The Lords' Prayers

Concerns about listeners played no role in the move toward a tighter set. "When you talk about audiences, I don't know..." Culhane trails off before announcing, "Everybody I see, I just want to smack. So in some ways, I relish my obscurity and the fact that I don't connect with people other than the people I work with, and I'm just this guy collecting cans--just some riffraff on the margin.

"If you play in bars," he points out, "really drunk people come up--really stupid people who you don't want anything to do with--and they rattle on: 'It was so cool!' And you're like, 'Hmmm. I don't want you likin' it.' There were a bunch of Deadheads in Salt Lake who were sending stuff to the barn all the time--all this flowery stuff about how we were really on to something. And I don't want these people likin' me. Cash their checks, though, David." He admits that he's "never had an audience; I don't know what that would be like. If they were intelligent people, I assume they would find this fascinating, but I don't really know that there are intelligent people in the world. I see a society where there's no sense of rebellion. Everyone's just herded, and I'm so wrapped up in trying to learn it myself. I would like to find out that there were such people, but I would also like to continue and finish this. And I do sort of imagine that I will have something connected to the world at the end of it."

In the meantime, the Lords of Howling continue on their quest; they've left the 3,000-song mark in the dust and are still going strong. "Either you contribute to the soundtrack to appease people's insanity or you create the opposite," David says. "And that's a lot of work."

The Lords of Howling. 9 p.m. Monday, June 16, Lion's Lair, 2022 East Colfax, $3, 320-9200. Hamster Theatre, with the Lords of Howling. 9:30 p.m. Tuesday, June 24, Mercury Cafe, 2199 California Street, $5, 294-9258.