In 1996, I met a singing trainer named Steven Jones. He was hired by my then-girlfriend as a teacher, and she found out he also played bass guitar. Her brilliant idea was that we all get together and make a band. I have a pretty strong reluctance to getting into music with significant others, but I met Steven and something just clicked. We both knew there was some kind of chemistry there, and so we put up with the ex’s BS for a few months, so we could jam.
One fateful night, Steven basically “broke up” with “us”. In a conversation out in his car after the announcement, he told me it was mainly the GF who made the whole thing unbearable. We definitely shared the same twinges over her performance. The stickiest part was that now I had to break up with her if I wanted to comfortably work with him.
The break-up happened, and it wasn’t just the band. But that’s just another boring unlove story.
Steven knew a drummer name of Steve Powell. He also had a basement. In that basement, the three of us figured out a special magic that pushed us all a little further into musicianship. We all were better together than apart. The sound wasn’t us aping anyone else; it was our sum of everything we ever liked, with our name on it. That’s the way it ought to be.
We played out for about a year. 7/17/97 we half-filled Satryricon as the second bill, mainly by enticing the bar crowd at Fellini’s to pile out and pay cover to see about the racket next door. Later that same year we recorded a 7 song albumette at Haywire Recording. I guess I’m producer, ‘cuz I paid for the studio time and I hold the masters, but Rob Bartleson gets something for such a sweet touch, and for bringing out that wicked Vox.
Sadly, that recording session and the 8 months following it encompassed our peak. We played amazing sets at Beulahland, a basement party, L&C campus, a couple holes in walls that are now filled up. We never got management, really. Me and Steven leaned on Steve to do the booking, and he could only do so much. He had other bands he owed attention, and that’s OK. Steven had medical, personal and financial issues that eventually led him to move to San Diego, and that was really the end. By late-1998, I was looking at the whole thing in the rear-view, wishing I had done a whole bunch of things differently.
But we did record those songs. And they are wonders. I still can’t believe they came from us. I hope you enjoy:
Unleashed by Altar Boy
All of the above, Words, Music, Performance © 1997 Steven Jones, Steve Powell, Trey Schultz.
