The talented Music department is a great mystery to most people, including the spudWorks staff. But more needs to be known about the inner workings of the people who put notes and words together to create what is debatably the most important art form we as a people have known.

"I got into music because it was better than having to go to football practice," explains one musician who asked to remain anonymous. "I was never really very good at either, but music seemed to make more sense." Such a thing is easy to believe, looking at his small frame and quick, cat-like eyes.

The story is much the same for many of the musicians and composers that work day in and day out in the basement of the spudWorks mid-town headquarters. And while all have varying interests outside of work, all sit and struggle, all day, and frequently all night to produce the sounds heard on the site's music section.

"I've heard people say that women can't play as technically as men in music," explained a female studio guitarist. "Well, I joined this company to prove them wrong." Last week, she just completed work on a song with a guitar solo in a Pentonic scale. "I'd been working with power chords up until then, but learning the scale, really opened up a new world for my music."

But with a wealth of talent like that assembled at this one company, do they think about breaking out to do their own thing?

"Not really," said a bassist who asked not to be identified. "I don't really like most of the people I work with, so I wouldn't begin to think about collaborating with them. I wrote You're Always Right about the people I work with and my girlfriend, and I think that attitude pervades the entire department."

Surely that can't be true. How could a whole department hate each other? How could it continue to exist?

"Musicians aren't good people," answers spudWorks president and CEO Colin Ferm. "They are kind of the lowest of the low, especially the ones that work here. How else can you explain that they've written only one song?"

"The simple fact is," Mr. Ferm said. "Is that I can't fire them because I don't think they'd leave. And then I'd have a C.H.U.D. situation on my hands. Who needs that?"