Rock Band Bush Forgotten in Record Time

neaking up on an enduring place in music history like an albino in a snowstorm, the platinum-selling English grunge band Bush has dropped completely from public memory in record time, a study found Tuesday. Previous record holders The Escape Club could not be reached for comment, as nobody could remember who was in the band or what they looked like.

Bush rose to fame behind the success of their 1994 album Sixteen Stone, which sold over 15 million copies worldwide and settled hundreds of bets over how long it would take alternative rock to turn into Def Leppard. Bristling under the weight of overwhelmingly poor reviews and tired of not being taken seriously by anyone over the age of fourteen, Bush donned indie producer Steve Albini like a credibility hat for the release of their second album, 1996's Razorblade Suitcase. Despite sporting an title that Spinal Tap thought was artsy, the album was another critical failure, sending the band into a deep prettyboy funk. They returned in 1999 with The Science of Things, an attempt to succeed where U2 had failed, by half-heartedly aping popular trends in techno music and alienating every last one of their fans.

Bush drew massive ire from music critics and hipsters on both continents for their 2000 release We're Nirvana, then promptly dropped off the face of the planet when the record-buying public lost its taste for generic bands copying good bands and developed a passion for homogeneously generic bands and rich white teens pretending to be angry and black.

Tuesday's report included a poll of over 3,000 households, none of whom could recall the grunge quartet in any meaningful fashion. Polls of the commune staff and random yokels on the street provided similar results.

Professional man-on-the-street Rodney Brown came the closest to remembering the band with his comment "What was their big song? Crazy Train?"

Others were not so lucky. commune reporter Lil Duncan feigned memory of the band with her claim to have toured with Bush as a groupie in the mid-90's, but her stories of wild debauchery and pharmaceutical excess quickly revealed the band in question to actually have been Scottish uberdorks The Proclaimers.

Other staff members confused the band with similarly forgotten, yet not completely eclipsed pop acts such as The Crash Test Dummies, Fun Lovin' Criminals and Frente.

"I got it. They were the ones with the two drummers, and the guitar player would always get naked for the last song," convenience store clerk Rasham Levin nodded with barrel-scraping conviction.

Whoever the members of Bush were could not be reached for comment as of press time.

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Here is a tale, well-learned, well-told,
about a girl of fifteen years old.
A girl nearly so old she could drive
with pretty brown skin and a look in her eye.
Between that and how she called the corn "maize"
everyone thought her and Indian babe.

Much props was she given, more than her share
for her leatherstocking dress and well-braided hair.
We thought her a mystic with powers bizarre
that she traveled by horse instead of a car;
wise and well-bred, with roots in the earth,
who knew what the wind and the rain were all worth;
that a teardrop would fall from one eye of brown
when someone tossed their litter around.

Maybe, someone said, she lived in a teepee
that's perfect for her, if not ideal for me.
It's possible someone has traded for deeds
this land all around for a necklace of beads.

So flooded with angst and white liberal guilt
we apologized for genocide and buildings we built,
but we found out later it was all for noit
and it turns out she actually came from Detroit!
She's black, not a Native, and now we have no doubt
a million other things to feel guilty about.

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I had game Saturday, good people. An old fashioned wedding, right out of the books. If the book was The Nightmare Before Christmas, or something by Roald Dahl maybe.

It was quite a shock to find Felchyana drunk on the worst imitation Russian vodka I've ever seen. On the day of our wedding! Actually, it was the day after our wedding was supposed to be, since I had been too inebriated to remember the date then, but you understand my meaning. It was quite disturbing. Lil Duncan had to walk her around the room and give her coffee, while Ivana Folger-Balzac shouted at her like a drill instructor; though since she does that for everyone I'm not sure if it was supposed to help. I was so depressed riding Boris Utzov around the room like a horse was the only thing that would cheer me up. I'm about to marry one of his nation's people, so that makes us like family. Then again, who knows where he comes from? They don't speak the Queen's English there, that's all I know.

Despite all that horror beforehand, it was a charming ceremony. Red Bagel walked me down the aisle, though the preacher certainly didn't approve, but he's Episcopalian and I don't approve of that, so we're even. Felchyana had to come down the aisle riding Lil piggyback, which was quite embarrassing for me and arousing for some of our guests.

It may seem strange, but I had a hard time deciding on who my best man would be. It was between Camembert and Lee for quite a long time, but I could never completely make a choice. Eventually I decided to select Lee carrying Camembert as my best man. Which worked out nice, although now Lee's back is out, possibly for good. But I say it was worth it.

We wrote our own vows, which were quite moving, if I may say so. Felchyana's vows were unintelligible in our original language, the way Boris read them they sounded like excuses on why she couldn't get married in very broken English. So I had to translate them, and then they finally sounded right. I promised to love, honor, and cherish her, and she promised to delegate all responsibilities outside the kitchen to me, the less known about it the better. The preacher then told me I could kiss the bride, at which point I punched him out—no one needs to see that kind of smut show, I don't care what kind of kicks he gets out of it. Then Lil picked her up and carried her out of the church to my car, which is a two-seater I bought second-hand from a go-cart place.

At this point it would be customary to drive off into the sunset. Would that we could! The battery was dead on the stupid thing and nobody brought any D-cells to the wedding. Which is just as well, we were only going to drive to her apartment and honeymoon ourselves into a coma. Who needs that?

Instead, as is more customary in the working world, Lil Duncan carried us both home to our place and I caught a ride from her back to the office. After all that, Lil demanded a week's vacation to go to physical rehabilitation, but I wasn't lucky enough to have that sort of vacation at my disposal. I had to jump in head-first, which smashed my desk, and get to work trying to pay for this gigantor-style wedding.

Despite the intrusion of reality and the deep debt I've run into, and my wife's never-ending crying after the ceremony, it feels good to be a married man again. I've closed one chapter to my life, nearly a thousand pages in, and start another one today. This will hopefully be the exciting chapter with all the explicit nudity and gunfights.

º Last Column: The Last Nights of a Free Man
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