Explosive, yet soothing...............

"A gentle breeze blows soft sounds across the desert floor.  A dozen dust devils dance as red ants chant in the dry Mojave heat.  The sun begins to fade and the lights of Las Vegas  begin to light up the distant desert sky.  A small band of restless time-travelers come down from the hills overlooking the Nevada Test Site and begin to make their way to the Arsenal.  If all goes well, they will leave in the morning for the future."  E-rex Arsenal - Bleached Bones In The Moab

E-Rex Arsenal was born a few hundred miles upwind of the Nevada Test Site in an era of extensive atomic testing. In 1959 his father stole a beat up Melody Maker guitar from a drunken hooker in Tijuana while he was AWOL from the Army.  He brought it home as a peace offering to make up for taking off on a three week Mexican bender.  Momma had no use for geetars other than to beat daddy unconsious with it, so after she got done setting daddy on fire in his sleep that night, she gave the guitar to young E-rex as a rememberance of his charred smoldering father. 

Shortly after Momma's lenghty murder trial (where she was absolved of any wrong-doing) she took young E-rex back to her hometown of Duluth Minnesota.  During the trip back, just outside the small town of Amargosa Valley, she was blinded by a flash of light so bright that she had to pull off the road.  Seconds later there was a deafing sound and an expanding mushroom cloud of such immense size that it blocked out the sun.  A violent radioactive wind blew up and momma grabbed the first thing she could, the Melody Maker, to block the horrible death wind from her face.  Scientists later estimated that the guitar was exposed to about 6.9x10^12 curies of radiation.

As beautuful as the surroundings were on the North Shore of Lake Superior, life was barely tolerable.  Momma's atomic brain damage coupled with heavy drinking made growing up in the family unbearable.  E-rex left home at a young age and he took the radioactive guitar with him.  He didn't know how to play it yet, but he knew there was something in that guitar that would make everything alright.  Nearly all of his life would pass before he found what that something was.