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Presenting Evidence
Dec. 19th, 2008 04:17 pmOkay, here's the next one of my "boring band stories."
I started writing music in high school seriously. Somewhere I still have that lyrics book, a spiral that is in seriously bad condition and that I need to get the lyrics out of it fairly soon. And I was an angsty tennager. First off, I totally sucked at the whole dating thing, and spent a lot of my time fairly alone with a few select friends and never a relationship during the school year. I was a depressive soul, too -- think of me as a Pre-Emo teen who had the emotional mindset down pat. So I wrote a lot of rather dark, contemplative, and fairly cynical stuff. But some of my best tunes came out of that time period, including Rebel Element, Where are We Now, Ice and Fire, Rainy Day Memories, and Love Long Lost.
So, fast forward a bit. I have all of these songs, and I've done some work with them in different projects, but nothing has formed a unified whole. One night in, I think it was, 1989, I had a dream about a band. (Dreams form great sources of inspiration for me too -- tunes like Physical Natures, Shame, and the entire Star Cross song cycle are dream inspired, often with the music itself coming from the dream) In the dream there was a band in Germany playing a tune, one that later became Shame. The band was playing in a strange place that had a nightclub attached to a school I was talking to a great record producer, someone who was not well known but had a lot of hits, and he led me into the gym of the school to a wall where a lot of band logos were taped to the wall. He pointed at one, and said, "This is the band that will make it. That's hit material." The logo was a black outline of a figure, like you'd see at a crime scene, with the name "Evidence" tacked across the figure's torso When I woke it was clear in my mind, and to this day I can still visualize it. But I had other business, as I had to creat the tune Shame first.
In 1994 my ex and I moved into a three story townhouse and there was room in the laundry room for a studio setup. (this was also on the ground floor, so it made gigging easy) I started looking for musicians, found a couple, then started rehearsing. The guitarist dropped out when he found out that we weren't going to give him at least fifty percent of the vocal time, so my singer and I went it alone, always trying to find another guitarist but having little luck. Still, we gigged, spent time in the studio, (someone else's) and create a demo, the Pre-Trial Release. (One of the things I loved about the band name Evidence is the wealth of imagery possible using the well known legal arena) We worked at it for a while, but without that important third member, the band never got as far as we'd like it to. We were told we had amazing stage presence, a totally natural feel on stage that made it like we were playing for people, not actually trying to be all showy.
Evidence was a modern rock band with a wide variety of sounds and influences, but with the common thread that just about everything we did was somewhat dark, pointing out problems and flaws in our society or in being human. But most of the time I also tried to provide answers with my questions, so as to not come off whiney. The sound was aggressive, sometimes quite dense with lots of deep layers to tracks, and often quite fast -- I tend to gravitate to faster tempos a lot of the time.
I'd like to get this project going again. At the very least, I need a female lead vocalist in the Soprano range and a guitarist, both of which need to have some strong stylistic variation. This project is also capable of going to a normal band setup, (though sequences will still be needed to fill the tunes, as much of the keyboard work is too much for two hands) and in that case I'd need a bassist and a drummer.
Gypsy Heir is a niche band, aimed at the pagan crowd. Evidence is mainstream. This band is aimed at radio airplay, club dates, and that type of more popular oriented stuff.
AGain, any help in finding cats for the project would be greatly appreciated. If nothing else, I'd like to find people available for just recording things so I can release it and get some buzz that way.
So that's the saga of Evidence. There's also stories behind Random Element, Firm Little Brother, (no joke, that was the band's name) and the studio only project Airtime. Perhaps I'll tell those next, though I have some other things rattling around in my mind too that may pop out here soon.
I started writing music in high school seriously. Somewhere I still have that lyrics book, a spiral that is in seriously bad condition and that I need to get the lyrics out of it fairly soon. And I was an angsty tennager. First off, I totally sucked at the whole dating thing, and spent a lot of my time fairly alone with a few select friends and never a relationship during the school year. I was a depressive soul, too -- think of me as a Pre-Emo teen who had the emotional mindset down pat. So I wrote a lot of rather dark, contemplative, and fairly cynical stuff. But some of my best tunes came out of that time period, including Rebel Element, Where are We Now, Ice and Fire, Rainy Day Memories, and Love Long Lost.
So, fast forward a bit. I have all of these songs, and I've done some work with them in different projects, but nothing has formed a unified whole. One night in, I think it was, 1989, I had a dream about a band. (Dreams form great sources of inspiration for me too -- tunes like Physical Natures, Shame, and the entire Star Cross song cycle are dream inspired, often with the music itself coming from the dream) In the dream there was a band in Germany playing a tune, one that later became Shame. The band was playing in a strange place that had a nightclub attached to a school I was talking to a great record producer, someone who was not well known but had a lot of hits, and he led me into the gym of the school to a wall where a lot of band logos were taped to the wall. He pointed at one, and said, "This is the band that will make it. That's hit material." The logo was a black outline of a figure, like you'd see at a crime scene, with the name "Evidence" tacked across the figure's torso When I woke it was clear in my mind, and to this day I can still visualize it. But I had other business, as I had to creat the tune Shame first.
In 1994 my ex and I moved into a three story townhouse and there was room in the laundry room for a studio setup. (this was also on the ground floor, so it made gigging easy) I started looking for musicians, found a couple, then started rehearsing. The guitarist dropped out when he found out that we weren't going to give him at least fifty percent of the vocal time, so my singer and I went it alone, always trying to find another guitarist but having little luck. Still, we gigged, spent time in the studio, (someone else's) and create a demo, the Pre-Trial Release. (One of the things I loved about the band name Evidence is the wealth of imagery possible using the well known legal arena) We worked at it for a while, but without that important third member, the band never got as far as we'd like it to. We were told we had amazing stage presence, a totally natural feel on stage that made it like we were playing for people, not actually trying to be all showy.
Evidence was a modern rock band with a wide variety of sounds and influences, but with the common thread that just about everything we did was somewhat dark, pointing out problems and flaws in our society or in being human. But most of the time I also tried to provide answers with my questions, so as to not come off whiney. The sound was aggressive, sometimes quite dense with lots of deep layers to tracks, and often quite fast -- I tend to gravitate to faster tempos a lot of the time.
I'd like to get this project going again. At the very least, I need a female lead vocalist in the Soprano range and a guitarist, both of which need to have some strong stylistic variation. This project is also capable of going to a normal band setup, (though sequences will still be needed to fill the tunes, as much of the keyboard work is too much for two hands) and in that case I'd need a bassist and a drummer.
Gypsy Heir is a niche band, aimed at the pagan crowd. Evidence is mainstream. This band is aimed at radio airplay, club dates, and that type of more popular oriented stuff.
AGain, any help in finding cats for the project would be greatly appreciated. If nothing else, I'd like to find people available for just recording things so I can release it and get some buzz that way.
So that's the saga of Evidence. There's also stories behind Random Element, Firm Little Brother, (no joke, that was the band's name) and the studio only project Airtime. Perhaps I'll tell those next, though I have some other things rattling around in my mind too that may pop out here soon.
