More Reviews of Bands That Have Stayed at your House

"Skippy": Archers of Loaf introduced me to Space Ghost Coast-to-Coast cartoons. One time after they played Metro with Beatnik Filmstars, we came home and we were so inebriated that we couldn't sleep. We must have watched six hours straight of Space Ghost episodes that Marc (drummer) had on videotape. I nearly peed in my pants. Really.

BEN SCHWARTZ: My roommate Danny is in Mr. Bungle, which has been playing "noise"-influenced music for some time now. I have come home more than once to find certain household items smashed to bits. Lamps, toys, plates, and something made of plaster, which, when I saw what was left of it, I couldn't remember what it had been. When I first started seeing the debris (none of it mine, btw), I asked Danny what happened, and he simply said, "Oh, we were recording."

MIKE WOLF: Christina Zafiris says Calvin Johnson is "innocent," but I sure didn't hear anybody saying he knows what to do in the kitchen. Several years ago, I was living in Minneapolis when on a Friday night/Saturday morning at about 1:30 a.m. the phone rings. A little strange, but hey! it's Calvin Johnson who just played in Fargo, and they wanted to drive all night to get to Mpls in the morning for their next show rather than sleep and drive all day. Can we show up at your place at around 7 a.m.? Sure you can, Calvin. So they buzz at around 7, I let them in and set them up in the living room with cartoons and pre-sweetened cereal and go back to bed. I re-woke up around 10 and shuffled into the living room to find them in basically the same positions except I think they were wearing pajamas (I'm pretty sure somebody had pajamas with feet). I wasn't awake enough to speak so I just sat down. A minute later Calvin gets up, goes to the kitchen, makes some noise, and comes back. Since I still couldn't speak, I didn't question what was going on. About sixty seconds later there was a great explosion from the kitchen followed by the sound of tinkling shards of glass falling onto the floor and counter. Well, now I could speak, so I looked at Calvin and said, "What the hell was that?" And he said, "I don't know!" and I could tell by the look on his face that he really didn't. We ran to the kitchen to find the remains of my favorite cereal bowl (a nice opaque glass one that held about 2 1/2 times the USRDA of cereal) all over the place. It seems that Calvin was gonna make some tea, and rather than heat water up in one of the several pots at his disposal he filled the bowl and put it directly on the burner! Man oh man! Obviously very upset by what had happened, Calvin tried to clean it up by walking barefoot through the shards of glass to where the broom was perched! Somehow he didn't bleed, I'm sure it has to do with Calvin not being like most people. Other than this incident, all three of them were a distinct pleasure to have as guests.

EPILOGUE: I told Calvin that his punishment would be that I would tell this story to as many people as I could. A couple years ago he called me out of the blue pretty much just to say "Look, I'm sorry about your bowl, okay?!?!?!?" But he never got around to replacing it, so I tell the story again.