This is a bad legendary quest for nothing in particular. It's a mixture of actual events, embellished retellings of actual events, and flat out lies. Some of the people and events mentioned are real, and some are, to my present knowledge, not. Though it may seem to be the most fictional element of the story, Shagbark Hickory is real. So are Raccoon Lake and the state of Indiana. Are You From The Ghetto? Look Who's Talking God Help Us All More Guitars Cause More Destruction Ain't No Guitar Wearin' No Frosted Jeans Teenagers Have Problems Global Village MY ASS White People Ain't Got No Rythm Woman Driver Makeup Soap Opera Shopping You Look "Cute" College Students Love Pizza Laipaka's Gittin Married Someone Carry On A Conversation With This Fucking Guitar These are the new album tracks on paper. You'll note the lack of music and lyrics and of course the lack of an actual album even though here it is. This is the copy I sent to Everdown when I mailed to to "Crawlspace c/o Floppy Feesh Records" in 1996. Actually, I didn't mail this because it didn't exist then, kind of like it doesn't exist now. What I mailed them, though I never actually mailed anything, was a proposal, an "indecent" proposal of sorts. That's right, I offered them one million dollars to have sexual relations with a piece of lettuce Tim found in his brown Ford Escort--the car with a bright orange "This Car Stops At All Big Lots Stores" (paraphrase) bumper sticker on the dashboard. It was all Michael's hair-brained idea and it could have made future fictional events worse, so it's a good thing it and all the rest of this never actually happened. So this is my structure. This is the new album, the album which has always existed in a visceral sense for Shagbark Hickory, both a revolutionary capstone and a defining work. It is, without a doubt, the articulation of what the birds of the earth have had in mind all these millions of years. Beaten down like scrambled eggs by woe and misery and failure and Diet Rite and loy soybean prices, SBH has emerged again in theory with a new imaginary album which will guide us through the envisioned summer of 1997, the horrible horrible failure of a tour. Exactly like Charon and the lake of fire and all the eternal damnation. And I assure you, those searching for a new Divine Comedy will not be disappointed, because this is already far better than anything anyone, including Stephen King, has ever written. chapter 1 index