Hey Guys. I found an old magazine article about the rock band Unexpected Badger, which provided the name of this blog and from the stage names of whose members we have taken our usernames.
Unexpected Badger: a piece of music history
The well-versed veterans of alternative rock outfit Unexpected Badger are among the grand old men of the bussiness. For almost half a century they have performed and made albums, never reaching the charts but always existing just below the surface of the mainstream, influencing other musicians as well as reflecting current trends.
Unexpected Badger was formed under humble circumstances. In the late fifties, jazz afficionado Clockmaker defeated his sociophobia and hit the jazz clubs to enjoy his favourite music. It was here, on the notorious beatnik café "the shout box" that he met beat poet J Sandas. They soon decided to start their own band and went looking for people to join them. They heard rumours of the mysterious "Ugglan", a man who dressed and lived like an owl among the rooftops of the city. Immediately convinced that he was the man for them, they set out to find this elusive individual. They crafted an intricate device, "the owl-catcher", which completely failed to function due to the fact that neither of the two knew a single piece of mechanics.
Finally, they just put up an ad in the paper and the next day they had Ugglan on the phone, eager to join the band. He proved to be a competent musician. Other recruitments at the time were Feuflux and the primordial being Insignia. In 1960, they struck their first record deal with Gardener Records and released their self-titled album.
In the early sixties the band drifted towards a more rock-oriented sound, with songs like "Twenty-five Cents Short Of A New Pair Of Shoes Twostep Shimmy", "The Guy In The Spotlight Has Hideous Facial Hair", and "Put Your Pants On For God's Sake". This change was cemented by the 1963 arrival of Kusch the worldwalker into the band. Kusch had travelled the worlds of the multiverse for ten years and assured the band that rock was all the rage in the other dimensions as well. Eager to get on the interdimensional bandwagon, the band made Kusch lead singer, and actually had a minor hit in the Second Realm of Light with "A Walrus Will Never Be Elected President", but as they were way too boring to take psychedelic drugs or participate in free love, the band totally missed the whole point of the sixties and as the seventies began, they still labored in obscurity. They had, however, expanded the band with yet another member, the guru Light Steps On Leaves that was imported from The East as the bands spiritual guide but stayed as a musician.
During the seventies, Badger was into political commentary, with songs such as "Karl Marx On The Rocks", "Foldout Engels", "Lenin Tango", "Stalin Shuffle", "Pol Pot Polka" and "Mannerheim Marengue". For some inexplicable reason, however, the listeners didn't take the band's social comittment seriously.
In 1979, Feuflux was killed in an accident involving dice. The coroner's report, however, stated that Feuflux had been stabbed to death, which created much speculation among fans as to the real cause of the death. To replace Feuflux, in 1980 the band recruited german Dimfrost whose band Terone had just split up. In Dimfrost, Badger found a competent songwriter and synthist, and so they were settled for the eighties.
The eighties are - as everyone knows - the least interesting decade of this century and consequently Badger did nothing of importance in these ten years. Songs like "Elders Disturbed by Bad Lighting", "Standin' on the Corner Tryin' to Bum a Cigarrette Blues" and "What's All This Then? You're All Nicked!" are characeristic of the Badger sound of this time.
Then came the nineties, with its boy bands and brit pop. Badger seemed very out of date, but in certain circles the band's sixties and seventies recordings had started to become rediscovered. All this provoked Badger to release a series of new albums: "Kids These Days Don't Know How To Play the Harmonica" was followed by "Tea and Lies", which actually saw a song on the hit lists ("Drawing Rhomboid Shapes on Your Girlfriends Belly Is Cause for Separation"). Last month, "Local Man Found in Soup" was released, and while it probably won't sell platinum, it has been critically acclaimed (to Clockmaker's great annoyance) and it can definitely be said that Badger is back on the road and as unexpected as ever.
Below follows a short presentation of the seven members of the band:
Kusch (Lead vocals, lead guitar)
The charismatic front man of Badger. Kusch has the ability to travel between parallell dimensions and is probably a couple thousand years old. He's the undeniable leader of the band and... eh, sorry... Clockmaker is standing behind me, reading over my shoulder and laughing maniacally.
Dimfrost (Synthesizer, second guitar, harmonic vocals)
Dimfrost was prevously known as Fritz Klegg and fronted the german prog rock band Terone, that attracted crowds of hundreds of thousands with its songs about sunflower fields and zeppelins. Badger recruited him after previous synth player Feuflux died in a freak dice accident. A seasoned songwriter, Dimfrost makes the lyrics of almost half of Badger's songs. His lyrical style is easily recognized and contains fantastic themes such as lengthy, detailed descriptions of otherwordly milieus and complex rhyme structures.
Insignia (Bass guitar, harmonic vocals)
Insignia is not only the Causa Causans, the primordial cause that made the universe begin and all causal relationships start to unfold, she's also one hell of a bassist. Having a transcendental being of enormous power in the band has helped Badger immensley. For example, during a copyright feud with their previous record label, Insignia simply unmade the label completely, extinguishing it retroactively from history as well as from the present. Problem solved! Mean tongues have it that Insignia is the sole cause for the band's success. In a methaphysical sense this is certainly true, seeing as how she is the sole cause of everything, but the people who think that Badger's first record contract was given to them by Insignia through miracle are just paranoid.
Clockmaker (Drums)
Hammering away on his drums with seemingly endless energy, Clockmaker is the mechanical heart of Badger's music. "I just pretend they're the heads of people I dislike" the seasoned drummer once cheerfully explained when asked how he could keep his sometimes superhuman tempo. There certainly does not seem to be a shortage of such people, and we can only hope that Clockmaker will continue making enemies for many years to come.
Ugglan (Fiddle, ukulele, banjo, harmonica, accordion)
Ugglan gives the group's music a country tinge. Little is known about Ugglan, who keeps his head inside an owl mask at all times. Fact is, noone has ever seen Ugglan's real face, not even the other band members (or so they say). Much is rumored of Ugglan, like how he lives in a hole in a tree, only comes out at night and eats rats which he catches himself by swooping down from the treetops. When confronted with his weird behaviour, Ugglan has been known to alternately explain that he's the member of an ancient secret society, "the citizenry", which worships the owl as a god, and that he's simply wicky in the wacky woo.
Light Steps on Leaves (Double bass, fiddle, sitar, flute, didgeridoo, various)
It was on a spiritual journey in The East during the sixties that Clockmaker found Light Steps on Leaves, a guru that used music and pseudopsychological meditation methods to come in contact with the astral guides. Clockmaker promptly returned him to The West to provide spiritual guidance for the band. This was the sixties, mind you, so people felt a need for spiritual guidance. However, the band soon became endeared with the big exotic man with his beard cut in the likeness of the Monkey God Hanuman, and they kept him even after the sixties were over. He plays a variety of weird instruments that gives Badger's music an exotic aftertaste.
J Sandas (Saxophone, trumpet, trombone)
"Cool Hepcat" J Sandas is the jazzy soul of Badger. In all the years since the fifties ended he hasn't forgot the band's roots and he takes every opportunity to demontrate this with an intense saxophone solo. He seldom writes songs of his own, but has been working on his musical masterpiece "Unreal Trombone" for, um... 50 years.
