Once upon a time there was a New Zealand three-piece guitar band that traveled to Ames.

At home, they were The Nixons, but we already had one of them. So here, they were Eye TV.

Eye TV liked Iowa. They liked the cows especially, so they decided to come back. I don’t really like cows, but I decided to go see them anyway.

Much to my surprise, they weren’t there.

According to Eye TV’s manager, Ashli Lewis, they “blew a fuse.”

Whatever that means, Lewis said she talked to them Thursday morning and everything was cool. By Thursday afternoon, they had fled from Omaha, Neb. where they were supposed to play that night, and were on a plane back to New Zealand.

Now, I’m not in a band or anything, but if I were on tour hundreds of thousands of miles away, trying to make a name for myself, running away would not be on the top of my list of smart things to do.

Maybe they didn’t like the cows anymore. Maybe they missed their sheep. Who knows?

On with The Pit.

Michelle Shocked’s new record, Kind Hearted Woman, will be released on Private Music, Tuesday. This puts an end to the career-threatening struggles she had with her past label.

“She represents everything we look for in an artist and more,” Private Music President Ron Goldstein said in a press release.

Kind Hearted Woman was produced by Bones Howe, who’s worked with Tom Waits, Elvis Presley and The Monkees, among others.

Members of Shocked’s band, The Casualties of War, joined her to record the material in which they had been playing for two years on the road.

According to Shocked, the new songs “are stories I needed to tell, songs I very much needed to sing.”

MTV has found a way for bands to not only be heard, but played. On Oct. 8, the music video network released a new 32-bit video game for Sony’s Playstation.

“MTV’s Slamscape” is the first in a line of new action games that will offer another medium for artists to showcase their music.

The industrial rock outfit, God Lives Underwater, was chosen to record the music for the game. “They’re a hot up-and-coming band, and besides, they are seriously into video games,” MTV Manager of Interactive Products Tony Calandra said.

Unlike most video games, “MTV’s Slamscape” has a musical repercussion for every action, creating a constant shifts and making it one of the most sophisticated video game audio tracks ever attempted.

Tool has announced the dates of its U.S. tour. They will play at the Memorial Hall in Kansas City, Mo. on Nov. 11, the American Theater in St. Louis on Nov. 12 and at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago on Nov. 14.

Corey Moss is a freshman in journalism and mass communication from Uranbandale. He is the assistant editor of Lifestyles. He is not now and never has been fond of cows. His tale is the true story of what was to have been a performance by Eye TV at the M-Shop.