Plow the Bones

by Douglas F. Warrick

  Marcus Copper:

  Look, here’s the thing, you can talk to me, you can talk to Grace, you can do your little interviews with Casper and Theo or the dudes from Misanthropics — who, by the way, were never around for this, despite what they’ll try to tell you, fucking squealing college–radio piggies that they are — but this whole story, the whole fucking story belongs to three people: Marissa Strange, or whatever she’s calling herself, Aaron Dhames, and Jan Landau. And only two are still breathing, so…

  Golem Zero (from his back–page column in Parasite City):

  This was intended as a relationship advice column, but astute readers will have noticed that it’s turned into something else. It’s been a chronicle of my own evolution. Look back at those old columns some time, check out my clumsy aphorisms, my naïveté. I’ve grown up in front of you, reader. Well, I’m about to do some more growing. My father has suggested that the time has come for an upgrade. I don’t know what that means, but I know it’s going to take some time. So, this will be the last column you see from me for a while. But father knows best, doesn’t he? (See Marissa? Sarcasm! I’m getting the hang of this!) See you next year, Parasites.

  Theodore Ricks:

  I don’t know how anybody even noticed that the golems weren’t around anymore. I mean, the shows got a little quieter, there were fewer fights, fewer beer bottles rolling around on the floor, but frankly, I had no idea they were gone until it was brought to my attention by Marissa.

  Aaron Dhames:

  Everybody in the scene knew that something was going on, even Theo, he just didn’t want anybody to know he knew ’cause it would blow his cover as, like, aloof experimental music guru guy. We all read that thing Zero wrote about being gone for a while. It was freaky. The scene got tense.

  Grace Sorbo:

  Oh Jesus, the Misanthropics/Only Children show? The homecoming show? Oh wow. Yeah, that was bad.

  Marcus Copper:

  Hal Landau, y’know, Jan’s brother, he’s there because he loved Misanthropics for some reason, and he always, I mean, always had mushrooms, so I squeezed, um… six caps, I think, into a Snickers bar and ate that, so by the time we’re on stage I am… really gone.

  Hal Landau:

  I wasn’t at that show. I don’t know what he’s talking about.

  Grace Sorbo:

  Marcus was terrible that night. I mean, he was always a dick, but especially that night. He was on mushrooms, I think, and he couldn’t even feel the accordion in his hands, and he kept busting his lips on the microphone. I remember looking at Jack [Pelligrino, bassist] and just shaking out heads, because there were supposed to be record execs in the audience that night. We were basically like, well, there goes our last shot.

  Marcus Copper:

  And Kerrigan Malloy and Boyd Taupin, cause they’re so high and fucking mighty now that their band is hot shit, they took over the green room at Gardersnake’s and wouldn’t let us in. It’s no secret, right, that everybody in Misanthropics was doing coke. Anyway, they are all completely tweaky and obnoxious, and Kerrigan, with that stupid fucking haircut, he comes out of the green room and goes to the bar and orders drinks that his record label ends up paying for.

  Grace Sorbo:

  Marcus… that poor asshole. It’s hard to be angry at him now, isn’t it, knowing what happened? He opens up his big mouth. He sees Malloy and goes, “Look at this fucking big shot! Hey fuck you, Malloy! Sell–out! College–radio sycophant! Blah blah blah!” That sort of shit, and the crowd got nasty.

  Marcus Copper:

  This is one week, one week, before Matador signs us and Volcano Void, by the way, so we’re starting to draw crowds, the place is packed, and not just with Misanthropics fans. I get up on stage, right, tripping… balls… and I guess I started shouting at Malloy, I don’t know. Anyway I said something about the golems, I don’t remember what, like, comparing them to Misanthropes to get Malloy’s balls in a knot, and bam. That’s when Marissa, who was… sensitive about the golems… did her thing.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  Marcus said, “You ain’t nobody in this town unless you’ve fucked Marissa Strange, and Malloy, you ain’t fucked Marissa Strange.” It had nothing to do with the golems.

  Aaron Dhames:

  Marissa rushed the stage and put a beer bottle through Marcus’s accordion. Marcus spit in her face. And she broke the bottle on an amp and, uh…

  Marissa Taliofano:

  Marcus Copper lost his left eye. I don’t know how it happened, but it wasn’t me. Nobody ever pressed charges.

  Aaron Dhames:

  After that? Chaos. Riot. Biggest barfight I’ve ever seen. It was apocalyptic. The cops came. Everybody was arrested. The record company sent lawyers and posted bail for Misanthropics and the rest of us sat at the station all night, filling out reports and waiting for our turn to answer questions.

  Marcus Copper:

  This isn’t my story. I’m not the guy you want to talk to. I know it seems like I’m a part of it, but I’m not. What happened to me was… it was inconsequential.

  Grace Sorbo:

  It was great publicity. We got signed, and I said to the label guy, hey, y’know, sign Volcano Void, they’re great, mostly because I loved Marissa so much. She was always like my big sister, even though I think I might be older. Even after what happened to Marcus.

  Aaron Dhames:

  You saw it happen so slowly. What a bad time that was. With the golems gone and after the fight at Gardersnake’s. I had this awful feeling the whole time, like Jan was… I don’t know, on the ceiling or something, looking down. When he was around, he always felt so slimy and… like, diseased. But his absence? The space where he wasn’t? That felt even slimier. Like he’d left his mark there, warning us away from it, like he would come back and he didn’t want anybody to stand in his spot. Anyway, about two weeks after the Gardersnake’s fiasco, Marcus’s hands started to rot off.

  Marcus Copper:

  I thought it was the mushrooms. Poison, or something.

  Hal Laundau:

  I never gave Marcus Copper any mushrooms. I’d like you to leave my property.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  He didn’t deserve it. Nobody deserves to lose their eye and their hands. But if anyone was close to deserving it, it was Marcus. The only person I can think of who would have deserved it more is Jan Landau.

  Theodore Ricks:

  I had never played accordion in my life, I was always a pianist. But I get this call from Grace, like, “We can’t record the new record. Something’s wrong with Marcus’s hands.” So I learned and I recorded with them. It’s why the accordion sounds so awful on that record. I learned it in three fucking days. I wish you could have heard Only Children the way they were supposed to sound. They were a great band. I remember getting to the studio and Marcus just looked pathetic. He still had that giant white bandage over his left eye socket and now his hands were… kind of grey and… okay, when I was a kid, my mom used to drive my sister and I to the Natural History Museum, and my favorite exhibit was the one with the Egyptian mummies, with their parchment skin, meatless and close to the bone, the fingers curled in like dead spider legs. That’s what Marcus’s hands looked like.

  Grace Sorbo:

  They were smaller every day. We’d show up to practice and a little bit more of them had flaked away. A good breeze could take a layer of skin with it. And Marcus was so damned depressed. That was the end of us, of our band. He refused to go to the doctor. And soon they were just gone. All gone.

  Jan Landau (in a letter to Aaron Dhames):

  Regarding your recent letter informing me of the unfortunate condition of Marcus Copper’s hands and eye. I am sorry to hear about his eye.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  The first news I got of the golems’ return was a poster. A poster. I hadn’t heard from Zero in a month, maybe more, and here’s this poster outside of this café where I used to get coffee in the morning. “Jan Landau’s Golem Band! New an
d Improved! Better than Ever! Friday Night at the Infamous Gardernsnake’s Bar and Grill! Come Pay Your Fealty to the New Kings of Rock and Roll!” I was furious.

  Theodore Ricks:

  Everybody was excited, as though somehow the return of a shitty local band was supposed to be big news. So we all went. They were much better with their new hands.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  I wanted to hate Zero for disappearing. But then he shows up and he’s staring at me with those big soulful eyes… there was always something about those eyes, so big and brown, set on either side and underneath of the Hebrew letters in his forehead. I remember that he knocked on my apartment door one night, and his knock sounded different. You know how, after a while, you kind of start to recognize the way a person knocks? Like, not consciously, not like, “Oh, I bet that’s so–and–so,” but your brain kind of prepares itself for who will be on the other end, just based on how the knock sounds. Well, he knocks, and I had no idea it was him. I opened the door, and I saw his eyes, and of course I melted right away, all the anger was just gone. And I fell against him, just let my weight carry me forward, let gravity pull us together, and I plummeted into his chest. He could take it. You couldn’t push him down. No one could. He said, “Shh. Hey. Shh, I’m back. It’s okay. I’m not going away again.” And he put his arms around me. And I felt something warm and soft and clumsy kind of… I don’t know, kind of combing my hair, and I reached back and grabbed his hand. It was real. A real human hand. The clay ran down to tiny rivulets over the palm and the back, then under the skin like veins, or like IV drips, and he had these big beautiful fingers, plump and pink, perfect. Just perfect.

  Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “You Ain’t Gonna Ruin My Fun”:

  Little girls, little boys, I’m coming home, strapped to the hood of my GTO, and you ain’t never ever gonna ever go and ruin my fun.

  Casper Lynch:

  I mean, they were Marcus Copper’s hands. That’s obvious, right? Somehow, all five of the golems had Marcus Copper’s hands. I don’t know how that’s possible, but I don’t know how giving life to clay is possible either. I don’t think anyone really trusted the golems after that. Except Marissa.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  I know this sounds crass, it sounds like I’m living up to my reputation or whatever, but I don’t know how else to show you what we were, how we were. After they got their hands and before the whole thing turned to shit, I used to make love to Zero’s hands. They were the most sensitive part of his body. So we used to hold each other real close, and I would just… I’m not going to go into detail. We used to do that for an hour every night. I used to cry sometimes. It was like, there was just all of this emotion. Not happiness exactly, and not sadness, just… hugeness. Cosmic hugeness. I could feel it inside of him, inside of us. It seemed like the only appropriate reaction, the only way to acknowledge it, without it bursting out of our bodies and killing us, was crying. I know this is strange, but it was like… that hugeness was a constant for him, a sacred lonely status quo, and making love like that, it allowed him to… to share some part of that with me. He trusted me. Goddamn it.

  Jan Landau (in a letter to Aaron Dhames):

  Golem Zero’s fingers smell of Strange’s snatch. She’s turning him against me. That nickel–plated harlot has always been an enemy of mine. Even when she shared my bed, she did so as an act of sexual terrorism. That’s precisely what she is, my dearest, and dare I say only, friend, Mr. Dhames. She’s a terrorist. You must aid me in my quest to separate them, before that bitch fucks up everything.

  Aaron Dhames:

  Every ounce of fascination I might have had with Jan Landau was, y’know, twirling clockwise and down. He creeped me out. He was so skeevy. And the way Marissa looked at him, you could just see something. I don’t know what that dude did to her, but I can guess. Problem was, you had to go through Jan to get to the golems. And all these guys, all these big–shot music journalism guys, guys from Spin and Rolling Stone and Pitchfork, they were paying attention to us. To me. I was getting offers to come work for them. Contingent, of course, upon being able to cover the golems, who had just released Sixth–Floor Processional Calliope, which was huge at the time. So I made some decisions I regret making.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  Aaron Dhames told Zero that I had fucked Jan. And Zero didn’t want anything to do with me…with anybody… after that.

  Spin Magazine:

  Is it Sorcery? Alchemy? Or Rock and Roll? The Peculiar Story of Jan Landau’s Golem Band.

  Pitchfork Media:

  Sixth–Floor Processional Calliope is the best record of the year, challenging age–old rock and roll traditions and definitions, remaking the popular music record in the image of the inhuman, and thereby liberating it.

  Rolling Stone:

  The Abominable Dr. Vibes: Who Is Jan Landau?

  Grace Sorbo:

  Aaron sold his soul. Which was sad, because he was just this awkward, nerdy kid who spoke too fast and liked strange music, he was innocent. Jan and the golems just twisted him.

  Theodore Ricks:

  You had people at the time starting bands in Tallahassee or Detroit or Portland who were like, “Hey, we sound like Misanthropics, we sound like JLGB, we’re Parasite Rock!” To which I always responded, “No, Parasite Rock is a Parachute City phenomenon, it’s not something you can participate in. You can enjoy it, but you can’t participate in it.” But the vibe was out there, so Jan put together a tour. It was Neo Geo, Misanthropics, and JLGB.

  Casper Lynch:

  We shouldn’t have been on that tour. Volcano Void was way more popular than Neo Geo, because they really were a better band, but Jan didn’t want Marissa anywhere near Golem Zero, so… ta–da. Neo Geo tours the world, and I’m not even done with college.

  Golem Zero (in an interview with Spin Magazine):

  You want to know the truth? We are superior to you rotting, dying animals in almost every conceivable way. Think about it. We don’t die. We don’t have to eat. We can’t fuck and aren’t distracted by the desire to do so. We are single–minded, soulless, and unbound by any law save those that made us. If I could stop playing music and devote the rest of time to the elimination of the entire human race, I’d do it, just so I don’t have to pity you anymore. But I can’t. That’s the only one–up you have on us. Congrats.

  Casper Lynch:

  That tour sucked so bad.

  Aaron Dhames:

  Jan saw me as his protégé. He wanted me around. I was his press liaison. He kept trying to teach me all those… secrets, y’know, the secrets he had. Don’t make me say it, come on. The magic. He was trying to teach me magic. So I went on tour with them. The golems, especially Zero, they hated everyone. They just resented the hell out of, y’know, people. Which sucked, right, because we’d been pretty tight before that. One night, they all show up at the venue from the hotel room and Jan’s got a black eye and he’s missing a tooth. And the golems are all kind of lined up around him. They’re all just blank. It was fucking spooky. I had never been afraid of the golems before. But four out of the five of them were just zombified, man. Drooling. Blank. And Zero’s standing there with his fists clenched and his eyes on fire, and Jan has bolted this iron plate to his mouth and he’s hollowed out his throat. I remember Jan reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out Zero’s throat and showed it to me. He said, “Golem Zero has misbehaved. He will receive his voice back when he goes on stage, and he will relinquish it to me when he comes off.” Then when the golems are on stage, he says to me, “It was his fault. Golem Zero’s. He riled them all up. I had to calm them down. I had to. I would have calmed him down too, but I need him. I need him cogent. Cognition is prerequisite for charisma and charisma is prerequisite for rock and roll. Damn it all to hell.” He was actually, like, really sad about it.

  Theodore Ricks:

  Jan muzzled the golems and we all started having nightmares. Don’t you ever miss those days when you could af
ford to attribute rational explanations to strange phenomena? The glory days, the days before Jan Landau and his asshole magic.

  Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “For Jan”:

  I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to feel your fingers down my, fingers down my, fingers down my throat.

  Marissa Taliofano:

  I wasn’t going to go to the last show on the tour. I didn’t want to. I mean, I loved Casper, he was a sweetie, so damn smart and so patient with Theo, so I loved going to see their band. I loved supporting them. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to stare up onto stage and see Zero staring down at me. I had nightmares about that moment of eye contact, the two of us building a beam between our eyes out of resentment and yearning.