Bio

I'm sure you're asking yourself: "Another bio? Haven't I heard this story before?"

The answer to both questions, dear reader, is "Yes!" Obviously, if you're reading this, then you've probably already heard this story. Maybe even more than once. Perhaps it was one of the authorized biographies, or the unauthorized biographies, or even Angus' abortive autobiography --which while unpublished, has made quite a name for itself on the internet for reasons that, I trust, don't need to be rehashed here. And with that, I give you...

When I first met McFadden, they were just four scraggly looking Irishmen (well, ok, three scraggly looking Irishmen and their bastard cousin from Scotland) who'd just come ashore from the potato boat they'd stowed away on. The were busking for change in front of a record store on the K Street mall in downtown Sacramento, California. For reasons which were never made clear to me by the fellas, they were entertaining the crowd by playing old Australian folk tunes. There they were: Angus with an old beat up Hohner melodica, O'Jeffrey with a scuffed and scratched Airline acoustic guitar, St.Patrick with his accordion, and Sean...naked except for a megaphone and a carefully placed Mountain Dew® bottle.

I stood there and listened to a few refrains of "Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport." Hmm...pretty good, too bad the Australian folk song market dried up last year, I thought. But, I figured, if these kids could make that Aussie crap entertaining enough to make me suffer through the half of a song I had already stuck around for, they must have something going for them."Do you guys know anything else? That is, anything that you've written?" I asked.

"SURE!!!!" answered Sean through his megaphone.

"Ouch," I said back.

"Sorry," said Shawn, this time without the megaphone, "1...2...1, 2, 3, 4!" And off they launched into "Maria's Tits."

It was red and blue all at once. My mind flashed a thousand times a second with visions of fillet mingnon. Giant leather pool cues danced around with leopard skin claw hammers. Cotton candy tornadoes picked up dotted eighth notes and slammed them into the tenor clef. A portal opened in infinity and I walked inside. All of my ancestors (and yours) were there. We danced a slam dance version of the macarena with the cherubs and the demons. Ghosts of sphinxes and griffins paired off and went upstairs. Satan himself crawled out of the hole in my soul, turned around, and plugged it up with ground bologna. The hole was filled, and my soul was whole. I reached underneath the air and found two spatulas. I flapped them and flew up towards the purple-paisley sun. Upward I flew, terrified and completely calm at the same time. The paisley burned into my smiling eyes, soothing them. Higher, higher, ever higher I went, the plastic beginning to drip from the spatulas...

And then the song was over. I looked at McFadden and said, "Have you ever thought of having your own record deal?"

"Yeah," answered O'Jeffrey plainly.

And the rest, as the cliche goes, is history.