Sleepytime Gorilla Museum

The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum opened its doors to the public in 1916, only to show them a well-managed fire. Its doors were closed shortly thereafter and remained so for the rest of the century. Almost. The last year of the 20th century found the improbable trio of words once again adorning a placard posted outside a derelict urban building, with the addendum- "No Humans Allowed." Indeed, the awkward re-inaugural movements were witnessed by a lone banana slug (Ariolimax dolichophallus)-- a suitable beginning for a group that would soon shelter Oakland California's hindmost interpreters of Anti-Humanist literature. Their incessant travels since 2001 have brought new life to the Movement. Like their namesake and its instigators (Futurist Lala Rolo and Black-Mathematician John Kane) the new museum embraces the essential weakness of the Movement. But also like their predecessors they reject the elitism of the avant-garde in favor of a reckless populism: They are entertainers. Though not without humor, their often wide-ranging musical and theatrical choices are rarely ironic. This sincerity extends to a passionate craftsmanship, as evidenced by:

1. The LIVE SHOW, a costumed festival of hyperventilating self-derangement, which has yet to include much of a puppet show, but has included human performers of varying stiffness.
2. The ALBUMS- Grand Opening and Closing (2001 Seeland/Chaosophy), a collection of boisterous laments for the failure of the millennial apocalypse; Live (2003 Sickroom), a collage of mishaps and singularities from various stages; and Of Natural History (2004 Mimicry), a setting, in part, of a debate between two contradictory pillars of 20th C. Anti-Humanism: The Futurists versus the Unabomber.
3. The INSTRUMENTS, many of which are homemade creations of bassist/producer/mechanic Dan Rathbun: The Slide-piano Log, the Percussion Guitar, the Electric Pancreas, the Vatican, & the Pedal-action Wiggler; or rare: Autoharp, Glockenspiel, Toy Piano, & Viking Rowboat.
4. The ROAD approached as (A) a place of potential learning: the bloody history of our doomed nation, its warm and varied current inhabitants- our hosts and their regional splendors, and (B) a scar which conducts us in our lumbering Green Bus into the temples of Nature: Forests, swamps, deserts, mountains, and coasts, with national parks and rest stops alike as places of reverence and study, sources of sound and vision, many of which appear on Of Natural History.
5. The FOOD, prepared on the bus kitchen in large pots, in quantities befitting a seven+ person crew, mixing local ingredients with reliable spices, beans, and the "other black meat"- coffee.

The Museum are unified in these various crafts by the simplicity of their opposition to rock music. In the words of John Kane, "Nothing should be left undone which might contribute to its demise." To this end they employ a most tried and proven destructive force: rock. ROCK AGAINST ROCK.

Ambugaton.