by Mike McCarty
Elliot sipped his coffee–fresh-ground, none of that Starblast crap. He had started organizing some invoices when Keaton rushed in, slammed and locked the door behind him.
“Break out the guns and blasters!” Keaton shouted.
Elliot yawned. “Oh, give it a rest. My cats aren’t that bad. Would it help if I bought you some antihistamines?”
Keaton sneezed. “Damned cats! No, I’m not talking about them. Look out your office window.”
“Have you been eating lotus again?” The night manager sighed heavily. “I’m really busy right now, so why don’t you–”
“Look out your window, you stupid piece of krogg!”
Elliot stared at the Keaton. “There’s no need for that kind of language. Now just settle down and tell me– Hey, is that blood on your shoe?”
Keaton looked down. “Yeah, I guess it is. It must have splashed on me after the space creatures tore up Lang. Or maybe Grot. I’m not sure. I was too busy being scared kroggless at the time.”
Elliot rose from his office chair, crossed the room and looked out his office window, down toward the landing bay.
“Where is everybody?” the night manager said.
Keaton lifted the needle from the record. The second the music ended, both men could hear a distant chorus of squeals, echoing throughout the building.
“Sounds like pigs,” Elliot said.
“Yeah,” Keaton said, “except pigs don’t travel in packs eating everyone in their path. The squealers do.”
“Squealers? Never heard of them.” The manager continued to look out the window, trying to catch sight of an employee. “Where did everybody go?”
“Listen. I’m just calling them squealers because they squeal and I don’t know what else to call them.” Keaton grabbed some tissues from a box on Elliot’s desk and wiped the blood off his shoe. “I’m pretty sure they’ve eaten most of the other employees. The Busy Bee brought them in, along with some weird silver vines. The squealers are all over the place. I ran into two of them in the hall outside your office, but they were small and I managed to kill them with my faser-stick.”
“Oh, no! Come see this!” Elliot said. “Down there! This can’t be happening.”
Keaton rushed to the night manager’s side and looked out the window. A small group of Tranquility, Inc. employees was running across the landing bay, followed closely by a pack of squealers. There were six employees and probably about four-hundred of the predators. The creatures soon caught up with the workers and ripped them to shreds, feasting with lightning speed. When they were done, the squealers moved on, leaving behind nothing more than a large stain on the bay floor.
“Krogg! We’re dead meat,” Elliot said, sweating profusely. “What are they?”
“Aliens. What else? They look like a cross between a rat and an armadillo, and maybe a pirahna, too. Somebody on the Busy Bee got sloppy and let some aggressive life-forms onboard. The squealers and those silver vines. The vines are growing everywhere in that ship.”
“That must mean those monsters don’t eat plants,” Elliot said. “Great. We have plenty of cargo bays filled with harvests waiting for distribution, but that won’t satisfy those squealers, will it? No, they’ll want to eat us. But we should be safe in here. The walls are steel-plated. Only a nuclear blast could get through.”
“I just though of something,” Keaton said. “Sometimes one of your cats will find its way down to my work area. How do you suppose it gets down there?”
The night manager thought for a moment. “Oh, I know. A few weeks back, I heard a mouse or something in one of the air ducts, so I took off the grid so my cats could go in there and get it. I guess I forgot to close it. I’d better block off that duct–it’s by the floor right behind my desk.”
Elliot found the cover grid and screwed it back down over the opening in the wall. Then Keaton helped him to push a filing cabinet in front of it.
The night manager looked around his office. “Oh, no. Charlie Parker isn’t here. He must be in the ducts. I hope he finds a good place to hide.”
Keaton grabbed some more tissues, this time to wipe at his eyes and nose. “Damn. I’m trapped in here with my allergies and all these cats.” He waved a handful of tissues at the computer. “What are you waiting for? Contact the home office, Punktown authorities, somebody who can rescue us!”
“Oh! Right!” Elliot rushed to his desk, sat down in front of the computer and–
That’s when one of the squealers broke into the office through another air
duct in the ceiling. Six more of the squealers jumped out of the opening after it.
Elliot reached into a desk drawer, pulled out an old Earth pistol and fired at the first squealer. The bullet ricocheted off its armor and missed Keaton’s head by half an inch.
Keaton began to poke the squealers’ faces with his faser-stick, but these creatures were full-grown–the jolt only stunned them temporarily.
Suddenly the cats went into a frenzy. They began hissing, their backs arched and their claws flailing. John Coltrane jumped in front of one of the squealers, ready to attack.
The squealer sneezed, like Keaton did when he’d entered the office.
The cats started scratching and biting at the faces of the alien predators. The squealers didn’t fight back. They couldn’t–they were too busy sneezing, coughing and gagging. Their eyes exuded stringy mucus. One of the squealers coughed up a blood-streaked shower of thick yellow fluid.
“Hey! The squealers are allergic to your cats!” Keaton said. He picked up Zoot Sims and rubbed the cat against his chest and legs. “Get some of their hair on you! Hurry!”
“I can do better than that! I combed all the cats about an hour ago.” Elliot reached into his trash bin and pulled out two handfuls of loose cat-hair. He handed one to Keaton and the two men began to spread the hair all over their clothes.
The squealers began to gurgle and gasp, desperately fighting for breath. The cats continued to bite and claw at their heads, ripping at their batlike shouts and ears, rubbing their fur–and dander–all over the faces of their enemies. A few minutes later, the squealers collapsed to the floor. Soon all of the repulsive alien creatures were dead, asphyxiated by their own phlegm.
Keaton grabbed another handful of tissues and blew his nose. “I think we’re going to be okay. You’d better contact the authorities.” He walked around the office, looking at the dead squealers. Their eyes, noses and mouths were completely clotted with blood and snot. As he walked by the window, he happened to look down at the landing bay.
“Elliot!” he shouted. “Look what’s happening now!”
The two men stood at the window and watched as, far below, the Manx cat known as Charlie Parker chased a horde of sneezing, gagging squealers across the landing bay.
“Elliot...” Keaton said. “How many Earth cats do you suppose there are on this world?”
The night manager shrugged. “Who can say? As far as I know, I have the only cats on the whole planet. Why?”
“Think about it. This building isn’t sealed shut. The squealers will find a way out. They’re no longer a problem for Tranquility, Inc.–but they are now for Punktown. We’ve got to figure out how to get hundreds, thousands of cats here as soon as possible.” Keaton looked at all the cats in the office. “Do any of these have kittens on the way?”
“I doubt it,” Elliot said. “They’re neutered males.” He then returned to his computer. “I’ll take care of everything here. Could you get us something to eat? After all this excitement, my blood-sugar level is at rock-bottom. I really need to get some food in me. You’re covered with cat hair, so you should be okay.”
“Oh, sure.” Keaton unlocked the door and walked down the hall. A few squealers ran toward him, but they ran away as soon as they got a snootful of cat dander.
Two floors dow
n, he found an employee lounge with snack machines. In mid-air, right in the center of the room, a silvery something was fluttering. It looked like a butterfly made out of leaves. It flew up to one of the snack machines and managed to wriggle its way inside.
Curious, Keaton watched as the strange flying thing tore a hole in a bag of potato chips and crawled in.
He then bought some snacks from another machine, turning away from the machine with the silver interloper for only thirty seconds.
When he turned back, the invaded machine was filled with writhing silvery vines.
“Oh, great,” Keaton said. “That’s all we need.”
Sex, Drugs & Rot ‘N’ Roll
When rock ‘n’ roll goes the way of the dinosaurs, musicologists of the future may find it hard to believe such an outlandish species of sound ever existed. They also may have difficult comprehending the success of some of the high-concept–or more often, no-concept–groups that managed to scale the dizzying heights of the pop charts. Certainly the heavy-metal/industrial-hardcore/glam-goth group Meat Wagon will seem like some kind of dubious fabled beast, made up by bored rock journalists.
But Meat Wagon was real–as real as the stench that assails your nostrils when you open the corrugated-iron door of a tool shed during a summer heat wave and discover a corpse that’s been left to stew and brew for three weeks.
Here is the complete story of the band Meat Wagon, as told by the ones best qualified to tell it: the Meat Wagon gang. Here you will find shocking yet illuminating excerpts from various interviews with Critter, Metalhead, Gothik Gustave and The Lady In Black. Also interwoven are recollections from those who knew them: their manager Fever Dawg, Sir Walter Buckingham of Badbone Productions, the band’s spokesman Derek Silverstein, and rock ‘n’ roll historian Dan Swamp, who also served for fifteen years as editor of Slag Magazine.
Meat Wagon’s rocket ride to superstardom was fueled by drugs, rage, lust, dark worship–and guuku juice. So buckle yourself in and turn up the volume. This is the story of one of the loudest, most outrageous and ultimately, blasphemous bands in rock history.
THE BIRTH OF MEAT WAGON
There are several rumors circulating about the origins of Meat Wagon. Some people believe that Critter and Metalhead were paternal twins, born backstage at Woodstock. Others claim that The Lady In Black prolonged her life for decades with daily goat-placenta injections, and all the other band members were her children. But what is the truth?
Critter, Metalhead, Gothik Gustave and The Lady In Black. Their real names were, respectively, Anthony Sweet, Dean Greenberg, Gus Martin and Hilda Lawrence–but they left those names behind years ago.
Anthony Sweet was born with vertical pupils and a slight harelip, giving his lean face a startling, catlike appearance. Dean Greenberg’s parents died in a car crash a week after his birth, and he was raised by an abusive grandmother who was also a conceptual artist and self-styled witch. He took to wearing home-made masks in his late teens–first white half-masks, reminiscent of the Phantom of the Opera, then later, metal masks that covered most of his head. Gus Martin stopped growing when he hit three feet tall. Hilda Lawrence loved eating paste as a child, and she never outgrew that desire to ingest unnatural substances. In the everyday world, those four were simply misfits–but when they entered the realm of rock ‘n’ roll, they became living legends.
Here is the real story of the origins of the group, which was formed in 1983.
Critter: I used to play lead guitar with this pathetic cover band called Stardust Ballet. We did all the Top 40 tunes of the time–songs by Culture Club, Huey Lewis and The News, Naked Eyes, Thomas Dolby, Men at Work, a few others. At performances, they made me wear sunglasses so my eyes wouldn’t freak people out. Do you know how boring it is to play guitar for synthesizer-heavy pop crap? About as enjoyable as masturbating with that Freddy Krueger claw.
Gothik Gustave: For a long time, I traveled with the circus. There isn’t much work in the music industry for someone who’s only three feet tall. I used to be Professor Micro-Mite, out there in the midway sideshow with Bearded Betty and the Incredible Gator Boy. I loved singing so I tried out for several bands to get out of the carnival business. Every band I auditioned for would say, “Dude, you have a great voice–but you have to be ‘this high’ to be our leader singer.”
Dan Swamp: Gothik Gustave had to be the shortest person in heavy metal–but he had the tallest voice. Really, his voice was somewhere around eight feet tall. I have an ear for height.
Metalhead: During the late ‘70s, I was into metal. Steel construction, that is. I worked construction sites, pounding out my frustration with a jackhammer. My life was going nowhere. Crummy past, shitty present, no foreseeable future–I hated this dirty fuckhole of a planet. I was filled with rage and it had to come out somehow. I had to beat something. Eventually I picked up playing the drums, and that did the trick–and paid some bills, too.
The Lady In Black: That was back when I was a crackwhore. The only instrument I played back then was the skin flute, in alleys, flea-bag motels and more backseats than I care to remember. I did every nasty thing imaginable to score crack cocaine. One of my johns didn’t have any cash, so he gave me an old bass guitar. It was easy to learn. It only had four stupid strings.
Sir Walter Buckingham: The ‘70s? The ‘80s? Hell, I’m in my nineties. Come back later. It’s time for my nap.
Fever Dawg: Back then, I was working for my family’s funeral business. I lived above the funeral parlor–I could look down into the Grief Grotto from my bathroom window. I drove the hearse, too. I even took my girlfriend on dates in it. She didn’t like to make out in the back, but that’s life in the death industry. That hearse always had some stiff meat riding in it.
Derek Silverstein: I was in college during that time, studying to be an English major. I read Shakespeare, Hemingway, Twain–all those literary dead guys. I crammed in those classics between smoking home-made bongs and getting drunk until I puked–until one day, out of the blue, I’d earned my sheepskin and had to go out and get a job.
Critter: I was bored out of my gourd with Stardust Ballet, so I used to go to different bars around Chicago and sit in on their open mike nights. There was a club on Lincoln that used to be called Skulls & Crossbones–now it’s a furniture store. I was playing my guitar, just wailing it–I played so loud there were ears bleeding in the audience. After that particular show, this ugly
dwarf waddled up to me and said he wanted to buy me a drink. I told him I wasn’t gay and even if I were, I wouldn’t do it with a runt. He just laughed and bought me a drink anyway. And when he laughed–man, that tongue of his just flapped out of his mouth and started waggling in the air. It made him look like a bullfrog, fishing the air for flies. It really creeped me out–I couldn’t believe it was real.
Gothik Gustave: It’s my tongue. Mine, all mine–every inch of it. Wanna yank on it for proof?
Dan Swamp: Gothik Gustave had the longest tongue in rock ‘n’ roll. Some believe he had an anteater’s tongue grafted into his mouth to achieve that effect. I think, though, that his tongue was too thick for an anteater, which has a narrow, almost tube-like snout. His would have choked an anteater, I think.
Critter: This tiny dude said he worked for the circus and was dying to do some music. Most of the customers had left Skull & Crossbones by then. I was completely drunk, so I picked up my guitar and started playing some crazy made-up shit. And the little guy started singing some mumbo-jumbo just as loud as my guitar. Beer glasses started busting. Mirrors were cracking. Outside, a pane in a telephone booth exploded–windshields of cars in the parking lot imploded. It was amazing. I asked him what his name was and he said, “Gothik Gustave.” Now I call him G.G. for short.
Gothik Gustave: It was really an off-night for me. I was getting over a cold, so I couldn’t hit some of the high notes–my throat had some phlegm i
n it. And because Critter was just making shit up on the spot, I had to, just to show him I could. I didn’t have any real lyrics. I just sang the names of all the constellations and planets I could think of, since his guitar reminded me of rocket engines.
Dan Swamp: That guitar and vocal improvisation was the foundation for “Starman Manstar,” a song from the group’s debut CD, Ride The Meat Wagon.
Sir Walter Buckingham: The first time I heard “Starman Manstar,” I thought–how odd, the lyrics sound like an astronomy lesson. And, there wasn’t a chorus. The song stretched out over seven minutes. I had no idea how to edit it, so I just faded it out during the last guitar solo. It got a lot of airplay on college radio, which really surprised me.
Critter: I was tired of playing lame covers and was thinking of forming a new band, so I asked G.G. if he wanted to join my group. The little man was totally down with that.
Gothik Gustave: I was psyched! I asked Critter if he wanted to party and he said, “Hell, yeah!”
Critter: We hit a few more bars, and as we were staggering down the street, I decided I was going to find a woman for G.G.
Gothik Gustave: Because I’m so incredibly short and ugly, I usually don’t attract the attention of women, unless maybe they’re mentally ill or deformed. But Critter’s wallet was fat, so finding me some action wasn’t too much of a problem. Soon we found this gal wearing a black dress, black stocking, shoes, black everything. Even black lipstick.
The Lady In Black: I saw this drunk guy with funny eyes and a dwarf stumbling around, and they asked if I’d give the little guy a BJ. They were carrying a guitar, so I told them, “Okay, but I only do cash, no musical instruments. That’s how I got stuck with a four-string guitar–it was so boring to play, I learned the damn thing in two hours.”
Critter: I said, “You mean–a bass guitar?” And she said, “Yeah, that thing.” So I told her, “After you’re finished with Gustave, we could give you an audition for a band we’re forming.” She was so happy she gave us a discount on her services.
