Scientist, adventurer, lover, aesthete - Mick Palmer at 30 was a bored retiree, having invented Magnetic Resonance Imaging. "My only exercise was strolling out to the mailbox to get my royalty checks," he laughs. "After Direct Deposit, I barely ever got out of the house."

A brief flirtation with Mortuary Science soured when he read the Swimsuit Issue of Embalming Illustrated. Mick had already mastered the complexities of the 96-tone scale; several newly discovered species (and two comets) were named for him; had been Patrick Swayze's stunt double; had successfully debunked the "hook man" myth; what worlds were left to conquer?

What, indeed. Roaming the earth disguised as Antonio Banderas (to avoid being mistaken for Patrick Swayze), he trekked to the remote lamasery of the Eternal Masters of Space and Time in Nepal or someplace, offering his services as apprentice and general factotum. Gently rebuffed, since the place was already lousy with wannabes and gofers, he was advised to "look inward by looking outward."

"Or was it the other way around?" he muses. "The old guy's accent was pretty thick." At any rate, he returned to the USA with renewed focus and sought fulfillment in grueling day labor. Many lacerations, jars of Tiger Balm, and a concussion later, Mick decided the old guy had said "... look downward by looking upward."

"He lost me there," said Mick, "I should've taken Dad's advice and been a starving rock musician. Mick Palmer, Underground Legend... yeah."  All that remained was to find a group of like-minded musicians, and he joined the nascent Big Stack Daddy in Lawrence KS, a town teeming with Underground Legends.

And fulfillment... has Mick found it?

"Uh, sure," he says. "Why not?"

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