THE HYDROGEN GEEKS TIMELINE
| DATE |
EVENT |
| Spring 97 |
Sean and I started playing guitar together, in hopes of starting a
band, Brian plays in the very small time local band "Blue Buddha" |
| Summer 97 |
Blue Buddha breaks up, no one cares! |
| Fall 97 |
Sean meets Brian in school, finds that he's pretty cool, plays guitar,
wants to start a band, comes over and jams with us, we all get along, this
is a long sentence, and we decide to form a band. Now all we need
is a drummer.... |
| Winter 97 |
Acquire Alex Rhoades on drums, after hearing him in his garage one
cold (I mean cooold) December day during Christmas break and finding that,
yes he does in fact play drums, and yes, he has his own set. Not
really our style, but those 2 qualifiers made him win out. |
| First 2 weekends in January 98 |
After I think one practice, we decide to record a demo. When
finding out that tracking it would be next to impossible (after many many
attempts), we decide to play instruments live, overdub vocals and 2nd guitar
tracks when the 2nd guitar part was different from the 1st guitar. In 2
very productive weekends plus 1 day to record all vocals (also, that day,
I had no voice from trying to record vocals the day before, and Brian had
a bad cold, but we wanted it out Tuesday, so we did it!) |
| Spring 98 |
Practiced now and then, enthusiasm not very high, due to lack of equipment,
sloppy skill, etc. |
| 5/16/98 |
Played our first show, at the Franciscan Center, West Peoria, IL, with
Counter, and the band later to be name Fluxx. It went pretty well,
except for a few key points: We couldn't hear each other, so we were
kind of sloppy; WE had to PAY to play a free (to the public only I guess)
show; some dumb jocks from our school threw all sport bottles at us; Brian
broke a string; it took us awhile to set up, tune, etc., so we had to cut
out 2 ("Broadcast" and "Groupies") songs to fit into our allotted time.
Set included "Purple Elephant," "Smoke and Mirrors," "After-Math," "Gone
Again," "Grungeblues" (those last 4 being kinda new, not really though,
written circa Feb/Mar), "Aneurysm," "Lithium," "I Can't Sing," "My Keyboard
and I" (fucked up because Sean broke the damn keyboard not once but twice
the day of the show), "Orange Chicken," (totally messed up) and our most
famous and most anticipated performance of all time, "Got Joe." (you can
hear the crowd on the horrible C+ quality tape yelling for it through the
whole set) This is a shortened version of "Got Cheese?" played faster and
with distortion the whole way through. About the band's most favorite (favorite
as in he sucks the worst) jock asshole of all time, Joe Gabbert. Unfortunately,
the tape is subject to the infamous 45 minute cut, it is missing the end
of "Lithium" and all of "Got Joe." We spent a LOT of time tuning between
songs, and sometimes tempos were messed up because we couldn't hear each
other for shit. |
| 5/31/98 |
Played surprise show in Alex Rhoades' garage to a bunch of elderly
relatives of his, plus his girlfriend, best friend, and a few little kids
related to him in some way. Total viewing audience could be counted
on two, possibly one hand however. Brian couldn't attend, so we played
a very funky setlist (with me doing ALL the vocals, even on Brian's songs!),
including: Where's the Beef, Dayglo Orange, Neo Trekkie Nazi, (yes
the Ham songs), I Can't Sing, Purple Elephant, Aneurysm, Lithium, and Broadcast. |
| 6/6/98 |
A HUGE turning point for the band, the beginning of the end for the
line up as it was then. Played show at Pizza Works, Peoria, IL, with Minker,
Fluxx, and Ham, and I must say that this is the worst performance of our
band, practice, recorded, live, or otherwise. This show was to be
our next demo, but unfortunately, (actually, fortunately) the taper couldn't
tape the show because the sound guy forgot to bring the mixing board for
him!!! But before that, we had a practice that day where Sean broke a bass
string, and besides that, the bass was sounding very bad because of the
fact it had been resautered numerous times by this point. Borrowed
an electric-acoustic bass from the bassist in Fluxx that would go flat
in 5 seconds after tuning. Also fed back a lot, so Sean had to move
over and stand in front of my amp (that Tyson from Ham most graciously
lent me) so that his bass didn't feed back, making it so I couldn't hear
my guitar. Brian broke ANOTHER string, there is a special reason
this time, but I won't say it here. I forgot a lot of vocals, screwed
up the chorus to one song, Alex played drums on a drumless song and changed
all the other drum parts on the spot, etc., etc. After the show,
Alex said something very derogatory to a certain extremely nice guy that
has supported us from day one that caused us to rethink his position in
the band, and decide he wasn't for us. We cut a LOT of songs out of the
set, because we just wanted to get done, we played (from what I remember)
Purple Elephant, Aneurysm, My Keyboard and I (with Alex drumming along.
Blecch.), After-Math (totally fucked up, I forgot how to play it and I
wrote the damn song!), Lithium (stopped halfway through because not only
was the bass out of tune, but Sean confused the two ways he knows how to
play it, in key of E and D), um, Gone Again, umm...possibly Grungeblues,
yes we did play that, Smoke and Mirrors, I think that's it, we did NOT
play Broadcast, I remember that because groupie Mike Jorgensen was pissed!
Oh yeah, we finished with "Tourette's" in cut time. We played it (I just
calculated it) at approximately 320 beats per minute! Well, we sort of
played it. It is not possible for more things to go wrong in one day and
to play a worse show. |
| 7/8/98 |
With the next show two days away, we hadn't practiced with Alex in
almost a month. We had a practice scheduled for this night, but Alex
decided to blow it off, and this was the last straw. Fortunately,
he left his drum set at the practice pad (Sean's house) and we had the
most fun in the history of the band, having an almost non stop 3 hour practice
with Brian on the traps, figuring out that Brian is the drummer for us.
(at least temporarily) |
| 7/9/89 late night |
Brian informs me that Alex has hurt his wrist bad, and won't be able
to do the show. This is almost a made-for-tv-movie quality kind of
thing, to be sure to be in The Hydrogen Geeks version of the movie, "The
Doors!" We schedule an emergency practice, compose a new setlist, and go
to bed. |
| 7/9/89 1st shift hours |
We practice from 12 pm - 10 pm, only stopping to eat, greet, and rest! |
| 7/10/98 |
Show at Pizza Works, Peoria, IL, with Ham, 21 Union Square, and Searching
for Andy Funk. We played pretty good, especially considering the circumstances,
but no one was there to see it, because our set didn't start till after
11pm! The sound guy was an hour late, and the first band, who we were told
were going to play about a half hour, ended up playing upwards of an hour
and a half! Featured first performance of "This is Everything." Also played
"Purple Elephant," "Aneurysm," "I Can't Sing," "Broadcast," "Grungeblues,"
"Lithium," part of "Territorial Pissings," umm...there was like 1 or 2
more, can't remember them right now, maybe "Smoke and Mirrors" and "Gone
Again," but I'm not sure. |
| 7/15/98 |
Goat and Gomer trek to Brimfield to give Marsha a tryout as our drummer,
within 5 minutes we officially made her our drummer at least for the studio.
Practiced a little longer. |
| 7/17/98 |
Recorded "Purple Elephant" at Stinky Pete Studios, East Peoria, IL,
for Bloody Mess from Fanatic Records and of the band The Vaynes's "Concrete
and Cornfields Volume 2," a new compilation series putting the spotlight
on Peoria area band. Bands such as Ham, Astronaut 9, The Scabies,
The Vaynes, Idiom, and many others were on the first one. Also recorded
a cover of Nirvana's epic "Aneurysm" for 1 of 2 Nirvana tribute CD's being
put together on the internet (One is being done by a regular poster of
the newsgroup alt.music.nirvana, Thomas Morgan, and the other is being
put together by a member of the Heart-Shaped Box Mailing list whose name
I don't currently remember.) Both compilations have fallen through, to
my knowledge, so there is the first official The Hydrogen Geeks unreleased
rarity!!! |
| 7/27/98 |
Marsha drops out of playing the August 1st show. Gomer runs around
frantically to figure out what to do, we decide to play as a three piece
again. |
| 8/1/98 |
Played show with bands The Electric Pants and Minker at 9 pm at Peoria
Pizza Works. Our best show yet. Debuted new songs "MicroSoft" and
covered "Molly's Lips" and "Drain You" for the first time. Also performed
"The Star Spangled Banner" as an intro to "Purple Elephant." half of this
show is on tape, by bootleg standards it is a B+. |
| 8/7/98 |
Played show with The Psychodelics, 21 Union Square and David Johnson
at, you guessed it, Peoria Pizza Works, 7:30 PM. This show continues our
current trend of better live performances. The only major screw ups
were (besides the usual occasional wrong note or wrong beat, etc.) when
some punk rockers fell on my pedal board and changed effects in the middle
of "Drain You," and when my A string fell down to F or so during "Aneurysm."
Also, my voice disappeared during set closer "Utah Boy." "Just 4 You" played
for the 1st time. Show existed on taped, room was PRO miked, but I've been
told the quality is shitty, but I've yet to see... The quality IS shitty,
some of it is decent though. |
| 8/21/98 |
Played release party for Ham's CD "Brave New World" at Pizza Works.
I can barely remeber it though. We may not have played any new songs,
though four were done, because our set was very short, like half an hour.
Show exists on A quality 4 track, but I haven't gotten around to getting
the tape yet. A pretty good show if I remember. Oh yeah, Brian
got a little showboatty, but we corrected that problem after the show by
horribly disfiguring his face (Note: Did not actually happen!) |
| 8/23/98 |
Played ANOTHER show at the Works, this time with The Read Letter.
Crowd that you could count on your fingers and toes, cause it was a sunday
night. Played the same set as 8/21, with the addition of Drain You,
cause we may not have had time for it at that show. Best show yet,
only problem was that Sean and Chris were out of tune with each other the
whole night, and we had to work through the plight of having one microphone
available for two singers. We just played Brian's songs first, moved
the mike, and played mine. |
| November/December 98 |
Concrete and Cornfields Vol. 2 will be released, contact me for a copy!
$8. |
| 9/98 |
Recorded twice for what was supposed to be a full length album, later
changed to an EP with a hugiferous amount of outtakes that may or may not
be rerecorded or even finished. |
| 12/27/98 + 12/28/98 |
Scheduled to finish the months-delayed Y2K Blues tape! |
| 12/30/98 |
Scheduled to demo 2 songs at Beck's Boss Sounds, one to appear on future
compilation album, the other....we'll get back to that later! |
| 1/9/99 |
Concrete and Cornfields Vol. 2 release party show at Pizza Works with
Idiom, the Vaynes, and the Electric Pants. 2 special surprises scheduled!!! |
| 1/16/99 |
Concrete and Cornfields Vol. 2 release party show at the Voodoo Lounge,
formerly known as the Great Barrier Reef, (!) in Bellvue, IL; with
The Vaynes, Dishwater, Stinky Pete, Snot Rocket, and Planetary Gearhead.
Over 21 only, sorry, all you young'uns. The official first appearance of
Matt Jordan on second guitar! |
| Spring 99 |
TOP SECRET...stay tuned |
| 8/99 |
Humongous, collosal, massive, gigantic show!!! Not in Illinois!
Almost fully set up! More details later... |
