Towards the end of 1999 I was working on a piece for MIDI guitar and computer. The title of the piece is Landfall II: Flaming Skull, and it is inspired by the Bovinian skull burning ritual. This is a serious "concert" piece, which I have now performed many times on various concerts and electronic music festivals all over the country. Since I created it while Bop and I were writing TMP, it was very much influenced by those ideas. I always expected some of the musical ideas in the piece to turn up in TMP, maybe in the overture, or the finale. What I didn't expect was that it would show up (although in an edited form) as one of the songs in the cycle.

One of the biggest gaps in the cycle was the need for SOMETHING to go between Kill Dog Pass and Longrows. I had suggested many times that Bop try writing a lyric about cows, since we had songs about pigs and dogs, but it just didn't happen. I can sort of see why, cows don't inspire the way pigs and dogs do.

Anyway, come summer of 2009, and I realize that if I trimmed it a bit it would fit right in here, and though its not about cows, it is about cow skulls on fire.