1. Why The Band Broke Up
When Tina Roxbury moved from Melbourne to Byron Bay she told everyone she had a ganja genius of a brother Bob Marley once hired to roll his spliff between concerts, a tantric aunt who had group sex with The Beatles when they were in India studying The Unified Field Theory with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a pyromaniac uncle who taught Jimi Hendrix how to pour lighter fluid on his Strat at Monterey, a forensic cousin who was personally in possession of the bullet shells that ended Kurt Cobain’s life, and most recently she confessed a best friend who was riding in the very same helicopter that shipped Michael Jackson’s drug-addled body to UCLA hospital on Santa Monica Boulevard the very day the King of Pop died.

It was enough to impress Rainbow Day-Glo the lead singer of Reincarnation, a new age band of mythic proportions who had released three independent singles no-one had actually heard but everyone swore were classics. They fell hard for each other, especially when Tina discovered a hitherto unknown talent for baking what the band swore were the best hash cookies in the entire universe. 

Now despite his legendary status Rainbow was not an ideal companion for someone who was trying to make a living out of baking hash cookies and selling them in hippie halls across Australia.

In theory:
He sang
She baked
The crowds came
The cookies sold out
The money came in
He sang again
She baked more
The crowds grew
The cookies sold out 
The money came in.

In practice:
He sang
She baked 
The crowds did not come
They ate the cookies
The band split up.

2. Talking Buddha Stick Blues

Rainbow sold the band’s Kombi and PA and withdrew to a treehouse in the middle of a massive mangrove swamp where only the sound of copulating mosquitoes penetrated the canopy of silence. Once there he lived on an exclusive diet of buddha sticks and unrequited love. To pass the time he threw the 47 yarrow sticks that divined The Book Of Changes and gazed into a crystal ball a wandering gypsy had swapped him for two deals of Mullumbimby Madness, praying with the combined wisdom of all his seven chakras that he would be reunited with Tina.

 
Sadly, the only person who ever visited was his dope dealer Barry The Birdman.  Between the buddha sticks and the silence Rainbow began writing reams of love-poetry. When The Birdman offered to be his emissary Rainbow was overcome with joy. He was certain that the moment Tina heard his poems she would realise her true destiny. 

However, something totally unforeseen occurred. Every second Wednesday The Birdman arrived at Tina's door clutching a fresh satchel of Rainbow’s love poetry. Tina always welcomed her guest with feigned surprise. She would quickly usher him onto an enormous back verandah overlooking an horizon twisted with hills, banana plantations and the glint of a windmill turning ever so slowly in the late afternoon.

There the two sat on a tortoiseshell cane couch sipping iced tea, eating slivers of watermelon mango and plums, while The Birdman withdrew the contents of his satchel and began the recital.  Intoxicated by the moment he utterly abandoned himself to these declarations of love, forgetting entirely from whose pen they flowed. 

Only when he returned to the mangrove swamp and saw Rainbow deliriously pouring himself into new and ever more erotic verses did The Birdman remember the true author. By that time, it was too late.

 

3. How Do You Straighten A Crooked Heart?

There were many theories surrounding the circumstances of Rainbow's death. Everyone agreed that while it was difficult to know his exact mental state one fact was certain: Rainbow was stoned. A rumour persisted that for seven stoner days and nights Rainbow levitated in lotus posture above the mangrove swamp chanting ancient Sanskrit texts and smoking endless Buddha sticks before those fatal waters swallowed him whole.  

Questioned by local police Barry The Birdman who had discovered Rainbow wedged face-down between two massive mangrove roots repeated endlessly, “But he was a great poet man.”  In the end the coroner’s verdict was death by accidental drowning.

Police divers did however uncover a pair of dentures tied to a crystal ball by braids of finely woven pubic hair. When one of the divers, a recent graduate of the Police Academy who had a secret interest in the occult gazed into the crystal ball, he saw a man and a woman making love on a tortoise shell cane couch. 

He immediately understood Rainbow died of nothing more complicated than a broken heart.

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