What's up, gang?
Book Worm Week is over and done. I feel pretty good about it. In hindsight I don't feel like I made a total fool out of myself or betrayed a complete lack of comprehension. If I did I certainly wasn't aware of it. To thank you for stick around during the theme week, I thought I'd share a bit of a tale about music and the ebb and flow of bands. Something a little literary and a little musical, perhaps.
Here goes.
After a tumultuous senior year of high school my parents made the kind suggestion that perhaps I'd be better off with my uncle Chuck on the west coast, where I could make a little money in his tavern and get away from unsavory influences. I figured my life as I knew it, up to that point, was ending, so what the hell? A single suitcase later, I was heading to Federal Way, Washington to live with Chuck, the two of us sharing his lovely suburban home. I toiled away in the tavern and spent my free time either chain-smoking and reading on his deck (I've long since quit - youthful indiscretion) or wandering local galleries and taking in the Seattle sights.
Being a young man with no friends and little family in the area (Hi Gail! Hi Ben!) I was at a loss for what to do while in the area for the four months I lived in the Pacific Northwest. Unlike my recent obsession with Twin Peaks, this was a sunny, adventurous time of my life, full of punk music and sunshine. So imagine my delight then, when my cousin Jason (and boss, let's be honest) offered a ticket from a friend to the Warped Tour. I was stoked. Only catch - it was three hours away in the Gorge amphitheater and I had no one to go with. This being the days before Craigslist, I decided to just say the hell with it and hopped in the car with a couple packs of smokes and some soda, making the three hour drive through the mountains to see the show.
It was a beautiful drive - we have nothing like the mountains in the middle west. There's just nothing that compares to the clear air of the coast. The Gorge is a hell of a place to see a show, I should say. A natural amphitheater, a whole slew of stages were set up, too many bands to see at any given time to take it all sufficiently in. Aside from the mainstays like NOFX, Bad Religion and Lagwagon and some local band that did a great cover of 'Holiday Road' from National Lampoon's Vacation, there was one little band that caught my ear.
Nobody Wins.
I asked some pierced and tattooed girl near me who they were and she could only offer a name. In my pre-wiki days I thought I'd never hear them again, so I paid rapt attention to their heavy yet melodic show, damn energetic and passionate. I thought I had stumbled on something fantastic and unknown. Plunking down what little money I had at the time, I picked up their only CD - a single with two B-sides, title 'Words Unspoken'. I loved it.
But that was all I ever heard from them.
Even now, I can only find this bare bones Myspace page. How is that possible? Listen to the tracks they put on their page and tell me there aren't countless inferior groups that get more airplay every day. How did I hear this band once, and then never again?
It's stayed with me all these years, this secret awesome single that no one else seems to have any knowledge of. Anyone with any info on the band, throw it in the comments. All I know is they were based out of Seattle and may have put out one more album that I've heard, but it was like a rough precursor to the single. What connection do they have to this other group, The Four Color Process? There seemed like so much promise, but instead they vanished into thin air.
Damn shame.
Book Worm Week is over and done. I feel pretty good about it. In hindsight I don't feel like I made a total fool out of myself or betrayed a complete lack of comprehension. If I did I certainly wasn't aware of it. To thank you for stick around during the theme week, I thought I'd share a bit of a tale about music and the ebb and flow of bands. Something a little literary and a little musical, perhaps.
Here goes.
After a tumultuous senior year of high school my parents made the kind suggestion that perhaps I'd be better off with my uncle Chuck on the west coast, where I could make a little money in his tavern and get away from unsavory influences. I figured my life as I knew it, up to that point, was ending, so what the hell? A single suitcase later, I was heading to Federal Way, Washington to live with Chuck, the two of us sharing his lovely suburban home. I toiled away in the tavern and spent my free time either chain-smoking and reading on his deck (I've long since quit - youthful indiscretion) or wandering local galleries and taking in the Seattle sights.
Nobody Wins.
I asked some pierced and tattooed girl near me who they were and she could only offer a name. In my pre-wiki days I thought I'd never hear them again, so I paid rapt attention to their heavy yet melodic show, damn energetic and passionate. I thought I had stumbled on something fantastic and unknown. Plunking down what little money I had at the time, I picked up their only CD - a single with two B-sides, title 'Words Unspoken'. I loved it.
But that was all I ever heard from them.
Even now, I can only find this bare bones Myspace page. How is that possible? Listen to the tracks they put on their page and tell me there aren't countless inferior groups that get more airplay every day. How did I hear this band once, and then never again?
It's stayed with me all these years, this secret awesome single that no one else seems to have any knowledge of. Anyone with any info on the band, throw it in the comments. All I know is they were based out of Seattle and may have put out one more album that I've heard, but it was like a rough precursor to the single. What connection do they have to this other group, The Four Color Process? There seemed like so much promise, but instead they vanished into thin air.
Damn shame.
