Summer was over, school was to resume, and The Derelllicts were juniors in high school.

The next time The Derelllicts recorded we were at Brad's house again, but this time we tried recording in different places such as his back yard, garage, and den (we managed to capture the den music on a camcorder and we sounded horrible). It was during these sessions, which produced the album The Kids That Said Hello, that The Derelllicts made their first musical story called "The Mystery At Red Corner". I also believe it was during these sessions that we filmed "A Day At The Beach" a nonsensical random film which told a story for each Derelllict. For an indepth account of "A Day At The Beach," read my memoirs in the Soapbox Archives.

After The Kids album, I happened upon some samples of Prozac and both Jamey and I tried some before our music appreciation class. The effect made us feel really laughy then really loose. We thought "hey, let's try taking this before we record next time." So we did. The result was We're Back and We're Pissed, our most uninhibited work, thanks to the Prozac. Up to this point, The Derelllicts were still using Brad's keyboard as a musical crutch, but had also been delving deeper into playing as a unit. The lyrics seemed more concentrated and thorough while the music became more experimental and thoughtful as The Derelllicts played together. We did percussive instrumentals and another musical story called "The Rescue of Pops Ghostly" (based on a videotape in Brad's collection). WBAWP was a creative landmark in The Derelllicts' musical progression. The Prozac definitely had a beneficial effect.

Towards end of 1997, there seemed to be an uneasy tension between Jared and Brad. Brad was growing increasingly distant and removed from their relationship affected by outside influences such as friends and drugs. The beginning of 1998 was a very sparse, unsettling, and grim time for The Derelllicts and very little recording was done due to Brad and Jared's rocky relationship and the fact that Jamey was moving to Michigan. So the band went on hiatus.

It was tough when Jamey moved to Michigan to say in the least. It wasn't like Brad and I would never see him again, but that was it--we didn't know when we'd see him again.

Jamey left sometime in August of 1998 to finish the rest of his junior year at another highschool. The transition was trying as you'd expect. And Brad and myself were left to finish our junior experience in Tennessee. We did a few video projects for school. One was a parody of The Great Gatsby for english class which included Jamey and was one of the last projects he worked on with Brad and myself before he moved. Of course Jamey still corresponded back and forth with us via email but he was greatly missed.

As far as music was concerned, Brad and I hardly did any. Jamey's presence had temporarily been filled by Chris Street, a friend of both myself and Brad. Although Brad and I had clashing lifestyles, Chris was able to bring us back together for a short while to do some recording. One of the recordings is a musical story in the vein of Peter and the Wolf. It was called "A Day In The Life of St. Francis of Assisi". Each of the characters we created had a musical instrument assigned to them when they would speak. For instance, Rabbi Heischwitz was played by an oboe, the Brave Retarded Bear was played by a bassoon, Pirate McGee by an accordion, the African Who Wanted To Be A Dinosaur by the marimbas, the Horny Jack Rabbit by a fiddle, the Evil Spider Monkey by a brass section, and Captain Happy by the "timbone". Brad narrated, he and I tackled the instrumentation and Chris helped us with the plot. The other recording, which was just recently discovered, involved Chris, Brad, and myself doing movie trailer parodies. One starred Daniel Day Lewis, Orson Welles, Wynona Rider and Jack Nicholson in "The Halloween That Almost Wasn't". Absolutely hilarious! And it was great to be working with Brad again.

Written June 8, July 8, and July 21 2002