ChairMan of the Bored
Accidentally became an obsessed fan after stumbling in to a secret chiefs 3 concert, SGM was the headlining band and after I didn’t know how to feel about them but I bought a cd and I kept going back to it out of curiosity and each time I went deeper into this bands world and each time I wanted to stay there longer. That was 2007. Still diving. So glad they’re back. Cockroach! Next to you I’m practically divine! Favorite track: The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion.
Nocturnal Egg (Jordan)
Dans Of Natural History, son album sophomore, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum ouvre une autre section de son édifice — ou devrais-je dire son chapiteau ? — qui retrace une évolution de l'humanité sans la technologie. Le groupe américain part à la recherche d'énergies primordiales : il se place sous la tutelle du loup et les voix, plurielles, innombrables, grognent et hurlent ; il respire les vapeurs de l'alcool et son rock en opposition se fait direct, impulsif. Le nourrisson devient le maïeuticien...
Favorite track: Babydoctor.
da9ve
My introduction to SGM was seeing them live (July 20, 2003, Indianapolis). The show opened with A Hymn to the Morning Star > The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion, with the entire band in realistic full-headed animal masks. I was a convert before the spiky guitar even kicked in. This album, when it finally came out, got me through the first couple years of the second GWB administration; I'd've gone 'round the bend otherwise. Necessary, powerful stuff.
Favorite track: The Donkey-Headed Adversary of Humanity Opens the Discussion.
Open you heart to the lord of light
Open your heart and mind and let him in
He holds the key to the throne of might
You are empty Say his name and let him in
All hail the dawn of a rising star
All hail the crowned and conquering child
Morning will come for you at last
No matter how far into night you have strayed
Say his name Welcome the child
A new world is crawling from the ashes of the old
Two thousand years of guilt and fear
And the greatest lie ever told
Out of the wounded side of the dying god
Out of the sacred heart of the throttled hen
The blood is the life
The flowing milk for the infant god
The throne is empty The cup is full
He approaches and then
He steps from the shadow and he opens up his eyes
He spills the blood onto the throne
And hurls a curse up to the skies
I am the adversary and must remain the adversary
The d.h.a.o.h. opens the book
The d.h.a.o.h. opens the discussion
I am the adversary and must remain the adversary
I am not yours to embrace I am not yours to invoke
The d.h.a.o. h. sleeps in the hall
Watches for signs of our imminent demise in the scratchings on the wall
The d.h.o.a.h. sleeps in the park
Listens for sounds of our eminent decay in the
singing of a solitary lark
Mankind is a plague Breathing hell into every corner of the rotting earth
Even now in this our finest hour I feel the hate of every stone tree & flower
Even now we fall under the long shadow of the donkey’s ears
Even now we listen for the slow grinding of the donkey’s teeth
Lalala we weep in the din of the stomping of the donkey’s black hoof
Lalala we weep for the slow coming of the dance
of our doom (Dance)
Eaters of the soil take us into the ground
Death by worm
Eaters of the air drive us from the blue
Death by sparrow
Eaters of the sea take us into the green
Death by eel
Eaters of the scraps take in our beds
Death by dog
Eaters of the soil take us into the ground
Death by sand
Eaters of the air drive us from the sky
Death by flower
Eaters of the green take us into the sea
Death by water
Eaters of the scraps take us in our beds
Death by stone
Death by silence Death by sorrow
The d.h.a.o.h. closes the book
The d.h.a.o.h. closes the discussion
The future sticks out its tongue
in the eyes of the gentle past
It fears its own demise but knows it cannot last
This momentary throne
precariously formed from its ashes
It takes the time we thought was ours
below to be reborn
Throw us away like a stack of old paper
Learn not from our scrawls
Close your ears to our rantings
And come against us
Flex your hooked claws and sniff
Like a dog at the stench of our decaying minds
Distrust the deceitful math of our perishing eyes
Run away from the phthisicky past
Let us turn our backs on this world of ease
Let us turn our backs and walk away
Let us close our eyes to the glory of the machine
Let us close our eyes and walk away
The houses are all gone under the sea
The dancers are all gone under the hill
And let us dream now the impossible dream
of a math professor
Even when the last tree falls There will be fire
Even when the last bird is gone Wooden boxes
Lovingly made by hand Filled up with fire
To blow off the hands of the strong
With wooden boxes
"And let us never forget
that the human race with technology
is like an alcoholic with a barrel of wine"
Rise up Friends of the Freedom Club Rise up
Dream your impossible dream
Crawl from your hole in the earth Crawl
The captains of this ship of fools are flesh
and softer than wood
The Freedom Club Rise Wake
The hermit of the woods is gone
The shack taken down
Even though his mind now is drugged
His desperate warning lives on
Blandly titled: Industrial Society and its Future*
Rise up Friends of Unabom Rise...Wake
Let us lay to rest our future dream
Let us leave it to rust and walk away
Let us turn around on the road of progress
Let us go back the way we came
"M-day’s child is fair of face,
Drill-day’s child is full of grace,
Gun-day’s child is breastless and blind,
Shell-day’s child is out of its mind,
Bomb-day’s child will always be dumb,
Cannon-day’s child can never quite come,
But the child that’s born on Battle-day
is blithe and bonny and rotted away."
—Muriel Rukeyser
There is a creature. It has to feed.
It stops at nothing to fill its need.
The people live in gruesome squalor,
So that the creature may grow taller.
Those with nothing have to bleed,
To help the creature spread its seed.
They learn to dine on fecal matter,
So that the creature may grow fatter.
The creature tells of evil gnomes,
Coming to destroy our homes.
And trolls who come with gun and knife,
To threaten our way of life.
The creature has enslaved our town,
But no one thinks to bring it down.
Provided with so much distraction,
The people can’t be moved to action.
And when the people are all dead,
Still the creature needs its bread.
When we’ve been sucked completely dry,
The creature needs its food supply.
(a parasite cannot survive,
unless its host remains alive.)
It has amassed such awesome wealth,
maybe it can eat itself.
"what shall we do without us?
Now when I get back here I expect to find
all of you marching through the streets
with great bunches of wildflowers in your arms."
—Kenneth Patchen
Three ways of staring at the sun
Thank you Thank you Babydoctor
Babydoctor Thank you
And you count out the years you have been here
in this foreign land
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Fourteen years Here Jalal Jalal Babydoctor
And you count out the years you’ve been deprived the use of your hand
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
Thirteen years Stroke
Staggering walker it takes you two lights
to cross the street
Traffic is backed-up here at the place
where cars and people meet
The very fast and the very slow
Beg for a ride and choke out a stream of words
as I drive
A mantra of thanks and counting out years that buries me alive
In the light of your humble and proud handful of mispronounced words
And I fall to my knees in the shade of a tree and cry Thank you
I look into the sun until it blinds me
I look into the sun until I go blind
I am raped by the light of the light until I am the son of the sun
I am replaced
Hail and praise the all-seeing eye of Pelton & Crane
I open my mouth to the all-seeing
eye of Pelton & Crane
Pelton & Crane I am replaced
Thank you
O loathsome crawling thing
Be done with your miniscule affairs
O hungry creeping speck
I release you from your cares Be gone Roach!
You live on carrion That’s outrageous
You’re probably contagious
Blind crippled and half-squashed
and yet you carry on
Your persistence is disgusting
I could never find myself trusting
A creature that would rather live in the trash
than in the lawn
Cockroach your problems are not mine
I love life but with you I draw the line
Not to flaunt my superior design
But next to you I’m practically divine
Cockroach your problems are not mine
These are the remastered tracks provided to Blood Music for SGM's 2017 vinyl repressings.
Recorded & Mixed by Dan Rathbun
at Polymorph Recording, Oakland, CA, 2003-04
Produced by Dan Rathbun & SGM
Mastered by Justin Weis at Trakworx, San Francisco
"Phthisis" produced by Scott Humphrey at the Chop Shop, Hollywood May 2004
Engineered by Chris Baseford, assisted by Garry Raposo & Vincent Piette
Field recordings made by Olivia Oyama & Carla Kihlstedt
credits
released October 25, 2004
Guest Voices: Dawn the Faun McCarthy (FC), Vince Piette, Kristin Burns, Strawberry (Phthisis), Gregory Scott Parker (hillbilly), Rich Louis Bires (3-6-9), Camp Manager (Swamp), F.T. Marinetti (Phthisis, Bring Back)
Art: Per Frykdahl
Design: Jenya Chernoff & Nils with thanks to Lorus J. Milne, Frank Lutz, and the John Kane Society.
Photos: Carla, David Grossman, Olivia Oyama, Marika Hughes, Moe!
Thanks: Olivia Oyama (live sound), Allen Wilner (lights), Trey Spruance, Mike Bennewitz, Mike Pukish, Chris Sipe, Danny Tunick, Ches Smith, David Grossman (web), Scott Humphrey & crew, Laurel Deppin, Konstantin Kondakov, Rusty Gil, The Stikman, Lisa Fay, John Carr, Vicky Grossi, Steve Chinn, Nick & Anya, Steven Eye & cooks, John Hagelbarger, Tom Crawford, Skeleton Key, Cheer-Accident, Dredg, Dresden Dolls, Yeti, Secret Chiefs 3, Brian Kenney Fresno & Felix, Faun Fables, Uz Jsme Doma, Degenerate Art Ensemble, Barbez, Immersion Composition Society, Mark Growden & Electric Piñata, Juan Prophet Organization, Pong, Dark Matter, Mattson & Stefanie, Eric & Ximena, Trish, Vacuum Tree Head, Michael Chen, Inkboat diaspora, our Families.
Field Recording Locations: Okeefenokee Swamp, Ft. Worth, Toledo, the Stealth Bus, Columbia SC, Oklahoma gas station.
Also thanks to the LucasArts Sound Effects Library.
Perhaps we can call them Avant-Prog Metal, or Grindcore Funk Theater, or in the words of one
particularly rapt
concertgoer “Satanic Anarchic Viking Shit."
Regardless, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum indoctrinates their audiences with circuitous melodies, unnamable harmonies and gleefully dark, evocative sounds emanating from an array of voices and instruments, many of them homemade....more
supported by 66 fans who also own “Of Natural History”
I can't remember a band/duo/artist that I couldn't get out of my head in so little time. The hypnotic claws of musicality are no match for my jaded misanthropy. There may be hope for the humans after all by way of newer, more in tune and talented alien ambassadors. Chris Shepard
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