THEATRICAL ROCK Sleepy Time's dreams are surreal

The drummer pleads for potential fans to try a show and they'll be won over.
By JOHN BENSON
VINDICATOR CORRESPONDENT
The members of Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum dream of a fictional goth world where The Futurists battle Unabomber Ted Kaczynski, and prog rock bleeds into black metal with surreal results.
If you're not into theatrical rock delivered with costumes and a dancer, you're going to want to stay as far away from Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum's upcoming Northeast Ohio dates (Friday at the Beachland Ballroom) as possible.
The obvious
Playing along with the story line, drummer Matthias Bossi explains the obvious, why The Futurists and Mr. Kaczynski can't just get along.
"Isn't it obvious," said Bossi, calling from Minnesota. "They're complete polar opposite people. The Futurists wanted to kill the past with everything that was new and technologically magnificent and shiny and fast and gleaming. Yesterday doesn't exist. Today doesn't even exist. All we can hope for is tomorrow.
"And Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, was a total anti-technology fellow who went out in the woods in this little cabin, typed away on his typewriter and wanted all of us to go back to a simpler way of life. That's ultimately what it comes down to, an anti-technology vs. all that is new."
Frisco debut
Now with that explanation out of the way, let's turn our sole attention to Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum, which debuted in the San Francisco area a few years ago as an artsy side project among friends with heady results.
As eccentric as the band may come across (and, really, on a scale of 1 to 10, the five-piece is pegging the meter), its music is an alluring combination of rhythms and percussion that embraces everything from incidental noise, contemporary classical music and theatrical motifs to non sequitur instruments and oddball vocals, as heard on the band's 2004 sophomore release "Of Natural History."
"It's just sort of what comes out," Bossi said. "No one has ever set out to be avant-garde, so to speak. The music that comes out is just channeling influences and inner dialogue and whatever happens to be in the brain at the time. It may come out sounding something other than Top 40, but I think if we started to label ourselves and to put ourselves in a genre, we'd be no better off than those like Casey Kasem Top 40 bands."
As the band waits for its long distance dedication by Kasem, it's touring its unique show replete with a caged dancer and a stage presence that concertgoers won't forget anytime soon. But before you chalk up the Sleepy Time Gorilla Museum as being eccentric just for the sake of it, Bossi personally invites various groups to experience this traveling institution of art rock fun.