It’s December 1980 in Worcester, Massachusetts. At the community radio station WCUW, outsider psych-folk legend Bobb Trimble is playing songs from his recently self-released debut LP, Iron Curtain Innocence, when one of his fans, a second-year Clark University student named Kris Thompson, stops by to introduce himself. The two become fast friends, and by the first of the next year, Trimble starts hanging around for basement practices and house show parties put on by The Prefab Messiahs, a band Thompson just started playing in.

The Prefabs started in 1981 as a project coordinated by Xeth “Xerox” Feinberg, a college senior recently returned from some time abroad in the UK. During one drunken night in Europe spent criticizing '80s consumer culture and the general state of things, a peer of Xeth’s made a reference to the “prefab messiahs” who were controlling the American mainstream mindset: Ronald McDonald, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and other “friendly face[s] of corporate fascism.” Hyped up on some German Expressionism classes he’d recently taken, Xeth knew he eventually needed to start a band with this name. When he returned to the US, facing forthcoming graduation into a rough economy and bleak post-grad prospects (sound familiar?) he did just that, and the Prefab Messiahs were born-- a noisy psychedelic band commited equally to writing weirdo pop songs and being socially critical punx. The band lasted about 16 months. 

To kick off their East Coast micro-tour with Massachussetts outsider hero Bobb Trimble this week, The Prefab Messiahs just unveiled this Xeth "Xerox" Feinberg-animated video for "Desperately Happy," a track from their recently reissued Peace Love & Alienation LP, on Fixed Identity. The Prefabs appear in the form of four cartoon avatars, idling around the suburban gas stations and bars of "Wormtown", MA like the alienated young adults they were back in the early '80s.

But who exactly are they singing about when they tell us not to "sing their harmony?" Sure, there's the images of faceless soldiers and a gun-slinging Ronald McDonald, flags of capitalist, warmongering society. But we can't ignore the golden arches on the drummer's kit, nor the fact that the band have chosen to participate in this all-encompassing, inescapable thing we call "the system" merely by penning this jangling pop tune, or choosing to appear in the form of a cartoon. In other words, we don't have to think long and hard about the meaning of the name Prefab Messiahs to be reminded of the endless complexities of trying to critique the status quo through the language of pop culture. For more on the matter, stay tuned for Liz Pelly's profile on the group later this week.

A few copies of Peace, Love & Alienation is still available from Fixed Identity. Peep the dates for The Prefab Messiahs' mini-tour below: