When you're looking for music to go with a sci-fi play that traffics in government conspiracies, hallucinations and attacks by bugs, you can't do better than a group that's been called "that dirty and bearded band" from Pittsburgh.

	Midnite Snake -- clockwise from top right, Sam Pace, Alexei Plotnicov, Paul Quattrone and Jim Lingo -- bugs out. Click photo for larger image.

Barebones producer Patrick Jordan says it would have been really easy to have just found some pre-recorded music somewhere for "Bug," as past productions have done, but part of his mission is to try to promote Pittsburgh as much as possible, and he says the music scene here is "amazing."

Jordan called on Midnite Snake, a local supergroup made up of killer players from the Modey Lemon, Centipede E'est and Alexei and the Justins.

"I had known Midnite Snake since they started playing," Jordan says. "I know these guys from the scene, and I'm a fan, so it was kind of a coup to get them in one place for a day."

What he wasn't looking for were pretty sounds, and that's exactly what he didn't get. Midnite Snake spent nine hours one day at the New Hazlett Theater laying down a score for "Bug" that's a dark, slithering piece of stoner rock with plenty of feedback and creaking sound effects.

Alexei Plotnicov, a guitarist known for his psychedelic playing, read the script along with the other members of Midnite Snake and knew the group was right for it.

"Our music does lend itself to the kind of mood and atmosphere that the play creates, like delusions and chaos. There was one scene that gets really intense where Patrick just wanted a freak-out."

Midnite Snake gave a freak-out and various pieces of mood-setting music like one slow, minor-chord piece that's a departure for the band. Two of the tracks are intended as songs the characters would be listening to on the radio. One of the favorites is a track the members call "Beer Drinkin'."

"It's a total mock-up of a ZZ Top song," Plotnicov says. "That was awesome because we're all ZZ Top fans. One of these days we'll have to do a ZZ Top cover show."

They have the beards for it.

"Yeah, even the drummer. For the first time we're all bearded at the same time."

Speaking of drummers, Midnite Snake already had one of the most explosive drummers in town in the Modey's Paul Quattrone. Beginning with the "BUG" score, they have two of them, with the addition of Sam Pace, bassist Jim Lingo's partner from Centipede.

"I saw Sam the night before the recording," Plotnicov says, "and thought what better way to initiate him into the group than by throwing him into a recording session? So, we never even practiced with him. I just came to the studio and showed him all the songs. Jim and Paul learned the songs on the spot, too."

Jordan says the hardest part of the Snake project is deciding what to leave on the cutting-room floor.

"They kind of blew us away. The play itself feels like a rock 'n' roll show. It's funny, it's dirty, it's sexy, it's good. Their music fit right in."