OXIDE IS
Nathan Higgins - Vocals, 2nd guitar. Age 17. Nathan plays a Fender Telocaster through a Fender Frontman amplifier. He uses a BOSS Metal Zone MT-2 pedal.

Nick Blanchard - Guitar, backup vocals. Age 17. Nick plays a Squier Stagemaster through a Marshall amplifier. Nick uses a BOSS Distortion D2 pedal.

Greg Baney - Bass. Age 16. Greg plays a Fender P-bass through a Fender Bassman amp.

Jason Robinson - Drums. Age 18. Jason plays on a Sunlite set, with Remo heads and Sabian B8proSymbols. Jason uses a dual Gilbritar pedal setup.

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[The Myth Behind the Mystery - 7/20/02]
Written by Nathan Higgins and Jason Robinson in the third person… for no reason.

The band known as oxide today started, insignificantly enough, back when two of its current members, Nathan Higgins and Jason Robinson, were in 8th grade, circa 1998. As many kids that age obsessed with rock music do, these two kids decided that they wanted to start a band. A few problems came up pretty quickly. First of all, neither Nathan or Jason played an instrument. Neither had any musical experience really whatsoever. Both knew however, what they wanted to play. Nathan was dead set on being the classic leadman, playing guitar and singing, and Jason just had to be a drummer. Their mutual longtime friend Chris McCoy, was all over this band idea as well, and offered his services as a bassist who had never even touched a bass guitar. The three called themselvesLucid. A pathetic start overall, but it just keeps getting worse.

Once word got around the whole of Lewis Central Middle School that someone was starting a band, everyone wanted to be in it. By the end of the entire fiasco about 7 people were in the "band", and none of them could play or even owned instruments. The whole thing had become such a joke that Nathan, Jason and Chris were just basically disgusted with everyone running around flaunting the fact that they were in some imaginary band. So the three core members decided to "leave" the band, while taking the name, and the few lyrics that the three had managed to write despite the fact that they were in 8th grade and they were pretty stupid in the first place. The band basically remained 3 guys who had no talent, no instruments and no music for a while.

Take a step into the future to spring of 1999. Chris got a guitar for
his birthday. A Hamer Slammer that the authors of this little history lesson still despise to this day. Neither Nathan nor Jason understood why Chris got a regular electric guitar instead of a bass, but neither really cared considering the fact that someone in the band finally had an instrument, even if it wasn’t what they were supposed to be playing. So Chris and Nathan dicked around on the Hamer for a while, picking up some rudimentary guitar skills from getting tabs off of the internet and practicing them to death. The band still really wasn’t going anywhere, but an instrument was actually in the possession of someone in the band, and that was just fucking amazing.

Time passed until an actual relevant event came to pass. Nathan got a guitar in October of 1999. A blue Squier Affinity Series Telecaster. For those not familiar with guitars, Squier is like the cheap version of Fender, and Affinity Series was synonymous with low quality. On top of all of that, the guitar was damaged making it even more laughable. Nonetheless, Nathan bonded with that guitar immediately, and would play for hours on end. Immediately, Nathan began writing *ribbit* his own riffs and fashioning songs out of the better ones. A level of accomplishment never achieved by the
three misfits that called themselves Lucid. Nathan’s life for a few months consisted of that guitar and that guitar alone. School was irrelevant considering he failed just about every class anyways, and didn’t have a girlfriend or any such things distracting him.

Understandably, Chris got a little bored with this little band, and his
interest started to wane as a bassist, he didn’t even have a bass guitar anyways. A good friend of Nathan and Jason, Adam Kealy, expressed some interest in taking his spot. So Adam sort of took Chris’ spot unofficially, but it really didn’t mean a whole lot considering neither of them even owned a bass. Then comes Christmas of 1999. Adam gets a bass, but more importantly, Jason gets a fine set of Sunlite drums. The new trio of Lucid started trying to play together, but for a few reasons, it didn’t seem to sound all that good. Maybe it was because Nathan had managed to fuck up the wiring on his guitar, making playing through an amp impossible, or maybe it was the basic lack of skill overall, but the band didn’t seem to really accomplish a whole lot. But goddamnit, they had instruments, they were a band.

Time passed in much the same way had been doing for quite a while, and while Nathan got his wiring fixed and could finally make loud noises, and him and Jason played together quite often, the band still wasn’t anywhere near getting off of the ground. Then came the inevitable name change stage of the band. It had come to Nathan’s attention that there was already a band named Lucid, and quite frankly, he and the rest of the band were kind of sick of the name anyways. So they adopted the name Paying Customers, it seemed clever at the time, but it just seemed to lose its appeal each time it was uttered. Then they were Oxide. They all seemed happy with the name, no one had a problem with the name oxide, but inexplicably, the name changed to Exit Wound. No one knows why, and no one ever will. After running that name through their heads for a while, they decided to shift back to oxide. And no matter how tired they got with that name they were sticking to it, changing your name all the time is just dumb.

As the summer of 2000 dwindled down and fall started (that’s what usually happens), Chris expressed a renewed interest in the band, so he was let back in as a backup guitarist. Junior year was starting, and now the band was nearing its third year of nothing. Nathan had managed to write a plethora of mediocre to decent riffs, and had made full-fledged songs out of a lot of them. The foursome of oxide managed to bang out one half-assed song with absolutely no lyrics. This song is what is known today as Absent, and it sounded much worse back when it was first created. But things were more exciting now, Nathan had his own amp, everyone had instruments, everyone could pick up the instrument and actually play something. The band still really went nowhere.

The frustration with the actual difficulty of creating music kind of got
to everyone, and practices become less and less frequent. Everyone kind of went on with their lives with the band as something that was always there, but no one ever really worked on it. By the time senior year started in 2001, Adam had parted ways with oxide, citing his failure to really ever practice and his lack of basic interest. It became harder and harder to drag Chris along to a practice, but Nathan and Jason were still pretty enthusiastic about the band, despite the fact that we had accomplished nothing in 3 and a half years. A mutual friend of Nathan and Jason’s for some time, Nick Blanchard, had been hanging out with the band for a while, and picked up Chris’ bass from time to time and made noises that no one else understood. After a while, he got his own bass, an Ibanez, and was there to play covers with Jason and Nathan when Chris wasn’t present, which was becoming more and more frequent. Chris wasn’t "officially" out of the band, but his constant absenteeism made it pretty clear that he had lost a lot of interest in the band.

While the band was making some minor progress, Nathan got himself a girlfriend, and spent all of his weekends with her, which was the band’s practice time. So for about 5 months, there wasn’t really any activity with the band at all. Everyone still practiced, on their own, with the exception of Chris. Nick also managed to get himself a Squier Stagemaster in December of 2001, and began to practice all the time, much like Nathan with his Telecaster. When Nathan’s relationship ended and the following period of depression and such finally subsided, he dedicated himself completely to the
band. An agreement between Nathan, Jason and Chris about Chris’ membership had been reached. Chris was out. The parting was amicable, and now Nick was in the band as a second guitar.

The search for a bassist was on. And what oxide got was Greg Baney. A longtime acquaintance turned friend and former neighbor of Nathan, Greg expressed a lot of interest in joining oxide. Jason and Nick had no objections and when Greg showed up for a practice and showed Nathan and Jason what he could do, it was decided right then and there that Greg was the new bassist. Greg brings an incomprehensible element to oxide, he’s just fucking weird, but you wouldn’t know it by looking at him.

By this point, with Nathan having picked up his feverish obsession with playing guitar and songwriting all over again, he began writing riffs that got stuck in everyone else’s head. And as he played them for everyone, the other elements of the songs just seemed to write themselves. The fact that there was finally a microphone within the possession of the band made things even better. Everyone in the band was very excited about where the whole thing was headed.

After over four years of frustration, name changes, roster changes, and a real lack of what makes a band a band, the songwriting and musical talent of oxide has reached an acceptable level of maturity. Where it goes from here is really irrelevant, as long as they can make music they’ll be content. Now go tell all of your friends about them.