Cataloging Where I've Been Going Wrong Part 1

As I stated yesterday (this begs the question...if you are still awake, was something that happened less than 12 hours ago still yesterday? even though yesterday hasn't ended....whatthefuckever), I began playing shows 10 years ago. I’m not 100% sure what this says about me, so in an effort to figure that out, I am going to chronicle all of the shitty (and sometimes not so shitty) bands I have played in since I was 13 years old. This is going to be about as enthralling as it sounds…apologies for anyone who somehow found their way here to see pictures of witty remarks written on bathroom walls. I leave for four again in like, a week and a half…there will be plenty of that to come.

Before I begin I think I should first put in writing what constitutes as a “band.” By a band I mean, we practiced more than once and had songs and a bandname and maybe played shows, even if all of the before mentioned qualifiers were fucking terrible. But, my first ever attempt at playing music with friends never produced a song, only practiced twice, but had a real, REAL shitty name and never played. So, we wont go over that abomination. Instead, we’ll start with a slightly smaller abomination…

Punx Named Bob (August 1998 – March 2001)
Like most people (with the exception of Lars Ulrich and that bass player from Thrice), my first band was absolutely god awful and no one gave a shit about us. I played guitar and wrote all of the music and lyrics, and since I was 13-16 during this time and had absolutely no perspective on the world around me…I produced songs that were rip offs of my friends bands and Blink-182. I played guitar very poorly, sang terribly, and all and all was the conductor on a trainwreck that I still can’t escape. Every once and a while someone will bring up the fact that I was in a band called Punx Named Bob and my heart shrivels up and dies a little every time. We played a bunch of shows at Slapp Records in Forrest Park, which was a dump next to a teen center. One time I left my bag in the back area of the venue and my cellphone (please don’t ask me why I had a cellphone when I was 14 or 15 years old) was stolen by one of the kids who frequented the Teen Center. We recorded an EP at Southside Studios which I hated from the second we got the “master” back. We paid for it by using all the change from a change jar from my recently deceased grandmothers house (that actually had close to $500 in it), and my dad let me go to his office to print off the inserts for our “CD.” I was embarrassed every time someone bought a copy from me, but still have a copy for some reason. We made a lot of friends in the scene and were constantly told by the “older bands” that when we got a little bit older we were really going to be a great band. I didn’t realize it then, but now looking back this was just there sweet way of saying that we were a really bad band. I can’t blame them.

More Than Maybe (April 2001 – May 2002)
Punx Named Bob had enough sense to change our name (but only after going by Punx Named Bob for two and a half years…), but changing your name to something you lifted from a GoldFinger lyric isn’t much of a jump. Somewhere along the lines of More Than Maybe, we all started listening to a lot of Thrice, Poison the Well and In Flames (for the record, I hated In Flames then, and still hate them now) and it started to show in our music. I started screaming some, which I guess was kind of cute. As More Than Maybe we played a couple shows and started to get a name for ourselves in the suburban Atlanta scene. Andrew Wiggins smashed his guitar after a show we played with a bunch of bigger Atlanta bands, so after that we thought people saw us as a band with a “crazy” live show, so we tried to expand upon that. One day we went and saw Fall On Deaf Years from Philadelphia at Under The Couch and became enamored with how the band played in the middle of the floor and not on the stage. Obviously, we stole this idea from them. We actually got to play with Fall on Deaf Years in May 2002, which was one of our last shows ever and was actually the first time I ever played with a touring band. Back then I couldn’t really grasp what a touring band is. Funny aside, the three guys in Fall of Deaf Years and the four guys in Green is Mean (and possible a merch guy) toured in a Ford Taurus towing a small trailer. Two of the guys actually rode in the trunk. Shit was insane. Anyway, we broke up after Andrew Wiggins quit our band because he wanted to play hardcore. If you know Andrew Wiggins now, you know how awesomely absurd this is. Oh, and when we were changing our name from Punx Named Bob to More Than Maybe, the guys wanted the new name to be Covered Bridge Arson Conspiracy Project…or the shorter version Covered Bridge Conspiracy. I was adamantly against it, and was ridiculed and called an asshole countless times for not liking the name, but I still stand by the fact that “Covered Bridge Conspiracy” is the most ridiculously stupid fucking idea for a band name ever.

Dead By Summer (September 2002 – Summer 2003)
After Andrew quit “> M.” (did I mention this was our abbreviation for More Than Maybe? We were a bunch of fucking assholes, weren’t we?), I wanted to keep playing in bands. Andrew had also quit Dead By Summer for some similar reason (he ended up starting a metal band that had a really, REALLY terrible name that I can’t remember right now. I think it was Lot 13, but I could totally be mistaken, anyway, they sounded like a bad Between the Buried and Me. Their singer wore face paint an JNCO’s when they played. I actually sang for them once cause he was so bad), so I jumped in to play bass. I had never played bass in a band before, but figured if I had played guitar in bands, I could just as easily play bass…and I was pretty right. I am by no means a great bass player, and I probably just as good of a bass player now as I was back then. Anyway, Rhys, our drummer use to like to throw his drumset after we played, so Daniel took to the habit of throwing his guitar across the stage when we were done, so, like an idiot, I did the same with my bass. I have no idea why I thought this would be a good idea, but I did, and actually destroyed a bass I bought simply to destroy. What a dick, right? Anyway, we stopped being a band after we stopped being friends with our guitar player Kerry. It’s a really long story but in short Kerry hated us for something that didn’t really involve any of us, blah blah blah. Rhys also moved to La Grange to go to school, only to drop out very soon after. We made one recording that, given the circumstance of recording it and how young we were, I think is a pretty decent little EP...regardless of the worst fucking bass tone ever.

I guess that’s where I’ll leave it for now. Things start to pick up HERE…as I continued to play bass very shittly in bands for 6 more years, with some guitar thrown in there as well.