A slightly improved history I've written a year later, for a slightly improved band:

There are two sides to the Son of Alf coin. One is blindingly shiny, and one is scratched, bent, and has had every possibe form of fecal matter you can imagine rubbed all over it. The shiny side, is of course, the video game oriented side, and the fecal side is our musical side.

Each band member has different video game roots, stemming from various genres, ages, and even in certain areas consoles. But the important thing is that we've all played a generally unhealthy amount of some sort of video game. This is the only real explanation we can give to our overall insane tendencies. Our minds, which were once like multiple copies of the amazing RPG Chronotrigger, have all been degraded to a sort of Cap'n Crunch RPG like my insane little brother wants to make on RPGMaker. But I digress.

While mentally, we're unstable, musically our history will reveal we are just as insane. The first actual song that has any relation to Son of Alf that was produced was a song prime keyboardist Justin Palumbo made up in order to ensure that his fellow classmates woulld beat up on him just that much harder. This song was "The Man with the Messed Up Hair". The lyrics are as follows:

Obviously Justin was a troubled youth, secretly crying out for help. He wanted to be stuck in acid. But again I digress.

The actual musical history of Son of Alf (Man with the Messed Up Hair, while catchy, was not technically music) should be traced to bassist Kyle Pulley and his distraught friends. For a long while Kyle and his comrades (Pat Sutch, Pat Brennan, and younger brother Bryant Pulley) screwed around playing crap rock that was technically only slightly more likely to be defined as music than Man with the Messed Up Hair. But later, they started listening to that wacky punk music and their music evolved into a slightly less eye-gouge invoking genre, Crap Punk. It would a long a whille before the word crap was only used to define their individual songs and not the genre itself.

Anyway, the main band of yesteryear was Pat Sutch, Adam Brillhart (our drummer), and Kyle Pulley (bassist) in a wacky little band called Short Fuse. For months they played writing bad music and never playing shows, thanks to the Dragon God. Bob Merkl, down the street, was for some reason jealous of this band of theirs and said to himself "I'll show them, I'll make a band that will make them jealous of me!" And so Man Vs. Box was formed with Bob, Pat Brennan, Bryant, and Mat Peppler.

Neither of these two bands played shows except for one show at the end of 8th grade where the two bands managed to embarass themselves beyond belief by playing a party organized by the soon to be master of self-induced shame, Kyle Pulley. Short Fuse played some originals, earning themselves a place in all of our hearts. The place in our hearts called the Shrine of Infinite Hatred, that is. Man Vs. Box somehow managed to do worse, by covering both NOFX's the Brews and Limp Biskit's cover of Faith withOUT distortion. That's right.

Ahem. So anyway the two bands broke up as a result of this situation. However, by the end of that summer kyle was longing for two things: he wanted to be in a band again, and he wanted to embarass himself horribly again. And so, Shot Down Glory was formed with Kyle, Pat Sutch, Pat Brennan, and Bryant. Basically all former members of both bands without Bob and Adam.

But, fortunately, Bob was a spiteful bastard. So in a desperate attempt to get revenge he planned to shame Kyle even further. Back to that in a moment.

Eight grade also marked the first time the phrase Son of Alf was used, you see. Long time friends, Cole Morris and Justin Palumbo, had a crappy inside joke. They, not being in a band like their other friends, Kyle, Bob, and Adam, had a joke band of their own that was called Son of Alf. This band was to be Justin playing classical piano (he'd been playing piano for about 6 years) and Cole playing the first 3 notes of the Popeye the Sailor Man theme song on hamonica. Ironically, this first line up was far more successful than the current Son of Alf, but again I digress.

Back to Bob.

Bob gathered together 4 of his friends at his house where they intended to form a band. The line-up would be Bob on guitar, Adam on drums, Justin on keyboard, Cole on vocals, and Peter Jannen on sax. No bass. 1 horn. Bob was dead serious. This is where the irony comes in. Son of Alf has lasted over two and a half years and played more shows than all the bands previously combined times 10, and yet it started as a crappy chance for revenge with untalented nonmusicians.

Anyway, Kyle eventually agreed to play bass for the band, despite still being with Shot Down Glory; and Peter, realizing he had no idea what the hell he was doing, agreed to leave. Justin, also having no idea what he was doing other than how to play Fur Elise with alarming precision, stubbornly stayed on board.

Eventually, we all learned what the hell we were doing to some extent. Two years have passed, seeing two releases one God awful, one slightly less God awful. Craploads of shows have been played.

Shot Down Glory, on the other hand, became the joke. They played one real show at a hardcore basement show with a bunch of scary guys, where they played covers of RANCID. Needless to say, they broke up shortly after.

So why has Son of Alf been so successful where the other attempts at bands made more seriously and with more effort failed? Well, friend, when you're singing about video games, nothing can stop you except for the final boss of Ninja Gaiden and the second to last puzzle in Lolo's Adventures. We care about video games, far far more than anyone anywhere in any plane of existence has ever cared about music. This is why we're so damned successful, if not so good musically, The fact that we make buffoons of ourselves everywhere we play doesn't hurt either.

PS: After reading this, who DOESN'T hate the word digress?