My name is John Ross Simon. Even before the Rolling Stone interview that destroyed my life,

things were not completely rosy within my band. I felt we'd topped out creatively five

years before, and my lead guitarist and co-lericist Liz Cargus and I were constantly scrapping

over our direction with her wanting a bigger and bigger sound and me clawing to keep the

studio musicians out. It had gotten so tense sometimes that during one tiff in New York

over the order of our set list at Lehman Center, she'd thrown a paper plate of chicken salad

at my head. Meanwhile, our bassist, Lenny Stern, was constantly leaving for weeks at a time

to make another appearance in some indie movie and was slogging to the world's longest divorce

from his high school sweetheart. Maybe it was the hurt over my own recent divorce that

loosened my tongue too much on the day of the interview, made me even more cynical than I normally

was. Liz always said, one day I'd fall backwards into my own mouth and choke on one of my own

diatribes. And so, in December of last year, I did, I finally did. It was the questions about

Branco Kingdom that drew the poison out of me, sucked it right out through a metal straw.

Branco Kingdom, the eye-opening new thing when the music scene, Branco Kingdom, the

epically strange and controversial pop culture force. And it wouldn't I like to weigh in on this

phenomenon? I was asked as a musical purist, what was my take on this man who had seemingly invented

his own genre, which had come to be known as Doomsday Folk, and who was beginning to both

enthrall and perturb millions with his twisted approach to tired aspects of the concert experience.

I said, yeah, I have a take on Branco Kingdom. And I gave it, and all hell broke loose.

You have to understand, it wasn't the bad music that enraged me about this man, though

making no mistake, the music was bad. This overproduced gumbo of influence is ranging from

lesser harpith rising to lesser iron maiden, with lyrics sporting the emotional maturity of

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