The Worm Quartet digs
into absurdist ditties
Shoebox seems like a
regular dude, as far as dudes named Shoebox go.
Shoebox is an imposing, 300-pound, รผber-mulleted
individual, but he’s nice as hell. No alarm bells go off when you talk to him.
Nothing stands out as a threat or as any kind of mental defect… until you hear
his music, something he calls “comedy synth-punk.”
Shoebox lives and
performs here in Rochester,
and travels around the country as the one-man band known as The Worm Quartet.
Musically, The Worm Quartet is lo-fi industrial synth-based insanity. Lyrically, it’s somewhat juvenile,
completely retarded and funny as hell.
It’s also genius in
its irony.
But it wasn’t always
music.
The Worm Quartet
originated from Shoebox’s high school doodles. “I started drawing pictures of
worms doing stupid crap, primarily out of boredom,” he says. “And they were a
band so at some point I decided for some damn reason that they should make
music.”
The Worm Quartet
began recording in Shoebox’s bedroom, releasing assorted tapes and sharing them
with friends.
“It was always angled
toward comedy,” he says. Shoebox’s delusions were those of music, not grandeur;
that is until syndicated oddball DJ Dr. Demento
dragged him into the national spotlight in 1999.
“People would say,
‘You should send your stuff to Dr. Demento,'” he
says. “I sent him ‘I Bit William Shatner’ and he
liked it.”
Dementites ate The Worm Quartet up, and still do.
“I’ve been in his Top
10 three times so far,” he says. In 2002 he had the second-most requested song
of the year with “Frank’s Not In the Band Anymore.”
The song “Great Idea For A Song” was the most
requested song of 2004 and his 2005 collaboration with comedy rapper Sudden
Death titled “Inner Voice” was also voted the most requested song of the year.
The demand for his
dementia is strong, and keeps him constantly on the road. He covers as far west
as Minnesota and as far south as North Carolina.
“Usually I drive,”
Shoebox says. “It’s nice being in a one-man band ’cause I can tour in a
Cavalier.”
The Cavalier brings
him to audiences of all sorts.
“My fans tend to be
some punks, some indie-rock people, and some full-on
sci-fi geeks,” he says. The Worm Quartet plays lots of sci-fi conventions.
Shoebox usually takes
the stage backed up by a lone CD player. Sometimes he’ll don one of those
Yamaha Keytars “just for the purpose that I’m a
300-pound man and I look ridiculous holding a freakin’
itty bitty Yamaha.”
But it’s when he
opens his mouth and the mad ‘n’ manic diatribes, rants, raves, and ruminations
let fly that he really gets attention. Just try to imagine the lyrics that
might accompany song titles like “Hair On The Soap,” “Ice Cream Has No Bones,”
“Smell My Nipple, Win A Prize,” “Call Me Jennifer And Steal My Stapler,”
“Calculator In My Bum,” “Archie Got An STD,” and “Eskimo Pie Is Not Pie And
Contains Very Little Eskimo.” That’s right.
“I like to open with
something that’s immediately going to turn heads,” he says. “And make people
think, ‘What the crap is this guy doing?'”
Some just don’t get
it, but Shoebox doesn’t blame the music.
“There are
timbre-Nazis out there that can’t deal with anything that doesn’t have guitars
or whatever,” he says. But Shoebox’s wife digs it, along with his 20-month-old
son. Shoebox’s folks…well…”They are aware that it exists.”
The Worm Quartet
could simply be filed under “wacko,” but there’s something more to it. Perhaps
it’s Shoebox’s self-deprecation, or the irony he sees in his success. Maybe
it’s the fact that people are genuinely entertained by this music and its
off-kilter humor. Frankly, we need a few more artists that don’t take
themselves so seriously.
Who knows what its
legacy might be long after The Worm Quartet is worm food. Shoebox, aware of his
coif’s cult status waxes absurd: “People will dig up the CD, look at it and
say, ‘Oh my God! He had a mullet?”
For more information
on Shoebox and the Worm Quartet, check www.wormquartet.com.
This article appears in Aug 9-15, 2006.
