The Fiend
Behind
the Scene

The scary man in the fez is no errant Shriner or emmissary from Morocco or Fez. Rather, the hideous bronze icon-token-totem is merely as close as your humble bamboo-ologist gets to baring his image in a soul-thieving photograph. But his true logo is displayed ad nauseum: the Abstract Tiki, a waveform god of old Hawaii recently exhumed, now exhaling the tradewinds of cyberspace.

Like a B-movie man-tiger, Mr. X --the fiend behind the scene-- prowls the cultural jungles of the eastern seaboard in search of daytime shade and nocturnally a sturdy vine on which to swing. In this land of strange juju, the natives are restless, false and lazy hunters are eaten by fierce crocodiles, and Jane is busy admiring her own reflection. Still, we shriek of tiny triumphs and agonies like Hell's own rogue hyena. Does the tribe of Yahoos hear?

He writes, illustrates, and otherwise promotes the unsung and bygone heroes of jazz and ethnic pop music. (Ever since his strange, Southern childhood in James Brown's neighborhood, the "universal language" of music has been a compelling influence.) And now, the beat of the conga calls him yet again to the kill: to sink teeth in the final vinyl, the platter that matters, the joys of noise, the taboo Sabu... Join him now, ear to the ground, in listening for the first booming roar of the tiger in full spring rut and bloodlust. Oo oo AH AH!