“Dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, he’s fucking dead, the guy from Brainiac is fucking dead. I want this to mean something to every fucking one of you,” shouted Jeff Buckley from the stage in Memphis on May 26, 1997. He was crying out for Tim Taylor, the 28-year-old leader of rising synth-punks Brainiac, who had died in a car crash near his Dayton, Ohio, home three days earlier. Disturbingly, Buckley himself would drown just three days later.

The son of jazz guitarist Terry Taylor, Tim formed Brainiac (often stylized as 3RA1N1AC) in January 1992 with bassist Juan Monasterio, guitarist Michelle Bodine (later replaced by John Schmersal), and drummer Tyler Trent under the name We’ll Eat Anything. Taylor employed his jazz upbringing in Brainiac, but pursued a more futuristic sonic palette. He sang through vintage Moog and Oberheim synthesizers, while the band frequently voiced its noisy guitars in seconds. On stage, the band was primal, with Taylor spastically writhing around. “They were the greatest live band of all time,” says Charles Bissell of the Wrens, who were early labelmates with Brainiac on Grass Records.

They quickly became a cornerstone of Dayton’s thriving ’90s rock scene, alongside the Breeders and Guided By Voices. Even among those soon-to-be alt icons, many heard and saw and believed that Brainiac was “the one.” They really came into their own when John Schmersal joined in 1994, bringing a new level of eccentricity to an already weird act. “There was a certain amount of individuality among our members, which is common among Ohio bands,” says Schmersal, who later formed Enon and Vertical Scratchers.

With the guitarist’s unique chord shapes now in the mix, Brainiac released what many (including us) believe to be their greatest album, 1995’s *Bonsai Superstar, *before signing to indie stalwarts Touch and Go Records. As Brainiac’s sound grew increasingly electronic with the release of 1996’s Hissing Prigs in Static Couture, the band’s profile continued to rise as well. Both Elektra and Interscope were courting Brainiac, then in pre-production for their fourth album. Hoping to finalize the signing, Interscope bought the band members all plane tickets to New York. But before they made it there, Brainiac came to a screeching halt.

“Juan [Monasterio] and I were about to drive back to Cincinnati [their home at the time],” says Schmersal, recalling his last memory of Taylor. “Tim said, ‘The lady at the BMV is this cute girl, I’m going to put on my best charm.’ He was going to try to sweet talk her into letting him pass an emissions test. He opened the trunk and showed us how, from the wheels up into the trunk, was all rusted out, so the exhaust was just going up into the car. He basically showed us what killed him.”

“I remember sitting on the front porch of his house in North Dayton, after what would be our last Brainiac practice, and all of us being very optimistic about the future,” says Monasterio. “In the same conversation, Tim told me how he had been periodically vomiting over the last day or so, and he had no idea why. At the time, I didn't make much of it much of it, but later it became apparent that was probably a symptom of the carbon monoxide poisoning that took his life.”

Taylor spent the afternoon of May 22 trying to patch the rusted-out floorboards of his new (to him) green 1977 Mercedes Benz. That evening, he worked in his studio until around midnight, when he decided to go to one his favorite weekly events: Alternative-Industrial Night at 1470 West. Around 3:25 a.m., Taylor collapsed behind the wheel less than a mile from his house, his car crashing into two poles and a fire hydrant before bursting into flames. “I know he wasn’t drunk that night because I stole his last beer,” said Molly O’Neil, a longtime friend of Taylor’s who was at 1470 West. The coroner’s report confirmed what those closest to Taylor already knew: it was carbon monoxide poisoning.