Bacon and Egg

Undercover of the KnightThe eventide was failing, and the setting sun cast a wan light on the parapets of Castle Volumen, beneath which three knights sat regarding, with grim solemnity, the two chairs left forlorn and empty round the round(ish) table at which they were to have spent a jolly dinnertime regaling each other with reminiscences of heroic deeds. It was Sir Shane who spoke first.“Prithee tell, Sir Douglas,” he said, “What doth thou suppose that Sirs Bob and Bacon are up to? Were they not to have supped with us this night?”“By my faith, good Sir Shane, ‘tis true,” replied a distraught Sir Douglas. “Surely they tread a path bestrewn with grave peril, for ‘tis hard to imagine Sir Bob missing supper for aught but the very gravest. What thinkest thou, Sir Bubbles?”But Sir Bubbles emptied his mead-horn at a draught and said nothing. His troubled gaze fixed briefly on the last shaft of sunset wreathing Sir Shane’s resplendent mullet. Dare he tell them of the vision that had cloven his slumber like a broadsword? Of the forked road and the magic spring where even now, he feared, Sir Bob and Sir Bacon had plunged off the path and into a Volumen side project?And long indeed had they tarried, our truant knights, at the enchanted pool revealed to Sir Bubbles in chimerical visions, a tarn of frothy orange fed by an inexhaustible freshet of gladdening elixir and ringed by the glittering foliage of a most curious herb. As the sated knights sat rubbing their orange-stained lips at the pool’s edge, Sir Bob heaved a contented sigh and mused,“For some time now, good Sir Bacon, I have essayed to program some sick beats into my drum machine and craft blasphemous pricksongs on my wicked axe. What sayest thou to ‘jamming’ with me one of these nights after Volumen practice once our stout brethren have set down their lutes and dulcimers and retired to their goodly women and warm hearthsides?”“By the gorgon’s girdle,” swore Sir Bacon, “Verily, Sir Bob, for I am down with that.”And there you have it folks: the long-lost first canto of the Bacon and Egg saga, etched in gryphon’s blood on a goatskin scroll and recently unearthed in a Cornish burial mound. It goes on for a bit, with the helpful “wee folk” and the Charm of Making and the significance of the gilded crustaceans (not to mention the heroic deeds), but you pretty much get the idea. Some time in 2002, Bob Marshall and Chris Bacon (drums and keyboards, respectively, for Missoula rock protectors Volumen), slipped away into Bob’s private dungeon and started cooking up the album of electrified madrigals you are admiring right now. Volumen bassist Sir Bubbles even takes the mic on a few tracks. Recording sage and fellow guitar wizard Tim Green (FUCKING CHAMPS) set it down for posterity in October, 2004 at his Louder Studios in San Francisco; Missoula record guilds Motron and Wäntage USA joined forces to make it available at a medieval craft faire near you. Each disc, I’m told, has been forged from swords melted in the kingdom’s finest smithy, and if you look closely you’ll find each cover is woven from the eyelashes of countless wild boars on a loom tended by thirteen unspoiled maidens. The ink is just regular ink.So is there room in your cluttered rock tower for Bacon and Egg? Methinks you’ll find it, rock varlet. Just listen to this crazy crap! The axes are perilous and the beats tireless, driving heinie-whuppers like “Formerly D 11” and “Stains on the Window Pane” home with shield-splitting fury. But you can also dance to it It’s like the Fucking Champs meets the Pointer Sisters, and that’s the beat that rocks the house, yo.--Andronicus Smetankacus, scribe