SPO-20 (the robot) and Professor B. Miller (the human) of Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra (Photo: Becky DiGiglio)
The first time I dropped the needle on my vinyl copy of Have an Existential Crisis, guest vocalist Spencer Moody kicked off the Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra album with “Pick ‘Em Up.”
“I’m picking up the pieces/Of my belief system,” he sang in a voice that’s instantly recognizable if you ever listened to Murder City Devils.
On my second listen, the same song played. This time though, Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra’s usual lead singer lamented the loss of core beliefs.
“It’s crumbling apart,” the robotic SPO-20 declares, “Fact/By fact/By fact”
Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra live at The Mayan in downtown Los Angeles for Exotikon 3 (Pic: Liz O.)
Our glasses weren’t 3D. We were watching a live performance inside downtown L.A.’s Mayan Theatre and, like the robot on stage told the crowd on Sunday afternoon, that’s already 3D. These were decoder glasses. Some in the audience had blue lenses. Others, like me, had red ones. The color of the lenses determined what you would see on the screen behind Satanic Puppeteer Orchestra, the human-and-robot duo from San Diego who were playing as part of Exotikon.
