Rainbow Unicorns and Fluffy Puppy Dogs

Rainbow Unicorns and Fluffy Puppy Dogs is a Vatican City death metal band. They are the acknowledged leaders of the NWVDMTADS (New Wave of Vatican Death Metal That Almost Doesn't Suck) music genre.

Beginnings

Band founders Paolo Maccartini and Johannes Lenin first met as youths in the Scola St. Ioannes Caput Ejus in Disco (The Holy St. John's Head on a Platter Academy). This was and still is the prestigious and secret school for bastard children of cardinals and the Pope. Both shared a common history since both were kept back several terms and both had long histories of disciplinary problems. As Paolo recalled 'We first met up in kindergarten. Johnnie bummed a fag and then we split a beer he had. We was mates from then on'. Further bonding happened when they were caught with the teaching sister's can of Red Label, who then sat them in chairs and tied them up back-to-back for hours. Both Paolo and Johnnie were just aged 18 at the time and were permanently scarred by being tied to chairs made for 5 year olds. Johnnie stated 'We got booed early on for imitating the Chuck Berry duckwalk, but that move came from being all cramped up after being tied to those stinking chairs'.

The two quickly found that they were interested in the same music, loud with a pounding beat. To their surprise, they were encouraged by the nuns to follow their musical interests, albeit as far away as possible. They vowed to start a band upon graduation to first level, when they would be able to steal instruments. However, this would not happen for four more years.

When out and about on parole on one weekend, Paolo and Johnnie were holding a young man upside down and shaking him to get any loose cash or sweets out of his pockets. Just before passing out, the victim suggested 'why don't we start a band?' After the concussed youth got out of hospital, they did just that. That person was no less than Brit Brian Jones, still quite young and still quite dizzy. It was Jones who suggested the band name Rainbow Unicorns and Fluffy Puppy Dogs to go along with his growing interest in psychedelic music. But while Jones played oboe and triangle, Paolo and Johnnie favored shredding on electric guitars turned up to maximum volume, singing in the resonant bass mumbling favored by Vatican natives. A frustrated Jones split with the duo, but it would be weeks before they knew about it after they had gone deaf cranking up the sound. But as Johnnie noted 'If it was good enough for that Beethoven geezer, it was good enough for us'. Jones would eventually form his own band, the Stone Roses (or somesuch) and faded into obscurity.

Still, the duo felt they were getting lost in the burgeoning Vatican City death metal scene with an ever-changing cast of bassists and drummers that were lacking in one way or another. It would be a number of years before they met the ones who would eventually take them to worldwide success, Ricardo Starrachino and Giorgio Arrissone.

Ricardo had all the credentials for metal that one would expect. Yet he was a contradiction of sorts, a highly intellectual and educated son of an upper class family living in Rome's Parioli neighborhood. As a chartered accountant, he had all the criminal tendencies that make metal musicians such legends. Yet what set him apart from the crowd is that he could play the oboe at the same time he drummed. And he could play it loud. He was hired on the spot after a tryout. Giorgio was hired based on his sneer and ability to get out of the way when either Paolo or Johnnie were running across the stage. His amplified ukulele had no equal, with his tapping and freeform shredding technique getting him thrown out of the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain for being too obnoxious.

Then Paolo had a revelation: wimp out and sell out completely. Rainbow Unicorns and Fluffy Puppy Dogs would now live up to their name. The band members cut their hair and adopted a retro 1970s look in pastel colors with bell bottom pants. Paolo switched to a child's keytar with only four notes, with Johnnie 'playing' bright loops and bass lines on synthesizers. Vocals were still low rumbled verses in Vatican dialect, though now often involving such topics as Hello Kitty and drinking juice. Most of all, the band was still very, very loud. Whilst they still performed mock blood sacrifices on stage, they now did them with stuffed animals, all amidst a frightening stage version of Hell made of brightly coloured balloons.

Concert tours

Mall Maul

The band's first real public appearance was at a mall record store, broadcast on live television. Ironically it was not interrupted by the death of four teenage girls.

The band's manager, Peter Paul Marian, secretly released several dozen pink-dyed mice as a publicity gimmick. Unfortunately, the crowd of 1,500 in the Jesus Loves You Shopping Center panicked and rushed for the exits, crushing the four girls to death. As a result, the band got its first record deal. They released their first album which they called Mall Maul in honor of the girls. Three of the album's songs charted, which were the title track Mall Maul, Pink Mice of Death, and Sweet Sally, Pretty Pauline, Cuddly Caroline, and Huggable Hayley All Got Crushed to Death in a Shopping Mall.

Free Death

To make up for the disaster of their first public appearance, they did a second concert where 3,000 people didn't die. Four did. Some fans sneaked on stage, one taking the place of a dummy in a coffin that was part of the band's show, a show where the coffin exploded. Then three died in a hit and run accident in a swimming pool. Experts are still trying to figure out how that happened.

UK tour

To fine tune their arena act, the band did a free concert for prisoners in the United Kingdom at Wormwood Scrubs. Guards' teenaged children were allowed to attend, with just two reported missing after the concert. The gig was considered a rousing success, although not without tragedy, when three teenaged girls clutched live power cables to their breasts whilst jumping up and down in puddle of water and screaming for the band. Their electrocutions almost overshadowed the famous incident when a large rat was thrown on stage whereupon Johnnie picked it up and bit off its bum. Despite being a test, Kerrang!! magazine rated it as 'not quite worth risking a capitol offence to see them' but 'still worth standing outside the venue for a listen whilst waiting for mugging victims'.