at a resort near Cancun, Mexico. Known internally as the Yucatan Outbreak, a small amount of the Lipscomb-Takashi virus was released into the local drinking water by an as of yet unknown individual or organization.

The infection spread rapidly through the native population. Those not exposed to the tainted water supply were quickly swarmed by the bloodthirsty hoard. Our local response assets were able to establish a perimeter with the help of local authorities preventing a more catastrophic and widespread pandemic.

As per classified World Health Organization SOP, no incursions were made in to the red zone to look for survivors. The known infectious cycle burns itself out in a confined region within 20 days.

At the time the first reports of infected came in David, CT, Karen and the Tanabe brothers were vacationing in a group of privately owned, remote beachfront cottages south of the city proper. According to their statements to our investigating agents they were largely insulated from the violence for the first 48 hours. Their fist sign of trouble came in the form of a drifting ferry from Isla Mujeres that floated by their beach on the afternoon of the second day. That night the first of the dead came crashing through the jungle.

The first small wave of infected were successfully dispatched with a few improvised weapons: boat oars, tequila bottles, an old wrench. Soon, however, as the death toll rose in the city, the numbers of walking dead moving south became more than they could fend off directly.

For a week the group held out, barricaded in the second floor of one of the cottages. Laying low kept them safe for ten days, until they exhausted their supplies. Their strategy was successful in preventing a horde of infected from congregating around their makeshift fort. On the eleventh day they were forced to leave in search of supplies.

They could see the smoke from the fires to the north and decided to try their luck to the south. They did their best to avoid the roads, reasoning that the infected would tend to move along the path of least resistance. The sound of them tramping through the bush would also give them warning of any approach. They had to move slowly to avoid making their own noise and attracting the dead.

Several miles south they found themselves in the middle of an evacuated, five star resort. They managed to dispatch the few zombies they encountered on the ground and began to explore the facilities. The hotel showed hasty signs of flight. Luggage, clothes, and toiletries were scattered everywhere. Doors were left open and the furniture in the lobby was all askew. A number of bodies, both infected and what appeared to be guests, were piled near the main swimming pool.

They explored the grounds of the resort and discovered a cache of pistols and shotguns in the security office. Combined with the two M-16 rifles they salvaged from an abandoned Police car they found themselves suddenly well armed against the threat. Fortifying themselves with provisions from the hotel kitchen, together they again barricaded themselves on the top floor of the resort building.

They were surprisingly comfortable in the in the luxury suites there. The previous occupants hadn’t cleaned after themselves, but the water and sewage lines continued to function throughout the crisis and the electricity was available sporadically. They also found a number of abandoned instruments. For the next week they wiled away their time noodling around on the guitars, playing together and writing songs. These formed the backbone of what they later recorded and released as the “Flophouse EP”.

After ten days their food supplies were once again exhausted. This could not have happened at a worse time. The zombie numbers were at their peak and the daily grind of repelling attacks only served to attract more with the sound of every gunshot.

On the 11^th day in the hotel they had run out of time. An enormous mob of the infected were crowding around the base of the hotel, overwhelming their barricades in the lobby and stairwells. They needed to escape, but there was no way to get past the dead. They had nearly given up, playing music together one last time when a plan was hatched.

Together they carried the guitars, amps, basses and drums up to the roof of the building. They found a hot electrical socket and plugged everything in. They turned up all the amps to 11. It was the loudest they had ever dared to play.

The effect was immediate. The crowd of infected below grew more and more agitated. In their blind lust to find the source of the noise they crushed through the ground floor windows, and bowled over the barricades and began streaming up the stairs. After seven songs most of the zombies had managed to squeeze themselves inside the hotel. The Funhouse Strippers had the opening they needed.

They left their instruments feeding back and cast ropes over the side of the building. They began to repel down 20 floors just as the first of the infected managed to burst through the roof access door. On the ground they quickly dispatched a few stragglers and tossed half a dozen Molotov cocktails after the zombies into the hotel lobby.

There was nothing left to do but make a run for it. They set out south as fast as they could. Their diversion had worked beautifully; with most of the infected in the burning hotel they were not attacked again. They continued cautiously on the main road until running across our security cordon.

They were held until it could be verified they were free from infection. Following their debrief, they were relocated to Salem, OR and instructed not to speak of their ordeal. They recorded the set that saved their lives and released it as their first record. They continued to play together, having since released a full length CD and they are working on a new LP as we speak. As much as they would like to leave their time in Mexico behind them, they are still the largest group known to have survived a Lipscomb-Takashi outbreak and continue to be the favorite resource for analysts tasked with studying the virus.

the Funhouse Strippers – Zombie

Eskimo and Sons first came to our attention through their association with Typhoon and the Boy Gorilla cabal. In accordance with agency policy all persons who come into contact with the members of Typhoon are subjected to a thorough background check. When this check was executed for the individuals in Eskimo and Sons, however, something very strange became clear. There is no record of any of their existence prior to 2005.

The discovery was troubling, and the initial fear was that they were a sleeper cell under the control of some foreign power. Resources were immediately diverted to perform a more in depth investigation.

After some weeks of careful research, surveillance and clandestine evidence gathering, our first clue came as our facial recognition software matched band member Dhani to a 19th Century mimeograph on a public database. The picture showed an artillery regiment in the British army during the Crimean War. Dhani was standing in the center of the image, one hand resting on the breech of the smooth bore cannon. According to the accompanying inscription, “Daniel Rosen” went missing shortly after the picture was taken and presumed dead.

This discovery sparked a huge argument within the agency. Most insisted that this was simply the image of a distant relative of Dhani’s. A small minority refused to accept this interpretation and maintained that the resemblance could not be explained by a familial connection.

The situation was further complicated by the discovery of a second image, this time of a flapper from 1922 who bore an uncanny resemblance to Danielle Sullivan. This created a sensation among the involved analysts who generated many more questions, but few answers. A new working group was established with a huge budget tasked with unraveling the mystery of Eskimo and Sons.

Six months of intensive investigation and budget overruns followed. At a meeting in DC with the director of operations the task force presented their findings. The prevailing theory suggested that every member of Eskimo and Sons was, in fact, a time traveler. Stranger still was the conclusion that none of them had the resources to build or operate such a device. There must, then, be an unknown individual who had traveled through time, essentially collecting these people before depositing them together in Portland, Oregon sometime in 2005.

The evidence to support this claim came in the form of a safe house discovered in southeast Portland. A forensic evaluation showed that each member of the band had spent at least several months living in the home. There was also one room for which the inhabitant was unaccounted. Where Dhani and Danielle’s rooms contained particulate evidence linking each to the 19th Century and the 1920s, respectively, the extra room contained fibers dated by most to the 17th Century. Before the results of that analysis were known it was believed by most that the room must belong to the mysterious time traveler. This interpretation was cast into doubt until the investigation of the basement confirmed it.

The basement was essentially empty and typical of those from the area built between 1950 and 1974. The lower floor had not been used as a living space. The plumbing and wiring were all exposed between the floorboards that made up the ceiling. The floor was bare cement and unremarkable, but for the scorch marks in the center of the large room. They were arranged in an overlapping pattern suggesting multiple events. Each set features a pair of parallel scorch marks several inches wide, two meters long and one meter apart.

An assortment of trace evidence could be found in the immediate area, but the most notable feature was the local disruption of causality. The site has since been turned over to the Department of Defense’s Contra-Physics Division for additional research.

Educational materials found in the house and interviews with neighbors suggest it was used as something of a halfway house for the occupants as they grew accustom to life in the modern era. Presumably, the time traveler skipped back and forth from the past, depositing his human acquisitions in the present where, for a period of months, they were instructed in all relevant social, political and technological trends.

To what end they have been brought here remains a mystery, as does the true identity of the individual responsible. Where he or she is now (evidence strongly indicates a man) is also unknown. To date, no era of origin has been established for the remaining three members of the band, Thomas, Clayton and Dylan. Evidence from the house was inconclusive suggesting only that they came from a time prior to easily dated manufactured goods.

So far we have no indication of any ill intent from either the band or their patron. Still, time travel is a great power and one we must be vigilant in our efforts to safeguard not only this nation, but the world. We will continue to monitor the situation in hopes of learning more. It has been determined that a direct confrontation of Eskimo and Sons would be ill advised, but surveillance will continue.

Eskimo and Sons – Oh It’s Even More Crash

Inasmuch as all three members of the Black Black Black are also members of Typhoon, much of their harrowing origin has already been recorded elsewhere. That account speaks to a horrific ordeal that would be more than enough drama for any single lifetime. For Dave, Kyle and Devin, however, that journey was only the beginning.

Like all the survivors of that pilgrimage, these three were possessed of great strength, endurance and resourcefulness. Their trials were compounded, however, by a condition they all three acquired while locked in the woods of the Pacific Northwest. Together they comprised one of the group’s main hunting parties. As they worked their way south through the wilderness rotating groups of hunters would break off to scout ahead and search for big game. Often gone for up to a week at a time, they would eventually link back up with the masses, hopefully with a big kill.

In the fall prior to their arrival in Salem, late in the month of October (though they had no way to mark it at the time), Kyle, Devin and Dave set off together on just such an expedition. For two days they stalked a mature male elk through the dripping mountain forest. On the third day the animal finally collapsed from exhaustion and they moved in for the kill.

Together they cleaned and portioned the carcass, drinking of the heart’s blood. It was too late to start back with their bounty so they set about making camp for the night. They found a mossy cave with a broad granite overhang and a flat, dry interior and after inspecting the site for unwanted animal inhabitants began to settle in. Devin built a fire while Dave and Kyle looked for dry wood and suitable forest debris for bedding. Soon the fire was warming the stone floor and the smell of roasting meat filled the hollow. They fell asleep warm, full and happy as they watched the full moon rise above the trees from the safety of the cave.

A few hours before dawn they were awakened suddenly by the frenzied sound of an animal feeding. They found a huge beast had entered the cave and was attempting to steal their rightful kill. At once they leapt up, shouting. Each found their wooden spear near at hand and, taking up a flaming brand from the fire, moved to drive the animal out.

Still hidden in the shadows, they could not identify the creature. They moved in concert to surround it as the dim fire light swam across its thick, black fur. Its great yellow eyes glowed with malice as they drew near.

The stolen meat forgotten, the beast rose onto its hind legs and let out a howling roar. Such movement would have suggested a bear, but the shape was all wrong. It was too lanky and the head too sharp. Undeterred by this consideration, the three advanced, brandishing their flames and thrusting with their spears.

At first the beast gave no ground, snarling as it swatted aside the sharpened sticks and smoldering branches. Its great claws raked across Dave’s right arm as he drove his spear into its haunches. It snatched a bit off of Kyle’s shoulder as he ducked to avoid a lunging bite. Devin was tossed to the ground like a doll when a massive paw caught him on the back of the head, the talons digging into his scalp.

Despite their injuries, they managed to drive the animal from the cave. Bleeding from a dozen punctures, one eye blinded by a hot ember and its nose split by a stone ax, the beast slowly retreated towards the cave entrance and then bolted into the night. It crashed through the underbrush at speed in a loping, semi-bipedal gait.

Having preserved all but one portion of the elk meat, Devin, Kyle and Dave set about rebuilding the fire, larger this time, and tending to their wounds. Once they had managed to staunch their bleeding they set a watch schedule and tried to get some more sleep.

In the morning they were surprised to find their cuts had all nearly healed, leaving behind fresh, pink scars. They struck camp, loaded up and headed off to find the others. Moving faster than they ever had, ladened as they were, they found the main group in a matter of hours.

Their return and their burden were celebrated with a feast that night. They regaled the group with their harrowing tale of survival and proudly displayed their quickly fading scars. The revelry lasted well into the night.

Some number of weeks later Devin, Kyle and Dave were out on another hunt. They had not had any luck tracking big game, so they made themselves busy setting snares for rabbit and other small game. They found a sheltered glen, the ground soft covered with grass, and started getting ready to stay several nights to give time for their traps to work.

The three were sitting silently around the fire as night fell. They munched on smoked meat strips and dried fruit bits they had brought. It had been dark for several hours when the full moon began to rise, swollen and yellow, sickly above the horizon.

Kyle was lost first, falling over sideways as his chest spasmed. The scar on his shoulder burned and he began to choke on his own bile. Soon Devin and Dave had collapsed as well, clutching themselves and weeping from the pain. The world they knew faded from their sight as their thoughts were transformed alongside their bodies.

Each mind boiled with rage as the humanity was replaced by bloodlust. The heavy winter pelts they wore were shed and replaced by dark wiry fur. Their faces distorted, elongated themselves, producing huge fangs, long red tongues and bright yellow eyes that shone in the dark.

The agonizing change seemed to take hours, but in truth it was only minutes. With the fire scattered, the three boys sat, panting, in a circle as they tried gathered their senses. It was as though their own personalities remained, forced to the edges of their thought as a new animal mind took up residence. They each in turn attempted to speak, but their throats were too different. They could not vocalize, at least not yet, but they recognized one another as though no change had occurred.

Their stupor came to a sudden end as they all three heard a distant snapping in the woods. Instinctively, they launched themselves into the trees in search of this new prey. With terrible silence they traversed the two miles to a meadow between a large river and the tree line. Stooping to nibble at the grass was a single black tailed deer; a doe. She did not hear their approach, or noticed the predators as they surrounded her. She died before she could realize the danger. Squatting around the kill, Devin, Kyle and Dave ate their fill.

For the rest of the night they ran as a pack through the woods. They woke the next morning, naked and back to normal. They were many miles from their original camp site, but they remembered what had happened well enough to find it again. Too worried to return to the main group for fear of changing again, they checked their traps and made ready for another night apart. They did not change again that night.

The next morning after some discussion and trading half remembered stories about people being turned into wolves by the full moon, they decided it would be safe to go back. They had, after all, managed to catch a few rabbits. Their arrival was not as celebrated on this occasion, but they did not mind. They became preoccupied instead with the phases of the moon.

A month later the main camp was preparing for a long stay through the winter. Concerned about a repeat of their earlier transformation, Dave, Kyle and Devin again set off on their own. They traveled as far as they could over the three days before the next full moon in order to put as much distance between their altered selves and their unsuspecting friends. Well the full moon rose, they changed again and hunted through the night.

Over the next few months they managed their lycanthropy in this manner, leaving as a hunting party a few days before each full moon. This way everyone remained safe, excepting the poor forest animals unlucky enough to be caught nearby when they changed.

When they walked in to Salem the next spring and were sent to live separately with adoptive parents, this strategy was no longer effective. They did their best to isolate themselves from their families and the community when the full moon came, but more often than not they would break out and run amok in the city. One day, while talking about their predicament together, well outside the earshot of their new parents, Kyle, Devin and Dave came to a realization. In their transformed state the music never left their minds.

Brought up the way they were, and possessed of such raw natural ability, even becoming a werewolf was not enough to drive the music away. Hatching a new plan they arranged a rehearsal space, complete with instruments and a supply of raw meat, and met the next full moon to spend the night together. Cloistered as they were in a warehouse downtown, they chained the doors shut and waited for the moon to rise.

Once the change had occurred, they struggled to control themselves. They ate what food they had brought and soon paced the room, clawing at the corners, looking for a way out. With great effort each was able to focus their animal minds on the instruments they had prepared. With the curiosity of caged animals, the approached the guitars, amps and drum kit. Despite their claws and misshapen hand, these instruments felt natural in their grip. Soon Dave and Devin were plucking out notes and Kyle was kicking a beat. They played all night long, a new brand of blistering rock they had never before indulged in. Like poison from a wound, the music drained the base aggression from their transformed bodies and kept them transfixed until morning.

This is how the Black Black Black came to be. They continue to meet every month to endure the change together through the power of music. Since some of the songs they write in their altered state are pretty damn cool, they will even perform as humans from time to time, though they’ve only ever recorded as werewolves. They sound best beneath the full moon, but there is the safety of the fans to be considered.

The Black Black Black – Old Roy

Evolver’s Remorse is the latest incarnation of what has recently become a one woman act. Also performing under the names Pronouncing Ellipses, The Tasty Danders, and Wronger Prong, Diane Steinmeyer. has been a solo act since the gangland style execution of her three band mates in the fall of 2006. She had met and began playing with Marco, Hans and Juliet during her undocumented time in Europe, but this bit of serendipity proved fatal for her friends. Truth be told, Diane is not simply a musically inclined young woman fresh out of university; she is in actuality a walking, talking, singing doomsday device. And she’s older than she looks.

Four years ago a pair of Venezuelan archaeologists on a dig in the mountains of Chile unearthed a black stone slab from beneath a layer of lava millions of years old. Although this defied explanation, it was clearly artificial. The men removed the stone to their base camp and began a preliminary examination. To their great surprise, an x-ray of the object revealed what appeared to be an egg-like cavity inside the stone containing human remains. Eager to get to the bottom of the mystery, they obtained heavy equipment and began chiseling into the monolith. What they discovered inside incinerated them almost instantly.

For, you see, Diane is an Archangel. For millions of years following her fall in the First War in Heaven she lay dormant, imprisoned in the black rock for her transgression. With her cell compromised, a pulse of divine energy burst forth, decimating the nearby forest. The Venezuelans died smiling, immediately enraptured by her beauty. Awoken by the intrusion, and remembering nothing of her former existence, Diane wandered aimlessly through the jungles of Latin America until the CIA, who have always kept a close eye on the region and could hardly miss her explosive rebirth, sent a retrieval team captured her.

The Company enrolled her in one of their summer work study programs in the South of France where she was inducted into the world of covert operations. She, naturally, excelled at any task asked of her. During the school year she maintained her cover as a student stateside at a small liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest. Summers she continued to work Europe, surveilling enemies of the state and performing counterintelligence operations against rival agencies. To date, she has three confirmed kills on her record. For her own edification she began dabbling in music, teaching herself to play a variety of instruments and writing original songs. A band formed around her and toured Europe as she took assignments, but when her cover was blown in the summer of 2006 all of their lives became endangered.

Unaware of the threat, her band mates followed her back to Oregon for her senior year at college, only to be caught and killed by as yet unknown assailants following a performance. Diane, manifesting her long dormant Angelic powers, destroyed a square block in Historic Downtown Salem, annihilating any evidence of her attackers or their motives. The CIA, of course, cleaned this up, creating a cover story about an electrical fire at a local furniture store. Diane was also hospitalized with a reported case of e-coli infection, though this was simply in order to reevaluate her status and health. Finally realizing her potential power, Diane sought to sever her ties to clandestine operations. Not willing to provoke another event, the CIA did not stop her.

Diane has since completed her undergraduate degree and relocated to the great city of Seattle. Working in the non-profit sector, perhaps in an attempt to atone for the violence she has wrought in her life, she continues to pursue her music. As always, she is well loved and respected, but privately she continues to struggle, tormented by the mysteries of her own past…

The members of Typhoon are the improbable result of a forced breeding program instituted by an elite cabal of music snobs within the Soviet regime during the waning years of the Cold War. Intended to address a perceived progressive rock gap, the project’s original goal was to produce an endless stream of communist friendly one hit wonders, flooding the world market with generic concept albums and overwhelming the West with shear numbers. Such a brazen strategy had not been attempted since the Great Patriotic War in which Hitler’s advancing infantry were stopped dead in their tracks by the murderous Russian winter and wave after wave of ballet dancers and pit musicians, the icy rivers soon choking on their corpses. Such legends of heroism do not die easily in Soviet Russia.

By the mid eighties the Improvisation Project, as it was called, had been fast tracked. Seed was harvested from every continent on the planet, often surreptitiously and without the donor’s consent. Following in vitro fertilization, the embryos were implanted in hundreds of less than enthusiastic Siberian peasant girls. As a matter of national security, the pregnancies were brought to term aboard an experimental nuclear submarine patrolling beneath the ice cap covering the North Pole.

From birth the children were force fed a thorough education in the history, theory, composition and performance of classical, folk and popular music. Their instructors included Buddy Holly, Elvis Presley and John Lennon who had all been political prisoners since the KGB faked their respective deaths. After only a few years the project seemed to be proving an enormous success. By 1989 Russia had produced an unprecedented community of child prodigies with unquantifiable musical talent and unlimited potential. On November 9th of that year, however, the course of history flipped a bitch. With the fall of the Berlin Wall the Iron Curtain faded out of existence and the Soviet Union began to disintegrate. Black budget line items were stricken from the books across the board as the Russian government struggled to maintain control. Having lost it’s funding, the Improvisation Project was terminated. All 328 children, ages two to six were set afloat on an iceberg in the Bering Strait before the submarine, which had been the only home they ever knew, returned to port to be decommissioned.

The children were forced to work together to survive. Burning their woodwinds and stringed instruments for warmth, they fished with guitar strings and paddled due east with every horn they had with them. After a week and several dozen deaths they made landfall in Alaska. On land, but still lost and on their own, they began to walk. For years the band of musical geniuses foraged for food in the vast wilderness of Alaska and western Canada. Having been born and raised on a submarine the children were not well suited to such a life of forest vagrancy. Many more deaths followed as the group made their way to the lower forty-eight. Only thirty remained when they, unknowingly, crossed the border into Washington.

By the time they first caught a glimpse of Salem in the distance there were only a dozen of the heartiest souls left. Their sense of direction was so poor that Salem was the first piece of civilization they had seen since they watched their last home disappear beneath the frigid waters of the Arctic Ocean. Deliriously happy, the ragged band of feral children made their way into the city where they were placed in loving families who finished the job of raising them. Their harrowing ordeal had taken a toll, however. The years of frostbite, malnutrition and tribal politics had so degraded their motor skills and retarded their ability to communicate that their musical talents went completely unnoticed until high school.

Ever bound by their shared gifts and trauma, the twelve have for years reunited to play, write and sing. Finally formalizing their association under the name “Typhoon”, the band continues to produce powerful and complex music, though the thought of revenge upon their former masters is never far from their minds.

Typhoon – Briar Rabbit

It was through serendipity that the four original members of the Widgets met late one fall night in 1997 outside a 24 hour convenience store. The previous day the NRA had visited the local high school they all attended as part of a nationwide campaign to raise youth awareness of Second Amendment rights. The tour bus has visited the school’s parking lot where firearms were freely distributed to students who were then encouraged to sign up for a junior NRA membership. Now armed with automatic weapons Dave, Becki, Nick and J. Peterman-Terwilliger (the original drummer, although he never actually performed with the band and couldn’t play a lick) had all independently decided to knock over the same 7-11. As luck would have it they, all four, arrived simultaneously in front of the shop, clad in their criminal regalia, ski masks, pantyhose and what-not. There was a brief argument over who would actually get to rob the store, but soon they realized they all attended the same school. Amused by the coincidence they decided to pull the job together.

But things went sour. The clerk had noticed the foursome, masked and carrying guns, loitering in front of his business and was ready for them when they entered. J. was quickly gunned down and the remaining three ran for their lives, not even pausing to return fire. That night all three renounced their lives of crime in favor of more productive pursuits.

The next day Dave, Becki and Nick went to a pawnshop downtown together to hock their guns. While there they bumped into another schoolmate, Dougy, who was pawning a large number of tee-shirts he claimed he “had no more use for.” All four spent some time looking around for something to buy with their in-store credit and were all instinctively drawn to the large number of used instruments. Pawn shops don’t really carry much besides guns, instruments and jewelry, you see. Each picked out something to play. Nick and Dave each picked out an electric guitar and amp. Beck had her eye on an upright bass, but the guys steered her towards an electric model held to be “bitchin’” by all. Doug, who had a natural predilection for banging on stuff, chose a drum set he said was, “tasty!”

Over the next several months the four spent most of their leisure time, time when they were supposed to be at school, hanging out together and learning to play their respective instruments. No one took lesson because Dave didn’t believe in them, but Becki went and checked out some books at the Salem Public Library to help in the self-teaching process. According to a librarian I spoke to those books are now four years overdue. It didn’t take long before they were playing simple versions of Mary had a Little Lamb, Hot Cross Buns and Camp Town Races, though they had to give up playing that last number when the ghost of Steven Foster began terrorizing the band on alternating weekends (I’m told for a deceased guy he really gets around).

It was, perhaps, an inevitability, but Dave, Nick, Becki and Doug eventually got around to officially declaring themselves a band. In the beginning they were a Burt Bacarack cover band; they went by the name Bacarack Attack. They caught the attention of an important record executive-type while playing a gig in David’s parent’s back yard (he was a neighbour). With his help they cut an unauthorized album of Burt Bacarack material which was only produced in an 8-track format and only released in the former U.S.S.R.. The next eight months was spent on tour in the former Soviet republics playing in dives to promoted the album.

During their last show in a karaoke bar in Uzbekistan their act was caught by a heavily inebriated Japanese businessman. He was so taken by the band that he bought their contract and took them all back to Nippon with him. He groomed the foursome to be a J-Pop sensation. For the next couple years they spent most of their time producing opening and closing themes for hit anime shows, including the wildly popular Super Crazy Robot Builder Fun-time Half-hour (translated from the Japanese). Curiously enough they kept the name Bacarack Attack throughout their career in Japan. In 2000 the band made a disastrous guest appearance on the Iron Chef during which they accidentally lit Chairman Kaga’s hair on fire in a failed attempt to liberate that night’s theme ingredient of live turtle. Having squandered most of their earnings on an exotic sushi obsession and just feeling burnt out, the band decided they’d might as well head back home to Oregon.

Back in Salem the band was renamed the Widgets and they began writing their own music. Once they were happy with the songs they went into a studio and recorded their first CD, Wannabe Renegades. To promote the album the band began playing some shows around town. Unfortunately it is very difficult for a band to find places to perform in Salem if they’re not mobbed up. Having previously sworn off criminal activity the Widgets refused to play ball with the local criminal syndicate (I hear it goes all the way up to Mayor Swaim!). The Widgets were able to find some brave business owners willing to risk the wrath of the local gangsters by letting the band play their venues. Not willing to stand idly by the band took up this cause and now wage a secret war against Salem’s criminal underground. By day Dave, Nick, Doug and Becki are mild-mannered young adults just trying to make a life for themselves in this topsy-turvy world, by night they are a relatively popular local rock quartet and by later that night they are vigilantes sworn to bring down organized crime. They don’t get much sleep.

And me? How do I know so much? Well, I’m their KGB contact. But that’s a story for another time.

The Widgets – Peppermint Patty

Want more? Now you can read the Continuing Adventures of the Widgets!