Zen Hooligans

The four lads, Grumpy, Trungpy, Surley and Lou McSweatpants grew up in a traditional family in Scotland. The older boys, Grumpy, Trungpy and Surley, were born sometime during the 50s – but Scottish people don’t keep very close track of time. Lou was born some twenty years later, in America. They were four or five of the fifteen or so brothers and sisters born to their mother, Tipsy McSweatpants, and their father, Father McMurtry McSweatpants.

The older boys, Grumpy, Trungpy and Surley, were raised as traditional musicians. Lou was born some twenty years later, and grew up as a rock and roller. They were unable to find musical common ground until….

One day Grumpy… maybe it was Trungpy… was walking past a call booth in town. There happened to be a group of hooligans there doing REEFER!!!! Knowing the dangers of that, he tried to flee… but it was too late. He already got second hand *high*. Being totally second hand stoned, Surley… or whichever one it was… wandered to the bog. Later, his brothers came looking for him. When they found him, he was so stoned, that all three other brothers got a contact *high* that remains to this day. (This is documented in their 1971 single Trippin’ Through the Bog.)

A little bit further investigation revealed that the whole story about second hand and contact highs were a bunch of malarky, and, in fact, the poisonous swamp gas from the bog was creating hallucinations. Beyond that, it is generally understood that Trungpy has pretty much been lying about the whole thing, and was just pretending to be stoned.

In fact, as his brother, Grumpy, put it:

“He got freaked out of these blokes in the call box and he ran into the bog, which people have measured as releasing large amounts of methane. So, he wasn’t getting enough oxygen for a bit and started seeing things. But it wasn’t from the annals of the drug movement, it was from the anals of dinosaurs. I mean, he, literally, got gassed out by dinosaur farts. Which, if you think about it, really put a damper on the whole psychedelic movement he was trying to promote.”

Surley added “he took off his shirt and started running around with a hatchet. It’s an unusual way to start a musical movement, but why not. I mean, I guess American jazz came out of the amazing fusion of African, Native American and European music, so why can’t music come out of the fusion of bad gas and a mentally deficient Scotsman?”

From that day forward, the boys found a musical synthesis of traditional, electronic, rock and roll and psychedelic music. They wanted to call it Trippy McSweatpants, but, instead, decided to call it Zen Hooligans.

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