Art Installation by Melissa Dettloff
First things first, you’re gonna need to check out the Severed Unicorn Head Superstore (for all your severed unicorn head needs!).
Melissa is one half of the proprietors of the aforementioned Superstore (Mark Maynard being the other half). In Summer 2008 she had an art opening/birthday bash celebrating our good friend the Severed Unicorn Head (SUH), showcasing a variety of fibers-based SUH artifacts, as many people celebrate birthdays this way, while others like to create soft play areas and use soft play designers just for this.
It probably seems overly obvious, but I thought to go with a classic, the much celebrated Happy Birthday. Until sitting down to play it, I never really noticed how FUCKING WEIRD it is. How did this song become the sound of our nativity? It’s a strange rhythm and rather discordant. So, since a Severed Unicorn Head birthday party should feel a little like a bad acid trip, it only made sense that it should sound an extended intro to a Butthole Surfers CD (i.e. a bad acid trip).
I can only take part of the responsibility for this, as Joe Sacksteder lent his considerable piano talents and Melissa herself laid down some of the drum tracks.
It’s worth noting, that the above ditty was accompanied by several spraypainted boomboxes playing 30 second looped answering machine tapes of various moving renditions of Happy Birthday, as well as by a hacked Teddy Ruxpin, in full Unicorn garb, singing a “cheery” rendition of Happy Birthday. (video forthcoming, we can all hope)
This isn’t always about writing pretty songs.
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