Power To Burn

Nuclear Balloon Era

I was walking my dogs today, listening to my iPod on shuffle when a very interesting song came up on the shuffle: Emu In The Morning, with very young Kurt Hukriede on vocals. My thoughts immediately turned to those magical few years in which I was a member of a promising new rap/spoken word band:the Nuclear Balloon Arrows.

In sixth grade at Mississippi Horizons, Kurt, Josh Johnson, and myself decided to start a band. I suggested "Nuclear Balloon Era," inspired by a recent Popular Mechanics article (shut up), but Johnson decided to pretend to mishear me and instead christened the band "Nuclear Balloon Arrows." As we prepared material for our first album, Johnson decided to leave the band, citing creative differences. So, the first album, Nuclear Balloon Era, consists of kurt and I sqeaking through 20 minutes worth of freestyle rap and some priceless skits.

Johnson, impressed at our first effort, decided to rejoin the band. He promptly quit again just in time for the production of the second album, Power To Burn. Once again, Kurt and I went solo through a half-hour of solid audio gold.

With contributions from Johnson, Josh Ellens, Jeff Shutey, and Sam Walker, Kurt and I eventually went on to record Return of the Cronson (Johnson's comeback record), Twilight Tacos (our Taco John's themed Halloween special), Granted (our oddly inspired tribute to Chet Stevenson's life lessons) and finally our Greatest Hits album. Our interests gradually meandered from emus and Kurt's dog Hank to a major obsession with our teachers at Missy Ho. Kurt and I even made a spin-off album of the Cafe Coranaries, our imaginary band consisting of Chet on lead vocals, Bob Brakke on keyboards, Eddinger on drums, and Glen Belgum on guitar. Yeah, we had a problem; but that was possibly our best album.

A lot of it was crap, but I'm proud of the fact that we made four albums, over 50 songs, and probably about 25 minutes worth of entertaining audio, all with zero musical talent.

Oh, and we're planning a sweet treasure hunt for Friday, June 2nd. Ask Mattson or Pammy or me about it tommorow.