The Commonwealth arose from the ashes of Capital Security, a short lived political hardcore band from Central Maine. Capital Security's original members were, Vic & Justin on vocals, Jonny on guitar, Todd on bass, and Josh playing drums. At the end of the 1997 summer (after playing only 2 shows), Josh & Justin (who are twins) went back to school in New Hampshire. Therefor, the band was on a hiatus, planning to be picked up the following summer. The only recording that Capital Security had was a demo tape recorded during brew fest ‘97, an event that know body will forget. There is some talk amongst Autonomous Action that the tape should released.
At the start of the ‘98 summer the only member of Capital Security that were able to play were, Vic, Jonny, and Josh. Jonny then decided that he wanted to do vocals instead of play guitar and we found Westie (of A Global Threat) to take Jonny's guitar. As far as bass, we were going to have Pat from General Strike play. We practiced a couple of times (and wrote the song List of Demands) and them Vic went into the hospital for a collapsed lung do to a police beating. Once he was out, we had to cancel the 1 show we had scheduled due to the fact that Vic could still not play. We never had another practice. At this point, Jonny had ironically mentioned that we may be joining A Global Threat.
A short time went by where there was no talk of bands issues. Westie and Vic were busy starting Autonomous Action and Josh was starting school (collage). Josh & Vic were talking one night and thought that they would like to be in a band with people that they had never been in a band with before. We talked to Westie and he agreed. Both Jonny and Vic had been in many bands together as well as Josh and Jonny. We needed someone to play bass. Pat was one option but Vic and Pat (as well as Jonny) had been in General Strike together. We also wanted to have dual (female/male) vocals. We though of everyone that we knew and we came up with Megan (no band experience) to do vocals and Carlton (played drums for a local joke pop punk band) to play bass. Jonny had informed us that he and Pat were going to start something up. We had a few practices (asked Jonny if he cared if we took List of Demand) and Carlton had a tendency to not show up. We gave him the boot and got Pat to play bass, what he and Jonny were planning didn't work out.
Westie then got kicked out of his apartment (where we played) due to legal trouble. We moved everything into Megan's mom's house. We practiced until early December of ‘98, when Westie's new apartment burn to the ground. There was about a month of time where he had no place to live so we didn't practice. It was Jan of ‘99 when Megan quit. She said that Vic was to much of an asshole. There is a fairly bloody story here but the Internet is no place to talk about it. Needless to say we, again, needed a new place to practice. Pat offered his house and it was cool with his brother so that is where we went.
We had not come up with a name for the band yet and Matt from C.D.S. called up and wanted us to play a show in Auburn Maine with them. We said okay and told him we were The Commonwealth so that he could get us on the flier. The Commonwealth, The Lockheeds, The Terrorist, The Syndicalist and Moral Conviction were some of the names that we had talked about. After a total of six members and three practice spaces, The Commonwealth was born.
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