My band history in Spokane, Pullman, Glens Falls and Fort Collins [Curiosities #39]

Seven Cycles – “Addicted” MP3/download (listen to my old Subtle/etc. compadres crank out the radio-friendly rock!)

I’ve been in several bands. Scratch that, millions of bands. I never planned on blogging about it but it’s interesting to chart the changes and friends that came and went over the years as I moved around and broke up/started new outfits.

Lemme see if I can name them all, in order: 

• Demolish (sixth-grade project with one Matt Wilms, who moved on to KICK ASS  in Smash Velvet and Bullet Club in Seattle; he’s forgotten about Demolish, probably, but I still have the tape and I think of it as important as anything in my Band History because it was the first “album” I self-recorded with my dad’s music equipment and kicked off my fascination with bands/being in bands.)
• Fatal Cross (ninth-grade project with Jeremy Berg, Josh Downing, Abe Walters and Dan Lang; we played one show and a junior-high talent show before I moved to Colorado and Berg started a new band — this would become a pattern; I leave, Berg starts a new band — with Curt Garafalo, Travis Edwards — who would come into play again later — and Bobby Hattenburg, the latter of whom would end up a founding member of Engine #9 and later Flyreal.)
• My Demise (Jeremy Berg, Josh Downing, Ryan Kirkenberg and Shane Yakel. This band lost a member and became … )
• Subtle (20-something project with Berg, Downing, Kirkenberg and Josh Plummer, also known as “Plum-Plum-Plum”; we were told, at the time, we sounded like a “combination of White Zombie and Sublime.” That sounds AWFUL now but back then it made us think we were gonna be rock stars. This was before the hip-hop band Subtle was performing. We played with High Centered, Five Foot Thick, Flyreal, After The Crash, Smash Velvet, The Daryls, News A.D., Clintch and many more.)
• Stigma (This band, which featured Berg, Downing, Edwards and newcomer Josh Plummer, was probably my chance to really make a dent in the “scene.” We were trying to go more melodic with Stigma — with Kirkenberg going on to form Illicit — and though it worked I always wonder what would have happened had we kept Subtle together. And anyway, Stigma broke up after our singer — who will totally admit this; no bad blood here — pulled a no-show for our biggest-yet show, leaving hundreds standing around. That killed us. Also, we saved $500 for a van, bought it, and then broke up. Travis then sold it. Stigma played with pretty much everyone on Subtle’s gig list, plus Kaiser Soze, Planes Mistaken For Stars, Self Inheritance (which became Belt Of Vapor), Level, Rorschach Test, Unified Theory, Zeke, a few christian-metal bands who were eventually much more successful than us, but I just can’t remember their names for the life of me, and, you know, a HELL of a lot more.)
• Another Dead Precedent (Now we’re down to just Berg, Downing, Plummer and a bevy of guest vocalists, including a girl named Susie who is now in an emo band in Spokane called Pitching Woo — she used to “pitch” that named to us and we balked; we proffered the name Dropping Penny, which is a weird moniker considering I now have a daughter named Penny — a trust-fund kid who got all mad at us, an ex-Illicit guitarist who RULED but just didn’t work out and even me, from behind the drumset. Too bad I can’t sing.)
• First Story Jumper (First Story Jumper — by the way, some FAG has stolen this band name, probably some dipshit who went to one of our shows with Civilized Animal and was awestruck — was pretty much Another Dead Precedent: Berg (again), Plummer (again) and Downing with a litany of singers, including one Joel Baxter. We had a song called “Driving Miss Satan” that I still think people should hear. Oh well. Berg, around this time, started Seven Cycles with Kirkenberg, Yakel from My Demise and drummer Kevin Neu.)
• Nameless Numbers (My Pullman/KZUU project with Scott Johnston (aka “Gigglebush”), Nate Prudhon and Matt Green. Nameless Numbers was a godsend for me because I had jammed with a MILLION terrible Pullman bands, including the F-Holes [I'm sorry Mike P., but you guys were like a Ben Folds abortion set to music.]. Nameless Numbers were a good post-rock unit and played some nice underground shows with bands like Saxon Shore, Aqueduct, The Robot Ate Me and the late Jeff Hanson, and also a show at the famous Cold Lab in Moscow, Idaho, where Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective and many others played back in the day … but we broke up after about 6 months, if that. No further comment … )
• The Last Melting Man (I stuck with Plummer for this project and added a dude from Texas named Brennan. We named it after a project Plummer was in, in Boise, in the late ’90s. How the EFF did he talk me into that? This was a long-distance band but a fierce one, bolstered by Brennan’s geek-out guitar playing. B-nan quit the band because his wife didn’t want him to be in a band and, in return, he didn’t want to be in a band. In fact we never even met his wife; she would drop him off at practice then wait outside to pick him up like his mommy, and she didn’t attend our one show at John’s Alley. Bitch — the band’s break-up BLEW a shot we had at playing this super-cool festival in some weird-ass town on Hwy. 195 (Spokane to Pullman). We also tried to work a piano-genius friend of ours into The Last Melting Man but it never gelled into a steady thing. Berg showed up for a few jams in this era too, which we held at this dude’s scooter shop after moving all the faux-Vespas out of the way.)
• Two Wheels (My wife Carolina Suarez-Purdum and I started recording stuff under this name soon after meeting. We scrapped the name and started over because the songs I wrote were terrible. TERRIBLE.)
• Duo Bomber (A — you guessed it — “duo” with Adam Robillard of Glens Falls, N.Y., Duo Bomber is the closest I’ve ever come to being in a truly cutting-edge band. Robillard is a genius when it comes to pitch-bending and he fills out a two-man lineup like no one I’ve ever met. He also suggested “Duo Bomber” and it’s my favorite band name. It’s too bad my wife and I BOTH got laid off and had to leave New York because we were getting set to make some damage. I’m still planning on putting out some Duo Bomber stuff, as is Robillard, from what I can tell.)
• Cookeddd Booksss (This is another my-wife-and-I project that we don’t spend enough time on. But we’ve had a lot of fun, shifting from bent-up folk to pseudo hip-hop — care of a few drum machines I’ve picked up over the years — to improv to noise. We’re gonna be famous for sure.)
• Terrorist Kiss (This is my first real solo project, borne out of … unemployment. I think it’s next-level but you’d probably think it sounds like hot-pink vomit, choked up by a bile-heavy, retarded robot. Hey, that’s what I like these days … )

JESUS CHRIST. I was going to work another topic into this blog but hell, I don’t see how I can keep writing at this point. 

Anyway, I compiled this list really for fun and my own reference and maybe so people who were in these bands can take a look-see and either get excited or pissed off and lawsuit-happy (HA! For what? For what? You can’t drain the blood from a turnip … ).

I love-love-LOVE controversial band-break-up stories so if you have any of yr own post them in the “Comments” for all to read …