This week’s art is a digitally-colored bit of calligraphy that your humble blogger created over thirty years ago as a band logo. This was hastily scrawled on drawing paper with a Sharpie, with no pencils or guides or anything.

And, I feel condident in saying…it shows.

Sadly, I could never persuade a band to name themselves “20 Nekkid Penta Costals.”

I suppose you want to know the story behind that name, if you don’t already. This is a story that was in the news in the early 1990s, but for some odd reason, I keep making references to it. Here’s how AP covered it back then:

COPS CHASE CAR, FIND 20 NUDE PEOPLE
(Associated Press, August 20, 1993)

Police in Vinton, La, were surprised when a driver wearing only a towel got out of a car they stopped, then got back in and sped off. They were dumbfounded when the car hit a tree and disgorged 20 people wearing nothing at all. “The Lord told them to get rid of all their belongings and go to Louisiana. So they got rid of all their clothes and pocketbooks and wallets and identification and the license plate off their car and came to our gorgeous state,” Vinton Police Chief Dennis Drouillard said.

All 20 were from Floydada, Texas, in the Texas Panhandle, about 550 miles from the southwest Louisiana town of Vinton. Drouillard said he believed they all were related. Driver Sammy Rodriguez and his brother, Danny, both said they were Pentecostal preachers, Drouillard said. Floydada Police Chief James Hale said he had been looking for the Rodriguez family since Tuesday night, when relatives reported them missing. “They made statements like the devil was after them and Floydada was going to be destroyed if they stayed here,” Hale said.

The family left in 5 or 6 cars, abandoning 1 in Lubbock and a second in San Angelo. Police found a thrid in Galveston, along with the family’s clothes, pocketbooks, wallets and other belongings. The chase in Vinton began after a campground owner called police. A Calcasieu Parish deputy stopped their car, and a man wearing only a towel got out. “When the officer went to ask what was going on, he jumped back in and took off,” Drouillard said. They sped down Vinton’s main street until the car hit a tree at the baseball park at the end of town. Fifteen adults, as old as age 63, and 5 children, piled out of the 1990 Pontiac Grand Am. “And they were completely nude. All 20 of them. Didn’t have a stitch of clothes on. I mean, no socks, no underwear, no nothin’. Five of them [the children] were in the trunk,” Drouillard said.

The car was totaled, but the injuries all were minor, Drouillard said. Rodriguez was booked with reckless driving, flight from an officer, property damage and several minor traffic violations.

There are, believe it or not, funnier details.

The wannabe cult leader responsible was Sammy Rodriguez.  He’d told his flock, comprised entirely of relatives, that the Lord had told him that their clothes had been cursed by the devil. so they all stripped off and piled into five cars.  Along the way to the promised land in Louisiana, four of the cars broke down, so they kept consolidating until they only had one car left, with the children riding, buck-assed naked, in the trunk, which had, thankfully, been propped open so they could get air.  On reaching  Louisiana the group attempted to steal an RV, which they claimed had been promised to them by God.

Of course, there’s a country song about the incident. You can hear it HERE.

To this day, this story keeps popping into my mind and it never fails to crack me up.  It should be a shocking story, but because nobody was seriously injured and everybody seems to have just gotten on with their lives afterward…it is simply hilarious.

I have never been able to determine if the Sammy Rodriguez from this story is the same person as the now highly-respected Pentacostal preacher, Samuel Rodriguez.  Part of me doesn’t want to know. It’s more fun to just think it’s him.

Anyway, this probably explains why I don’t get asked to design many band logos.

If you want to see this image larger, click HERE.

Meanwhile, over in radioland, Monday beginning at 2 PM on The AIR, we bring you a classic episode of Psychedelic Shack, and then at 3 PM an also classic edition of Herman Linte’s weekly showcase of the Progressive Rock of the past half-century, Prognosis.  You can listen to The AIR at the website, or on the embedded radio player elsewhere on this page.

Psychedelic Shack can be heard every Monday at 2 PM, with replays Tuesday at 9 AM, Wednesday at 10 PM, Friday at 1 PM,  and Saturday at 9 AM. You can hear Prognosis on The AIR Monday at 3 PM, with replays Tuesday at 7 AM, Wednesday at 8 PM, Thursday at Noon, and Saturday at 10 AM.

At 8 PM you can hear a classic episode of The Comedy Vault devoted to the satirical brilliance of Tom Lehrer, who just passed away eight days ago at the age of 97. I may have more to tell you about Mr. Lehrer in the coming weeks.

Tonight at 9 PM for the Monday Marathon we bring you ten hours of episodes of Radio Free Charleston. These are not our most recent episodes, but they are gems of local, independent and cult free-format radio from earlier this year.