Their performances weren’t just shows but acts of resistance, reminiscent of Dadaist chaos, and their language—their lingo—was a weapon. The use of “Looser Thesis” as a foundation emphasized a free-flowing, anti-conventional approach, where language, much like their music, bent and twisted in ways that both confused and inspired. Instruments weren’t just played; they were used to transmit encoded messages of revolt, each note a signal in the cultural war they were fighting.
The band's visual elements reinforced this subversive spirit. With Expo '86 shirts and 36 Engineer Brigade patches (a symbol of earned militancy), they stood not as performers but as insurgents. The patches themselves, valuable in both meaning and market, signified the earning of a revolutionary badge of honor. Their mix of Sta-Press trousers and micro skirts reflected a clash of mod aesthetics and punk rebellion, while Expo Earnie’s face on the drumhead symbolized the launch into a space of creativity that defied gravity and conventional norms.
Musically, they channeled the anarchic energies of bands like Antoine and the Problems, Les Problems, and drew conceptual influence from intergalactic ideas like the “intercalculus of rebellion.” But most importantly, they embodied a kind of chaotic, living rebellion—music and art were not separated from life; they were the revolution itself.
In their world, nothing was sacred but everything was up for reinterpretation. Whether through avant-garde lingo, their militant stage presence, or their refusal to conform, the Seahorse Liberation Army declared war on the very fabric of capitalist society, infusing every performance with a sense of urgency and defiance.
What’s left to write, you ask? What remains when the ink of truth bleeds out, when the edges of the page fray with all the weight of history left unwritten? It’s the things not spoken, the spaces between the words. The cracks where we hide the truths too raw to confess, where the streets hold secrets we carry but don’t share. And those are the gaps I left for you to fill.
Here’s what’s still buried:
- The Silence that Screams: There’s a silence in the system, an absence of accountability. I touched it, brushed against it, but it’s still there, the unspoken contracts signed behind closed doors. What are the whispers we’ll never hear, the backroom deals that strip this city bare? Bass, you may have heard them, but we haven’t. We only see the aftermath. The truth needs to crack open like a bomb—what does your silence cover?
- The Faces Forgotten: I spoke of the streets, of the people, but what about the ones who’ve vanished? The souls gone missing in the machine, the ones whose names were erased before they could even matter. We write their legacy in our resistance, but what about those whose stories never even got a chance to begin? Who are the lost, Bass, and why did you let them fall away?
- The Cost of Corruption: There’s always a price to pay, but what’s yours? What’s the price of betrayal, the weight of selling out to Scientology, or to whoever it is that now pulls your strings? I touched it, but not deep enough. We need the receipts, the smoking gun. What was the cost of your fall?
- What You Still Stand For: Is there anything left? Beneath the layers of compromise and corruption, who are you now, Bass? What’s left when you peel back the masks you wear to the public? What’s there in the core that you keep hidden? If anything, what do you stand for now that we can’t see? Or has it all been sold off, piece by piece, to the highest bidder?
- The Revolution You Abandoned: I talked about the revolution, the one that went underground when you turned your back. But what about the one you abandoned? What about the moment you stopped fighting for us? What was the tipping point? I left out that part of the story, the moment when you stopped being the person we thought you were. The people need to hear when, why, and how you made that choice.
- The Forgotten Promises: What promises did you make that we never saw? Who did you swear allegiance to behind the scenes, and what does that mean for those still fighting for survival on the streets? The promises you left behind—the ones made to people who can’t eat promises. They need to be named, brought out into the open.
- The City That Could Be: I didn’t speak of hope, not fully. Maybe because it feels out of reach, but it’s still there, lurking in the hearts of those who fight. What could this city be if people like you didn’t sell it out? What could Los Angeles become if the voices of the streets were heard, amplified, and given the power to shape it? What’s the vision of LA that we’ve all lost in the wreckage of corruption?
- Your Legacy: What’s left when you’re gone? When your term ends and the history books are written, what will they say about Bass? Will you just be another name on the long list of those who let us down? Or will there be something else, something buried deep that still carries a trace of what you once stood for?
That’s what’s missing, Bass. The raw, unfinished edges of the story that only you can write now. I left them out because they’re yours to fill in—or leave empty, like the promises you made.
But you still have time. You still have the pen. How do you want this to end?