Plow the Bones (12 page)

Jan Landau (in a letter to Aaron Dhames):

Golem Zero’s fingers smell of Strange’s snatch. She’s turning him against me. That nickel–plated harlot has always been an enemy of mine. Even when she shared my bed, she did so as an act of sexual terrorism. That’s precisely what she is, my dearest, and dare I say only, friend, Mr. Dhames. She’s a terrorist. You must aid me in my quest to separate them, before that bitch fucks up everything.

Aaron Dhames:

Every ounce of fascination I might have had with Jan Landau was, y’know, twirling clockwise and down. He creeped me out. He was so skeevy. And the way Marissa looked at him, you could just see something. I don’t know what that dude did to her, but I can guess. Problem was, you had to go through Jan to get to the golems. And all these guys, all these big–shot music journalism guys, guys from
Spin
and
Rolling Stone
and
Pitchfork
, they were paying attention to us. To me. I was getting offers to come work for them. Contingent, of course, upon being able to cover the golems, who had just released
Sixth–Floor Processional Calliope
, which was huge at the time. So I made some decisions I regret making.

Marissa Taliofano:

Aaron Dhames told Zero that I had fucked Jan. And Zero didn’t want anything to do with me…with anybody… after that.

Spin Magazine:

Is it Sorcery? Alchemy? Or Rock and Roll? The Peculiar Story of Jan Landau’s Golem Band.

Pitchfork Media:

Sixth–Floor Processional Calliope
is the best record of the year, challenging age–old rock and roll traditions and definitions, remaking the popular music record in the image of the inhuman, and thereby liberating it.

Rolling Stone:

The Abominable Dr. Vibes: Who Is Jan Landau?

Grace Sorbo:

Aaron sold his soul. Which was sad, because he was just this awkward, nerdy kid who spoke too fast and liked strange music, he was innocent. Jan and the golems just twisted him.

Theodore Ricks:

You had people at the time starting bands in Tallahassee or Detroit or Portland who were like, “Hey, we sound like Misanthropics, we sound like JLGB, we’re Parasite Rock!” To which I always responded, “No, Parasite Rock is a Parachute City phenomenon, it’s not something you can participate in. You can enjoy it, but you can’t participate in it.” But the vibe was out there, so Jan put together a tour. It was Neo Geo, Misanthropics, and JLGB.

Casper Lynch:

We shouldn’t have been on that tour. Volcano Void was way more popular than Neo Geo, because they really were a better band, but Jan didn’t want Marissa anywhere near Golem Zero, so… ta–da. Neo Geo tours the world, and I’m not even done with college.

Golem Zero (in an interview with Spin Magazine):

You want to know the truth? We are superior to you rotting, dying animals in almost every conceivable way. Think about it. We don’t die. We don’t have to eat. We can’t fuck and aren’t distracted by the desire to do so. We are single–minded, soulless, and unbound by any law save those that made us. If I could stop playing music and devote the rest of time to the elimination of the entire human race, I’d do it, just so I don’t have to pity you anymore. But I can’t. That’s the only one–up you have on us. Congrats.

Casper Lynch:

That tour sucked so bad.

Aaron Dhames:

Jan saw me as his protégé. He wanted me around. I was his press liaison. He kept trying to teach me all those… secrets, y’know, the secrets he had. Don’t make me say it, come on. The magic. He was trying to teach me magic. So I went on tour with them. The golems, especially Zero, they hated everyone. They just resented the hell out of, y’know, people. Which sucked, right, because we’d been pretty tight before that. One night, they all show up at the venue from the hotel room and Jan’s got a black eye and he’s missing a tooth. And the golems are all kind of lined up around him. They’re all just blank. It was fucking spooky. I had never been afraid of the golems before. But four out of the five of them were just zombified, man. Drooling. Blank. And Zero’s standing there with his fists clenched and his eyes on fire, and Jan has bolted this iron plate to his mouth and he’s hollowed out his throat. I remember Jan reached into the pocket of his coat and brought out Zero’s throat and showed it to me. He said, “Golem Zero has misbehaved. He will receive his voice back when he goes on stage, and he will relinquish it to me when he comes off.” Then when the golems are on stage, he says to me, “It was his fault. Golem Zero’s. He riled them all up. I had to calm them down. I had to. I would have calmed him down too, but I need him. I need him cogent. Cognition is prerequisite for charisma and charisma is prerequisite for rock and roll. Damn it all to hell.” He was actually, like, really sad about it.

Theodore Ricks:

Jan muzzled the golems and we all started having nightmares. Don’t you ever miss those days when you could afford to attribute rational explanations to strange phenomena? The glory days, the days before Jan Landau and his asshole magic.

Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “For Jan”:

I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to, I don’t want to feel your fingers down my, fingers down my, fingers down my throat.

Marissa Taliofano:

I wasn’t going to go to the last show on the tour. I didn’t want to. I mean, I loved Casper, he was a sweetie, so damn smart and so patient with Theo, so I loved going to see their band. I loved supporting them. But I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to stare up onto stage and see Zero staring down at me. I had nightmares about that moment of eye contact, the two of us building a beam between our eyes out of resentment and yearning.

Grace Sorbo:

I brought Marissa out to the show. I made her come. They were playing at Macy Amphitheatre, which was the biggest venue in Parachute City that any of us Parasite Rock scenesters had ever played. It was a gorgeous venue, and it was a beautiful night.

Casper Lynch:

Poor Boyd Taupin. Y’know, the dude from Misanthropics. Boyd found Jan’s body. I never saw it, but it did a number on Boyd. I don’t know what Zero did to Jan, but it wasn’t like your common household homicide. I know that Boyd is back home now, but for a while, maybe six years, he was up in Waverly Hills Hospital. He lives with his mom now. I think they were planning another Misanthropics record, but I’ll be real surprised if that ever happens.

Boyd Taupin (guitar — Misanthropics):

Lots of, uh, lots of, uh, reporters,
journalists
I mean, lots of
journalists
come around, or came around, they came around, they don’t come around often anymore, but they came around and asked me about it, they asked me what happened to me, because, so they say, you don’t get so, y’know, so, y’know, so, y’know, fucked up about a stupid body and I haven’t ever, um, told anybody what I saw, and I don’t, I don’t, y’know, I don’t, um…
intend
… to start
telling
it… now, not now. So, y’know, so… maybe you ought to get the fuck out of my mom’s house before I call the cops, Mr. Reporter, Mr. Journalist. Maybe you ought to get the fuck out, out of my mom’s
house
, or I’ll just call the cops, I’ll call the cops, I’ll call…

Aaron Dhames:

I made the decision not to call the cops. Yes, I saw the body. Yes, I know. I’m sorry, man, he deserved everything he got. I was…because of my closeness to Jan, because I was his butt–boy or whatever, I was in a position to call the shots. I didn’t realize how much I hated him until he was dead. So I thought… fuck it, he wasn’t murdered, exactly. What do you call it when a man of mud kills somebody? Is it a natural disaster? I mean, you tell me. As for what Golem Zero did to him… I told you, right, that he taught me some, uh, secrets? Yeah, well. He taught me how to keep secrets, too. If you think you’re getting any nasty, gory details out of this… sorry, man.

Marissa Taliofano:

The rain started coming down halfway through JLGB’s set. Zero was always terrified of rain. Because… (laughs)… clay. He didn’t blink. I’m sorry, I can’t.

Aaron Dhames:

I ran out on stage and tried to gather everybody up, tried to get everybody away from the rain. We could maybe put a canopy up or something. The equipment could have fried everybody, we could have had a fire. And rain was bad news to the golems for obvious reasons. But Zero had his plan at that point. He wanted to show us all what he was made of.

Grace Sorbo:

I’m in the front row and I see Aaron run out waving his arms and shouting, trying to herd the golems off stage. Zero leans into the microphone and says, “Excuse me for a second, we’ve got an issue.” And he walks away from the microphone and grabs Aaron by the throat. The other golems are just standing there with their instruments. Their eyes are on the clouds. Zero lifts Aaron off his feet one–handed and starts punching him in the face with his free hand. Aaron is kicking his feet and waving his arms, trying to get free, and the crowd… ugh… they’re cheering. They love it. They’re bloodthirsty. They think this is what Parasite Rock is all about. It’s what people still think Parasite Rock is about. Violence. Magic. That wasn’t us. That wasn’t our scene.

Aaron Dhames:

I just stopped struggling. My nose was broken and my eyes were all swollen and purple and my cheeks were puffy. Zero carried me by the throat to the front of the stage and said, “This song is called ‘No Coda.’ ” I’ll never forget that. No Coda. That was their last song. They played like that, with me dangling from the end of Zero’s arm.

Jan Landau’s Golem Band — “No Coda”:

Forget this song. Nobody sings in the wasteland.

Marissa Taliofano:

The rain came down. My nightmare about locking eyes with Zero was completely untrue. He never glanced at me.

Aaron Dhames:

His grip wasn’t tight. He didn’t want to kill me. Or maybe he did and he couldn’t. Then again, he wasn’t supposed to be able to kill Jan, but we know how that turned out. I wish I knew how. I wish I knew how he broke Jan’s hold over him.

Theodore Ricks:

Casper comes over to our little tour van and throws the door open and goes, “Zero’s gone crazy.” So we run over to the stage and watch.

Casper Lynch:

The rain came down, and they peeled layer by layer, and we saw every moment of it. We saw the first strata washed away and we saw what was underneath. Everyone in Macy saw it. The colors that made up their insides. You know, your eyes are biologically designed to only see certain colors. The cones in your retina, they can see over ten–million variations on those certain colors, but if there are colors other than those basic rainbow ones, you can’t see them. But we did. Do you have any aspirin on you?

Aaron Dhames:

They looked like voodoo dolls cobbled together from bat wings.

Theodore Ricks:

Don’t you dare do that. Don’t you dare ask me what it was like. That’s not fair.

Grace Sorbo:

Zero’s last words were, “I love you, Parasite City.”

Aaron Dhames:

The last thing he said was, “Fuck you, Parachute City.”

Marissa Taliofano:

“Fuck you, Marissa.” The last thing he said before he was gone.

Golem Zero (suicide note):

For months, I have wanted to see the world destroyed. And I can’t. Jan can. Jan is powerful enough. But Jan needs the world. He needs it so he can have something to take advantage of, something to rape and forget about, because that’s where his power comes from. His power is in revulsion. And so, no, I can’t blow up the planet. I can’t wipe out the infection. And so I’m done. I give up. But before I go, I’m going to break as many of you as I can. After tonight, the history books will say that Jan Landau changed the world, but you all know that Jan had nothing to do with it. It was me. I’m about to change everything.

Aaron Dhames:

When it was all over, I still had Zero’s hand around my throat. Looking around, there were hands everywhere. Human hands, identical to each other right down to the length of the nails, just scattered across the stage. Ten of them. They looked like (laughs)… uh, like rutabagas, like, their wrists tapered off to these earthy roots. And then the balls of notebook paper. One from the mouth of every golem.

Marissa Taliofano:

It’s no secret. There are probably a thousand videos online. The crowd rocking and swaying, curled up in fetal positions on the ground. Me, crawling onto stage and picking up the paper. That’s the thing, isn’t it? There are a thousand videos of the aftermath and not one of the cataclysm. No record of the golems opening up their mouths and vomiting up those sheets of crumpled notebook paper. I still have all of them. They’re in my purse. You want to see?

Theodore Ricks:

The world should have changed. Things should be different. Look around. The entire planet is aware of the reality of mysticism. Scientists have been studying Jan’s notes and books around the clock for, what, nearly a decade now? And what’s the most significant change? Charlatan rock and rollers selling you on the idea that they know Landau’s secrets. Websites where you can buy “necromantic guitars” and digital editing suites that allow you to filter your tracks through “Baphometic reverb.” We’ve managed to capitalize on the rape of rationalism. Astounding.

Marissa Taliofano:

See, look. Five sheets of notebook paper, one from each golem. The writing looks Hebrew, but it’s not. According to the guys at Parachute City Community College, it’s written in charcoal, but it never smudges. I’ve spent eight years trying to find out what it says. Nobody can tell me. I know — I fucking
know —
that one of these five pieces of paper is Zero. I know it. Now, will anybody let me see Jan’s books? No, of course not. Which leaves me with Aaron fucking Dhames.