Mercury Radio Theater is Philadelphia’s conceptual rockabilly/punk monster/sci fi with a zydeco twist band (or, in their more concise appellation, “Punk Rock Exotica”). With three LPs to date, the band is known for elaborate, theatrical stage performances and for selling out venues like Johnny Brenda’s. Being good friends with the drummer, Joey Getz, and now the other members, I’ve had the pleasure of working with the band on two occasions.

In May, 2009, I appeared onstage with the band at the legendary Khyber Rock Club as a narrator for the interlude animated films between songs for a sequence called the “Lewis” episodes, about a young boy who befriends a monster that avenges him upon his bullies. The poster for the show was designed by Greg Lytle, a celebrated illustrator and animator based in Brooklyn, NY. The strutting robot depicted on the poster alludes to those described by H.G. Wells in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds: “I did not dare to go back towards the pit, but I felt a passionate longing to peer into it. I began walking, therefore, in a big curve, seeking some point of vantage and continually looking at the sand heaps that hid these newcomers to our earth. Once a leash of thin black whips, like the arms of an octopus, flashed across the sunset and was immediately withdrawn, and afterwards a thin rod rose up, joint by joint, bearing at its apex a circular disk that spun with a wobbling motion. What could be going on there?” The radio broadcast of Orson Welles’ adaptation by his Mercury Radio Theater players (as part of “The Mercury Theater on the Air”) October 30th, 1938 was so convincing that it caused widespread panic among listeners. Welles’s theater company lends its name to the band Mercury Radio Theater. 

In 2011 I appeared in a film called “Death of Mercury Radio Theater,” which I narrated and co-wrote with Kurt Alford Fowler, the band’s founder and presiding genius, shot on location in a freezing abandoned factory in January of that year by director Nic Justice and his crew. We needed many drams of Tullamore Dew to keep from losing our minds or feeling the frostbite. I foggily recall a machete whisked out of a toilet bowl and brandished overheard by a member of the band. I had to be in LA at the time of the concert, but my wife tells me the film, projected onto two large screens over the band, showed well. I hope to work with the band again in the future. Here’s a short video of their recent Static Sessions, filmed by Nic Justice at Drowning Fish Studios. Enjoy! And check out Mercury’s new show, Fabulous Red Menace Part II, on May 3rd at Johnny Brenda’s.