The Strange World of Davidh - Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR (Originally Written and Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006)
"Scary Music for Scary People"
One day at my future wife's apartment i met her cousin Andy, he was sitting in on the session and apparently like what he heard so he offered to record a little bit on a song...i suggested he sing, but with no experience whatsoever he declined. I asked him to come and give it a go at one of our practices which he accepted and for no previous experience he did well, we recorded one song in this time period and as a band, me, Brance and Chad wrote a lot of songs and worked on lots of pieces of music. The longer this went on though i grew weary of having almost zero control over what we were playing and my new desire into the Smashing Pumpkins was really becoming evident in my playing and they were going for more of a funky, jazzy kinda sound, as much as i didn't want to embrace it, i knew it was my time to go. On a sad note, my first ever left handed guitar, a Phantom model, a vintage Memory Man delay pedal, and the stereo which i had used to record countless demos and practices were all stolen from our practice spot. Winter was upon us and i continued to record on my my own into the new year.
I went to Jay hoping we could play again but he had no drum set, so i figured we had written and recorded music with almost every form of instrument, why don't we do electric guitar / drum machine again and i'll just come in and add whatever was needed later, without a trace of hesitation he agreed. We set up shop in Jay's mom's house, lucky for us she had moved Downtown and left Jay the use of the house for what would become an almost 3 year 24 / 7 party. On a side note, we got heavy into movie making at this point as well, we had always dabbled in making movies but now we owned cameras so we could do as we pleased any time we wanted to, and we did.
At this point in time around spring of 1997, we used the downstairs den as our recording spot, we didn't need much space...we brought Andy in and we all just sat at a table, we would record all our parts together live insuring a raw aspect to the recordings, i would later add bass and keyboards, if needed, to the mix. Magic, that is the only word to describe what happened next, a month or two after we started this thing me and Andy were sitting at my parent's house and the phone rang...Jay was on the other end urging us to come over, something big was happening.
Walking over to Jay's we had no idea what was going on but once we got there and walked through the front door we knew what was up, we were rewarded for our hard work, suffering for our art all those years. (Jay and I) Shining bright like presents on Christmas day was a drumset, pa equipment, and a guitar amp!!! We were in business again. Important things first though, we needed a name. I had taken a liking to DeSalvo, yes after the serial killer, Andy wanted to shorten it to Salvo for a place in North Carolina he liked, i wasn't really fond of that so i just called it 6ft Ghoul (the name came from a Halloween yard decoration Jay had bought), he went with Salvo and to this day i don't know what the real name of the band was, there are tapes labeled with both names on them. haha!
Practices were held everyday, we had no bass player and never had the want of a bass player, we didn't play shows (although we would near the end) we recorded. We recorded hours and hours of 4 track audio and video footage, we also moved up to the second level of the house to much more spacious living room area. We decided on a lark that we would stage a show in the late fall at Jay's house for all of our friends, for fun we used some synced tape tracks to the music to add effects, unfortunately for some odd reason this show was not taped, it's a shame because i remember this night really going off well. In November i moved out of my parent's house and into a house with Andy and his sister, yes debauchery insued but most important was we had a new place to throw a party for the band to play at.
In December of 1997, almost at our musical peak, we played to a house full of people in what would go down as one of the best times in my life. We played a great show, Brance and Chad showed so we had a impromptu reunion of sorts playing a tight but short three song set. After the new year, we started thinking about getting a bass player, our friend Chris Bryant had recently bought a bass and a bass amp, he had never played before so we figured he would be perfect. We could mold and shape him to be the player we wanted, this didn't work out though because we needed someone to learn the songs fast and he was just super slow to the take so we ditched that idea for the time being, next up another show. Our last show as a band was at the Amoco Docks in Yorktown, Va. This was our biggest show to date with about 200 people in attendance, here is where i first encountered people who didn't care for the band and wanted to dance to radio...We were about 4 songs into our set when they started to turn their backs to us, which only fueled us to played louder and faster, 10 songs in and they wanted a break, they wanted the DJ, we said no and kept playing. I think all 200 backs were turned to us that night and i couldn't have been more pleased as we were playing for the rich, Yorktown elitist kids anyway, i was roots baby and i took pleasure in pissing off these types of people anyway. H-Town Represent........sadly enough, this show wasn't recorded either for some reason.
After this show we again wanted to acquire a bass player, Jay had mentioned to me about a basketball friend of his, Tony Rife who had a friend that was looking for a band to join and he just happened to play bass, we tried him out and he was just too funky of a player for us. I'll never understand why every bass player wants to be Flea or Les Claypool, be yourself...much more interesting. The way we wrote songs was pretty much as before, improve jams would just flesh out from songs or we would record jams and interchange parts to what sounded the best, lyrics were random and improv, some songs like "Computers" and "JFK" we would write out the title and then write just one word descriptions of said title and Andy would riff off of the words we had written. Andy's vocals were very raw, yelling and screaming coming off as a 1996 version of Johnny Rotten, suited the music very well, as usual we played no covers, we would mess around and riff on a few songs for fun but none were in the playable set. Just Say No!
Shortly after this show, Andy moved away for the summer, this was a terrible blow to the band as we were just hitting our stride. Jay and I had just recorded 2 new songs and polished 2 older ones that we had hoped Andy was going to record vocals for and now he was gone. We decided that to do this all over again we would need a full band, so now the search was on for a bass player and a new vocalists, luckily we didn't have to look to far.......
CHAPTER FOUR (Originally Written and Posted Wednesday, November 08, 2006)
"Scary Music for Scary People"
One day at my future wife's apartment i met her cousin Andy, he was sitting in on the session and apparently like what he heard so he offered to record a little bit on a song...i suggested he sing, but with no experience whatsoever he declined. I asked him to come and give it a go at one of our practices which he accepted and for no previous experience he did well, we recorded one song in this time period and as a band, me, Brance and Chad wrote a lot of songs and worked on lots of pieces of music. The longer this went on though i grew weary of having almost zero control over what we were playing and my new desire into the Smashing Pumpkins was really becoming evident in my playing and they were going for more of a funky, jazzy kinda sound, as much as i didn't want to embrace it, i knew it was my time to go. On a sad note, my first ever left handed guitar, a Phantom model, a vintage Memory Man delay pedal, and the stereo which i had used to record countless demos and practices were all stolen from our practice spot. Winter was upon us and i continued to record on my my own into the new year.
I went to Jay hoping we could play again but he had no drum set, so i figured we had written and recorded music with almost every form of instrument, why don't we do electric guitar / drum machine again and i'll just come in and add whatever was needed later, without a trace of hesitation he agreed. We set up shop in Jay's mom's house, lucky for us she had moved Downtown and left Jay the use of the house for what would become an almost 3 year 24 / 7 party. On a side note, we got heavy into movie making at this point as well, we had always dabbled in making movies but now we owned cameras so we could do as we pleased any time we wanted to, and we did.
At this point in time around spring of 1997, we used the downstairs den as our recording spot, we didn't need much space...we brought Andy in and we all just sat at a table, we would record all our parts together live insuring a raw aspect to the recordings, i would later add bass and keyboards, if needed, to the mix. Magic, that is the only word to describe what happened next, a month or two after we started this thing me and Andy were sitting at my parent's house and the phone rang...Jay was on the other end urging us to come over, something big was happening.
Walking over to Jay's we had no idea what was going on but once we got there and walked through the front door we knew what was up, we were rewarded for our hard work, suffering for our art all those years. (Jay and I) Shining bright like presents on Christmas day was a drumset, pa equipment, and a guitar amp!!! We were in business again. Important things first though, we needed a name. I had taken a liking to DeSalvo, yes after the serial killer, Andy wanted to shorten it to Salvo for a place in North Carolina he liked, i wasn't really fond of that so i just called it 6ft Ghoul (the name came from a Halloween yard decoration Jay had bought), he went with Salvo and to this day i don't know what the real name of the band was, there are tapes labeled with both names on them. haha!
Practices were held everyday, we had no bass player and never had the want of a bass player, we didn't play shows (although we would near the end) we recorded. We recorded hours and hours of 4 track audio and video footage, we also moved up to the second level of the house to much more spacious living room area. We decided on a lark that we would stage a show in the late fall at Jay's house for all of our friends, for fun we used some synced tape tracks to the music to add effects, unfortunately for some odd reason this show was not taped, it's a shame because i remember this night really going off well. In November i moved out of my parent's house and into a house with Andy and his sister, yes debauchery insued but most important was we had a new place to throw a party for the band to play at.
In December of 1997, almost at our musical peak, we played to a house full of people in what would go down as one of the best times in my life. We played a great show, Brance and Chad showed so we had a impromptu reunion of sorts playing a tight but short three song set. After the new year, we started thinking about getting a bass player, our friend Chris Bryant had recently bought a bass and a bass amp, he had never played before so we figured he would be perfect. We could mold and shape him to be the player we wanted, this didn't work out though because we needed someone to learn the songs fast and he was just super slow to the take so we ditched that idea for the time being, next up another show. Our last show as a band was at the Amoco Docks in Yorktown, Va. This was our biggest show to date with about 200 people in attendance, here is where i first encountered people who didn't care for the band and wanted to dance to radio...We were about 4 songs into our set when they started to turn their backs to us, which only fueled us to played louder and faster, 10 songs in and they wanted a break, they wanted the DJ, we said no and kept playing. I think all 200 backs were turned to us that night and i couldn't have been more pleased as we were playing for the rich, Yorktown elitist kids anyway, i was roots baby and i took pleasure in pissing off these types of people anyway. H-Town Represent........sadly enough, this show wasn't recorded either for some reason.
After this show we again wanted to acquire a bass player, Jay had mentioned to me about a basketball friend of his, Tony Rife who had a friend that was looking for a band to join and he just happened to play bass, we tried him out and he was just too funky of a player for us. I'll never understand why every bass player wants to be Flea or Les Claypool, be yourself...much more interesting. The way we wrote songs was pretty much as before, improve jams would just flesh out from songs or we would record jams and interchange parts to what sounded the best, lyrics were random and improv, some songs like "Computers" and "JFK" we would write out the title and then write just one word descriptions of said title and Andy would riff off of the words we had written. Andy's vocals were very raw, yelling and screaming coming off as a 1996 version of Johnny Rotten, suited the music very well, as usual we played no covers, we would mess around and riff on a few songs for fun but none were in the playable set. Just Say No!
Shortly after this show, Andy moved away for the summer, this was a terrible blow to the band as we were just hitting our stride. Jay and I had just recorded 2 new songs and polished 2 older ones that we had hoped Andy was going to record vocals for and now he was gone. We decided that to do this all over again we would need a full band, so now the search was on for a bass player and a new vocalists, luckily we didn't have to look to far.......
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