A Band Driven By Ideas

Son of C.O.D. was a headier band than Cargo of Despair. The group came into being when three of us original members of the latter group all wound up living in the general environs of Atlanta, in 2002. (This was some ten years after the demise of Cargo of Despair.) We were once again a band. No longer however were we armed with guitar, bass, and drums. We were also no longer penning such ditties as Flipper:

Get it up my flipper he sure looks fine

Driving his Mercedes down Hollywood and Vine

See him flip his fins to the ladies walking by

He can pick up any cutie just by winking his eye

Chorus:

Flip flop flippy flop, flip flop flip

Man that porpoise is really hip

Flip flop flippy flop, flip flop flip

I really dig that flippers trip.

He’s a well-hung porpoise if the rumors are true

And the National Inquire says he loves to screw.

He’s free basing coke and popping pills

And cruising all night through them Hollywood hills.

Chorus:

He made a million bucks on his TV show

And he spends all his money on brawds and blow

He loves getting off between the girls legs

And he wonders if the kids will come out caviar eggs.

Chorus.

Flip flop flippy flop, flip flop flip

Flip flop flippy flop, flip flop flip

Flip… flop… flippy…flop… flip… flop… flip...

Verse and chorus songs were a thing of the past. So too for the most part was our standing up. Son of C.O.D. was more of a seat of your pants band. We sat and twiddled with knobs and veered ever away from conventional music structure.

Our improvised compositions were based on ideas rather than raw emotions. For instance our “lyrics” for one piece of music were entrees from a Chinese menu that we recited, recorded, and then burned onto 3 CDs that we played back on 3 different CD players set on shuffle. These we broadcasted through our PA system and accompanied with flute, audio bleats, and Theremin. Another composition saw us incorporating birdcalls and wood-chimes. Then we left melody completely behind and constructed music for instance that subsisted entirely of tones of varying frequencies. It was as if a hearing test had gone completely awry.

But don’t get me wrong. There were also sublime moments when we poured into the music more than simple thought process. But those moments were perhaps too few to sustain us as an ongoing enterprise. Before we imploded five or six years into it however we shared some magical interludes and wowed some audiences.

At one point we incorporated an electric clothes dryer into our sound making and stage presentation. I can still see the dropped jaw couple in the audience staring into the strobe-light illuminated tumbling mouth of our dryer filled with rocks, metal, smoke bomb, and other debris. Id never seen such intent staring as I witnessed in that young couple. It was a look to broach a cliché that I’ll carry to the grave.

Not too long after that show we gave what would be our final performance, a heated rendition of the Door’s Lizard King. It was a fitting end to which I believe we will never return. Son of C.O.D. resides now in history and memories with Cargo of Despair.