"Knowledge in Pieces", the world's foremost perg rock band, has a long and storied history. Formed by four childhood friends after extensive foundational research, the band's humble beginnings remain a stark contrast to their later success and tragic demise. The band's first gigs were on street corners and AAPT conferences for spare change and free coffee. After recording their first album, however, the band -no- the world was never the same.
Charles Monroe, the band's original drummer and academic advisor recalls, "When we recorded Pre-Operational we were certainly not expecting to precipitate a paradigm shift. Really we were just trying to give the listeners a true sensorimotor experience. I think that really comes out in the track "Be My Piaget", especially in the bass line. Ba dum dum dum. That's my favorite track."
Taking their newly forged musical schema on the road, the band truly tapped into their creative resources. With a string of hits, including "P-Prim Salad", and "Tutorial of Love" (both on the LP Towards an Epistemology of Funk), Knowledge in Pieces knocked the world of it's respective feet.
Fame hit Knowledge in Pieces hard. While the fans preferred old hits like "Timmy's in the Well", the band refused to remain static and instead pushed into a new developmental stage on the album Open ?nquiry. "We weren't so much interested in playing the "right" notes," Monroe recalls. "After all, there are plenty of horrible "right" notes, and plenty of interesting "wrong" ones. I believe Coltrane said something to that effect." Fans disagreed. After a few flops ("Give Me Some of Your Oomph", "I'd Like to SWOOS You Up", etc.) Monroe decided to take over executive function over the band. Other band members blamed his inability to think abstractly and attend to their thinking, but Monroe maintains that they just have severe misconceptions.
In late 1997, Knowledge in Pieces fired Monroe and replaced him with a clicker. Monroe's side project "Post-Doc" acheived marginal success with the provocative "Transfer This!". The remaining members of the band adopted a more "urban" image and abbreviated their name to K.I.P., but all their attempts at recording were sent back to them by the publishers with the simple message "Revise and Resubmit". The lead singer thought this would actually be a good name for an album, but he was punched by the guitarist. In 2002, K.I.P. finally lost coherence and split up, citing "contrasting epistemological frames" in a brief but poignant press release.
Since 2001, there have been persistent rumors of a reunion tour and album, but nothing has materialized to date. Until that day, Knowledge in Pieces will be solely in the mind's ears of their loyal fans.