In town for the VMAs, ‘Too Many Guitars’ legend Tornado Explosion Sanchez sat down with our own Toffee Zimmerman over some scotch coladas. Here he continues the story of how his seminal band was formed.
TORNADO
So, there we all were, every night, strumming as one. The cicadas are important to my people, and we thought that the sound of our many guitars was like the song of the cicada. On some nights we felt we could converse with them, that ratchatcha din, that wall of ratchattatatat from the forest, we had an answer, you know? We could, we thought, chat with the forest. The cicadas. I think the cicadas liked the competition, you know? It was like a friendly rivalry between two friends who like to play wrestle, but with sound.
TOFFEE
Then you made quite a splash at a battle of the bands?
TORNADO
War of the Bands. Not just a battle. All-out war. Every year in the nearby town of Picayunaplaya, they would hold a full War of the Bands. You did not play just one set, but many. And you had to do your best to cut off the other bands’ supply lines or capture their best musicians. Alliances were made and broken. All guitarists. That was our advantage. Who do you kidnap? Who is our lead guitarist? No one. We are all rhythm guitarists. Take a few of us, who cares. We sound the same. We were not even our full size back then. I think we were just 31 guitarists at the time. When we won that first year, we decided it was time to start recording in the big city.
TOFFEE
Carumba.
TORNADO
Yes, the capital of sin. The city of Carumba was where we recorded our first album: “We Are Stealing Your Silence And Replacing It With…(Please Place Record On Turntable)”.
TOFFEE
Tell me about your Foundation.
TORNADO
Ah yes, The Pets Without Lasers Foundation. We raise money for laserless pets.
TOFFEE
Can you put to rest any speculation about you and Beyonce Dos?
TORNADO
Ah, Beyonce Dos. Ah yes fine. I hired Nazi scientists who are in hiding to build me a Spanish speaking Beyonce Knowles clone who is programmed to love me. I called her Beyonce Dos. And now we are apart and she is even more famous than me. It is sad.
TOFFEE
Do you know Spanish?
TORNADO
No, I do not.
ANDRES
I guess I shouldn’t write while focusing on my upcoming fantasy football draft. This stuff doesn’t make sense. So who would YOU take with pick #6? I dunno, maybe Steven Jackson on St. Louis?
NEXT TIME…A POST THAT MAKES MORE SENSE!
Once again, New York City is home to MTV’s annually televised party, the Video Music Awards, which means that once again, music journalists like our own Toffee Zimmerman can catch a rare interview with a legend or two. When we caught wind that one such luminary was going to be staying right across the street from our offices at the luxurious Pastiche-Lawnjaws Cilantro Suites (a Hyatt property), we told Toffee to grab her tape recorder and head on over to the lobby’s infamous bar, The Clench, to stalk her prey. Of course she got the interview we wanted. For the first time in print, here are the thoughts of Tornado Explosion Sanchez.
TOFFEE = Toffee Zimmerman, reporter for Jetsam Magazine.
TORNADO = Tornado Explosion Sanchez, founder, lead singer and seventh rhythm guitarist for eighteen-time Grammy Award winning band, ‘Too Many Guitars’
TOFFEE
Thank you for taking the time to sit down with me, Mr. Sanchez.
TORNADO
Please, call me Tornado Explosion, and no problem at all.
TOFFEE
Of course. Am I correct that this is your first visit to New York City since the infamous ‘Butt Arson and Cocaine Scandal of 1987′?
TORNADO
Ha ha ha! You are bold! Oh yes, that is very true. Nineteen years later and here I am. Haven’t done that since.
TOFFEE
Cocaine?
TORNADO
No, I still do cocaine.
TOFFEE
You are frequently referred to as ‘The Godfather Of That Type Of Music The Gipsy Kings Play, Whatever That Is Called.’
TORNADO
I am called that. And it is true.
TOFFEE
How did you seize upon the technique of having so many guitars play at once?
TORNADO
In my hometown of Xoaca Verde, a truck overturned. It was delivering many guitars to an evil man, so we townsfolk took those guitars and hid them and when the police got there we told them some wily bobcats had taken the guitars. We made this up, but just then as we were telling the policemen our fib, God smiled upon us and sent some actual bobcats to attack the police. In the ensuing chaos, we were able to hide our town from the police in a fragrant valley where to this day all of my townspeople are guitar experts and allies to the secretive and ferocious bobcats.
TOFFEE
What about the truck driver?
TORNADO
He was transformed by magic into a tree frog, leaving behind only his bruised and bloodied human form, and lives happily to this day in the wild.
TOFFEE
I have a source who claims your town murdered the driver when you took the guitars.
TORNADO
To this day there is told of a tree frog who can drive, and that is that man.
TOFFEE
Alright, so the whole town learned how to play the guitar, what then?
TORNADO
Every evening we would gather around a bonfire and play our guitars all at once…
TO BE CONTINUED…
the sky is the color of mold
the clouds seem to start at my feet
thick like a sneeze
damp like a coworker’s personality
Saw it on Cinemax last night.
It’s time once again for a notebook-dump of sorts. Today, I’ll be scouring my scrap of notes from the show I hosted last night and posting the tidbits that bitted the tid the most.
For example, I’ve been doing a lot of pitching this summer, and one of the shows I’m most proud of is called Who Wants To Fuck Me Twice? It’s a reality show in which 20 female contestants are each fucked by me, Andres du Bouchet, on a one-per-episode basis. After I’ve fucked every contestant ONCE, I then decide which one I’d like to fuck a SECOND time. And then I do. That’s the show. No prize. No binding commitment of any kind between the 19 fucked once women or the 1 fucked twice woman and me or the show, which I shall heretofore refer to as WWTFMT. The women all get fucked once (with the exception of the “winner”, who gets fucked twice), and that’s it. I think it’s a can’t-miss. I’m assured of some enthusiastic fucking, because after all, each woman is trying to outfuck the others in an attempt to be chosen as the twice-fucked woman. I could go on, but I won’t.
Another show I’ve created is called Kids Say The Most Inaccurate Things! It’s similar to other shows you’ve seen, but in this case, a sidebar graphic tallies up all of the inaccuracies spouted by each child that I’m talking to. Then, when the child grows up and gets a job, they are fined one thousand dollars per inaccuracy. I also maintain a straight face the entire time I talk to the kids, and never once call them by their correct names. This is a good technique for flustering them and ensuring that they say more inaccurate things.
COOLCULATOR – this invention of mine has already proven impractical, as it is a beverage-cooling thermos with a calculator attached to the outside. I’ve been tackled and arrested both times I’ve tried to use one in public, and my initial shipment of 1000 prototypes from my factory in Islamabad never made it here due to Customs quacking up my ass.
Chemoflage – this is for hunters with cancer.
I met a gentleman who was a Holocaust Survivor, and I made the terrible error of trying to find some common ground with him conversationally by mentioning that I used to be a college DJ, and that one of our annual events was SURVIVOR HOLOCAUST – 24 hours of “Eye of the Tiger” straight.
I want to put two listings on Craigslist. One advertising myself as a “Man With A Van” and another advertising myself as a “Pizza And Beer Delivery Service”. I will coordinate requisitions for both services so that I can help someone move, get paid in pizza and beer, and then immeditaly deliver that pizza and beer to someone else in exchange for cash. I want to do this instead of asking for cash to help people move. I will call it Pizza Laundering.
America’s Got Airtime – every single citizen of the U.S. gets 5 minutes of airtime.
And I slowly back out of the room grinning.