Although their meteoric rise and fall in the late summer
of 1986 left Picasso at the Mall in tatters, they soon realized that they were
better off torturing each other than being boring and morose alone. MothB0t had
started a moderately successful Tupperware business, with a stable of three
sales people below him. He was paying the bills, but no amount of leftovers kept
fresh in the refrigerators of his customers could fill the creative void in his
heart.
Meanwhile, Dekx lost his life savings "playing the
stock market," which was actually one of those oversized slot machines
that takes silver dollars you see near the exit of a lot of casinos. While
$73.56 may not have seemed like a lot of money to most people, the loss was
catastrophic for Dekx's psyche. He began gently but steadily banging his head
with a 2 x 4 he found in an empty lot, just to feel something other than
self-hatred.
In 1988 they ran into each other in an Amway recruitment
meeting. They immediately fell into a kerfuffle, breakdance battling until both
of them had sustained multiple self-inflicted injuries and could no longer
continue. At the emergency room they mended both their torn ligaments and their
relationship. They immediately started writing new music.
Their reunion gave PatM a new energy which was captured
perfectly in their second album, A Touch of Mullet. Eschewing their previous
eclectic sound, A Touch of Mullet was raw bravado, cool guy persona, and
lazers. Dekx, still hearkening back to his roots while keeping up with current
trends, got a Shumway Death Ray model AK-eytar, but MothB0t moved from melodica
to synth drums, having crafted a unique style bopping on various sizes of
Tupperware in his free time.
Using MothB0t's Tupperware network, PatM played a string
of house parties in the Reno/Sparks, NV area, quickly garnering a reputation
for mediocre talent and even mediocrer stage presence. What would have been
their first single if they had ever received any radio time, Rising Sun
Headband, did get somebody to dance for a few seconds. In what may have been
his saddest moment, MothB0t made out with a woman to his own love song,
Roundhouse to The Heart.
Their most popular song was a deep cut from A Touch of Mullet - between Lambo Libido and Sex Ninja, Love Shuriken - called Corpse Fucker. A soaring, inspirational, Transformers: The Motion Picture Soundtrack-inspired song, Corpse Fucker immediately became popular with the 15 or 20 people who heard it. Because of the heavily robot-augmented vocals, listeners were unaware that they were championing a necrophilia anthem for the ages. This led to PatM making the national news. It also led to them going into hiding. In their VH1: Behind The Music episode, they revealed that "going into hiding" mainly just entailed them staying home and playing a fuckload of Super Mario Bros. 3.
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