Spoonful Of Laudanum Audio CD (at Amazon.com)

Zounds! What on earth are you listening to? Why, it's a new collection of satirical spoken word and surreal music by Lucid Screaming, a motley group of writers and musicians who are mostly based in Los Angeles and who hail from California, Wisconsin, New Zealand, and quite possibly Neptune. Their pieces -- laden with outrage, whimsy and obscure references -- are intended to amuse and provoke. The Lucid Ones write about whatever strikes their fancy: UFOs, dictators, hippos, city living, cell phones, clones, and Sunday drivers are among the subjects of their twisted tunes and rants. This new collection, "A Spoonful of Laudanum," explores the collective hallucination that is America in the new millennium. We have entered an alternate reality cooked up by Karl Rove, televangelists, and Enron, with guidance from George Orwell. War is peace, greed is holy, and ignorance is bliss.

Paul Wolfowitz and his colleagues live out James Bond fantasies in "Never Say NeoCon"; "Axles of Evil" shows us Bush's inner thoughts before the 2003 Iraqi invasion; and "Bush's Alphabet" explores our president's childlike perspective a few months later. "Jesus Crack" and "Things Jesus Never Said" explore self-serving interpretations of the Gospels. "Mr. American" speaks of looking out for No. 1, while "Show Me the Money Sutra" chants a Jerry Maguire mantra. Does "Aaron's Bar" contain a curiously puritanical message or is it a coded allegory? Some of the pieces on Spoonful are just plain out there. "Visions of Wozbrood" is a Kerouac-inspired road trip that mixes the music business and UFOs, while "Upside Down Dog" summons up a whiskey-drinking neighbor tormented by visions of flying canines and devoted to her piano lessons. The rest of the tracks speak, wail, and howl for themselves. Time to get Lucid!
 

Arcanarama (at CDBaby)

Arcanarama (at Amazon.com)

Lucid Screaming is a six-member group of L.A.-based writers and musicians who hail from California, Wisconsin, New Zealand and the Oort Belt. They have peformed short stories, poems, comedy, blues, bossa, and rock in various incarnations and combinations. Their satirical and surreal work draws upon eclectic influences and delves into love, internet sex, UFO abductions, and other fundamental mysteries of the universe. Take Firesign Theatre, Monty Python, the Bonzo Dog Band and mix with a little Samuel Beckett, Tom Waits and Werner Herzog. You’ve got Lucid Screaming.

On Arcanarama, the Lucid gang attempts to explain love, abductions, and other fundamental mysteries of the universe. Freud memorably wondered what it is that members of the fairer sex truly seek, and he is answered in "What I Really Want" by an anonymous female on the internet, who describes the smoldering passion she seeks in "a committed relationship." "Fraction Smith" is driven to drink when his baby leaves him ("at least that is what she said"), while "Love, the Wandering Emu" explores the extremes of love, comparing it to a "firing squad of angels" and a "hierophantic pageant on Saturn’s rings," among other things. However, love may not be in the cards if you travel to Main Street and there meet "Esmerelda the Indifferent," a gipsy fortuneteller full of dark tidings.

Encounters of a different sort are captured in "The Green Mistress," in which a rural couple has a "missing time" experience on a desert highway and encounters a green goddess they reckon will "do her spawning high in orbit." "Probed Like Me" is a disturbing tale of big-headed grey aliens who want samples, and lots of them. Osgood brings us back to earth when he elaborates on the phrase "life is like a box of chocolates," and we are faced with unsettling fudge-encased truths.

True lucidity requires that we channel Mississippi bluesmen, that we scream at glowing green meteors that no one else sees, that we drink fine imported ales until dawn, that we mock jihads and crusades, that we mourn the passing of Dr. Gonzo and the Quiet Beatle, and that we seek what lies east of the sun and west of the moon. Yes, this is the Lucid way. Or so say the rumors…
 

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