Seeds Harvested: A Band's beginning and perhaps it's end
In the not-so-distant past, 4 young men came together in the almost timeless, suburban, adolescent tradition of forming a rock band. This band may never make it to the rock ‘n’ roll hall of fame or have a video played on MuchMusic but its story will remain fond in my heart as I am inextricably part of it.
The story begins with two friends, myself and Chris Chalmers. I was at the time spellbound by music (The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Pink Floyd, and The Police to name what I was listening to) and found a fellow aficionado in Chalmers. We spent hours talking about music and the philosophies they conveyed. Sometimes he would come over and we would sit in my family room listening to old Beatles records. He was learning guitar on an acoustic guitar and I was keen on getting my hands on an instrument so we could form a band together. I thought about the bass guitar, imagining myself to be the next Paul McCartney (I had thought that Chalmers was a lot like John Lennon and at the time he looked like a Let It Be era John Lennon, so if I was to be in a band with him I wanted to like Paul McCartney so we could be song-writing partners), or Sting or Roger Waters, but I settled on guitar because I had a broken one that belonged to my mom. My dad fixed it up and I began taking lessons. It was at this point where I was introduced, by Chalmers, to the music of the Smashing Pumpkins, which would turn out to be THE common influence to the band that followed.
By the following year I was fully in love with the dichotomy of hard rock and soulful, melancholic psychedelia of the Pumpkins’ music. Moreover, it had won over my best friend Aleks, who had been against contemporary music until this point. He too began to dream the dream of many and conceived of forming a band, seeing that both Chalmers and I were learning guitar (To Aleks’ credit, he knows how to get things started). A newcomer to our circle, and now one of my closest friends, Sean had just moved to London from Abbotsford B.C. and befriended Aleks and subsequently Chalmers and I as well. He also had musical aspirations…and he too was learning the guitar! (He was also a Pumpkins fan). Aleks, wanting to play drums but couldn’t afford them, instead picked up an old guitar that once belonged to his grandfather and slowly began teaching himself chords.
4 guitarists!? In a band!? No drummer, no bassist, just 4 guys playing guitar!?
If you said that this was like walking with two left feet, you’d be right, it was…at first. We tried working on covers but obviously that didn’t work because most songs only have 1or 2 guitar parts. The band would usually split off into two groups each hamfistedly trying to work on their respective songs. The only alternative was to write our own songs…but how?
I must say I’m more of a poet than a musician as much, as music is an important part of my life. I began writing lyrics to song and a few months prior I had been learning some chord progressions and nice-sounding arpeggios from my guitar teacher. I began putting it all together like an alchemist (albeit a very inexperienced one). In my mind the music I has hearing was reflecting an idea I had, being conveyed in the lyrics. The idea was of the cyclical pattern to nature, the seasons, birth, growth, death, etc. I thought about introducing the song idea to my friends but I was not wholly confident in it and at the time I was overly sensitive to criticism. But the time would come for me to share it with the others and let fate takes its course.
It was New Year’s Eve 97-98. We were invited to spend the night at our friend David’s place. He lived in a small town outside of Sarnia. We took this opportunity to hone our musical skills as David was very apt in this regard (he played piano). We loaded our instruments in Aleks’ van. As I recall the weather was bad that day and Aleks’ dad was reluctant to risk driving but I suppose if he hadn’t things might not have developed as they did. We arrived at the David’s unharmed, everyone in good spirits as we unloaded our instruments from the van. Almost as soon as we got in the door we had the urge to bust out our instruments. We had the place to ourselves so we didn’t need to worry about making too much noise. However, the same problem as before occurred; there was no cohesion in the group; the group was splintered. We needed something to work on together…but what?
I reached into my guitar sleeve and pulled out a sheet of paper. I gave the sheet of paper to David saying something to the effect of "I’ve been working on a song but I don’t know how to write melodies to go with chord progressions…..maybe you can help me." And help me he did and the band too. He sat at his keyboard and came up with a melody. The rest of the song took some working out, but with the band working on it we were able to turn a small idea into a song. The song was called Seeds. The song wasn’t finished but it was a step in the right direction. Now, I won’t lie to you, this did not make us a full band and it would also be a lie to say that there wasn’t any immature infighting and temper tantrums (I talking about my self here), but we had come to taste the sweet nectar of song-writing and cohesion as a band (albeit a small taste) and we liked it. It was the true beginning of the band.
Today that band still exists although it has undergone many transformations. Chalmers sings, Sean and Aleks are dual guitarists, and I play bass, as I had always wanted to. In both incarnations of he band we wrote a few good songs, two of which were expertly recorded on computer by Aleks with Sean’s help. We still don’t have a drummer but the computer does a good job pretending to be one. In the not-too-distant future, this band may no longer exist as the boys who founded it are growing into men, men who must put away their play things and venture into adulthood. Our last task may well be what we endeavour to do next month: finish what we started and record the song written that fateful New year’s eve. It is fitting that if the band must end that it be where it started, the circle complete.
The story begins with two friends, myself and Chris Chalmers. I was at the time spellbound by music (The Beatles, Cat Stevens, Pink Floyd, and The Police to name what I was listening to) and found a fellow aficionado in Chalmers. We spent hours talking about music and the philosophies they conveyed. Sometimes he would come over and we would sit in my family room listening to old Beatles records. He was learning guitar on an acoustic guitar and I was keen on getting my hands on an instrument so we could form a band together. I thought about the bass guitar, imagining myself to be the next Paul McCartney (I had thought that Chalmers was a lot like John Lennon and at the time he looked like a Let It Be era John Lennon, so if I was to be in a band with him I wanted to like Paul McCartney so we could be song-writing partners), or Sting or Roger Waters, but I settled on guitar because I had a broken one that belonged to my mom. My dad fixed it up and I began taking lessons. It was at this point where I was introduced, by Chalmers, to the music of the Smashing Pumpkins, which would turn out to be THE common influence to the band that followed.
By the following year I was fully in love with the dichotomy of hard rock and soulful, melancholic psychedelia of the Pumpkins’ music. Moreover, it had won over my best friend Aleks, who had been against contemporary music until this point. He too began to dream the dream of many and conceived of forming a band, seeing that both Chalmers and I were learning guitar (To Aleks’ credit, he knows how to get things started). A newcomer to our circle, and now one of my closest friends, Sean had just moved to London from Abbotsford B.C. and befriended Aleks and subsequently Chalmers and I as well. He also had musical aspirations…and he too was learning the guitar! (He was also a Pumpkins fan). Aleks, wanting to play drums but couldn’t afford them, instead picked up an old guitar that once belonged to his grandfather and slowly began teaching himself chords.
4 guitarists!? In a band!? No drummer, no bassist, just 4 guys playing guitar!?
If you said that this was like walking with two left feet, you’d be right, it was…at first. We tried working on covers but obviously that didn’t work because most songs only have 1or 2 guitar parts. The band would usually split off into two groups each hamfistedly trying to work on their respective songs. The only alternative was to write our own songs…but how?
I must say I’m more of a poet than a musician as much, as music is an important part of my life. I began writing lyrics to song and a few months prior I had been learning some chord progressions and nice-sounding arpeggios from my guitar teacher. I began putting it all together like an alchemist (albeit a very inexperienced one). In my mind the music I has hearing was reflecting an idea I had, being conveyed in the lyrics. The idea was of the cyclical pattern to nature, the seasons, birth, growth, death, etc. I thought about introducing the song idea to my friends but I was not wholly confident in it and at the time I was overly sensitive to criticism. But the time would come for me to share it with the others and let fate takes its course.
It was New Year’s Eve 97-98. We were invited to spend the night at our friend David’s place. He lived in a small town outside of Sarnia. We took this opportunity to hone our musical skills as David was very apt in this regard (he played piano). We loaded our instruments in Aleks’ van. As I recall the weather was bad that day and Aleks’ dad was reluctant to risk driving but I suppose if he hadn’t things might not have developed as they did. We arrived at the David’s unharmed, everyone in good spirits as we unloaded our instruments from the van. Almost as soon as we got in the door we had the urge to bust out our instruments. We had the place to ourselves so we didn’t need to worry about making too much noise. However, the same problem as before occurred; there was no cohesion in the group; the group was splintered. We needed something to work on together…but what?
I reached into my guitar sleeve and pulled out a sheet of paper. I gave the sheet of paper to David saying something to the effect of "I’ve been working on a song but I don’t know how to write melodies to go with chord progressions…..maybe you can help me." And help me he did and the band too. He sat at his keyboard and came up with a melody. The rest of the song took some working out, but with the band working on it we were able to turn a small idea into a song. The song was called Seeds. The song wasn’t finished but it was a step in the right direction. Now, I won’t lie to you, this did not make us a full band and it would also be a lie to say that there wasn’t any immature infighting and temper tantrums (I talking about my self here), but we had come to taste the sweet nectar of song-writing and cohesion as a band (albeit a small taste) and we liked it. It was the true beginning of the band.
Today that band still exists although it has undergone many transformations. Chalmers sings, Sean and Aleks are dual guitarists, and I play bass, as I had always wanted to. In both incarnations of he band we wrote a few good songs, two of which were expertly recorded on computer by Aleks with Sean’s help. We still don’t have a drummer but the computer does a good job pretending to be one. In the not-too-distant future, this band may no longer exist as the boys who founded it are growing into men, men who must put away their play things and venture into adulthood. Our last task may well be what we endeavour to do next month: finish what we started and record the song written that fateful New year’s eve. It is fitting that if the band must end that it be where it started, the circle complete.
posted by The Doctor at 4:33 PM
1 Comments:
It should be made clear that time has passed since you wrote this. The band no longer exists, we're all scattered to the 4 winds. Geographically and mentally.
But like your story Lost and Found, it's never really gone when you have your memory, or in our case, the two single songs we completed.
I was listening to Black Sabbath's "Wicked World" today. I recall there's a riff in there that Sean and I lifted as the outro to the guitar solo in our song Vietnam. He had given me the tab book to that album for Christmas. We were struggling to get something to fill the gap over top over your menacing bassline. I recall flippig through the book and saying, hey lets use this. We did a couple takes with me playing but it just didn't sound right. Then Sean tries some variations and bam, we have a perfect sound.
It's memories like that. We'll always have them.
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