RKMBs Forums .::Robegories::. Comic Books northwood saga

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“I can materialize, too, you know. Want to see?”

I’m sitting in the lobby of the Anchorage Best Western, chatting it up with Marc Campbell. He’s been steering the conversation toward teleportation for the last ten minutes. I decide to indulge him.

“Forget it,” he says, sitting down. “You don’t really want me to.”

One gets the impression that the subject of metaspatial travel is a sore one for the grizzled performer, 83. His former bandmate thedoctor utilized teleportation and other quantum effects on his recent string of sold-out stadium shows—something that he never would have attempted as a member of the band.

“I never told him he couldn’t materialize,” says Marc. “Let’s get one thing perfectly clear. I’ve been taking some hits in the press lately, and it’s not fair. The band was a democratic organization if ever there was one. It was democratic to a fault. If one of us had wanted to use sophisticated multidimensional technology in the stage show, I certainly wouldn’t have stood in the way. The fact of the matter is that we never discussed it. Never.”

A strange look comes over Marc’s face, and he corrects himself. “I mean, the band IS a democratic organization. Not was. Is. It still exists, thank you very much. It’s just as strong as ever. How did you like the new album?”

He’s speaking of “Retrospective,” a collection of previously recorded material that allegedly features the contributions of new band members, guest stars, and noted session players, although with the exception of heavy echo processing on all the vocal tracks, these remastered selections sound suspiciously like the originals. Many critics regard “Retrospective” as a criminal offense. I mention this to him in passing.

“Teleportation isn’t that hard,” he says. “Not if you know how to do it. I invented the process he’s using, you know. That doesn’t get talked about, but it’s the truth. I call it fiber molecularosis. It works on the principle of string theory. It’s all right here in my book.”

The frontman throws open his jacket with the gusto of a sexual deviant, revealing several copies of dog-eared computer manuals. He flashes me a smile that’s somewhere between Elvis and Mick Jagger, and he draws his jacket closed. Then he hits me with a bombshell.

“TK, Disco, and Grimm are on the new album.”

I do a doubletake. I ask him to repeat himself. He looks at me incredulously.

“The old band. Minus thedoctor. They’re on the new album.”

I begin to suspect that Marc thinks I’m an idiot. At last check, drummer TK was in the studio, working on his first solo album, while bassist Grimm and rhythm guitarist Disco Steve made a few well-received surprise appearances during the last leg of thedoctor’s tour.

“That’s hogwash,” Marc says, and he spits on the floor. “I was thedoctor’s keyboard player for the entire tour, and Disco and Grimm never once showed up. They weren’t in the encore. They weren’t even at sound check. I would have known it if they were, seeing as how I was there, and they would have known it, too, because I would have had a few words with them. But, yeah, they're on the new album, and so is thedoctor, actually, plus all the guest stars and session guys. Pretty much everyone is on the record somewhere. I rerecorded all the voice and keyboard parts, of course, and I played all the rest of the instruments. The other guys basically just helped me power up all the equipment. But it's definitely a collaborative record, probably the most collaborative record we've ever done, now that there are, like, 500 people in the band.”

I ask Marc to stop while I play back my tape, just to confirm that I heard what I thought I heard. I did. Marc was in thedoctor's stage band?

“Oh, yeah,” Marc says, shrugging. “I was part of the big tour. The big-deal tour, if you ask me. You see someone materialize once, and it's more than enough. But, yeah, I was on the tour. That’s another thing what’s-his-name never seems to be able to remember when he’s giving an interview. But the truth of the matter is simply this: I wrote all his material, and I produced his solo album, in spite of what it says in the liner notes. I should know. I wrote them.”

Drug-fried brains are one thing. You get used to them in this business. But the tangled webs this former frontman weaves are too much even for me. I decide I've had enough.

I go into my briefcase. I pull out a copy of last month’s Rolling Stone, the issue with thedoctor on the cover. I open to the tour photos collage. I don’t seem to see Marc on stage. Neither does he.

“I was invisible,” he explains. “I knew it was going to be a problem when I was taking those pictures of us for your magazine. Turning invisible in front of a packed house is something I always wanted to do when thedoctor was in the band, but he wouldn’t let me. You don’t know what it’s like, having the ability to turn invisible and not being able to show the world. I’ll never work with thedoctor again.”

Marc shifts in his seat. “At least not visibly.”

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"It's really sad," the Doctor says as the conversation shifts to his former bandmate, Marc Campbell. I can tell that it is not a comfortable subject. "I saw him once several years ago, right after he was institutionalized for trying to overdose on Pixie Stix. He was in bad shape then. A shell of the man he once was. I couldn't handle seeing him like that. I haven't had the courage to visit him again."

We're sitting in the main room of his T.A.R.D.I.S. It is magneficintly large. The walls are lined with rare objects from all over the universe. It's like a musuem without the velvet ropes and plaques.

"Grimm has visited him the most. He's told me stories of Marc singing into a rubber tree like it was a microphone and performing for an audience of hedges outside of his low rent apartment.

TK rang me up before a show one night to give me his new number. He had to have it changed. Marc kept calling him trying to organize a reunion tour. The trouble was, he wants to kick it off with a concert on the sun."

I try to steer the conversation to other band members and ask him about Disco Steve. "It's no longer Disco Steve," he replies. "It's now Rev. Steve. He found religion about a year ago. I understand that he's leading a musical ministry down in Honduras somewhere."

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Originally posted by theory9:
I bought the rights to the movie. Yer all fucked...

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Upon attempting to interview Grimm for a followup to this article, we found him on the floor of a seedy nightclub, rolling around in a puddle of his own vomit. The scary thing is, he was apparently sober at the time.

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Originally posted by theory9:
Preliminary casting:

thedoctor--one of the guys from the Strokes
TK-069--Gary Coleman
Grimm--Mike Patton
Marc Campbell--Jack Nicholson


...directed by John Woo.

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Hey! You!

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Upon attempting to interview Grimm for a followup to this article, we found him on the floor of a seedy nightclub, rolling around in a puddle of his own vomit. The scary thing is, he was apparently sober at the time.

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Grimm said:
Disco wanted to know if we were still gonna tour Japan.

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