punk rock is about friends...

(425 davis)
It was the fall of 1995 when my friends Joe, andy,brandy and myself moved into 425 davis st in the student ghettoes of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Joe and me needed a space for our band to practice and andy wanted to take a year off before he went off to school at University of Michigan. There were so many great memories that came from this house. We spent our time talking about politics and records and straight edge,we were doing a food not bombs chapter. We were,to put it simply, living the life.Joe and my band were getting ready to put out our 2nd 7" and were playing shows on the reg despite our guitarist getting ready to move to milwaukee. Andy's band, inso grey had just started out of the ashes of the RENOBS (get it, boners spelled backwards). Renobs were a goofy high school sort of poppy punk band, you know the type (if not, most of their songs were about preppies and jocks and norms of all kinds and HOW THEY SUCK). The Renobs were moving towards a more cap'n jazz sort of sound and then they discovered that their friend marissa wanted to be in a band. At this point they started taking more of a turn towards the sounds of anasarca and other freakout emocore bands of the 90s. Needless to say, everyone in our crew of friends were pumped and excited for the band. I wanted to do as much as I could to let people know about them and would send their demo to penpals across the united states and abroad.

I don't remember how many shows they played, but it wasn't a lot. They were about to play detroit fest 1996 when marissa let them know she wasn't going to do the band effective immediately and they played their final show the day before the fest in the living room of 425 davis with constatine sankathi, decay, My ear is bleeding and Guyver one (yeah, I know most of these names mean absolutely nothing to you). At the time, they had an offer to do a 7" on anima records but it kinda just was forgotten due to them no longer being a band (I can't recall but I believe it was a pretty big bummer to the rest of the band). They did end up putting 2 of their songs from their demo on the anima records food not bombs compilation that was released the summer of 1996.

When Micah asked me if I wanted to contribute to his blog I got really excited to make stuff available that most people either haven't heard or have barely heard. Like it or don't like it, I want people to hear it still. I haven't heard most of these songs since 1996 and the memories are coming back like a flood to me. It reminds me of just how important you and your friend's world that you share together is when you are in your late teens early 20s. How many crazy life changing things happened during this time in my life, some good, some bad, but all important. This is for Andy Cornell (one of my dearest and most loyal friends), adam, dusty, andrea and marissa. In the words of Judge "those days are gone but they're not forgotten" .

edit: I was missing the 4th song from the demo.. It is now there. Download it again, if you wish.

http://www.mediafire.com/?sso5eo4bs2vjn4g