Track 13: "Pandemonium Jukebox"

Heed that sound that's blasting in your brain!

Why does my cottage cheese taste funny?

CHORUS:

Pandemonium Jukebox pumping Faith into the Void

One more round and one more sailor on the floor

We'll make a toast to beasts we'll roast

And ladies we've enjoyed

While that Pandemonium Jukebox plays all night forever more

xxx

Once there was a harmless man who did just as he pleased

He lived in a little cottage

Manufactured cottage cheese

He never howled at midnight

He never went against the grain

Until that Pandemonium Jukebox started blasting in his brain

(Chorus)

I knew a man named “Battleship"

He thought he never could be sunk

Some called him a barbarian, some called him a sleazy drunk

He lost it in a pool game

Fifty cues crashed on his head

With that Pandemonium Jukebox playing dirges for the dead.

(Chorus)

copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)

(Written 1981)

What in tarnation is a "pandemonium jukebox"?

We’ll get to that in a minute.

But first, a flashback is due here. Let’s go back to that golden year of 1983.

As I mentioned in the prelude to this publication, my album Picnic Time for Potatoheads had been out for nearly a couple of years. I’d lost my beloved Sunday night gig at the Forge and my first marriage was falling apart.

But I still was obsessed with making music.

So, with the help of a friend and (literal) neighbor, I did just that.

All the cool people call it “Panda Juke.” (Album art by Edward Klamm)

If you’ve read previous chapters, you’ve already seen the name Tom Dillon, the real hero of Pandemonium Jukebox. Tom played steel guitar on a couple of Potatoheads songs, "Cajun Clones" and "Solar Broken Home," was one of my "Wolfboy" howlers and added some backing vocals on some other cuts.

And around the time, maybe shortly after we recorded that album, Tom began regularly joining me onstage, every Sunday at The Forge, plus most of my out-of-town gigs, either as a duo or as part of The Potato Salad Band.

At one memorable show in Taos, the band outnumbered the audience — and that night we were just a trio!

As I wrote in said prelude, sometime in the early 80s, Tom rented a house next door to me on Houghton Street.

"At some point he bought a 4-track Fostex cassette machine. Naturally we started fucking around with it. And by December of 1983, we started recording new songs as well as several old ones that hadn’t made it to Potatoheads.

"And thus sprang the lo-fi (a full decade before “lo-fi” became a thing in “alternative rock”), cassette-only Pandemonium Jukebox …"

Yup, we were the founding fathers of the lo-fi movement. But Guided by Voices never gave us any credit! (Unless maybe, "Kicker of Elves" was referring to Blue Elf Music …)

While Tom and I spent countless hours over several months working on this project, Tom spent many more hours on his own tweaking the sound and overdubbing his parts on guitar, steel guitar, dobro and banjo — not to mention the bass parts, which he played on electric guitar.

The song "Pandemonium Jukebox" came about in 1981, the same year Potatoheads was recorded. I’m pretty sure I wrote at least the lyrics while bored one day substitute teaching, perhaps at Capshaw Junior High. I wrote a lot of songs while bored in some classroom during a substitute gig.

The first line, "Pandemonium Jukebox pumping Faith into the Void," came to me first. I’m not sure why I’ve always capitalized "faith" and "void" here. Maybe I was contemplating a career in ghost-writing crackpot screeds for fanatics’ pamphlets.

I could have made this one much snappier

But seriously, I’ve always considered this song to be something of a "call to arms" for folks to heed to their inner "calls of the wild." It’s a song of celebration of our wild natures, as well as a cautionary tale of going too far into that wild nature.

The chorus, which actually opens the song is full of imagery of wild celebration. "One more round and one more sailor on the floor."

It could be considered a rowdier more explicit version of this old chestnut:

Though I’ve actually never heard this complaint from people who are familiar with my song, I can see why some feminists reading this now might not be on board with lyrics like, "We'll make a toast to beasts we'll roast / And ladies we've enjoyed."

No I wasn’t and I’m not comparing women with slabs of meat!

I would hope that ladies always feel free to toast men — or anyone— they’ve enjoyed — as well as food they’ll roast, bake, barbecue, sauté or order from GrubHub or whatever.

Here's to good friends. Tonight is kind of special …

The chorus is meant to invoke companionship, "fellowship," as my old Methodist friends would say. In my own mind, it brings images of Friday night at Okie’s bar in Albuquerque with my old friends from my college years.

Not to mention images of Sunday nights at The Forge, where friends would gather to drink beer and sing along with a nutty singer telling tales of carnival freaks, Cajun clones, Satanic cults and plastic childhood toys coming to life.

The two verses tell stories of two very different men. The first guy is a unassuming humble little fellow, happily living in his cottage, which I guess is the best place to "manufacture cottage cheese."

Richard Nixon was a cottage cheese fan. This photo is his last meal before his resignation speech. Not sure where it was manufactured. Tricky Dick usually liked it served with ketsup. I also love cottage cheese, but, like most real men, I prefer mine with salsa.

We don’t know what prompted the Pandemonium Jukebox to start blasting in this guy’s brain. But we can assume it led to him howling at midnight not long afterwards. And that’s a good thing.

I’d like to think that this "harmless man" could howl at midnight and get a little high and rowdy sometimes, while at the same time still cherishing his quiet moments in his cottage with his cottage cheese.

That would really be going against the grain.

However the next verse, we meet a "barbarian" — or maybe just a sleazy drunk. He ends up in a pool game that goes bad: "Fifty cues crashed on his head."

50-1 fights rarely go well for the one. Or so I’m told.

And being that the Pandemonium Jukebox is right there playing "dirges for the dead," it’s a pretty sure bet that "Battleship" didn’t survive.

"Was it something I said?"

Actually, there was a real-life incident that inspired this fictitious pool hall fight. And, sorry to disappoint, but it was far less dramatic than the song.

It took place at the aforementioned Okie’s, but it was a year or two after I’d graduated. I was with a group of friends, including an old roommate — let’s call him "Evan."

Evan wasn’t a barbarian. He didn’t look anything like any of the guys in the above AI masterpiece. But by this point you definitely could call him a sleazy drunk.

That night in Okie’s he was especially looshed. He told me he was going to make a pass at the wife of another friend who was there — a move I vehemently discouraged.

Then he wandered over the pool room. And few minutes later a heard a commotion from that area.

I looked over and sure enough, there was another guy cussing out Evan. The angry guy was holding his pool cue in a threatening manner and a couple of his friends, similarly armed were heading in the direction of the confrontation.

"Oh shit!" I thought, and headed over there.

I looked at the guy who Evan had pissed off and said something like, "I don’t know what this asshole did, but he’s my friend, so please don’t hit him. I’ll take care of him."

Then to my drunken friend, "Evan let’s get the fuck out of here!" And we did. I never did get a straight answer about what he’d done to anger that guy at the pool table.

Knowing this title song would be the opening track on the album, I provided a sort spoken intro.

With my own guitar strumming and Tom playing a little "Also Sprach Zarathustra" on steel — evoking both 2001: A Space Odyssey as well as Elvis’ 1970s live shows — I say "Is this thing on?"

That was a common way I’d open my live sets. I probably nabbed it from The Firesign Theatre. Then I declare, "Gonna play some selections for you from the Pandemonium Jukebox …"

That’s immediately followed by a sample of some weird chants backed by drums. Actually Tom and me, going "oooga chucka, oooga chucka, oooga chucka …" inspired by an off-kilter early '70s hit, Blue Swede's "Hooked on a Feeling."

I don’t think B.J. Thomas done it that a way …

This Swedish chant would appear later in Pandemonium Jukebox. I’ll let you know when it’s time for those chapters.

So I sang the tune while Tom provided a Byrdsy feel behind me.

So in my cosmology here, the Pandemonium Jukebox is a source of liberation in the first verse and the harbinger of doom and excess in the second. And in the chorus it’s a crazy rallying cry that pumps faith into the void.

I hope you’re in tune with that Pandemonium Jukebox and it plays all night for you. Forever more.

Now eat your cottage cheese and enjoy my song:

Get your own copy of Picnic Time for Potatoheads & Best-Loved Songs from Pandemonium Jukebox HERE

Credits

Steve Terrell: lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar, harmonium jukebox

Tom Dillon: lead guitar, steel guitar, everything else