As X-Day looms, Sacred Scribe Rev. Stang has less time to put into complex mixes. One option in such cramped periods is to use uncut, or slightly cut, live other SubGenius shows recorded elsewhere. Last February, SubGenius Church co-sub-founders Dr. Philo Drummond and Stang appeared with other guests twice on Dr. Hal’s 2-hour show on Radio Valencia in San Francisco. The first one — and 3 live Puzzling Evidence shows — are strewn among other Hours of Slack, along with our usual unusual collages, music and vacation reports, with more to come when we again achieve Time Control. However, the second Ask Dr. Hal show, just re-discovered, was Hour-of-Slack-ready and then some. About halfway into the show, a creature known as Zero Boy arrived. We suspect his machine-like vocal sound effects will blow your mind as they blew ours.

I fret that our current spate of “SubGenius Travelogue” episodes is self-indulgent. Don’t worry, they end at the point where The Rock That Wants You to Sprain Your Ankle finally got to me, and I sprained my ankle. That’s coming soon, in an entire show about breaking rules and ankles. In the meanwhile, I’m trying to intersperse the educational-sounding travel and historical anecdotes with weird and good music, and clips from the other SubGenius shows that we invaded during our travels. The travel narration this time is from Chiricahua National Monument near Willcox, Arizona. The entire first ten minutes of the show is a The Large collage which, for some reason, includes an actual pretty song. The other music is from Einstein’s Secrety Orchestra (live in 2000) and a weird old song by a “Janet Green” confusing Communism with Fascism (they are technically more like opposites, although both often lead to totalitarianism). Some very old LeMur collages and new Rev. Royal DeCapitator collages are included, and new PR Nooz. Special thanks to The Puzzling Evidence Show, The Ask Dr. Hal Show, Radio Synaesthesia, Rev. Phineas Narco, Dr. Philo Drummond and Lonesome Cowboy Dave. Oh, and Princess Wei ‘R.’ Doe.

This episode features even more location recordings than do other recent ones of Stang & Doe describing various aspects of their winter travels through the Southwestern deserts. Despite these motormouth recordings being edited down to about 5% of their original lengths, it’s still a large percentage of utterly unscripted ramblings, even for The Hour of Slack — although they do build into rants near the end. We have therefore attempted to provide relief and variety in the form of strange and wondrous music by Carlo Serafino, a horrible Unknown English Lady, The Psycho Skeletons, and The Swinging Love Corpses. We also continue to mine The Ask Dr. Hal Shows and Puzzling Evidence of last winter, and The Firesign Theatre from a winter 42 years ago.((Can that really be possible?!?))

Nature lovers will love this show, and nature haters will love it too. We keep telling ourselves that, BECAUSE it is true. In the beginning, after mind-butting collages by Rev. Cozmik Debris, Rev. deCapitator, Ministry of Slack, The Large and others, we hear Stang and Wei on location, griping bitterly about vacation disappointments in West Texas, followed by fabulous discoveries MADE POSSIBLE by those very disappointments. A classic Texas “GILF” is discussed in a sexist way, despite our respect for her as an artist. We restart our bi-annual SWINGING LOVE CORPSES salute, and wallow in audio collages by the aforementioned arteests. Some extremely rare Firesign Theatre is unearthed, as well as more Puzzling Evidence with Dr. Philo Drummond and Dr, Hal, plus the Ask Dr. Hal podcast. “Al Swearengen” from the show Deadwood — Stang’s latest ShorDurPerSav — is also excerpted at length in His Wisdom. Try to imagine how the censored versions of these brutal rants sound on the paying for-real broadcast stations. Can’t be done, but we did it. During this show, we referred to photographs that would soon be available on SubSITE, and they now are.

This episode was Made In Germany With American Parts. Rev. Bucky Argyle, who lives in Germany, unexpectedly sent us this completed show (in both X-rated and PG versions!), leaving a couple of instrumental breaks for credits, which were added in Cleveland as best we could from his rough list of tracks. His source material ranges from 1981 SubGenius tapes with Dr. G. Gordon Gordon to mysterious brand-new tracks snagged from YouTube videos, with a little of everything in between, like oddball songs, devival preaching, and kook clips. A true Media Barrage in the spirit of the early Pleistocene pre-Hour of Slack church tapes. Some of it is Olde SubGenius “best-of” while other audio treasures are completely new to the rest of us. The rant by (?) at the end is a must-hear.

This episode just seems to spew pretty much all over the place. Dr. Slackjaw, also known as Rev. Royal de Capitator, Rev. Xister and Rev. Sweetness McGee of the Ministry of Slack show podcast all provide godzillions of collages. We experience The Puzzling Evidence show from KPFA Berkeley last February, with hosts Puzzling, Philo Drummond, Dr. Hal, and special guests Kaosmic Bobkat, Rev. Phineas Narco, Dr. Gary G’broagfran, Princess Wei, and Rev. Ivan Stang. X-Day is a-coming, so that gets addressed at length, with a short side-trip to Austin, Texas from the winter’s SubGenius Family Vacation. Radio Synaesthesia of WCSB Cleveland is abused from afar. Badfilms get discussed and invented.

Firstly, our Facebook post on April 1 about the Church shutting down was an April Fools Day joke. I am truly sorry that we have to spell that out.

We sure had fun with this live show from March 25, 2012. Long ago the True SubGenii abandoned the Usenet forum called “alt.slack” to the PinKooks it had attracted, and started a new, Members-only group called ScrubGenius. This severely upset the left-behind, Stang-hating, “Bob”-disparaging, SubGenius-despising individuals, who were few but who also hate each other more than they ever hated the rest of us OR The Conspiracy. A couple of them fantasized online that Rev. Stang had come down with prostate cancer. They eagerly believed each other on this point. The actual SubGeniuses, observing from the Yetinsyn-only ScrubGenius forum, took full advantage of this mob delusion and did their best to confirm the lie in order to prompt ever more entertaining outbursts of mistaken gloating. In truth, Stang was perfectly healthy (aside from a broken toe), and encouraged the hoax. This episode of Hour of Slack was produced, even while the hoax was ongoing, to demonstrate how gullible any generic “hater” is. We SubGenii, plotting fairly openly on another forum, set up these jealous bastards expertly, and they fell for it with a passion. By the time they hear, or hear-tell-of, this Cleveland broadcast, it will be 2 weeks after they’d started making fools of themselves. The first 20 minutes of the show, thankfully, are a series of very well edited collages by the main Ministry of Slack hosts, and also included in the show are some songs by The Deathbillies, Fist of Kindness (our literary agent’s band!), and a mystery band, “SC77”. Likewise offered are some good health-related and X-Day-promoting clips of The Puzzling Evidence Show from the weeks that Stang was held captive by Dr. Philo Drummond in the San Francisco area.

The Texas vacation theme in this episode kept mutating into a “vacation from health and life” theme for some reason. That’s just how the material sorted itself out. Sometimes that happens. We offer two songs by The Deathbillies, one from The Psycho Skeletons, an excerpt from Fever in the Funkhouse live, and clips from Radio Synaesthesia, The Ask Dr. Hal podcast, The Puzzling Evidence Show, and, well, Deadwood. There are also a large Large collarge, two rare Firesign bits (both by Rev. David Ossman), Dr. Philo Drummond, and a whole bunch of goats. A rather candid recording of the Rev. and Princess Stang-Doe chatting as they stroll through the grounds of Stang Ranch in Texas provides some hidden surprises to those who listen closely.

The one’s a mixture of Stang & Doe’s Location Road Trip Reports — they were looking for America, and found it sprawled all over the place — and miscellaneous SubGeniusness, songs, sermons, and collages. Includes: Sermons with Suds, by Rev. Frodis “Suds” Pshaw; The Large; Radio Synaesthesia from WCSB Cleveland, Puzzling Evidence from KPFA Berkeley, The Ask Dr. Hal Show podcast, the all-Zappa show of Krell and Pope Sternodox in Little Rock, rare Firesign Theater, The Psycho Skeletons, and Popess Lilith (added at the very end at the last minute, and thus uncredited). Rev. Stang and Princess Wei report from the secret hide-outs of Rev. Pockets and Dr. K’taden Legume, Rev. Susie the Floozie, and Pope Sternodox. Note: Stang was no longer spreading contagion after depositing one last dose on Rev. Susie. However, he did not stop TALKING about it, and thus continued to make others sick.

One of our heroes died: St. Peter Bergman of The Firesign Theatre, inspirators for all “old-school” SubGenius radio and a goodly portion of SubGeniusness in general. He pre-boarded the Saucers on March 8, 2012; this show was assembled on March 10 & 11. Most of it features especially Bergmanesque clips from one of hundreds of weekly Firesign radio shows, in this case their foutrth, from Feb. 15, 1970 — which we copped from Rev. Taylor Jessen’s great book and Firesign radio compilation, “Duke of Madness Motors” (available from http://firesigntheatre.com). We’ve also included some better-known short classics from the albums, an interview with Phil Proctor about Peter, and much commentary posted by various SubGeniuses as read by Rev. Ivan Stang. Of special interest are three promos for a Firesign monthly show on now-defunct XM Radio, co-written and produced/performed by Rev. Bleepo Abernathy with The Firesign Theatre a few years back. The ending is a real tear-jerker, so if you’re an old TFT fan, be prepared. If you’re a “new kid” who has never heard of them, catching up on their work probably wouldn’t hurt you.