Bruce A. Tweten was once known as “Mr. Bat”. This is his 1981 album, called “Mr. Bat Sings”. What else does he do in his spare time? He probably also scares the hell out of small children. If you play the album backwards, you may hear the sound of children screaming in horror as he pummels them with his fist he is now waving in the air. While you are keeping an anxious eye on your loved ones and holding your children a little closer tonight, let Mr. Bat teach you the meaning of coulrophobia, firsthand.
Much rumors and speculation abound as to what he does these days. This blogger speculates that he might be playing “Mr. Moth”, while his wife plays accompaniment on something called a fart horn (I thought this was a made up slang, but such horns really exist, and one such horn is being auctioned off for 20 bucks on E-Bay as I write this) every time he hits a high-C. I have also now learned that there is such a thing as a butt-horn fart, defined as a fart that sounds like a horn. So, he should forget about playing high-C and start playing flautulent duets. They would have to play in tune, of course, and if Bruce can still fart in high-C, that would be worth the price of admission.
Well, I do recall around that same decade, a 1987 punk rock album from The Butthole Surfers, called Locust Abortion Technician. But this time, the clowns had smiles on their faces.
Like Mr. Bat, having clowns showing up on an album with a name like that does not generally give a positive portrayal of clowns.
Like much of this blog, this all has a precedent. One example of a clown with issues was mass murderer John Wayne Gacy, who also went by the name “Pogo the Clown”.
Gacy was known as “the Killer Clown”, and here he is, standing in front of his house. 30 bodies were found in his basement by 1974. He is depicted here in this black-and-white photo.
It would seem that once the Gacy murder trials started in the Early 80s, that left a void in the evil clown market, which is about the same time that Mr. Bat took over to fill in the clown shoes left behind by Gacy. Gacy, beset by legal problems (arrests, trials, convictions and jailtime can cramp your style, you know), was finally put down by lethal injection in 1994. What makes Gacy particularly repugnant is, that unlike Charles Manson, he did not produce any crappy albums, nor crappy album covers. Society will never forgive him for this heinous crime.
Enter Mr. Bat, who obviously wants to restore dignity to the good name of evil clowns everywhere. Bat has a big job to do, and big clown shoes to fill. He now must perform evil and terror-filled acts, but in a law-abiding way. We still await the outcome.
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