BARRY "Gort" CHILDS-HELTON

provides the band with ecologically-correct lead guitar (85% recycled 1960s riffs), certifiably burly male vocals, and neo-obscurantist lyrical hysteresis. Rowing Stoned decribed his songwriting as "post industrial hieroglyphics by an English major off his medicine-- we think we hate his attitude." His seminal crypto-rock venture American Cheese stuck to the FM grill with their debut LP "Free Cheese" ("We liked what we could understand, but the attitude probably sucks"-- Variety). The Young and Pissed Off Tour met with disaster after the Mars Hole, N.J. gig, when the equipment van swerved to avoid Bigfoot paparazzi and tumbled into a crater.

"Gort" resurfaced in a sardonic country-rock alliance with Barnacle Gonzo and the Chianti Brothers to produce the rare classic, "Honky-Tonk Glop from Beyond the Ozone," a plaintive protest against public incomprehension of sensitive artists. Vengeful over a one-word review ("Huh?"), he joined forces with Pain and Damage Level on fretted airhammer, opening for Crash'n'Bore on their Punished by Hormones Tour. (Asked to describe the performance, a surviving audience member replied, "What?").

After a general amnesty was granted, "Gort" was free to form a hyphenated-ethnoid-space-rock duo with Sally Childs-Helton ("Her attitude is even worse than mine!"). Rewiring an Indianapolis studio for antigrav with the help of space aliens caused a stir (and coverup), resulting in the duo's joining the Black Book Band with the Expletive (Classified) Tour. Between gigs, "Gort" relaxes--injecting semicolons into hapless technical prose, giving fake basketball autographs in shopping malls, and volunteering as a giraffe-groomer at nearby zoos.

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Last Revised: March 25, 1996