At El Molino High School, Larry, self admittedly the world's biggest AC/DC fan, heard of a freshman kid in school, named Marty, who also claimed to be the biggest AC/DC fan of all time. Upon investigation, he found that they had quite a bit in common and began teaching each other guitar chords. Zack knew Marty from their freshman year in high school, and heard that he and some other guys were trying to form a band, but needed a singer. Zack couldn't sing a note, but he kind of hung out until they needed a bass player.

In the meantime, a drummer was needed. Marty knew Ray from kindergarten and reunited with him in high school. Under the name of High Output, they all started jamming on cover songs by Tom Petty, CCR and the Rolling Stones, just to name a few. They played weddings, barmitzvahs and every kegger in high school. After too many broken guitars and noses, they'd had enough of the party brawls and decided that they wanted to play some of the local night clubs. They didn't realize it, but the days of the high paying gigs were over. After falling all over each other out of sheer stage fright, they started getting the hang of playing on a real stage.

They started practicing like crazy on four songs which became the self-financed, Giant Midget E.P. Playing tons of shows in the San Francisco Bay Area landed them a record deal with Caroline Records. Without ever having previous knowledge of record labels or their affiliations the band didn't realize what kind of impact this could have on their reputation. Bracket wanted to develop a fanbase that would include fans of vinyl recordings so after a request to record 7"s was turned down by Caroline, they approached Fat Wreck Chords. A strong friendship grew and when Caroline released most of their staff and bands, Bracket called and emergency meeting with Fat Mike and was officially a full fledged FWC band the next day. After touring all of the U.S., Canada, and Europe several times, they finally toured Japan in 1997