Whence the name

In my first post, I said I might tell where the name "dull dull boring dull" came from, aside from the fact that I am.

Around 1979-'80 I became briefly involved as keyboardist in a nihilist-anarchist punk band whose name I hesitate to mention on the web for fear the web Nazis may find it and visit me early some morning and take me away to a re-education camp. We could never get any public gigs because no theater or club would publicize our name outside their place. This may lead one to surmise that the name was scatological; more accurately, it was proctological; that should give you some hints for speculation. (My involvement with the Church of the Subgenius began about the same time, which may give a clue that I was in a somewhat unstable mental condition. I usually describe the period as a combination of a nervous breakdown and midlife crisis.) My association with the band was brief because I was the only one in the band who could read music - a quite unusual skill in garage bands, and, as anybody can tell who hears most of them, quite unnecessary. Certainly the other members were competent enough, in total absence of any formal musical training, to do what they wanted to do, which was to make as much ear-splitting noise as possible. But I think they secretly resented me for my elitist skills and eventually found a devious way to nudge me out of the band: they held "practices" without telling me when they were and then told me I couldn't be in the band because I missed practices - as if what they did needed to be practiced anyway. This was among the nicer things they did. They were all (4 others besides me) mental and physical basket-cases in one way or another, the most extreme being so psychotic that she'd become violent if she forgot to take her meds and would come roaring out of her disgusting hovel of a room in a paranoid frenzy and run around the house screaming hysterically and waving a knife. I count myself lucky that they simply marginalized me and didn't seriously maim me and burn my house to the ground in a fit of pique. In fact, the "band" completely disintegrated soon after they booted me, simply because the members were too screwed up to keep together even such a minimalist act as that. Actually, although the talents were minimal, the equipment was anything but. The "leader" was a techie-freak who spent a small fortune amassing a huge battery of equipment in order to maximize the amount of ear-splitting noise they could make. It was an interesting group, while it lasted.

Anyway, enough about the band for now; I may expand their history later, and will probably at some point discuss the one member I stayed in contact with after the band folded, up until he died recently. The relevance here is simply that "Dull dull boring dull" was the name of one of the "songs" in their repertoire. I can't even remember the names of many of the other songs, it was so long ago. One, for instance, was called "Kill your parents"; they were all, in one way or another, about violence, mayhem, alienation - all the lovely things which psychotics pride themselves on. Oh, and incidentally, at the same time I was associated with this pack of raving maniacs, I was organist in the most conservative, uptight Episcopal church in Boulder - what might be called leading a double life. It was an interesting period.