"Latent structure is master of obvious structure."
--Heraclitus of Ephesus, fragment 54, circa 6th century BC

"Just remember this. All agents defect, and all resisters sell out. That's the sad truth, Bill. And a writer? A writer lives the sad truth like anyone else. The only difference is, he files a report on it."
--Exterminator #2, David Cronenberg's motion picture based on the writing of William S. Burroughs, NAKED LUNCH, 1991 AD

PRE-FACE:

Farther south than ye olde' Stephen Foster ever got (what say he turned back unto the Yankee tide to blue-moon-vision'd his own Old Home State of The Mind) and here/there over yonder when/where times ain't like they used to was; a whole new second-hand myth was to become born'd, a fantasy (in one of the Jungian sensations) of what never was but making it come, rising now down there, on a bitter breeze below the dirty Ohio River where once Huck & Tom floated, on the hunt for Cairo....

But here/there on the corner of both post and pre glam simultaneous on 3rd and Broadway in Lexington, KY in 1877 Jennifer Ray and J.T. Dockery bumps into one anothers as a chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella and just like Sister Ray she said, she did: "Buddy, let's what me and you start us up one of them rock n roll bands."

Henry Faulkner sashays happenstance upon this scene down on his way to paint or write poesy bouquets or perform or look for lost sailors on shore leave and/or lost goats on the street fresh from the farm or who knows what all, and overhears the conversation, regards Ray's natural attributes as looking fine on television and opening her Mary-Come-Lately-Third-TV-Eye happy to say to these two figures on the corner: "Laddy-ladies, I think ya really should get Crunchy with this old thing. It's in y'all, and it's gotta come out. And you can tell 'em Henry of Egypt, Kentucky: Consort to Tennessee Williams, Great Procuress of Lexington, Key West, Fallen Timbers and Parts Unknown said so."

Doc nods to Henry (whom he calls Lawrence, having known him in the Old Country when they both had hunks of nothing but meat-duck-taped to their legs when going back to Jackson county with nothing but the blues & Visions of Stringbean in they heads), turns to and then regards Jennifer more closely, leans in like in a moving picture show insert edit D.W. Griffith Hot-Tamale, and he say:

"What do you think about about KISS?"

*****

Lexington, Kentucky.

A basement on 324 Preston Avenue in the early years of the 21st century (for those counting numbers) where many bands at the time make space for practicing their craft, recording sessions on site, and plenty of house party/shows. Debris for a Kentucky weirdo art/music/literary scene litter that sub-level-ground-outpost. Signs from Lexington venues past are inexplicably propped in corners (the Wrocklage, 37 Center, and no one seems to remember who brought these signs there when or how), flyers from shows adorn the walls: the Dangels, the Smacks!, Cheeseburger & Fries, the Kentuckians.

Miss Kitty Twister & her Hot Dogs would soon become born in that basement following the crib death of the Dangels. The Smacks! recorded most of the "studio" portions of "Here Lieth the Smacks Procted by the Ejaculation of Serpents." within that self-same subterranean locale, with Justin Eslinger and Paul Puckett alternating current of day and night separately, schlepping remote location audio electric fly paper strips with only minimal tracks to spare.

It may have been a dawning and/or (both/and?) a decline of the Age of Apsaragus, and it may or may not have been a last stand with General Custer Crunchy, Sr. and his regiment live from Mammoth Cave, with Cap'n J.T. Dockery (J. Todd may not have believed in Claude, but either which way: that's me) who seems to remember having lost his leg at Wounded Knee.

Dockery's Plantation, I called it there-then-now.

This document contains the closest thing to an artifact in existence of this line up of The Crunchies in its specificity of Ray/Doc/Allen. As a live recording, I suggest as your attorney that it's best heard start to finish as a self-contained piece. One song bends and twangs and spook rackets itself into another. It's a show.

Jennifer Ray in her finest Sunday dress. J.T. Dockery in a red white and blue jump suit he picked up somewhere down Conway-way (along with a few other things). Ben Allen in a drag of normalcy with a bass guitar in his hand quietly locking into a rhythm section with Doc, power trio style, with Ray warbling and playing plunky on misleading guitar and vocals reverberating in a foggy soup of echo, a burgoo spiced with vaudeville post toasted grunge garage, a cement automatic salad mixer what goes putti putti: where time becomes space.

Often mid tempo with seeming casual disregard, but then, wham changing their tune, abrupt double time (and sticking it in the camera, babe). Beat up old Ludwig kit signed by Hasil Adkins what Doc is getting it on with the banging of gongs in time and out of season with Benny-boy. Ray's Danelectro baked fresh on chicken pot-pie-top in genuine Rockastle River mud and lipstick painted on a bottom-feeder from that dirt meets water.

Jennifer Ray breathy retorts to an audience heckle n' jeckle query of "What's the score?"

with:
"I'm the score."

All of that, and fishing, too (with make-up).

Well, ya had to be there.

And with this rare artifact, you ARE there: right now.

--agent J.T. Dockery reporting in the rear-view of his big behind-sight / live from the border of Laurel and Jackson counties, KY / Summer 2016

[For optimal playback we here at Doc Labs have too many facts and thusly concluded this recording sounds best listened to in a car while driving south on old highway 25 in Kentucky between Livingston and Camp Wildcat]