The Long Hard Road Out of Hell

why art and commerce are in essence incompatible.
    But then, out of the blue, Nothing came to a decision that went strictly against commercial instincts. They didn’t want to release “Sweet Dreams” as a single, which I knew would be a song that even people who disliked our band would like. The label wanted to release our version of Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’s “I Put a Spell on You,” which was far too dark, sprawling and esoteric even for some of our fans. We battled the label this time, and learned that we could win. The other thing I learned was to stick with my instincts, which usually end up serving me better than someone else’s. It was a disheartening experience but it didn’t hurt half as much as the fact that no one at the label ever congratulated us on the success of the song. What began as a very disturbing record had become a record that disturbed only me.
    The only solace was that through some unfortunate error someone at the record pressing plant made several thousand copies of our original version of the album, thinking it was the new one. Without even listening to them, the record company sent them out as promotional copies to radio stations and journalists before realizing their mistake. Now, they are available to anyone who wants to hear them on the Internet. Though someone at the label actually accused me of plotting it, I wish I was that resourceful. God, however irrelevant he may be to me, works in mysterious ways.
    Another saving grace was that, despite having to remove the recordings we made on tour, we were able to include Tony Wiggins on the lawyer-approved version of the album. The result was one of the record’s more surprising and ironic moments, an acoustic version of “Cake and Sodomy.” Since the song critiques southern, Christian white trash, we thought there was no better way to remix it than to have Wiggins strum and twang a redneck version.
    During our entire stay in New Orleans we had exactly one good time. And we had Tony Wiggins to thank for it.
    Narcotics were so plentiful there that we became bored with just doing drugs. To entertain ourselves, we had to add special games, rituals and scenarios to drug experiences. On Twiggy’s birthday, a pug-faced, inbred-looking bartender who worked at a dive in the French Quarter came by with a friend, a one-armed musician who played slap-bass with a hook. Since his primary source of sustenance was drug-dealing, he brought us several eight-balls of cocaine. But we didn’t just want drugs. We wanted the combination of drugs, ritual and the situations that Wiggins was capable of getting us into.
    On a notepad, Twiggy and I sketched Wiggins in pencil and red crayon, depicting him dying saint-like on the cross, presiding over a Last Supper of maggots and blood, and descending to earth in the guise of the Angel of Death. On a tray on the floor, we arranged several lines of cocaine next to several shots of Jagermeister and chicken in a biscuit (to represent the alleged killing of the chicken and the confirmed torching of our drummer on tour). Behind them, we propped up a battered doll of Huggy Bear, the pimp from Starsky and Hutch , which was missing a leg. Inside that empty plastic socket was where we hid our drugs throughout the Tony Wiggins tour. Whenever we ingested the contents of that extra orifice, we referred to it in code as “dancing with the one-legged pimp.” And the night of Twiggy’s birthday, we had our dance cards out and ready to be punched. I was naked except for a blond wig, a rooster mask with flashing eyes and a homemade red paper crown. Twiggy was wearing a blue plaid dress that looked like a tablecloth, brown pantyhose, an auburn wig, and a cowboy hat. He looked like a slatternly zombie housewife from Texas.
    We called Wiggins on his portable phone and, as soon as he answered, conducted our own Communion, attempting to transubstantiate the body and blood of Tony Wiggins into our meal of intoxicants. We snorted a line, licked the head of Huggy Bear, dipped the doll in the remains of the coke and rubbed it on our gums. Then we downed a shot of Jagermeister, and placed the chicken wafer in our mouths. It took no more than forty-five seconds for Twiggy and me each to complete this sacred obstacle course. Wiggins recognized us right away.

    As if having eaten the fruit of knowledge, I realized I had to cover my nakedness. So I took the cardboard tube from a roll