On the Road: With Rand & The Randroids

Hackensack, NJ—American campuses are hot to trot for the new pop band, Rand and the Randroids, on tour promoting their first album, “Waterheads.” Guys, how did you come up with the concept for the album?

Rand: There’s, like, this dead chick named Rand. Just like me except she’s, you know, dead. And she wrote a book or maybe a blog entry called “Waterhead.” It might have been a book.

Joey Delvecchio (drummer): Isn’t it called “The Fountainhead?”

Rand: Whatever. We only learned that after the album-cover went to the printers. It’s about an architecture student who flunks out of school, so our audiences can relate to him. But he thinks he’s a genius and doesn’t need education and his buildings won’t fall down or anything. Way cool.

Tommy Schmendrickson (keyboards): Then he, like, loses his job and we can really relate to that too. Then rich people and bureaucrats try to, you know, mess with his mind.

Abdul Harami (bass): We can all get into that, man.

Tommy: He wants a government building contract but he doesn’t get it: he forgot to put toilets in the blueprint or something. The unions really hate his ass.

Joey: Like chill, people! Everybody needs a toilet sometimes.

Rand: (dismissively) You ain’t even read it! I’ll text you the URL. Look, the architect ends up in court but people on the jury see that everybody is, like, really down on his stuff. Then some rich guy says he’ll pay for the building and some babe thinks the architect is rad. That’s it, basically.

Tommy: But it’s like long. Really long.

Susanne: Um, fabulous. Let’s talk about the tour. Where are you guys booked next?

Joey: We’re in Hackensack tonight.

Suzanne: And for the rest of the tour?

Rand: Joey’s brother’s got a place on Long Island, and we thought we might chill out there for awhile.

Tommy: We can work on our second album. That dead babe wrote something else, a book or something, called “Atlas Shrieked.” My dad says it’s about this body-builder named Charles Atlas.

Joey: Your dad’s a moron, dude.

Susanne: Different question. Why all this fascination with Ayn Rand?

Rand: She’s, like, the man. She says that everything’s crap. Religion is crap. Government is crap. Charity is crap. It’s all crap except getting money and power.

Tommy: My Uncle Benny was into power, but he lost his job with Con Edison and now he’s getting unemployment. He was a great electrician.

Joey: Your uncle’s a moron too, dude.

Rand: Shut up, guys! She says that government and college teachers and rich people and, like, what do you call ‘em? Yeah, institutions, are all trying to, you know, get inside your head. Then they, like (beep) you up, dude. So, like, all you need to know is get money and power, but don’t like (beep) up other people either.

Abdul: We can all get into that, man.

Rand: She calls it Objectionable-ism, because people who want to (beep) you up are objectionable. It’s pure Reason, because the other dudes are so unreasonable. It’s, like, all you need to know.

Joey: I thought we was Libertinarians.

Tommy: Forget about my Uncle Benny. You’re the moron, dude.

Susanne: How can charity be bad? Isn’t it just helping people who need it?

Rand: Babe, that’s why our first track is called “(beep) the Poor.” They’re just blood-suckers pulling you down, man, playin’ on your sympathies and keepin’ you from greatness.

Tommy: He means money and power, babe.

Joey: And babes, babe. They love drummers.

Susanne: Some people say that religion tries to make people better.

Rand: Read the facts! It’s all in Wikipedia! Ayn Rand worked as an extra in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1927 movie “The King of Kings.” I watched it once on Turner Classic Movies. When that Jesus guy gets killed at the end, in the crowd there’s some babe grinning and eating popcorn. No crapola! Maybe it was Ayn Rand, and maybe that’s when she realised that religion is all special effects. The guy playing Jesus was just an actor, babe.

Abdul: We can all get into that, man.

Susanne: Last question. What do you say to Professor Eric Voegelin’s theory that that a sense of order is conveyed by the experience of transcendence, and serves as a basis for a particular political order?

Rand: (long pause) Babe, have you got, like, a boyfriend?

Susanne: This is Susie Creamcheese, roving pop-culture reporter for The Imaginative Conservative, keeping you up to date on every single change in The Permanent Things. Good-night!

(Apologies to Rob Reiner and “This Is Spinal Tap”)

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