The Rise and Fall of The Dark Side of Hall and Oates: A Brief History
When was The Dark Side of Hall and Oates born? That question has perplexed scholars, music lovers, and theologians alike for years, and even now, in this nuclear winter of 2064, it continues to divide the Tribes of Earth. There is, of course, a small but particularly violent group of fundamentalists who insist that the project commenced the moment the Lurie brothers espied a $2.00 cassette copy of Hall and Oates: The Early Years in a Portland convenience store in 1993. Others point to the Christmas Eve in 2002 when the brothers stormed an open mic in Kingston, WA to deliver an extended take on “One on One”—complete with a rap that name-dropped Captain Kirk, Attila the Hun, and the mighty Australian ensemble Men at Work.
Researchers from Instanbul University work to unravel the mysteries of The Dark Side of Hall and Oates.
Archaeologists, however, have declared a recently unearthed email transcript (stardate 2004) the probable inception point for the album. In this missive, the elder Lurie encourages his younger sibling to “imagine Pink Floyd teaming up with Tom Waits to perform Hall and Oates songs on broken banjos.”
Then, frustratingly, the trail goes cold.
We have the recordings from the infamous “Lost Weekend” of 2008—the sessions that yielded “Adult Education,” “Had I Known You Better Then,” and “If That’s What Makes You Happy.” And we know from carbon dating that the cracked, brittle renditions of “Say It Isn’t So” and “Maneater (Reprise)” also hail from the same era—albeit from a different session.
Recent findings trace the origins of Koot Hoomi's Hall & Oates tribute album back to the year 2004.
In 2053, self-educated anthropologist Don “Doughboy” Doughty reported an amazing find: three cassette tapes buried at the bottom of a box of Hustler magazines in his recently deceased father’s attic, labeled “Swami Sessions.” These turned out to be the legendary recordings of Swami Premananda crooning “Back in Love Again” seventy-seven times. Prior to this find, historians had concluded that the Swami himself was simply a fictitious creation—an embellishment that had crept into the accounts of the few survivors who’d heard the album in its entirety prior to its destruction.
As we well know, the Great War of 2011 is the reason for our shamefully spotty historical record. And we also know that the war itself was sparked by internecine violence within the indie rock community as radicalized Koot Hoomi fans and Bird and The Bee fans took up arms against one another. What had started out as a friendly rivalry quickly soured with the brutal martyrdom of Topher Blair (He was burned in a giant wicker man by ironic hipsters. One eyewitness account has them dancing lewdly and chanting the canonical works of Death Cab for Cutie while Topher’s flesh curled off the bone, but this has never been verified.)
From that point forward it was brother against brother, mother against daughter, alligator against crocodile, slug against snail.
The rest of the story you no doubt remember from your history lessons in elementary school: The Purge of 2013, the nuclear meltdown of the Blue Note Records pressing plant, the invasion of Rhode Island, and the birth of the squid baby. It’s all too depressing to recount here. But for that one shining moment before the great cataclysm, the Lurie brother’s great dream had its day in the sun. And what a wonderful day it was.
