Even when you're as talented as The Fat Man and his group, Team Fat, computer game music is better than working at a head shop or renting out videos at Blockbuster. George Alistair Sanger closes his eyes and imagines a Lakota Indian warrior.
Sage burns nearby in an oyster shell.
Sanger and his band, Team Fat, are getting ready for a recording session, and they're trying to create an indigenous-people mood. It smells like a prairie fire to me. We're in El Rancho Gordo, a one-story house 20 miles northwest of Austin, and I'm glad there's a police station next door, because the gray haze created by the smoldering sage is giving me a minor case of smoke inhalation. Scattered about are boxes full of unplayed computer games. There's also electrical equipment with bleeping lights and a tangle of cords that look like slithering black snakes.