A Once And Future Thing ( Or ) A Study In Brown.

The first thing that struck me about him is that there was still nothing at all striking about him. I think I said as much at the time. I'd just seen him perform and could not reconcile the onstage persona with the mild and unassuming young gent urinating next to me.
"Nice tie" he said glancing briefly at me.
"I'm not wearing a tie" I replied.
"Precisely" he countered, then he shrugged, zipped and walked away.
That was to be the last time I ever saw him…or that girl, Emily Coaster.

Not at all auspicious, but there it is, or was, as time would have it. It had been the launch of his first and only single 'Quel Fromage!' with his band The Probe, lifted from the ill fated L.P. "Not I", said the Pig.
But I'm getting ahead of myself here and should stop now and go back to the beginning. In the beginning….

I met Pubert at High School. He was tall, thin, quiet and oddly disturbed (a trait I found most endearing at the time).
"You looked disturbed," I said.
"That's odd," he replied.
Most important was that he knew the true difference between a fool and an idiot. He would tilt his head to one side, look vacantly past my right shoulder and explain…
"A fool knows what he is doing and does it because he must or he wants to… an idiot simply has no choice," then he'd fall down, or over, because he had a choice.

He was well read, a quick wit, and not afraid of a bit of a scrap. Pubert always maintained a ready supply of cigarettes and chewie.(Which was another thing I liked about him). He was also fond of Mars bars and had the filthiest pockets of any one I ever knew. Grit, strands of tobacco, bits of chocolate, burnt matches and lint…
"Never know, they might come in handy" he'd offer.
He had a little plastic soldier clutching a radio on the end of a fob watch chain stuffed into his vest pocket. People would sometimes stop him and ask,
"Do you know what time it is?"
"No, but you can ask him", he say thoughtfully pulling out the little plastic soldier and offering it to them...

Pubert got his first guitar at the tender age of fifteen. It cost all of $12.00 and had no brand name that I can recollect and was semi acoustic. It caught fire when he was stripping it back to paint it white. The thinners he was using for the job were ignited by the pilot light in the gas heater in the shed. Thus he blew up the laundry, set fire to the guitar (and himself to a lesser degree) and caused bouts of maniacal and hysterical laughter from myself. I can still see Pubert in my mind's eye, smashing at his flaming guitar with a mattock like a crazed ranting loony.
"Why didn't you use the hose" I choked.
"Because… I wanted to put it OUT." he stressed.

What we have on this CD recording is the telling of the last day in the life of the enigmatic Pubert Brown-Fridge. Not of specific events, but the moods and feelings he was experiencing. No-one knows to this very day exactly what happened or even how it happened. We only know that Pubert is gone, along with that Emily….

The worst thing I could ever say about Pubert, is the very best I could ever say of myself. I loved him as a brother. The stories I could tell….
This recording is dedicated to friendship, inspiration, the human condition and raving loons everywhere. Here we have it. A Once and Future Thing. It's for Pubert. For now and for then.

Herbie Mayhem.