Bullseye with Jesse Thorn is a production of MaximumFun.org and is distributed by NPR.

I'm Jesse Thorn, it's Bullseye.

My guest is Stuart Murdock of the band Balanced Abastien.

In the pantheon of rock band Mekkeards, Balanced Abastien is probably one of the weirdest.

Stuart, who was the founder of the band, never really had any interest in playing music.

I mean, he took piano lessons and played in a couple of recitals.

But then in college, when his friends were playing clubs and house parties, he was watching

happily from the crowd.

It'd be DJing once in a while.

Around the beginning of the 90s, though, that changed.

Murdock started to feel exhausted and sore, pretty much all the time.

He couldn't concentrate.

He'd sleep would come, but it wouldn't help.

He'd come down with chronic fatigue syndrome, also known as myalgic and cephalomyelitis,

or ME.

Murdock dropped out of school, stopped running track, stopped DJing, and at home he started

mustering his strength to write songs on the piano.

And then on the advice of his doctor, he took a class for unemployed musicians.

There, he met Stuart David, and the music they made together eventually became

Belen Sebastian.

Since their debut, Belen Sebastian records have made it on literally hundreds of top ten

lists.

...