I slipped into a dream.

I stood in a shallow valley. Soft hills rose around me and seemed to slowly inflate. The earth breathed in the clean atmosphere and exhaled with swaying blossoms. My feet were wet, cool. I looked down and found myself standing in a swift brook of pale lager. Tremors shook the ground as large beasts approached, their presence announced by a whistling chorus. I sunk into a fighting stance.

Over the nearest hill trod brown beasts carrying pink blobs of flesh. The first beast came into recognition. It was a baby riding a bear. A small pack of the mysterious riders lumbered closer and finally stopped before me. The leader baby-- at least, I surmised that he was the leader baby, as he wore a diaper woven of spindled silver and carried a gem- studded scepter-- raised a hand and spoke to me in a rich, velvet voice.

"Stranger, please remove yourself from such violent stature. Fear not, our beasts are gentled. Please come with us, we have much to show you," he said.

I could do little but follow. The baby may not have offered much resistance, but the bears were another matter. The babies seemed to have an unconscious bond with their transport. A fight would have to wait for more opportune times.

"Please, Stranger, come."

The babies rode their bears to a deep thicket. The leading bear yawned, emitting a deep tone. A small opening in the thicket widened to accompany the strange party. I walked after them. The babies dismounted in the thicket and gathered around a glowing space heater. They removed their ornamental spears and earrings, which I now noticed to be crafted from whittled pieces of vinyl LPs and radiant CDs. Several robots tended to the bears.

"Please, Stranger, sit by our space heater and drink up. Drink," the Leader Baby said with a chuckle, passing a skin of the flowing ale. "Now we make music."

A band of babies and robots gathered inside a circle. They held instruments forged from scavenged junk and wood. With a clamor, the band began singing to the tune of "Mr. Sandman." "We're the Beta Band and we're nice and clean," they began. The robots kept a clumsy rhythm. After a few verses, the song slipped into an intoxicated rap before finally settling on sloppy Elvis karoake. It was the one of the most deranged sounds I'd ever heard, both exotically insubstantial and unnecessarily piecemeal. The leader baby leaned and whispered in my ear.

"Don't pay too much attention to this. It's just our custom. The performers must first expel all of their musical demons. The invoke their muse with a joyous cacophony. Through this, the audience hears all of the band's exaggerated styles and can bear witness to their spirit."

It hardly mattered to me. The band had already begun a beautiful epic. Built upon subtle chugging and a thumping march, remarkably similar to the opening seconds of the Stone Roses' "Bye Bye Badman," spread to infinity. "It's Not Too Beautiful" dragged me into bliss.

Occasionally, the robots would emit the symphonic sounds from the theme to "The Black Hole," which strangely fit into this xynophillic jam. The band did not have a singer, per se. Rather, a totem of four babies stood stoically in the midst of this wonderful racket and sung with echoing harmonies. Their voices were both indolent and inspired. I didn't want it to end.

Alas, the song faded away into a minimal chant over skeletal beats and blips. My host informed me this song was called "Simple Boy." It sounded like slothful, sylvan techno-- like Underworld for drugged squirrels.

Suddenly the band broke into a full- on jam, filled with pots, pans, acoustic guitars, steel drums, and strings. It was Pet Sounds as performed by rednecks from Tolkein's Middle- Earth. As the performance continued, I increasingly fell into a intoxicated rapture. I remembered little, but cared not. Beat- boxing, scratching, wood- blocks, and bongos swirled in my brain. This was stream- of- consciousness soul from somnambulists. Forest noises were rock n' roll. Rock n' roll was forest noise. The thick mix of instruments and sounds seemed far off, emitting from deep inside ancient trees and through the robots' cracking speakers...

I woke in a pool of Newcastle and drool. No clothes covered my sleek and shapely form, aside from boxers and a torn undershirt. A pulsing headache reminded me of the intense music from the night's dream. It was too much to absorb at once. Yet, it called me back. I wanted to splash in those lager streams and skip around that hodge- podge hip-pop orchestra. It had been so psychedelic, yet not excessively experimental. Nothing else sounded like that.

As I rolled out of bed, I felt a piece of platic jab into my ribs. It was a compact disc. On it was a note scrawled in Sharpie: "Stranger, you have visited our land. You can take nothing but this. Play it when you need escape from the city, the grind, the din. The Beta Band can save you."

-Brent DiCrescenzo