Matt Muffin (Lollygagger)
SPB: Have you ever forgotten lyrics or the music for a song while playing live? How did you recover?
Muffin: The best story I have is....
A few years ago, Mike and I played in a band called The Peekaboos, which later pretty much became rebranded as "Lollygagger" when Kinsey joined. One of our favorite places to play was D.Z. Records, which would throw a yearly fest called, you guessed it, "D.Z. fest". One year in particular during the height of our debaucherous years, our friends in another headlining act was eating a big bag of mushrooms after they played and offered us some...a little scary considering the turnout, but in our youth and inexperience we figured, "Fuck it, what's the worst that could happen?"
Flash forward about an hour: we're onstage in front of a few hundred people, eyeballs dilated to the size of dinner plates, and it begins. We're actually playing a pretty screaming set but then the mushrooms really start to kick in and during the first verse of "Door Prizes Rule" I start singing the second verse...usually a problem like this wouldn't be that bad except for the fact that it's EXACTLY ONE MEASURE LONGER than the first verse.
Second guitar doesn't catch it, bass does, the drums probably ate more mushrooms than me, so long story short it becomes a strange trainwreck on stage, each instrument just hardly out of step with the other...This horrible sonic spaghetti also exacerbated by the fact that my mesh shirt and pigtails made me look like an insane person, the psychedelic dissonance notwithstanding..
Worse than that, Ben Arguelles, the respectable straight-laced producer (and totally awesome dude) had probably heard that song 100 times while mixing it, and was in the audience. The disapproving, yet fatherly looks he gave me after the set will follow me to my grave as a reminder, so from time to time I'll sing myself this little ditty;
"Stick to San Pedro cactus dust. You'll be able to remember all the lyrics."
