Thao Nguyen is a tireless performer. She’s been touring with her band, the Get Down Stay Down, since she graduated from college, and is used to the rigors of the road, including backhanded compliments like, “You play pretty good for a girl.” Anyone who has ever seen her live, or listened to one of her records, knows how far off the mark that comment is. Nguyen is one of the most innovative guitarists around, with a style that blends grinding power chords, the jittery fills of a funkateer, a dash of country twang, clanging rock guitar pyrotechnics and staccato single-note runs that add a skewed melodic feel to her songs that’s halfway between bluegrass and hip hop. After hearing her 2005 debut, Like The Linen, Laura Veirs took her on tour and helped get her signed to Kill Rock Stars for 2008’s We Brave Bee Stings And All and 2009’s Know Better Learn Faster. Between tours, she moved to San Francisco and took a year off to write the songs that became We The Common (Ribbon). Nguyen and bandmates Jason Slota, Adam Thompson and Johanna Kunin will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new feature on them.
Thompson: One week ago on this day, I emailed Giorgio A. Tsoukalos via his Legendary Times website contact section.
I wanted to get down and be honest about some ancient alien fashions. In my message I declared my preoccupation with the ancient astronaut theory and the TV show Ancient Aliens and the fashion that goes with, and wrapping up by asking for a quote from Mr. Tsoukalos concerning the hair products he uses, with a mind to add the quote to this very essay I was writing for my band’s guest editorship at magnetmagazine.com.
It appeared as if Mr. Tsoukalos could simply throw a dog a bone, that he could offer up a bit of wisdom to the masses, giving us all insight into how one could craft such a mythical coif. Oh, I complemented him, and I showered him with “impossible height!” this, and “wow-do!” that, hoping to gain his confidence so that he would let down his guard and open up to me, letting me in on a few of his fashion secrets But what I needed would be between the lines of his response, wherein I could decipher the clues to the ultimate puzzle…
Alas, my true intention for contacting Mr. Tsoukalos was to pursue the truth behind one of the most enduring and scientifically perplexing mysteries of our time: How can one G.A. Tsoukalos craft a hairdo that achieves such an illogically high elevation using only the tools of our time? Is it possible that Mr. Tsoukalos has been endowed with hair products from an otherworldly origin? Is it possible that Mr. Tsoukalos has been aided by extraterrestrial technology to produce the unfathomable heights of hair he wears, as some Ancient Alien fashion theorists believe?
Anyway, I never got a response: Inbox = empty. Not even a stock response from their email server, just silence. It was pretty dang discouraging. It started to make me rethink my entire position, like maybe I’m just some lost soul with a crazy paranoid theory.
It’s at times in my life like this when my whole world is spinning and I’m not even sure if I believe myself, that if recall a quote from Mr. Tsoukalos that gives me the strength to keep believing: “The only way the ancient astronaut theory can be disproved is when the extraterrestrials show up and say, ‘We were never here.’”
Well Mr. Tsoukalos, I’m willing to bet they weren’t ever not.
Video after the jump.
