The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Final Song"

This is the final song The Escaped Fetal Pigs ever played. This was recorded on 28 April 1992 (though it might have been 29 April 1992 by the time this song was played) at Howard's Club H in Bowling Green, Ohio USA. For this one, we switched things up, and Simon sang, Jim played guitar, Mark played drums, and I played bass. At the end of the set, Mark "kills" us to make sure there would not be a cheesy reunion show. At the beginning of the clip, you can hear the end of "I Hate French", which is why one of our pals is speaking French onstage at the end. How we got into playing "The Cult Of Pogo And Porky Pine" switching instruments is beyond me. It might have just been because it is such an easy song to play. In any case, the pogo party at last call is glorious. Playing in bands that last for a bit is fun, but it is always bittersweet when the end comes because people whom have become as close as siblings scatter, and typically the relationship is never the same, even when the parting is friendly. With the Pigs, I am happy that I still get to see Mark, and he's still creative. Jim and Simon, I only stayed in touch with through letters and then social media. Jim I would see a year later when I visited B.G., but the last time I saw Simon was about a week after this gig at graduation (he seemed to be drunk at ten a.m. in the morning and wearing mouse ears on his graduation cap as he was headed to Orlando to work for Disney--I doubt he even remembers seeing me). In any case, The Pigs were a good time overall. It was certainly a great band to learn how to play rock and roll in. I know Mark and Jim, like me, went on to play in other bands--I'm not sure if Simon ever did--but The Pigs will always have a special place in my rock and roll heart. I don't remember who filmed the show, but at the end, whomever it was gets nice and avant garde freaky, which I enjoy. It provides a nice brief postshow primer of a band packing up, in this case, for the final time (as one of the guys in Pere Ubu, probably David Thomas, supposedly once said, rock and roll is mainly moving big black boxes from one end of town to another and then back again). It is also nice to see our friends The Copulating Crabs again near the end. They and the other attendees of the final show made for a great audience!

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Cockring"

This one is a parody of cock rock. We boiled it down to its essential element. We found the word "cockring" to be funny, and the actual device even funnier, so, of course, we wrote a song about it. The lyrics are all of one word, except for some of my rap/rant, and the song is basically one rocking and funky riff. Does it cross the line into actual cock rock? Probably not, as we were laughing too hard playing it usually. Cock rockers aren't known for their sense of humor. Our friend Buzz liked the word also, so we reference him at the beginning of the song. I don't know where we got the giveaway from, maybe the club's restroom. There is one more Pigs video from this tape, and then we're done with the Pigs for a time. Even with the last show, I think there may be more Pigs videos in the pile of tapes.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "I Wanna Be A Mason"

I have no idea why Simon is throwing a shirt or whatever at Jim at the beginning of the video, but the dynamic between the rhythm section was always fun to experience as they were both a couple of characters! This is the first song of the second set that night, so the audience is sparser as the hour is growing later, but they are drunker. This was always one of my favorite tunes by The Pigs. Again, I do little on this song beyond banging my head. I just go along for the ride. On the demo, which ended up being the most heard recording of the song (it was one that got played on the radio), Mark plays everything. The band had plans to make another cassette album, but we never did so because we were so busy. Near the end of the band, probably not long before this show, we did a document recording of many of our songs with our friend Chris Comer, but there was no point in releasing the recordings as the band was essentially going to be defunct shortly thereafter. I did make a nice Escaped Fetal Pigs "Greatest Hits" CD-R for the band members and some friends years later, and I used some of the tracks from that session on it, but that's probably the only time we recorded "Mason" in the studio as a band. Mark was obviously listening to a lot of Slayer then, but he kept the humor in the lyrics. Simon would make a lot of jokes about his drumming ability, but by the end of the band, he was a pretty good drummer, as you can tell from this song, which is not an easy one to play drumwise. As far as I know, Mark has never joined the Masons. Maybe he gave away too many of their secrets in this song! Yes, that is a plastic toy pig in front of us that the women check out at the end of the video. If I remember correctly, we had a few of those at the show, along with some Three Little Pigs coloring books we altered to tell the story of The Escaped Fetal Pigs.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Mr. Pointy Pants"

If I ever knew whom Mr. Pointy Pants was, I have now forgotten. I hope he was not me! He may have even been a figment of Mark's imagination, but whatever the case, his theme song was fun to play, so The Pigs had to play it at the final show. This is another one where I don't do much except sing along and dance. At times, in The Pigs, my role was not dissimilar to the guy in The Happy Mondays who just jumped around on stage. The audience also joined in as a mild slam pit broke out. Mild slam pits are the best. When pits get violent, they get stupid. Not much to say about this one, just another fun Pigs novelty tune.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Did You See Tom?"

This is one of the first songs I ever wrote. It is about the typical high school friend who disappears the minute he gets a girlfriend. Even though I wrote the song, I still wasn't quite good enough at playing guitar at that point to both play guitar and sing, so I just sing on this version. I think my girlfriend of the time is in the audience. That was quite nice of her to show up. I really like Mark's backing vocals here. We probably should have expanded those; it would have helped the song.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "You Can Buy A Piece Of The Wall"

The Pigs were fortunate that we were operational during an eventful time since we drew many of our songs from current events. As the band progressed, the humor aspect was lessened, and we started doing some more serious songs. This was one of them, a ballad Mark wrote about the crass commercialism that ensued upon the fall of The Berlin Wall. I didn't do much on this song, except sing backup vocals, but occasionally we'd do an alternate version of the song featuring some verses about The Vietnam War Memorial that I wrote after visiting Washington D.C. for a peace rally in 1991. The video has some good shots of Mark's Flying V guitar, which I always dug. I also dig the audience slow dancing to the song. Odd, since it was not a love song, but by this point in the night, most people were drunk, so why not slow dance to a piece of political commentary? The band is a quartet; Jim, our bass player, is just hidden behind some speakers on the right side of the video. At this point, I think the camera person is drunk or tired, explaining probably why no effort was made to catch Jim in the shot for an entire song.

The Escaped Fetal Pigs - "Crustacean Crush"

This is another song from the final gig of The Pigs. By this point in the show, we were sweating so much, we just went shirtless. This song was a favorite of our sister band, The Copulating Crabs, two of whom, Crissy and Kirsten, helped us out with the song. Mark wrote the song, a tale of freak show summer romance. I mainly just sang backup on it. Towards the end, I try to get Mark to do his Bob Dylan impersonation for the final verse, but he wisely didn't take the bait.