The Man Who Ate Modest Mouse and Became a Human Stereo

Fact: highly anticipated albums = highly protected albums. 

And since each issue of Paste goes to print well in advance of its street date, we have to get advances of these albums in order to deliver timely reviews.  Most of the time these popular albums are “watermarked” and carry FBI warning labels on them. Sometimes they don’t play in computers. Editor-at-Large, Jay Sweet, encountered this problem because of the “ultra-sensitive copyright protection” used on Thom Yorke’s solo album, “The Eraser” (read the Issue 23 cover story here).

Once in awhile, though, albums are so carefully guarded that the only way to hear them is to visit a record label, which is how Paste was introduced to the upcoming Modest Mouse release, “We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank.” Managing Editor, Reid Davis, and Program Sales Director, Nate Douglas, got to hear the disc in November when they visited Epic’s New York offices.  This, of course, got the rest of the staff pretty jealous since we would have to wait until February to hear the disc.

That just wasn’t soon enough for me, which explains this dream:

Senior Contributing Editor, Bud Scoppa, was invited to hear the only copy of the new disc. Apparently the band was so nervous about tracks leaking to the internet that they only pressed one disc (no back-up copies).  Bud was happy to oblige and promised to report back.  Reid, Nate, and I went up to NY to meet him and hear all about the album.

[Note: I’ve never met Bud. But as we’ve seen already, its not unusual for me to dream about people I don’t know.]

Bud sat in a soundproof room and listened to the disc, while Reid, Nate and I waited outside the room. When his time was up, though, Bud wasn’t ready to turn the disc back over to the label reps.  It was so good that he didn’t want anyone else to have it.  So he ate it.  That’s right, Bud swallowed that disc in one gulp. 

Well that made Reid very angry.  How were we supposed to review the disc if the only copy was in Bud’s stomach?! Bud offered a Cheshire cat grin. Reid started yelling and when Bud went to speak a very strange thing happened… we could hear music coming out of his mouth! Bud shut his mouth and the music stopped.  When he opened it again, we could hear Isaac Brock’s voice.

Bud was a human CD player!!

Reid ran off and returned with duct tape.  He asked me and Nate to hold Bud down. We did so, while Reid taped him to an office chair.

“Open up!” Reid yelled.  When Bud went to yell, “No!,” all we heard was Modest Mouse. Reid somehow managed to tape Bud’s mouth open so we could hear the whole CD.  It was not unlike a scene in Clockwork Orange. And like the good music journalist that he is, Reid pulled out an iRock recording device to capture the sounds coming out of Bud’s mouth.  Even if it meant torture, we would be the first (and only) magazine to review the album.

END SCENE

A moral for this story?  Help feed starving artists. Buy their albums, don’t eat them.

And maybe we should just bring back the 8-track…