Taking a joy ride in Grandma’s car
Give me a kitten
Give me a scar
Like so many of Cooper’s lyrics, the song’s opening lines leave you wrestling between nostalgia and bewilderment. It’s not long before he clicks the distortion pedal for his guitar and Sal sort-of rocket launches onto his drum kit. ‘Picnic’ sails around a pond of sweeping riffs before it ends where it started.
Taxidermists are in a perpetual state of locked-in, on the record or at a live show. They are the rare guitar/drums duo where what you hear is so electrifying you don’t think about the lack of a bass or anything else. You wouldn’t want to imagine another instrument stepping between this sonic marriage.
I was along for part of the ride of their beginnings on Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard. They were performing as a trio called Pierre in their early teen years before they downsized to a duo in December 2010. I filmed the first set where it was just the two of them at Annie’s garage in North Falmouth. (Not a venue, an actual garage.) Strings of Christmas lights left the sweating faces of the thirty kids crammed in there bathed in an orange glow.
Cooper wore a wetsuit that night because the band was toying with renaming themselves Fish Tank for a moment before they settled on Taxidermists. Their performance was mesmerizing. There was some kind of telepathy at play between Cooper and Sal. It was clear they rehearsed from how tight each synchronized hit was but it also felt like they were in a constant state of discovery as they moved through the left turns of their set of weirdo pop. I was 19 at the time, three years older than the precocious duo, but already old enough to sense my grainy footage would likely end up in a rock-doc about them someday.
Taxidermists didn’t play ‘Picnic’ that night. That track was part of 2012’s double-disc Pool Party. It’s the song of theirs I hold closest because so many of my memories of being part of that music scene are riding shotgun or in the backseat.
Taking a joy ride in Grandma’s car
I waited to get my license until I was 20. So throughout high school and some of my college years of playing in bands on the Cape, often alongside Cooper and Sal, I was dependent on other young musicians for rides to shows. We crammed into minivans with all our gear to play at the Knights of Columbus. We smoked cigarettes on the way there because we wanted to be like The Strokes. We built a scene in our little tourist towns. First draft flyers and Facebook events to get the word out. Playing train depots, community halls, library meeting rooms, and always talking with my friends about how it went in the car ride after.
I still make music now and I have even been called a ‘prolific’ songwriter once or twice. But I can’t take credit for my musical output. It comes from growing up with Cooper and Sal, knowing they were always going to have another trick up their sleeve, some new guitar tuning, or time signature, or a drum fill the size of a hurricane. Even when we were kids, I always felt like I was just trying to just not let them totally peel out of sight down the road ahead of me.
Taking a joy ride in Grandma’s car
Give me a kitten
Give me a scar
Brian Engles is a writer and musician from Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He worked as a reporter for the Cape & Islands NPR member station before moving to Chicago this year. His debut novel Wildball (2018) earned coverage in the Boston Globe. He has also released several albums of original music under the name Racing Days.