But this story doesn’t start there. Instead, it starts in the middle of my first term of University. A couple of guys on my floor were trying to start a band. They had the singer/songwriter/lead guitarist, a drummer with a kit and a rhythm guitarist that had jammed together a few times but they could never find a bass player to play longer than one session. This is where I step in. One night while they were about to jam, they asked me to fill in on bass and apparently wouldn’t take “I don’t know how” for an answer. Since no one really had the same influences or the ability to play much of anything, the decision was made to write a few of our own songs. And because of that lack of ability, the songs started off as generic three chord ditties that could pass for pop-punk before it got all whiny and emo-like. Actually I didn’t mind that because I was listening to a lot of it at the time. Anyways, we kept on jamming for a couple months and ended up with 9 songs. The term culminated with a couple of performances at dorm-sponsored talent shows (although we still had an obvious lack of talent and cohesiveness, especially on the bass end). We also rented a 4 track mixer and put to tape what we had spent so little time crafting. Here’s where I reveal my age; this was before the time when anyone with a computer could make a mediocre recording. We spent a couple days laying down some simple tracks and making rudimentary mixes, and given our lack of talent, lack of practice time, lack of cohesiveness and lack of technology, “Trust Me” didn’t turn out too badly.
Unfortunately, this is the part where our Rock & Roll dreams die. Thanks to the University of Waterloo’s co-op program, all four of us would never be at the University at the same time again. As a result of this (mixed with the general apathy towards practicing and no desire to book shows), the band would never reach mediocrity.
The summer of that year brought about our first real show. Our drummer knew about a Christian Youth Event being planned in Ajax and passed our tape on to the promoter. For some reason, he listened to it and still wanted us to play. so in typical YourFace fashion, we practised once the weekend before (the first time we’d played together since December) and loaded up the Beretta with 5 people, a drum kit, a couple guitars and amps and headed out on the 401. When we got to show, everything was a little disorganized, partly because it was supposed to be outdoors and it rained off and on, and partly because we had no idea what we were doing and didn’t know our material very well. Anyways, we got through our set and had fun. Thankfully, the sound board recording of that day has never been made public. I’ve been told it exists but have never heard nor do I know the whereabouts of it.
The fall brought the lead singer and guitarist back to school while I toiled away in a different city. For the next 4 months, we played together almost every weekend but the rhythm guitarist dropped out almost immediately, leaving us as a three piece. We kept writing new material with more chords and no remnants of anything that could be considered punk rock. The drummer had a friend who was studying sound engineering and had free studio time that was promised to us. So after practising new material once a week for two months, we headed into an actual studio. Once again, we were ill-prepared for what was awaited us. For some reason, we thought that 6 hours of studio time would be more than enough for a band that still struggled with execution to record and mix 13 songs. I’m not sure how we did it but 13 songs did get put down. We were mixing down to the last second and much of it was done on the fly, but at the end of the day, we had a CD with 13 tracks. “Not Where We Should Be” was a huge success considering the lack of effort the band put into it. I think that we managed to sell 40 copies to people that we knew and thankfully, not everyone hated it.
From here, distractions set in and the band members went their separate ways for a while. 18 months later, we got to jamming again and set out with the goal of making a recording that we could be proud of. We enlisted the help of the engineer from our previous disc (bringing on another friend of the drummer as the producer), and gave ourselves a whole weekend to put together another shot at immortality. Unfortunately, we were plauged by unreadiness, a lack of cohesiveness and over-ambitiousness (I sense a theme). Anyway, we managed to get the music down for all the songs but it still wasn’t much to be proud of. We drifted apart for a while but the producer kept working, using his Pro-Tools skills to try and take our poor effort and turn it into something good. A year later, we re-visited those sessions and put down the vocals. After four months of post-production, we were handed a CD of “Best 2 Out Of 3″. Thanks to the tireless efforts of the producer, it was listenable but not the respectable recording we were looking for, but to our ears… we enjoy it. So here we are with three albums and one “real” show after four years.
Don’t worry, we’re finally nearing the end of this drawn-out tale. As we approached graduation (at least one of us approached graduation), we came up with the idea to play one final show as a last hurrah, even though we didn’t really have any fans and hadn’t played together on consecutive days in over three years. We signed up in an online contest to play a show in Mississauga, and thanks to the votes of 15 of our closest friends, we manage to make the cut. The show was scheduled to take place at the end of June with Hulk Hogan MC’ing and K-Os headlining. Two weeks before the show, I got a call that Hulk Hogan had cancelled for personal reasons and the show was off. However, they offered us a slot at a smaller show a week later. Sadly, I was already scheduled to move to Winnipeg the day before the new show, so I couldn’t participate. I guess I should be thankful, the band again practised sparingly the weekend before the show and attempted to play without really knowing the material (especially since a rhythm guitarist and a bass player were brought in and didn’t know the songs). After listening to the sound board recording from that show, I’m a little grateful not to have been a part of that.
This story does skip a few parts… the fan letter from Sweden, the near distribution deal with a .com startup, the time we got played on the campus radio, as well as our “Creep” (well, it would be comparable to Creep if we didn’t keep re-recording it) and “The Slurpee Song”. Here we are four years into the future and I wouldn’t count out a reunion show quite yet, but the lead singer has disappeared and the drummer has moved to Europe. Regardless, I still hold a grudge against Hulk Hogan for causing me to miss the closure to 5 years of fun.
