|Bill Atkinson - Guitar/Vocals|
The Disaster...What lead to The Aftermath
Well I'm going to try to do this as best I can. This all happened over about 8 months so I have to think back. Well, I remember one day I was sitting there in gym class and I had been trying to recruit band members. I remember this kid Ted said he'd start guitar if I'd teach him, and my friend Justin said he had an Aria strat but wasn't all that good. Well Jim bought a Squier Bullet and a small Crate amp for $150 together. I played my dad's old acoustic and my my uncle's Yamaha Acoustic, but I planned to buy an electric guitar once Jim and Justin Got better. Well the day Ted bought his guitar I remember I showed him a few chords and scales, but he wasn't all that good, but on my way over there I saw my friend Jamie, who said he had a guitar too and would bring it over. He had a B.C. Rich Bronze Warlock. Well the origonal name was gonna be something like 2 month advance because we weren't gonna be a real band for about 2 months. Well after about a week Ted quit to join a band with a bunch of people that didn't really play, but Justin said he would play 2nd guitar for us. After Ted left we changed the name to The Dregs. Well, me and Justin were in gym again one day, and instead of listening to the teacher in the beginning of class, we talked about what else the band needed.We were saying that we deffinetly needed a bass player, a drummer, and possibly a vocalist, but couldn't think of who we could get to play for us. I remember asking my friend Greg if he would play bass for us and he said he'd think about it, but he later joined Opitemy. Speaking of Opitemy, I remember there was at one point some talk of my friend Mike doing vocals for us as a sideshow. As far as drummers went I remember my friend Mike Donahue asking if he could play drums for us, but Justin didn't like him and said he'd quit if Mike joined, so Mike didn't join. My younger brother Dylan played drums, but he was 3 years younger than me. I remember thinking "will he be willing to play punk, metal and other kinds of music?" Well I asked him eventually, and he said he would play as long as we weren't like Death Metal, so all I had to do was talk it over with Justin. I was expecting Justin to be saying He's just a 10 year old kid, but he didn't care, because I told him how long Dylan had been playing (5 years, which is longer than most kids our age had been playing). That Christmas I got my electric guitar, an Epiphone Les Paul. We soon aquired a 3rd guitarist who was doing this as a sideshow (he was 2nd rythm guitar), but the day after he joined he decided that he was only gonna do his main band, because the drummer and his girlfriend sorta forced him to quit. Then we decided that we had gone throuh so much before even practicing that we changed our name to The Aftermath. We practiced not too long after that and I remember that practice pretty well. Justin came over after school with his amp and he used my peice of crap Harmony Strat which could only have 5 strings cause the bridge was messed up, ironicly his guitar had the same problem. We started playing and we couldn't really hear anything but the drums because our amps were so small, mine was 19 watts and his was 10 watts. We watched the NOFX DVD and then Dylan had to go to something for school so me and Justin watched a Bronx Tale and ate pizza and then my friend Eric came over. We chilled for a little while and then went out for a walk. I remember when we were heading home from the walk some kid tried to start with Eric and he scared Eric to death. Well soon after that me and Justin jammed again. We had been working on a few songs. Not too soon after that Justin said he was gonna take a break for a while because he needed to sort his life out. After that I asked my friend Eric to join and he said he would. Then my friend Brad offered to come in on bass. That lasted for a week and they didnt show up for practice and they quit. We decided it would just be me and Dylan. A few months later before we did any shows or recordings Dylan left. Now it is me and hopefully soon a backup band That is our story so far. - Bill
*SOME NAMES WERE CHANGED TO PREVENT EMBARASSMENT AND SO WE WOULDN'T GET IN TROUBLE WITH ANYONE.
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