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The following is a simple account of some of the more profound, interesting, or significant experiences that the band has been involved in during the last three years. Much more to follow...
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Four and a Half
Chapter Five

Chapter 1: The Beginning

Monday September 2nd, 1996. This day marks the beginning of something that is thus far endless. This was the day that we started the band. It was our first practice, and we wrote our first song.

The band at the time consisted of what was soon inconsistencies. Nate sang, I played drums, Mike was on guitar, and Ahmed rounded the band out on bass. During the first few practices we wrote three songs and must have made at least that many tapes. “Bonus” was a song from Nate and Mike’s old cover band “Blessed Oblivion”, “Backseat Saucer Driver” is the oldest song we have. It came from a band that me and Mike were in called “Sailor Sluts”. The best song of the bunch was “Sleep” which was later renamed “Guilt Trip”. The band at this time had no name, and was referred to only as band. It was comical in a sense, Ahmed would fall asleep during songs, Nate sang with a British accent, and I sucked ass, (which I guess is just a relative term). We made tons of recordings and had a lot of fun. We wrote to more songs “Garbage Bag Freakshow” and “Yaboo’s Dream Palace” which were pretty much in the same vein as our others, which is to say that they were simplistic outbursts of pure rock and roll energy and youthful errors that only a bunch of fourteen and thirteen year adolescents could make.

One day, Nate was late for band. While we were waiting, we asked Mike’s brother Mat to fill in and just sing the words while we played. He was vaguely familiar with the songs, since we were polluting the Labelle household for nearly two months by this time. Things went surprisingly well. Nate then mentioned that he didn’t want to sing any longer (since at heart he’s a bass player), which opened the door for Mat. When Mat joined of course, changes needed to be made. mat moved to vocals, Nate moved to bass, and Ahmed once again rounded out the sound of second guitar. Along with Mat came some new songs “Utopia”, “Domtor Express”, and “Figure 8”, all songs that Mat had previously written or co-written with his old band “Bliss”. The sound improved, which was still not saying much.

Our first show came about as a fluke. Our fellow Churcillian, Dave Kuruc received a flyer for bands interested in playing shows. Somehow he knew that we were a band and passed it along to us. This is where the name of the band originated. On the signup sheet we had to fill in the name of the band, naturally, but since the rep from the promoting company was only at school for the afternoon, Mat had to come up with a name quickly. He wrote down “Empathize”, which was just a mockery of names previously suggested by Nate and myself. I put forth “Apathy”, which Nate misheard as “Empathy”, which in turn evolved into Empathize. We found out that we had the show about a month before the actual date and we practiced every single day from that day on, just to make sure we were ready to be onstage.

Our first encounter with anyone else in the music industry was a clear indication of our naivety. We arrived almost an hour early and eagerly awaited our meeting with the concert organizer. He arrived late, and led us up to the attic of a Chinese food restaurant. In this room, we stood among seventeen or eighteen other bands, including Fink, Subdominant, and the predecessors of the Fuzz, Leviathan. We were explained the terms of agreement for taking the show, which basically stated that we had to sell thirty tickets at $9 each to have a chance at winning. We went ahead with it. Details of the show can be found in the show history section.

A few months later, Dave presented us with another chance to play, this time at the famed X-Club for the Secondary Press battle of the Bands. We attended the meeting, which was a similar deal, and everything was pretty much the same. The main difference was that this show was still months away from the meeting, which must have been in early December.

Things for the band pretty much continued the same way, although we cut our practicing down to three times a week. In January, we decided that we needed to go record a demo. We called around and found a little studio named “JSG Recording Services”, whose slogan was “Small studio, big sound”. On the day that we went down to meet the guys at JSG Mike and Mat were being themselves and decided to sleep in until four o’clock, which meant they missed the meeting. Nate, Ahmed and myself went on our own and explored all 50 cubic feet of the place. It was there that we met Jordan and George, two of the co-owners. We reached an agreement with them since we had a limited budget ($300). We went away from the studios panting like monkeys, I think it as my first profound sexual experience, though I can’t be sure.

When the time came to record, we were as anxious as Adam Burchill sitting in front of a hamburger. We entered the studio on February 2nd and ended up doing nine tracks for our first “official release”, “My Boss Is A Jewish Carpenter” (Note: At the time we were unaware of its religious connotations). The tape subtended the songs “Guilt Trip”, “Enclosure” which broke the four minute mark that we did not surpass until this point, and “Desire/Despise”, a frantic battle of two guitars trying to see who was the furthest from being in tune. Other songs included “Domtor Express”, ”Figure 8”, and our first attempt at a slow song, the convalescent “Chimes”. We added “Garbage Bag Freakshow” and “Yaboo’s Dream Palace” for good measure. The initial “shipment” (handful) was twenty-five tapes. We sold them all quickly, but never bothered getting more. Like all recording, we look back upon this with a degree of regret, wishing that we would’ve waited a few more months , or at least written better songs quicker.

The greatest thing about the recording was not the songs themselves, but the whole atmosphere. Mat was segregated from the band to the upstairs area, which was more or less a closet. He had to sing sitting down. Nate, Ahmed, Mike and I were crammed into a little room adjacent to the mixing room, which was kind of cool since we could see Jordan. We were all hooked up with mics and headphones, which led to some funny conversation, mainly due to our stupidity and immaturity. For example:
Jordan:That was the balls!!
Nate :What? We lick balls? Fuck you Cheech!
Jordan:Call me Cheech one more time and I’ll rip your nuts off!
Nate:Okay sorry buddy, calm down.
Band:[Laughter...]

After the recording we had two more shows lined up. One was a return to Fortune Village and the other was a trip to the infamous “X-Club”. The X-Club show didn’t go as smoothly as possible, and had one serious repercussion. After this show, we made the decision to part ways with Ahmed. He was missing practices, and took part in certain activities that did not sit well with the band. It was a tough decision, and Mat refused to take any part in it, but in the long run we did the right thing. Mat moved over to second guitar, a move that was initially going to be temporary.

We played another show with ROR at Fortune Village, once again the details can e found on the show history page. We were in a good frame of mind, and found a new togetherness as a four piece. This pretty much concludes the first chapter of our (De)evolution.



Chapter 2:The Iron Fist of Dan Boyko


On the final day of examinations during our grade 10 year grade 11 for mat) we made a decision that would seriously alter the course of the band. It was on that day that we met Dan Boyko and Tim Adam, both of Byus. The two of them were waiting outside of the school for Chad (Mike and Mat’s brother). Nate recognized Tim and we started chatting. They eventually invited us over to their place to jam. We agreed and took a ride in the back of Dan’s pickup truck, which would become the a staple of our times with Dan. We were brought to a house that reeked of a rather unique substance, some might call it marijuana... Anyway, we were led down to the basement and pretty much told to play, and play we did. We jammed away in their basement for about 45 minutes, and then watched BYUS play a short practice.

Let me indoctrinate you to this band. They were led by our future manager, a twenty-four year old singer/promoter extrordanaire, who just happened to have a kid at the age of fifteen. Next was Wolfee, a man who built a table to graduate highschool. To this day, I still believe that the gods of rock and roll played a terrible trick on this guy when they gave him hair. Nonetheless, he rocked ass. On bass was a six and a half foot beast of a man named Jay. Few have met this guy and lived to tell about it, but I know that one time he picked up a rapper by the collar and threatened him with that age-old line that has stood the test of time: “I could fuck you if I wanted to.”. He was a fun guy. On drums was “the hurtin unit”, Neil. He worked a lot, and those “fuckers wake me up everyday at ten to practice”. Anyway, they offered us the opening spot at the series of shows at the Redwood Inn that they had planned for that summer. We must of played five or six shows with BYUS, including our fist paying gigs. For each show we did, we got a $60 food tab, which usually went towards chicken fingers, garlic bread, and shrimp. Details can be found in the show history.

Nearly everyday leading up to the show, Dan kindly “invited” us to practice at his place. This soon became a mandatory thing, and we actually had to come up with reasons not to go.

During one of the famed Redwood shows, we were approached by Steve, a bald man in his thirties who has the head of “Morning Phlegm”, a production company. He wanted us to meet with him and his partner at the Gladstone a few days later to discuss business. Of course, we were all giddy.

When the day of the meeting came, we all went to meet Steve and found out that his partner was none other than...Dan Boyko!! We talked for a few hours, got free fries and pop, and learned that we had access to unlimited condoms, in fact, Steve would even put them on if we wanted! We agreed to go with Morning Phlegm productions which was more or less the day we handed over our souls to Dan Boyko.

Somehow, Steve got dropped out of the picture, which is too bad, he was a nice guy. So, Dan changed the name of his company to lots of different things, but made lots of decisions for the band. First off, no more of this opening for BYUS stuff, we were gonna start headlining our own shows. This meant of course that we needed to waste $200 on promo packs. Keep that figure in mind.

To properly create the promo packs, we of course needed pictures. I would say that this was one of the most fun things we did under the supervision of Dan, even though he didn’t actually attend the shooting of the pictures. He instructed Tim and Jay to accompany us to all sorts of weird places and take those traditional band pics you see all over posters from the 80’s, you know, the kind were the group of teenagers is hanging out in the children’s park and all looking cool. If this is a just world, hopefully these pics will be posted, they are quite humourous, and we were really trying to portray the image Dan created for us, “The are the youngest working band in Hamilton, but they are sons of bitches...evil!!!”. It was great.

Another one of Dan’s crazy schemes was his “low budget recording”, which after a few additional costs ended up coming to around $200. The studio was built into the basement of this guy names Laws, who was actually a really cool guy. He got into some sort of accident and ended up with $40 000 in sound equipment in his basement. So with him we recorded “Mechanical Corfeshekee”, a song about vibrators, “Park of Grass, But A Street”, which was about a guy jumping off the Parkdale bridge. Other songs recorded included our “metal tunes”, “Poison Shrine”, and “Mirror Image”. “Missing Out” rounded off the tape. Most of these songs can be found on our new CD. The tragedy of this recording was that it never got mixed. Only two songs got completely done, since as Dan put it “the studio burnt down”, which translates into “I used up your money for my own band.”. Only one copy of the Laws tape exists, and its good just for Mechanical Corfeshekee.

So, Dan was pushing us into main event status, so we had to recruit a band to open for us. Since I had a ginormous (buzz word) crush on one of the members, we asked Fink to do it. They agreed, but Dan didn’t take our word for it, he wanted to go watch them practice. One night, Dan, Tim and I went up to Keely’s house and watched them practice, Dan thought they were hot, made some classic Dan remarks (“I could go to jail for what I’m thinking about doing right now”) and agreed to have them open. Fink was then invited to the weekly practices at Dan’s house, during which we were told “pretend you’re playing to Skydome!”.

Anyway, by this time, we were sucked even further into the Dan Boyko trap. We found ourselves in a situation similar to that of an abused woman. We wanted to leave, but couldn’t due to extreme fear. One time, Neil didn’t show up for practice, so when he did come home (he lived with Dan), Dan broke his nose! This of course led Neil to one day telling Dan that he was going to do the laundry...Neil never returned from cleaning his clothes. He instead hopped on a plane and flew to Nova Scotia, a place where Dan Boyko has no power. We were being cajoled into doing more and more things we didn’t agree with, one being Dan’s “spy”, which meant that we had to make sure Fink was doing everything Dan told them to. We didn’t do that though, but it was still an uncomfortable situation.

We played a few shows under Dan with Fink and things seemed to be falling apart. Dan’s crazy schemes (to many to mention) weren’t panning out, and he was getting more aggressive with us. It got to the point where me and Nate were afraid to call him unless the other guy was on the phone as well.

The end of the “reign of terror” fizzled to an end shortly after the “Secondary Press Battle Of The Bands”. We just stopped calling Dan, and just stopped calling us. For us, it was a huge relief and the end of perhaps the scariest era the band had ever endured. Total cost of ten months with Dan Boyko over $700.





Chapter 3:Mmmmm, thats Melicious.



So, the band was on our own again, after months under the watchful eye of Dan. We had split with Dan in early February of 1998. About a week after we finished with him we were practicing when one of Chad’s friends Mel came down to check us out. She was enamoured with our sound and told us she wanted to give us the cash to put out a full album! We discussed and quickly agreed. We started talking more and we decided to take on Chad and Mel as managers. Mel with be both the bank and Public Relations and Chad would do all the nasty behind the scenes stuff. So with that thought we embarked on our next adventure!

The whole Mel adventure can be divided up into three sections. The first was getting a vehicle since the obvious thing for managers to do is to go and spend tens of thousands of dollars on a band during the first week and buy a van. Anyway, she took us to some car dealerships and we picked out nice things that we liked. Unfortunately the dealership was closed, so we couldn’t purchase our choice vehicle. Anyway, we never ended getting the vehicle..i think she lied to us.

The other main thing was of course the recording. We went back to JSG at its new location and booked a weekend. Mel was prepared to spend $4000 on our CD, which was pretty damn amazing. We were all psyched to see Jordan again, since he’s once of the coolest guys we’ve met during our journeys. Anyway, when the day of recording came along, Mel took us for a long car ride up to the Redwood Inn (why?) and explained to us that if she gave us the money, Chad would get kicked out of home. We decided that it was best not to go ahead with the recording. So, I guess that its good since we didn’t record cause we went back a year later and recorded better songs...but it would’ve been cool to record for $4000....

The last, and perhaps most interesting thing with the whole Mel situation was the breakup itself. One day Mel disappeared. She actually pulled a Neil! She apparently ran away to the states to go live with some guy she met on Realm! So once again, we were on our own, though we were only with Mel for about two months. The marked the end of the band under a manager, viva le revolution!



Chapter 4:On Our Own


This can be considered the start of a slower part of our history as a band. We didn’t play many shows during the period from May, 1998 to November of the same year. This period can best be described as a period of growing, convalescence, and reflection (note: I am fully aware of how self-helpish that sounds). We wrote lots of new songs, the majority of which ended up on the CD.

Normally I leave the show descriptions on the show history, but I think I need to speak a little about one show in particular, that being the first Laser Vortec show. This is probably the best show in the history of the band, and each of us looks back upon it with a certain fondness. Millhouse and Vyle opened, little did we know what hardcore rock gods they’d later become, well, Millhouse anyway. Actually, they were a far cry from the Millhouse of present day, Steve was barely audible, Dal played bass, and Kasey was the axe master. They played well to a what was a really good crowd, we crowded over two hundred people into the place, and in one of those weird circumstances, the crowd continued to INCREASE as the night went on. I would possibly say this was the high point for the band, but the scene was a lot smaller back in those days, so its hard to compare.

The key event of the rest of the summer was not a show, but rather a sleepover. Over the last few weeks before school the four of us were speaking increasingly on how to improve the band. In fact, Nate, Mike, and myself spent an entire day at Canada’s Wonderland talking about band, we only went on three rides! We were all in unison in the belief that we needed to raise the bar a little bit for the stageshow. We all had different ideas of how to go about this but were generally stuck.

One summer’s eve the Labelle parents were quietly vacationing away from the city. We all stayed over at the house along with Adam Burchill, who was lobbying to be our new manager. He has a way with people, which is not always a good thing though, but we thought it’d be a good idea. As the night progressed and the sun drew near we came to a conclusion, he should join the band! We needed someone big on wit and low in weight, we compromised. We decided to bring him in as the odd man out, the one playing all the extras [Me and Mike had a fair share of experience with this sort of thing during our (mis)adventures with Marlie On Ice, a band that used lots of tambourine, and even a butter knife for a pick(?)]. That didn’t really pan out, so we applied some of the knowledge we had ascertained during our encounter with Laws from...Laws Recording! We remember that keyboard sounded good, and since I had a keyboard it would be easy. Of course, Adam had all sorts of fabulous ideas for the live show, which unfortunately were not covered by life insurance, so they weren’t going to happen. Adam joined the band and ergo, the band would never be the same.

The last thing I’m gonna touch down on is a fun incident that took place involving some band members, who shall remain nameless and a female, who shall also remain nameless. In what was one of the cooler events that transpired during this chapter, a girl agreed to be stripped down to nothing and let us paint her naked body. For some reason or another, we decided to go with the flags of the world. The whole thing was just really crazy, reminiscent of the things you only heard about as you flip through the pages of August 1986’s Rolling Stone magazine. As I was washing of the arm and hammer on the old soviet flag, I remember staring at the girl’s flesh and thinking...”what the hell is going on?”. It seemed way too weird, something was just not right about it. Luckily for me, I’ve learned to defeat my conscience, and now look back with no regrets. For a second there, I almost shifted into porno history, which is full of the stereotypical funk (thanks to Paul Dayco of hereafter for providing the imaginary music). Anyway, this chapter concludes with the return of Subdominant and the popularization of hardcore music.



Chapter 4.5:Hamilton has more than seven bands?


This section is not really a part of Empathize history, but more or less a commentary from myself on the Hamilton scene (R.I.P.), and my observations on what was really an interesting time. History particular to Empathize during this period will be added a later date. For those keeping strict records, I will submit that the scene took place from the beginning of the 1998 summer to the beginning of the 1999 summer, one full year. Of course, these things cannot be 100% accurately dated.

When we first started we were lucky enough to catch the tail end of a really cool scene. There were massive shows being put on every few months by ROR concerts, and bands like Subdominant, Snoozer, Holy Joe, and Fink had all been together for a year or two. The Secondary Press was raving about the Dupes and Purple Slush and the Fuzz were still Leviathan. Things were a lot different, I doubt anyone can really understand if they weren’t there. Transit Union hall was still a blossoming virgin as far as rock and roll was concerned. Shows were staged weekly at the X-Club (still the best Hamilton has seen), and every third month at Fortune Village, a massive hall complete with Chinese dragons! That was the first scene I experienced, and as the cliche goes, “those were the days...”.

Two years later, a new scene started. There is no defining moment, but several factors attributed to the reemergence of something important to Hamilton’s music fans.

First off, the popularization (yes, it’s a word) of hardcore music, paving the way for bands like Millhouse, Malice, Soarize, and gasp, Tourette’s Syndrome, as well as countless others. While some of these bands deserved the attention, others more or less developed a fanbase, just because “they’re hardcore!”.

Secondly, the summer of 1998 brought about something necessary for a scene to develop. Consistency. Every single Tuesday people were assured that the Corktown would be rockin in some form or another. Big thanks to Mike Kiere for this, seeing as he booked almost every single Tuesday that summer and although some of the shows didn’t draw a lot of people, there were a small group of people that were becoming evermore dedicated to supporting Hamilton’s bands.

Lastly, the reappearance of Subdominant brought out lots of fans of the old scene. With their return, they rejoined there scene-mates from 1995-96. Fink was still playing, we were finally coming into our own, Holy Joe was still proving to be the tightest band on the planet, and the Fuzz (formerly Leviathan) continued to entertain. Add to this the fact that Subd had gotten even better and you have the elements needed to produce a scene.

During the reign of the Hamilton scene, there were two major fronts of action. In a way, you could almost put it in terms of East and West.

On the West front, Dave Kuruc was doing some big things with his label, Hot Tub Records. He released the first Hamilton-only compilation that most people our age had ever seen. It did amazing, charting at number 1 at both Mac and Mohawk respectively. The comp, featuring bands like Evil Engine, Hereafter, and Sara Somebody, (as well as Marlie On Ice, which featured both Mike and myself), sold a lot of copies and ended charting all across the country and gaining rave reviews in many publications in the process. On the domestic side of things (if Hamilton was a country), Hot Tub shows were being staged monthly at the Transit Union Hall as well as the occasion foray to the urbanite walls of the Corktown. We were invited to participate in a great many of these shows and like many other bands became synonymous with the Transit Union Hall.

On the Eastern front, the revolution, or we shall say evolution took part with a vanguard party to lead it. The bands most prominently featured included Millhouse, Job Well Done, Subdominant, Soarize and Jack Harer. To a degree we were a part of this group, but much like the Hot Tub side of things, we weren’t really regarded as an Eastside band until the fall of the scene grew nearer. In fact, much of this scene was formulated not in some uptown club but rather in the parking lot of Eastgate Mall. Hordes of people spent their Friday and Saturday nights there, pondering such issues as drugs, alcohol, and once again alcohol. Perhaps a little bit of musical philosophy was also brought up during the conversations. There is one thing that can be said about the East end, they can all drink with the best of them, (in this case Gurm and Murph). Many shows were put together featuring a large number of these East end bands, many of which were setup by either myself or Job Well Done. Mat(t) Pearson introduced us to the Bowl-o-Drome, perhaps the least likely place for a bunch of teens to assemble. Alas, things there were not meant to be. One night a bunch of rowdy kids decided to smash things up, and resulted in to razing of the bathroom. From then on, the Bowl-o-Drome was much more careful about who they let booked shows, which meant no teenagers.

The scene is dead. Many would argue this point, but since the summer of 1999, it has completely lost it’s steam, which might actually be a good thing. Hot Tub has put things on the backburner and are just pushing their current releases without doing anything extravagant. Many bands on the East side of things have began to fall apart. There are rumours, which I cannot confirm, that state that one the most prominent East side acts has only a few shows left in them before they decided to hang up their guitars. Most other East end bands have suffered a degree of instability and have resulted in many personnel changes. For all intents and purposes, I’m going to say that the scene died in late June, its last Hurrah being the double show, which featured bands from both the East, the West, and even others. Since then, only a few big shows have taken place, most notably the Millhouse CD release, and a few downstairs transit shows.

This is not to say that music was not going on elsewhere, but these two scenes were the hot spots of musical activity. A bunch of punks, literally, from the escarpment were staging shows, as well as sometimes Kashmir Funk, sometimes Sel-Fish, sometimes Chip Lesson guru, Neil Haverty (spelling?).

Perhaps a lesson can be learned from all this, our perhaps it was just a bunch of kids having fun. There were good things about the scene, but there were also negative aspects. Bands finally took the power back from money grabbing “Battle of The Bands” scam groups and began to stage shows for themselves. At the same time, music was more widely appreciated and attendance for shows was up nearly two-fold. On the same token, shows became less special, and too bands rushed onstage when they really should have practiced just a little longer.



Chapter 5:Our Niche in the Hamilton Scene


Now that my rant is complete I can focus on our place and activities during the time period starting the summer of 1998 and ending the summer of 1999. This was the busiest time for the band as far as shows are concerned, but of course most of that is covered elsewhere.

During this participated in a few interesting things. One such example was the day we took photo’s for the CD. We had a cluster of ideas but some of them seemed impossible. We took pictures of each of our faces, as in a portrait shot in Mat’s room in front of his blood red walls, which sort of tied in with the whole Black and Red thing that was the theme of the CD. We also took full body shots, which were to be the basis of an anime drawing, though some of them ended up getting used, including ridiculous shots of Nate and myself. To attain the cover of the CD we found a wall mirror and cracked it. After that we covered it with a light layer of water, and took a vial of Black and Red sand and placed it on the mirror. We took the photo at an angle so to capture the colour of Mat’s walls distorted through the water and cracks in the mirror. It was an unparalleled photographic success.

On that very day, we decided to indoctrinate Adam to one of the band’s favourite pastimes, the burning and mutilation of stuffed animals. We got a big doggy, set it ablaze and then only after he had gone down in a fiery inferno did we realize that he was making a huge mess in the backyard. Quickly before the Labelle parents returned home we filled up a garbage bag with snow and charred dog. At a loss to find a place to put the bag, someone, which may have been me or Adam, suggested that we dump it in the mail box. I’d like to think that this suggestion was not an accurate reflection of our respective IQ’s, but Mat, aka “the scientific one”, assured us “ya, like it’s gonna fit in the mail box.”. We felt deflated and defeated, our idiocy had bettered us once again! We ended up just putting it in the garage.


The recording itself was damn amazing. I honestly think it may have been the most exciting and fulfilling weekend of my life. We arrived at the JSG studios at around 11 am after backing my mom’s car with the entire kit, all the amps, guitars, stands, pedals, sleeping bags, pillows, and Mat and myself. The rest of the band showed up about half an hour later and Jordan began to setup the place. We waited eagerly, knowing that for the next 40 hours, life outside band would cease to exist.

While we waited for Jordan to finish the setup, we walked around the place, which is a huge four story place in West Hamilton. The basement houses all of the amps, which are connected to the main floor via really long cables. The main floor consists of the mixing room, the recording room, and the drum room, which doubles as home to the microwave. The upper levels exist as bedrooms, a meeting room, the bathroom, the “acid room”, and an attic/rehearsal/bedroom. The acid room is basically a lounge area full of odd painted walls and really interesting paintings, many of which have double meanings.

We passed time by scavenging the place for pornography and other amusing antics. Luckily Adam brought along a camcorder to capture the moments, unfortunately it sucked. Many small glimpses into our weekend found their way on to some tapes, which perhaps one day will be released with the CD and tape in a boxset-type deal. We spent time looking for hookers in hope to interview them, but alas came up short. Dave Flack was there to spend some time with us and he assisted in a mockery of a monkees episode, during which Adam, Flack, and myself stole a mattress. It was insanity! Well, planned insanity.

The time to record came about and we all retreated to the main floor and took part in fun things like “punching it in”, which just means playing over your mistakes. We recorded for a few hours and took a food break, during which Adam’s mom brought us pizza, which was good. We finished recording at around 1:30am, by this time Mat had been singing for over thirteen hours, which wasn’t great for his voice. Plus, we still had one more track to finish in the morning.

That night, Dal and Matt from Millhouse decided to keep us company and spend the night. We made a movie, “Battle of Monkeys”, which featured some fine jumping by Adam and myself as we portrayed a fiesta band whose pet monkey is stolen by villains (Mat and Nate), and forced to watch Michael Jackson’s “Moon Walker” for Sega Genesis. I don’t want to give away the ending, but a special message from Mat from Millhouse finishes the film in fine fashion.

That night Jordan came upstairs to the attic, where the band was sleeping and brought along some erotic film. Let it be known that Jordan was 100% misconstrued when he told us he had some movies to watch. When he said film, I immediately though along the lines of “Citizen Kane”, “Gone With The Wind”, and “Ben Hurr”, I was not prepared for “1000 and 1 Arabian Nights”. He forever corrupted whatever innocence the band had. Anyway, one highlight of the film was the closeup of a man’s phallic region, which suddenly the shot was interrupted by a horse’s ass! Apparently, the symbolism of scene was somewhat lost in confusion.

The next day was spent mixing. Highlights include the band getting in several disagreements, me facing the consequences of spending $40 on chocolate in one weekend, and some us making some ill-timed jokes directed at the Jewish faith. We didn’t realize that Jordan was Jewish, luckily he took no offence. We finished mixing and each got a tape dubbed for us and we were on our way. The entire experience was enlightening to say the least, and it was good to see Jordan again.

Another occurrence during this time I will only briefly speak about. Adam and I were extremely taken by hardcore wrestling, and many evenings were spent on the Labelle front yard breaking things over each other’s back and skull. Highlights of this period include Adam chokeslamming me off of a porch, me moonsaulting three times off the Labelle’s fence and Adam slamming me on a shopping cart. The climax of these days was our “2 out of 3 falls” match as Rosedale school. Adam took the first match which was just a normal fight. The second match with hardcore stipulations was one by myself after a botched 11 ft. elbow drop which ended up sending Adam to a chiropractor. That match included many weapons, including boards, steel grates, a shopping cart, and interference from Adam’s manager, Randy River aka Nate. Just as Adam recovered, we were ready to begin the third and final fall, a thumbtack death match! The cops showed up and shut us down, luckily they didn’t see the tacks, which we proceeded to bury. When a student found them, a report was sent home describing the incident and stating that some sick people were deliberately trying to injure children. Anyway, this period was showcased briefly at a show in which Adam took like 40 shots to the head with a cookie sheet, know he suffers head problems, go figure.

The last really good thing I remember about this period was band therapy. The entire band ended up joining a youth group run by my old, and Adam’s current therapist. Every Wednesday we’d attend meetings that dealt with depression, sex, alcohol, drugs and other fun topics like that. We don’t know why we all attended, but we spent a lot of time there, and it was in the end very worthwhile. I’d like to say that we didn’t laugh at the people there, but some of them were just so damn crazy. For instance, this one girl would flip out every time, once even screaming at the group, who I think she perceived as her parent’s “fuck you! You can’t tell me what to do! I don’t wanna do the dishes! I don’t wanna do the dishes!”, it was classic stuff.

Well, there wasn’t a lot more to say about that particular time period. Next chapter may or may not get done. It deals with pretty much this school year, which isn’t complete yet, so I don’t know when to end it.