Pigeon Religion-Scorpion Milk 7" EP (2009)

You meet all sortsa folk in Florence's Piazza Sant'Ambrogio on a Friday night-Tunisian refugees, Eritrean winos, day laborers....last night my drinking companions on the steps consisted of three punks in town on their way to Bologna. Between a couple-five Peronis apiece, my bad Italian, and their bad English, we had quite the night. Part of this night consisted of hearing about one of these kids' (i'll refer to him as Paolo) first 'shroom trip. It went something like this:

Paolo and some friends were on the slow train from Florence to Rome (4 hours on a rickety, battered rail car that hasn't been cleaned or refurbished since the '80s, usually). The plan was for the crew to pop 'em when they got to Rome, but after an hour-long, unexplained delay somewhere outside Arezzo, they decided to get the party started. Everyone else was having a decent time watching the rolling hills and nature stuff, but Paolo started freaking out somewhere around Orvieto with an hour or so still left on the train. He started thinking he was in prison (narrow corridor, bare metal, ugly, mean looking people all around-makes sense) so he hit on the great idea of locking himself in the bathroom for the rest of the trip.
Needless to say, cuz had to be carried off the train by his friends when the train got to Termini, and spent the next two days at some scuzzy squat in my old neighborhood recovering from this trip to the void.

"Scorpion Milk" is what I imagine that hour and a half trapped in a cigarette butt-littered, piss-stained train toilet were, psycho-aurally: horrible shrieking noises, waves of churning dissonance, and maniacal cackling somewhere in the background. Oh, there's an organ, too.

We're the poison in the human machine. This is long out of print. Read this amusing, laconic interview and start planning your next bad trip.