The Sleepytime Gorilla Museum opened its doors to the public in 1916, only to show them a well-managed fire. Its doors were closed shortly thereafter and remained so for the rest of the century. Almost. The last year of the 20th century found the improbable trio of words once again adorning a placard posted outside a derelict urban building, with the addendum- “No Humans Allowed.” Indeed, the awkward re-inaugural movements were witnessed by a lone banana slug (Ariolimax dolichophallus)– a suitable beginning for a group that would soon shelter Oakland California’s hindmost interpreters of Anti-Humanist literature. Their incessant travels since 2001 have brought new life to the Movement. Like their namesake and its instigators (Futurist Lala Rolo and Black-Mathematician John Kane) the new museum embraces the essential weakness of the Movement. But also like their predecessors they reject the elitism of the avant-garde in favor of a reckless populism: They are entertainers. Though not without humor, their often wide-ranging musical and theatrical choices are rarely ironic. This sincerity extends to a passionate craftsmanship…. [Source; internal links are mine.]

SGM: Grand Opening & Closing!

In the cadaverous pre-dawn of a day not so far removed from the labyrinthine alleyways of an endless night like unto those illuminated by E.A. Poe and H.P. Lovecraft, I, having spent several interminable and distended hours curbside in the company of a drunken and spavined angel drinking White Horse and ruminating over the entrails of one Lemony Snicket, who, after a series of unfortunate events, had succumbed to the ministrations of an unscrupulous succubus,—I, as I was saying, heard a song. And the song said that all the desperate people in this town were coming out. And I was afraid, not of those desperate people, no, but was afraid instead of the immediate love I felt for the song.

SGM: In Glorious Times

Imagine, if you would so kindly indulge me, mixing a liberal dose of Glenn Branca with a tender lumpling of vintage Oingo Boingo and a lunch box’s worth of Marilyn Manson. The resulting concoction—distilled by some sort of Rube Goldberg machine made mainly from human remains—would, if imbibed during a new moon from an alabaster cinerary urn, result in the frenetic composition of such a song. And to think: since that time I have heard two albums of such songs! Such songs. Such songs! Such songs…. Melodious anthems to cacophany. Unraveling tales like bags full of spiders.

Sleepytime Gorilla Museum make theater. Literate and outré, outlandish and heathenish, theirs is the work of brujos and shamans. They comfort those trapped in the suffocating elevators of bureaucratically administered atrophic mentation, and inspire the unconscious to rebel against the ego. They make the listener want to bang his or her head in the way that, as Will Smith once put it, parents just don’t understand. They remind people my age that “evil” music is fun… not that I had even momentarily forgotten.

In any case, I am no longer afraid. I have embraced the music. I know in my bones that sleep is wrong.