PLAYGROUND BOSTON

The three extraterrestrials that call themselves Planetoid were in an unusual position last Wednesday at Harper’s Ferry. Ordinarily, the talk from these sharp-dressed spacemen is all about waging intergalactic war, melting faces and enslaving the “fleshbags” that remain. But on this night, the Planetoid showed an unexpected flash of mercy and chose to save the day for the earthlings they had come to destroy.

Perhaps they took pity on us. After all, much of the crowd at Harper’s Ferry was hoping to see grammy-nominated, 247-piece puppet-core goofballs Green Jelly (pronounced “Green Jello”) along with openers Hydrahead, Neurological Damage. However, word began to trickle through the Allston grapevine earlier that day that Green Jelly had fallen prey to a sudden financial disaster when founding member Moronic Dictator’s assets were frozen by his bank. Monsieur Dictator and his mates could not scare up enough last-minute cash to get out of California, and had to cancel the scheduled tour behind their latest release, Musick To Insult Your Intelligence By. Of course, the crowd would not have gotten to see Green Jelly anyway, given that Planetoid would have already reduced them to a steaming mess of slime and bone fragments long before the headliners hit the stage – but the point is, they (the crowd) didn’t know that, and fully expected to be regaled with Green Jelly’s obscene retellings of “the Three Little Pigs” and other childhood favorites.

It could have been a major disappointment, but by the time Planetoid packed up their alien weapons and returned to their mother ship, no one in Harper’s Ferry could be heard asking “where the hell is Green Jelly?”