True Love Always-three interchangeable balding men in glasses, brown Dickies and chunky black sneakers-enters shortly afterward and immediately descends upon the free cold cuts. Sam pushes furniture around while I avoid the band and survey a framed tribute to Amy Alden Rossborough, a Yale student who is captured forever high up in the limbs of a tree, smiling perpetually. Her mien is almost cherubic. She is the mascot of this dilapidated Women's Center, a dedicated student who had "worked with emotionally disturbed children," "taught English to immigrants," and "led the protests when Playboy came to Yale" before dying an untimely death. Fastened to a wall, lodged in the branches of her principles, Amy Alden Rossborough is not ready to party. I wonder how we'll fare.

The Flying Luttenbachers, musical pornographers, march into the Women's Center and no one stops them because Amy Alden and the values she personified are dead. The meek True Love Always looks about, disoriented, afraid. Its three members are no match for the three members of the Flying Luttenbachers, two of whom are dirty and disheveled, the other clean-cut and larger-than-life. The Luttenbachers consider themselves prophets of a robot apocalypse and their music the harbinger, a spasm of technical proficiency and thunder. They have been around for ten years in various incarnations and are reborn almost yearly. Only the drummer, Weasel Walter, is a constant. Each incarnation pursues a new aesthetic in the name of Weasel's "indefatigable ire, blistering frustration, and impending catharses"--free jazz, death metal, punk rock and, currently, "brutal prog." Progressive rock. Masturbatory, self-indulgent, and volatile. Weasel Walter raises his hand for a high-five but Sam misses and wiggles in his Converse sneakers, too floppy and old to hold him up, and with that Weasel ignores him and presses forward, sniveling.

He is an oversized Beaver Cleaver or Richie Rich-buzzed hair with two exuberant tufts in the front, tiny leather jacket, obnoxiously plaid shirt, small wire glasses, just enough room for a slingshot in the back pocket of his jeans. "Awesome," Weasel Walter says. He relishes being sarcastic for the sake of being sarcastic, even when drumming. Everything he does is calculated to sound pinched and nasal and mean--but everything is calculated, ultimately, to be meaningless. Weasel Walter will never be a rock star, but that doesn't preclude him from saying things like "I generally prefer kicking asses first and taking names later" or "I am seeking to offer an artistic alternative by making a conscious commitment to create music that strives to avoid and surpass the prevalent complacency I see in the contemporary rhythmic, harmonic, melodic, and timbral approaches of energy music." Essentially, Weasel Walter wants you to kick your own ass. He wants to get into your head and, with moves as blunt as a gong's, wire your brain accordingly. He goes to unload the van, smashing his hands into walls and singing, "The Flying Luttenbachers fuckin' rule."

One of the bassists for the Flying Luttenbachers, dumpy and smelly and red-bearded, approaches my brother and asks where he can purchase Krazy Glue. Sam suggests he check Durfee's, the overpriced convenience mart next-door that has television, an arcade, bathrooms, and king-sized candy bars. The bassist smiles and feels about in his mouth. He has been without medical insurance for fifteen years. He needs to buy Krazy Glue in order to repair a broken tooth.

The bands socialize and tear into bread. ("Any free food is good food," say the Luttenbachers, grinning.) Weasel Walter tells a joke about a blonde that only the Women's Center could love. The red-bearded Flying Luttenbacher bassist lifts his shirt and shows his sunburned torso to True Love Always. There is an "Oo" and one or two "Ahs." True Love Always is skinny, wilted, pale, and jealous.

"If you think this sunburn is bad," the bassist says, "it's just the beginning. Last summer I was pooping green."

He pokes his neck and smiles. Wax paper from the cold cuts has accumulated on the Women's Center floor. The bassist's skin, falling off in slices, mingles with the paper. Weasel Walter picks up a flake, origin unknown, and pushes it onto the bassist's back.

"You're like a snake, man," says True Love Always.

"I know, man." The bassist giggles. "Hiss."

He says he has seen Lost Highway 23 times. He and his girlfriend both own complete Twin Peaks box sets. For a moment I imagine that it was his ear, shed in increments, that is discovered in the beginning of Blue Velvet. Sam spent half of his school year watching tapes of Twin Peaks obsessively and I know he desperately wants to interject something, but he is too busy fiddling with the PA and dabbing at spilled beer with his foot. The bassist peels off a piece of his arm and sticks it on a nearby amp. It is the shape of a fish.

Weasel Walter lets the name "Durfee's" slip about in his mouth. "Awesome."

The fish falls to the floor.

The other Flying Luttenbacher bassist, dumpy and black-bearded, unzips his fur coat and places it over the growing pile of equipment--one box labeled "The Weas," several drums layered within others, a tupperware box labeled "Your mother's underwhere," two pairs of black boots, amps of various shades, a black hat, a sparkly green jacket, a yellow case with a large WFMU sticker, a brown case with a small WFMU sticker, a cardboard box, another brown case, black cartons, black boxes, a drum on which is written "Hey Weas Your Gay Signed Jeff R. (Brown)." Amy Alden Rossborough presides over it all, barely escaping being poked in the eye by a twig.

I know why Sam is here tonight. He is here to bear witness to the ultimate of parties, punk rock in the year 2002. It is an exciting time for punk rock, with revivals of the Velvet Underground and Television strumming away in New York, Detroit re-begetting new Stooges and new MC-5s, and Rhode Island picking up the scabby remains. Pink, Brown, and Weasel Walter are friends with former members of Fort Thunder, a Providence, RI, artist enclave that was recently shut down by the city. Before its demise, Fort Thunder housed bands that fused art, music, and performance in new and unique ways: Forcefield, which knits its own costumes and creates nightmare-scapes out of mannequin monsters and experimental music; Lightning Bolt, whose bassist and drummer recast "Frere Jacques" as a screeching, emboldening ode to melodic noise; Arab on Radar, which offer so-called 'tard rock, the guitarist crawling out into the audience and sitting on strangers' heads, the bassist's sweat flipping off his forehead like coconuts dropping from a tree, the singer sticking out his tongue and bashing his hands into his head and raving sexually explicit lyrics to a crowd green at the gills. It is new and it is weird and it messes with you. While bands with radio hits and MTV-coverage are also donning masks and promulgating warnings of future apocalyptic decay, their audience is singing it along with them; their fright is choreographed and unfrightening, the world's tectonic plates hardly realigned, the lightning bug squashed before it could blink. Part of what is so exciting about Pink & Brown and the Flying Luttenbachers and others like them is that no one knows what is going to happen: the stage is there, right there, right now, here, and you can touch them and punch them and make love to them and the music can go on for minutes or for days.

But why, anyway, are they here? After all, they know what is going on. They, ostensibly, are not going to be excited or aroused or angered by tonight's performance. They lug all their stuff in, hang around, hang around, hope people come, play, hope people want to leave, hang around, eat, play. Tonight will last eight hours for the bands and only an hour for the audience. And at the end of it Pink and Brown and the three members of the Flying Luttenbachers will split only $400. Then they will crash on a stranger's tweed couch, wake up early in the morning, scrape together some cash for eggs or coffee, and finally head down to Providence for another night of pounding. Weasel Walter may spew his rock and roll hyperbole, he may prepare for his performance later tonight by greasing his tufts of hair into devil horns and applying rogue bruises to his eye sockets, he may relish telling his inappropriate jokes and laughing his curt laugh, and he may have been doing this day in and day out for ten years-but he still only makes ten dollars an hour and few are listening and none are understanding. What is the point?

When the Trouble with Sweeney begins playing, Weasel Walter and the red-bearded bassist immediately settle on the couch and prepare to be rocked to sleep. A few Yale students convene in the foyer, sticking their hands in the bowl of black condoms and admiring the merchandise. Pink & Brown T-shirts come in a shade of pink and a shade of brown--one bare-assed baboon screams and slams a drum, the other rages on guitar. This isn't see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil--it's just kind of evil, loud and energized and pastel. Meanwhile, those listening to the show don't know if they should dance or sit peaceably. The music trembles over the PA. Sam tries to impress Weasel Walter with his middle finger. Pink has a king-sized bag of Raisinets and he offers a handful to anyone who will take. I want one but am intimidated by his lime green socks. The bassist peels off a piece of his skin and sticks it on Weasel's face.

The music, Pink's socks-everything is loud. The cops have been alerted to a noise complaint. Weasel Walter sneers in surprise: "That band was so fucking quiet." True Love Always does not want to cause any trouble and it plays only four songs, as blip-blip as they can get. Now it is Pink & Brown's turn to rock.

"We can play five minutes or we can play twenty-five minutes," Brown explains to Sam, lugging his drum kit out of the back room. Brown has changed into brown socks, brown cut-off shorts, and a brown jacket-no shirt, just hair in apostrophes across his chest and belly. His brown stocking mask has a little wet circle under the nose from his breath. Two kids are jumping and touching the ceiling.

"Are any of these pipes hot?" my brother asks, and jumps. "Oh." He shakes his hand. "This one is."

Pink goes up to a particularly pale young man and whispers, all throaty and wet because he has a microphone rammed in his mouth, "Normally my costume is much better but I left it in New York City last night." He's got on a pink stocking mask with a sewn on white beard, a tight pink T-shirt, and his corduroys. There is the sound of drumming and the sound of guitaring and we don't know if it is going to begin or if it has begun but then it does. I am on the floor because my brother pushed me. He is spazzing. He is dancing? His expression is part anger, part ardor, part stupor, part stupidity. Thrashing, kicking. Sweat streams down the ravines in his creased forehead, his VIAGRA hat lost long ago. I am in the corner, arms crossed, and Brown is huge behind the drum kit and Pink is small and lithe, there and suddenly not there, on the couch, dangling over a couple's head, prancing, leering, in the throes of passion and in the act of throwing up: what? Music. Refuse. There is banging, clambering. And then the song is over. It continues in our skeletons. "If the cops come, everyone start singing 'Happy Birthday,'" Brown says.

And instantly another song. Sam jumps up and hangs from a pipe. A friend pounds Pink's back. Pink marches through the crowd, strutting. He pushes open the door with his behind and wiggles for the girls sitting in the foyer. The light emanating in is pink. Noise, abject squalor, music, dance--and Sam has linked arms with Pink--and Pink is on the floor--and the floor is in colors of blue and beer. I am pushed here and there. The crowd is pressing on the drums and the drums are assaulting our ears, our kidneys, our thyroid glands. Weasel Walter stands behind Brown holding two cymbals. He brings his arms out wide and smiles broadly, hands golden and shimmering like he is a musical Jesus on the cross.

Pink dangles near a lamp. He is screaming or he is playing guitar.

"It is time to stop," says Brown with a final pound, but it isn't. Pink smashes his guitar into Brown's kick drum and as the plastic curls in, defeated, Brown hurls Pink's guitar and the strings whiz and pop and Pink begins kicking Brown's drums, one by one by one. The kit falls apart and rolls along the floor. Pink keeps jumping, up and down, and he is as thin as a drumstick but much bigger, stronger, all muscle. The drum is breaking.

To avoid the cops, the concert is being moved across the street to the basement of one of the dorm rooms. The lights are turned on and the Luttenbachers begin hauling their shirts and boxes from the Women's Center while the Yale kids scatter like roaches. The Women's Center is back where it started, empty save for Pink and Brown, but now the floor is covered in beer bottles. Pink's ribs rise and fall against his tight pink shirt and Brown collects their dismembered equipment. Sam gets a chair so he can fiddle with a dismantled fluorescent bulb. "Fuck the fourth wall, they're after the ceiling": Pink, in the moments before the breakdown, had placed his guitar on top of one of the low-hanging light fixtures and let it swing there for a single, disturbed moment.

It wasn't a show. Pink & Brown were actually fighting. One of the snares has a chip in it that can't be repaired with Krazy Glue. Pink's thumb is sprained and, still breathing heavily, he nurses it with a bag of frozen corn. Brown tends to his broken drum kit. Weasel Walter gets into costume. He looks like a robot-alien-Nazi, grease paint under his eyes, his hair turned into devil horns, his green pants wedged into heavy black boots. The black-bearded Luttenbacher comes back for his hooded fur coat and top hat while Pink and Brown speak as coldly as the bag of corn.

I stop in Durfee's for some Raisinets. When I am waiting in line I notice the red-bearded bassist sitting on the floor beside the rack of candy. The cashier does not see him look up at me, wink, and lean over to pocket a king-sized Kit Kat. The woman in front of me gasps. He giggles and runs away.

The next time I see him he has taken off his shirt and is adjusting his bass strap so that it doesn't blister his sunburned shoulders. This new room is salmon and coated half-heartedly with soundproofing. The only people still here are me, my brother, two of his friends, two New Haven kids, and True Love Always. Weasel Walter climbs behind his drum kit and shakes his head. "You'll be really sorry you stuck around for this." The red-bearded bassist puts on a terrifying white mask. Then it begins, an apocalyptic crunch of two bassists and a drum wound so tight that Passover Seders everywhere know the angel of death has done his business. The short and dumpy are transformed into the terrible, the long-limbed into a robot spirit of hell. It is a show not interactive like Pink & Brown's but just as aggressive, all the neck-strangling of a serial killer and all the cacophony of seventies prog rock. Twenty minutes becomes forty. A bass becomes a sword and a drum kit a bazooka. It ends with a smoke machine and a strobe light, Weasel Walter raising his arms: a silhouette Christ for a split second, then gone, then back again. Saving rock and roll for an audience of nine. The lightning bug.

It has been almost eight hours since Sam first danced for me on the sidewalk. True Love Always thanks Weasel for cleansing its colon. I buy a T-shirt, lime green, the color of Pink's socks.

The next day I accompany my brother to his Literary Theory class, where the professor dissects the elements of Marxist criticism: art as the compulsion for social change, shocking the viewer out of his distracted, narcotic state, finally galvanizing him into seeing life anew. My brother holds his pen like a fork, jabbing at and jittering about on the page. His notes are in indecipherable cursive and he is wearing his new pink Pink & Brown T-shirt-baboons screaming-and crimson pants, redder than the red-bearded bassist. Rock and roll, right there. Marx wants objects to be demystified. A broken drum kit is just a broken drum kit, a guitar with strings whizzed and popped merely obliterated. Art makes spectator become participant and participant become revolutionary: Sam pushes his sister to the floor.

Weasel Walter and Pink and Brown came to Yale to let loose their plagues of uncompromising chest hair and drums-as-pistols, and they did it because rock and roll is power and partying is the revolution and goddamn if the walls won't come down then at least a drum kit will. Although they are so poor that they are their own dentist and although their aesthetic is so ravaged that Pink must make do with a little girl's tee instead of his usual pink body suit, although they will never be rich or polished or famous, they still do it because in the moment that they are playing they have power. They leap and they terrify. Their body suits and make-up make them superheroes, their spit and stench supervillains. Pink & Brown and the Flying Luttenbachers do not need lyrics or the eloquence of Aaron to say what they want to say. They use only sweat stains, popping guitar strings, and perfidious odors. They are what we need because what we need is conflict and dialectical materialism. Pink & Brown and the Flying Luttenbachers kill the world dead. Pink & Brown and the Flying Luttenbachers resurrect the world anew. 1