The Early Days
Back in early 2001, a band was formed at the Northside Music School rock band program, an effort to encourage students to collaborate with each other and jam. The band consisted of Matthew Roberts, who had played in another band of the program a year earlier, Shaun Fraser (me), a newbie playing in his first band, Rowan Mitchell (who tried to play drums), and Ryan someone-or-other who played keyboards. The whole group remained nameless, playing crappy covers of songs such as the Red Hot Chili Pepper's "Californication", Rage Against the Machine's "Guerilla Radio" and.........I don't know if I can even admit it........Blink 182's "All The Small Things." SHUT YOUR HOLE! It's the only song we all knew. Thank god we didn't have a singer or were able to sing and play at the same time.
So this line-up continued till around august until Rowan could not make the Saturday practices because of a job commitment (he wasn't missed), so we were drummer-less for a while. During this time the teacher who helped us filled in on drums, and we continued to play crappy covers of the aforementioned songs and a few Nirvana numbers such as "About A Girl". In October, We were informed we were playing a Northside Music end of year concert at the Joondalup Arena with the other bands in the program. Upon hearing this, we knew we had to get our shit together, because we didn't even have a full band. We enlisted the school to find us a singer, and was successful in finding us one punk rocker dickhead who shall remain nameless (Purely because I cannot and chose not to remember is name) and some dude who didn't even know any songs other than choir shit he played at his school. The audition was shocking, but we needed at least a vocalist, so we went with the punk rock dude. At first the guy was working, despite from the fact that his vocals sounded like a high pitched, nasal stereotypical commercial punk rocker, but crappier. We managed to pull off the Foo Fighters' "Learn To Fly" and the Chili's "Californicatoin" with full vocals and Ryan filling in on drums, however his showing up to practice had become infrequent. 2 weeks before the show, we were getting increasingly worried, because Matt and I were the only ones turning up for practices. One week before the concert, the rare occasion that the full band were in the same practice room came around, and we discussed whether or not we would play. Surprisingly, the singer gave some sort of motivation speech, telling the rest of the group we needed to "practice our arses of individually during the week", and we would do fine.
The First Concert
And so, when we rejoined a week later for our final practice before that evenings concert, we were partially nervous and partially excited. Unfortunately, their was one thing missing....the fucking singer! It was then that the ever-friendly receptionist Kathy came up to tell us he called saying he had to go away for the weekend and wont be at the concert. The three of us all uttered the same word- "Bullshit." He bailed on us, pure and simple. However, we decided to do the concert anyway, because we didn't want to disappoint friends and family. We changed our set, scrapping "Learn To Fly" and "Californication" for Nirvana's "Something in The Way" (to be sung by Matt) and "About A Girl" ( sung by Shaun).
6 hours later, we arrived at the venue. We didn't play the actual arena, but a small room at the top of the complex. A bonus was that we got to play through Marshall stacks. After about half an hour, the crowd was about 30 people, mostly family and close friends. We opted to open, because we we're afraid we'd suck and wanted to get it over and done with. And so, "Showtime" came, and we surprisingly weren't that nervous. Feeling confident, I strummed the opening chords to "About A Girl," and went to sing, but nothing came out. Well, something came out but no-one herd it. The fricking mic wasn't turned on! Kathy ran up and switched it on while we were halfway through the song......it didn't make us sound better though.
Despite this stuff up, we got more and more confident with each song. We screwed up "All the Small Things" royally, because I was still learning how to play and sing at the same time, but that didn't matter because we hated that song anyway. Then came "Something In The Way," one of the most haunting ballads Kurt Cobain ever wrote. I think its safe to say Matt did the song justice, singing it as low as he could while in the verse and bringing it up a bit for the chorus. We actually got a half decent applause after that. And then came our surprise finisher......Rammstein's "Du Hast". This was a last minute decision, and since Matt only knew how to sing the verse (he did it brilliantly with his deep voice and fake German accent), we just went of into a jam based on the songs riffs after the second chorus. The song lasted about six minutes, and after the last distorted chord was struck, their was an awkward silence for one split second, then came a very encouraging and lengthy applause. At first we thought they were glad it was over, but we got surprisingly positive comments from both friends and parents, and Northside Music staff. The manager of Northside even went as far as saying we blew away the other bands, even thought they hadn't played yet, and offered all of us free guitar strings and discounts at the shop. We found this both a learning and encouraging experience, especially considering we were the best band there with so little organization and practice (trust me, the other guys sucked.....damn try-hard blink 182 bands.) And so we decided to continue with the band the next year.....
The New Drummer
After the break for Christmas holidays, the band rejoined on the weekend of the first week back at school. It was apparent that we were drummerless once again, as Ryan had dropped out of the music school and essentially the band. It Was one week later when a new drummer was in the room, a GOOD new drummer. He was introduced as Paul, and then he proceeded to crank out some drumming I hadn't actually herd anyone do since I went to the Big Day Out 13 days prior. Another bonus was he had a Nirvana shirt on.....I liked him already.
So we continued to jam as a 3 piece for a while, and as we got to know each other, we connected more musically. By this stage we were playing the old songs bar "All The Small Things", but also attempting faster songs with more complex riffs and solos (well, complex for us anyway), such as Nirvana's "Love Buzz" and "School". We were pulling these songs of a lot more proffesionally than in the past, however we were still lacking in the vocals, as none of us had bothered to learn to play and sing at the same time over the holidays. We were playing it ok, just out of time in some parts. However, things were looking up with the announcement of our next gig.
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