Abe Birch has been a drummer all his life, but he's never been successful. Things changed when, after a chance encounter with a bar buddy, he was recruited into Chylok and The Actual Movers--one of the biggest and most unique bands in the world.
Bu...
Some bands come together by chance, like The Doors. Other bands are strategically formed, shaped, reshaped, and regimented over time, like Miles Davis' groups. Bands come together by mistake, by jealousy, by destiny. The Band, Fleetwood Mac, the Traveling Wilburys. There are bands born of rebellion and there are bands that are products of some subculture. And there are bands, too, that would seem to have always been woven into the fabric of the universe, independent of time, The Rolling Stones, and bands the occupy their own universe altogether, The Beatles. And but there are also bands that don't appear to truly fit into time or space or the universe at all. Parliament-Funkadelic. The Mothers of Invention.
Chylok and The Actual Movers, they're different. Nobody, not a single person I've met, can or will say how or why they came together. There's no knowledge of when the band formed (although there is, strangely enough, record of the band's future dissolution, a confounding Treatise (that's the actual title—a confounding Treatise, author unknown)). None of the members of the band were part of the original line-up, but also the band has never had a line-up other than the current line-up. The members of the band can't or won't explain the group's purpose. Even Chylok himself claims adamantly, well, as adamantly as a man like Chylok can, that he was not present for the group's founding. However, I have heard others theorize that no one but Chylok was present for the group's conception. Although, if no one else was there, then how would anyone know?
Only one thing is certain—without Chylok, there are no Actual Movers.
Anyway, for a band like The Actual Movers, with no clearly defined history, per say, there's not much point in wasting the energy or the ink in trying to trace out a probably fabricated path of origin and evolution. As with most things in life, it's much better left to unfold of it's own momentum. And besides, the story I want to tell concerning Chylok and The Actual Movers has nothing to do with their music. Well, almost nothing. It has a bit to do with their music. But that's one of the strangest things about them. There's apparently very little left in the world that doesn't have something to do with their music.
I knew Chylok long before I'd been brought into the inner circle—only I didn't know I knew Chylok. Or, maybe I really didn't know Chylok, I just happened to know another entity who just happened to sometimes occupy the same physical manifestation that Chylok does. Sort of...because come to think of it, they didn't resemble each other either, the man that I first knew and Chylok as I later knew him. (I apologize, but as I write out my own experiences with the band I find myself beginning to question things I've always thought I knew with certainty.) And that's a good example of why it can be troubling for writers and filmmakers to document the band with any accuracy, because it's not only that Chylok is or isn't the person he seems to be, but it's everyone in the group. Each member of The Actual Movers is and is not who they appear to be. And I'm not just talking about stage personas. That's a completely different thing, and that's not what anyone in The Actual Movers has. In fact, if there is any kind of prerequisite for being an Actual Mover, that's probably it—To have no stage personality.
That's not to say the group members are to be mannequins up on the stage. Quite the opposite. One of Chylok's oft-repeated mantras is—'You may lie to yourself, but never lie about yourself.'
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