The Extraordinary Lives of the Phenomenauts

The sun was beating down as the earth shattered under my hands. My throat cracked and ached with the need of water. I’d been out here for days since my food and water ran out, and who would’ve thought that the Mojave was such a big and empty place. I hadn’t seen anyone but the scorpions and an occasional mirage and the dust was thick on my whiskers. Even being abducted by aliens would be a relief out here.
There’s a road, but it might be a mirage. I couldn’t crawl any more, and had settled down with my face on the burning ground when I saw a glint of metal through my caked eyelids. I pried them open and a robot was looking at me. “Are you OK?” it asked. With someone I couldn’t see, the robot loaded me into a giant bomber of a space ship and aliens crowded around me. In my delerium, I could see that they thought I looked funny. Obviously a bunch of guys who liked to have a good time. And that was how I met the Phenomenauts.

Later that week, as I was recovering from my ordeal in the desert, I visited the Phenomenauts at a show in Berkeley, at the Gilman.

Commander Angel Nova: guitar, vocals
Corporal JoeBot guitar, vocals
Professor Greg Arius: keyboards, moog, vocals
Major Jimmy Boom: Drums, backing vocals
Captain Chreehos: upright bass, backing vocals

Angel: I sleep in the nude.

Chris: That guy just licked the window. He keeps licking our window.

Angel: Tell him to do the grill. That’s where the bugs are.

Manifesto: Tell us about yourselves.

Angel: We came together in the amazing year 2000. When we were younger, we all had this idea of what life would be like in the YEAR 2000!!! And it worked out the way we thought. We have the exact vehicle we thought we would. We wear the same outfits we thought we would.

Greg: No one else caught on!

Angel: Yeah, no one else kept up.

Manifesto: Where do you come from?

Angel: We come from Earth’s Capital: Oakland.

Manifesto: It’s kind of depressing that Oakland is the capital of Earth.

Jimmy: There are worse places that could be the capital. Stockton could be the capital.

Angel: Or American Falls, Idaho. That’s the meth capitol of the world I think. Let’s not badmouth them in case we have to drive through there.

Manifesto: Are you bringing science to the ladies?

Angel: We’re bringing science to everybody. It’s mostly rock, but our songs are pretty scientific sometimes. Science is truth. Science doesn’t tell you what to believe, they tell you what they think and then they prove it. It’s like math, it’s fact. And honor which is honesty and integrity. We don’t screw people over. Except for big record companies, if you’re reading this.

Jimmy: We have a motto: Science and Honor. That’s how we live our life. These guys, Angel and Greg, built our Command Center. And it really is a Command Center.

Greg: Me and Angel spend many many hours of working on the Command Center.

Jimmy: Yeah, they build all the things that are wacky that we use on stage or at the Command Center.

Greg: It’s a job but it’s also a hobby. It’s fun and rewarding. People come and they notice the changes.

Angel: We built our own Command Center. We do our own vehicles. We do our own uniforms. Our own stage effects.

Jimmy: The one we’re gonna use tonight is the Streamerator 2000…

Angel: No, it’s a 3000, remember the 2000 exploded in Europe.

Jimmy: That just means that this is more mega. It’s got a roll of toilet paper connected to the end of a leaf blower. It unrolls in literally about 20 seconds. You can mummify someone.

Manifesto: Any volunteers to get mummified?

(nervous laughter)

Jimmy: We try to ride the line between Science Fiction and Science Fact.

Angel: Science Fact is tremendous and we love it. Science Fiction is like hope for tomorrow. Phenomenauts don’t believe in borders, religion or race. Phenomenauts are about mankind and expansion. Except we hate the East Coast.

Manifesto: Tell us about the cadets.

Jimmy: Well, the Phenomenauts philosophy is that if you like the Phenomenauts, then…you can be a cadet. Then you can move up the ranks. You can start dressing the part, hang out, come up with your own ideas for science and gadgets, or you can choose to stay on earth for the rest of your life.

Angel: Work some kind of crappy day job.

Greg: We have some fans that made miniature Lego figurines of us and our vehicles. Somebody once made a rocket.

Chris: Somebody dropped of cupcakes and then ran away.

Manifesto: Do you guys do any space exploration or shoot off rockets or something?

Angel: Well, we try to keep it as fun as possible, so NASA probably wouldn’t take any of our data. They have a bigger budget and smart guys.

Chris: But when NASA is done with their long hard day at work, thinking about trajectories, what do you want to do? You want to go see a space science band like us!

Manifesto: What about spelunking? That takes a lot of science. There’s a lot of parts of the earth that have never heard music.

Angel: That’s right. Inner space.

Chris: As long as that Martin Short guy’s not there.

Angel: The Delightful Martin Short!

Manifesto: How’d you get together with Springman?

Chris: He actually came to us. He wanted to put out a seven inch for us.

Angel: But we insisted on a 45.

Later that night we travel back to the Command Center, an extraordinary place at an undisclosed location in the Western part of Earth’s Capital. There’s a stage with a trapdoor that discloses a jacuzzi. Every room is decked out in a different space-related theme. There’s blinking lights everwhere, and gradually, everyone from the bands that played that night at the Gilman end up there. We examine the foosball table, where the little foosball guys are actually miniature phenomenauts.

Colonel Reehotch, Mission Operations Specialist: These little guys will dance on the graves of the Weezer foosball guys!

Jimmy: At the Phoenix theater in Petaluma, they have a foosball table, but the guys were all fucked up, it was so old. There were some places where it was all duct tape, there was no more guy. SO we thought, we’re gonna go out and buy some guys, make them into Phenomenauts, and we’re going to make that table good again. You know, for the kids! So we go in there, and the table is gone! They threw it out! So we had to bring them back here. And put em on our own table.

Colonel Reehotch, Mission Operations Specialist: We challenge Weezer for the FRUIT trophy, the Foosball Royal Universal Intergalactical Trophy. And if Weezer wins, we’ll let them play at the command center, and if we win, we get to play a show at their house. The Phenomenauts are pretty good at Foosball, we took a lot of Europeans and they weren’t happy about it.

Which is how we ended up inviting the Phenomenauts out for food and bowling. We told them, show us what you do, take us where you want to eat, a place you really like. So we ended up at the no-name diner in the Albany Bowl on budget bowling night.

Manifesto: Why did you guys want to come here instead of some fancy restaurant?

Greg: This is far superior. It’s got an interesting variety. They have Thai food, they have burgers. Their hot dogs are pretty good actually.

Manifesto: And you used to be able to get hash browns and eggs, right?

Greg: I think so.

Cadet #1: You used to be able to get breakfast?

Cadet #2: Breakfast is always better when it’s not breakfast time.

Cadet #1: I love breakfast.

Manifesto: Do you bowl here a lot?

Greg: We haven’t been here in a while. We did come here every week for a while. I think we’re all poor.

Cadet#2: Even though it’s a dollar fifty! (laughter)

Manifesto: When you go bowling do you always eat here? Or do you ever go somewhere else and then bowl?

Greg: I don’t know where else to go!

Hostess: Onion rings! Mozzarella! Okay!

Manifesto: I think this is a unique Thai food restaurant. Most Thai restaurants give you forks. I’ve been offered chopsticks. But I’ve never been given a plastic spoon before. But it’s like home cooked Thai food. It’s actually good food!

JoeBot: It’s like if you go to a Chinese restaurant that advertises Chinese-American food and donuts. You usually don’t want to eat there.

Manifesto: It’s got to have spaghetti, too. (Jimmy is actually having spaghetti)

JoeBot: Yeah! But this place is actually good.

Manifesto: There’s a place not far from the Command Center…

JoeBot: Oh yeah, Allstar Donuts!

Chris: I went there once. I’ll never go back. Jimmy and our manager Rich go there all the time! They call in their burgers and go pick it up. I don’t understand.

Manifesto: How does bowling fit in with the Phenomenauts cosmology?

Angel: Well, they’re both focused on spheres.

Jimmy: Bowling became popular about the same time as the space race. It’s kind of like the space race, actually. Didn’t they used to call them pin monkeys?

It turns out that the Phenomenauts are actually pretty decent bowlers. JoeBot is one day going to hurt himself because he throws the ball so hard. Both Greg and Angel have fancy spin throws. Even the Cadets (at least some of them) can hit the pins. The beer flows, the jukebox cranks.

Angel: This is so much more fun that rehearsing.

As you may have noticed, we haven’t discussed too much about the Phenomenauts’ music. The fact is that they’re a great band. The rockabilly-infused punkish rock and roll sound is high energy and a lot fun. The show is a real show with smoke machines and fists held high and the bass player spinning his bass rockabilly style. They have two albums out, which you can buy at Rasputins for a really good price (and maybe elsewhere too, probably at their shows). They have lots of cool t-shirts and pins and patches. They did the Warped Tour, they toured big venues in Europe. Right now they’re hitting the road with the Aquabats and they’ll be coming soon to a quadrant near you, starting with Café Du Nord on May 6. Sign up for updates at www.phenomenauts.com