Blunt Rapture unzips his bunnysuit of bullshit

It's not every day that someone just gives you a big envelope full of flyers, weird graphic art, and zine pages from the '80s and '90s, but that may be the best introduction to the human coil of frenetic energy named Blunt Rapture. Blunt and his band CattleProd moved from Spokane, Wash., to Madison in 1986. Since then, he's played in other local bands including Headpump, hosted a local cable-access show called The Dumb Show, published a zine called Woo-Woo, made himself a major gadfly of The Daily Page's forums, and absorbed a higher concentration of Madisonian weirdness than is safe for most humans. Now in his 40s, he's announced that he plans on moving back to Washington State, making this Saturday's Senior Scenester gathering at the High Noon his farewell. Since we're already looking back to some of the Madison music of the '80s and '90s this week, Decider sat down with Blunt and asked him to explain some of the crazy stuff he dropped off at our office last week.

Decider: So you moved here from Spokane...
Blunt Rapture: It was funny because, in Spokane, people had to fight against stuff. I got here, everything's laid-back, no one's fighting. Spokane was kind of a camping, white-bread, redneck-type place, close to Idaho, so we had to fight against stuff. It made the scene solid and everything else. We figured, the drowsy herd needs a boost—so, CattleProd.

Mr. McFeely
BR: Our bass player [in Headpump] was the Purple Panda on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and he said Mr. McFeely did try to.... so that was kind of cool. Not only did we have rockstars in our band, but our bass player was on Mr. Rogers. But he doesn't have any pictures of himself, he just had Mr. McFeely.

Bill/article about Headpump
BR: Remember who Cosmo, street guy, skinny Cosmo was?
D: I don't think so.
BR: OK, he just died, he was a big icon, that was the icon before him. You know how State Street has certain—Scanner Dan. But Bill was always there to help and he always wanted to come to shows and carry in a drumstick or something, so he was our guy. We had tons of turntables all over the place with spinning Madonnas and junk. If you're gonna play live, at least gimme something to look at. We were known for doing Thanksgiving and Christmas shows, cause when you're sick of your family, what are you gonna do? Come see us. Mifflin Street Block Party used to have 20,000 people on it, and we played at the end of Mifflin on a stage with people, and they all listened. So we felt kinda like U2. We thought, one year, we're gonna take a helium balloon and a whole bunch of sandwiches. We just launched a bunch of sandwiches across the crowd. We spent all night tying little sandwiches to helium balloons.

The Dumb Show flyer
BR: First it was Alternative Playground, we had bands, bands, bands, then it was Hey! What's The Big Idea? And we had occasional bands, and it was live, then we said, "Well, let's just call it The Dumb Show, 'cause that's kind of what it is." We had Garbage on there, we played on there, tons of weird bands, strippers. People would call, "Yeah, I'd like to come down and expose my breasts." And they did. We were very popular with high-school boys. I don't know what it was. I think it's 'cause we were on at 9 o'clock. There was a lot of, "Hi, I'm 15, just watchin' your show!" Like, God! Taking time from your masturbation to watch our show? Pretty cool. The saddest one was some kid who was 13 or 14 and I said the same thing, and he goes, "I don't really masturbate. I'm kind of overweight, I haven't been able to see or reach my penis for a couple of years."

Shroud of Turin beach towel
BR: I personally invented the Shroud of Turin beach towel. I don't know if you think you've heard of this before, but we sold a bunch of these. But one person said to me, "Wait a minute, shroud of Turin beach towel? I think I might've heard of that on The Simpsons." Here is a zine from Spokane way back in '83, way back before Simpsons, and there it is, my first copy. So just so you know, that's me.

D: How do you keep up all this energy?
BR: Everything that I do is my map of how I'm wakin' up. I'm unzipping my bunnysuit of bullshit and stepping out. Draw it, write it, re-arrange it, record it? It's always been really easy. I'm not sayin' I'm great, I'm just sayin' that's where I was coming from. This is a map, and the map's not the territory. These are breadcrumbs in the forest that I have traveled through.

D: So what are you going to do at the Senior Scenester gathering this weekend?
BR: The Senior Scenester Hoverround Rodeo Potluck Reunion Jamboree? I've done a few things: Biff & Blunt—acoustic music, people hate that shit—and then CattleProd, and then Headpump, which is pumpin' the bad stuff out, pumpin' the good stuff in. We're gonna do a retrospective, things from all bands. CattleProd was just punchin' you in the face with joy, Headpump is more mystical and groovy-weird, and Biff & Blunt, like I said, it's weird organic stuff that people who usually can't stand coffeehouse music will like. We have a lot of dirty songs.

Poof
BR: "Madison's only artsy-fartsy fag-rag." I don't know if you've been to the Shamrock and seen these little zines they have everywhere? There's so many and they're dumb. Mostly it's just beefy orange-tan people just understanding nothing. Even people who are gay and drunk go, "Eh, that's about it." You can have shirtless boys, but something that the drunk people can go, "Ooh, yeah!" And someone who wants to read a few words can go, "Ooh, yeah!"