At Venus, Snowden’s crude-looking, unheard demo was relegated to an Everest of unsolicited “mystery” cassettes that would be plastic-bagged and sold five-for-a-buck. One day, the curious Ratboy noted the ingenuous, disarming black-and-white cover photo of B. J. and said, “We gotta listen to this.” Bob Giordano, a fellow sales clerk, recalled, “Ratboy put it on and everybody was mesmerized. People in the store would stop and say, ‘What the hell is that?’ They’d never heard anything like it.” Venus patrons are among the planet’s most ennuyé; they’ve heard, read, seen it all. How did B. J.’s tape
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