Finally a diet of bloody music for cows, margin buyers and everyone going postal

                                                           Bands of Cows


San Francisco has long been the home of experimental bands with the
Grateful Dead the most noteworthy example.

This noisy and luscious history is beginning to change, however, with the
popularity of Reagan-era music demanded by the 20-something Internet crowd
who want to feel good about something. Psychologist Ezzard Darles suggests
that this generation “wants to find soul at the same time they are tearing
out the hearts of the competition. It is a curious paradox.”

“It is not surprising,”  Darles adds, “that the Internet crowd has
popularized the music from the most vacuous administration since
Buchanan--and the latter is understandable because he was from
Pennsylvania.”

Maybe so, but don’t talk politics to the hard-core San Francisco music
crowd who feel betrayed by all the winsome nostalgia. Says Darryl Johnson,
a local elementary teacher,” There was a time when San Francisco was the
home for hot music and beggars. Now we’re a city of beggars--and they make
more than teachers.”

These days cover bands--they cover hits first performed by others--are in
great demand,  so much they are abandoning the wedding circuit much to the
chagrin of brides.  Bands such as Twisted Love, named for the 1980s hit,
Money Lust, and Beautiful Greed  are swamped with work. Indeed, they among
the highest grossing bands in the city.

Another popular group, the Cheeseballs, whose members are named after a
different dairy product (Gorgonzola, a crowd favorite, wears a costume of
live maggots), is getting offers from as far away as Iowa and Wisconsin. In
2001 the Cheeseballs will be the featured attraction at the Minnesota State
Fair and appear on the Garrison Keilor Show.

Understandably, hard-core musicians are appalled at the success of these
bands popularized by young entrepreneurs. The local population is furious
that the IPO generation has caused real estate and coffee prices to double
in the last year. And they are striking back.

The hard-core musicians, largely badly-dressed leftovers from the 1960s,
have pooled their money and opened The Slaughterhouse Hive, a venue for
really meaty, experimental music. In fact, this group discovered an eerily
interesting way to combine meat and music with a stock market overlay that
has appeal to the Internet crowd. 

The formula is simple. The Slaughterhouse Hive sports five large video
screens that show a video of cows on their way to the abattoir, beginning
with the truck ride from the farm of a sobbing Farmer Jones, who kisses
each one of his pets good-bye. “Satisfaction” plays endlessly in the
background. On the bottom of the screen is a stock market ticker. Every
time the Nasdaq or Dow falls 10 points, the cows move a few steps toward
the slaughterhouse. The margin buyer in the crowd who has lost the most in
that day’s market buys everyone a round of drinks. The buyer is relatively
easy to identify because he is green around the gills and has fashioned his
Gucci necktie in the form of a noose. “Satisfaction” is still playing. 

Psychologist Darles thinks this is a brilliant undertaking “because it so
strikingly captures the shadow side of business and then permits a
cartharsis as participants can drink themselves silly. I think this is one
reasons the Internet crowd mixes so freely with garbage men and postal
workers. Everyone has a little dirt under his fingers. We all know
something about “going postal.”

But what happens when the stock market goes up? Simple. The cows walk
backwards into a meadow full of daisies and calves who are deliriously
happy to see their parents again. Mrs. Brown videotapes the reunions. Clips
from The Sound of Music can be heard in the background, but is ignored by
customers ordering Cosmopolitans.

With the recent precipitous plunge in the stock market The Slaughterhouse
Hive has been one busy bar. The market dropped so sharply on Bad Friday
that the videos could hardly keep up with the parade of forlorn cows
galloping like mule deer to the slaughterhouse.  They were serenaded by
various groups who took their names from slaughterhouse job categories:
knocker, sticker, shackler, rumper, tub dumper, knuckle dropper, splitter
top/bottom butt, and feed chain kill.

In truth it was a battle of the bands as the Knockers’ saxaphones wailed
when the cow was stunned, then the Stickers picked up the bloody drumbeat
when the cow’s throat was cut. By the end of process the music was bleeding
and cow pieces were piled high on conveyor belts traveling at speed to a
fast food restaurant near you. “Satisfaction” thudded in the distance.

The stock market carnage has made The Slaughterhouse Hive investors very
wealthy, so much so they intend to franchise the operate in at least ten
cities. The protests have already started, particularly from PETA (People
for the Ethical Treatment of Animals). Psychologist Darles, who is serving
as a consultant to this enterprise, dismisses the complaints. “Combining
the business/slaughterhouse metaphors in an atmosphere rich in music and
fellowship,” he remarked, “is psychologically healthy and affirming. At the
end of the day we at least participate, musically, in the final agony of
the cow. We’re talking empathy, not exploitation.”

Darles says a streaming music Web site is in the works. It will have an
ecommerce dimension, selling “everything cow.”

An IPO is planned. “Death,” notes Darles, “never takes a holiday.