Date: Early Autumn, 1996

This three-man (boy?) wonder was back in business in The Loft. Every Sunday morning, around 11 or 12, practice commenced like clockwork. Most of them were awake. The rest pretended.  This period produced works such as "That song that starts on E, is E in the middle, and ends on E, but has a lot of dynamics so it isn't terribly boring", "The Loft Stomp" (which coincedentally, is a just a riff on E), and they learned covers such as "(Undone) The Sweater Song", "My Name is Jonas", "Killing in the Name Of", as well as some we'd like to completely forget about.

Soon, this band got a little too loud for The Loft according to a certain neighbor who will remain namless. This guy ran over and slammed open the door ever Sunday, threatened us, called us names, and called the cops on us. Every Sunday. So we got tired of that shit.  We up and moved to "The Garage".

This had been our haven since then, until just recently. Brian's garage. Roughly less than 1/4 the size of The Loft. Roughly 100% more freezers, bikes, coolers, tools, and radial arm saws.  We managed.

Date: Late Autumn/Early Winter 1996

Brian got a new, Hartke amp for Xmas. Dave got a Fender Stratocaster. We were all golden, except Ralph. Ralph's crash cymbal started to break. The set was in worse shape than ever. Somewhere along the way, Brian had the idea for a name. He suggested "SiMent". We thought it was kinda cool. I think he said it was Spanish cement or something.

Brian popped out the riff to "Solvent Alcohol". Solvent Alcohol was a cool song. It had so many dyanamics, but now it comes out all flat.  Dave squeezed a riff he called "Reef".  Whilst practicing in the Garage one Sunday (perhaps Christmas Eve?), Dave's newly purchased Small Stone Phaser started picking up this Shortwave station in France, or something. It was definaltey a dude speaking French. It sounded so freaky all foreign and swirly coming out of Dave's Amp.

Brian instantly fit his new groove to the occasion. Thus, thier first slow groove was born: "The Amorphous French Man"
Mind you, these are all little instrumentals. No one in the band could sing yet. A lightbulb turned on above Dave's head.

'A singer!' he thought.

He threw the idea around a bit, and the guys seemed to like it. So they set out on a journey to find a singer. It was probably Dave coming up with the idea of a female singer. It sorta threw everyone a curve.

Tara LaDore loved singing. She still does. She probably always will. She expressed interest. For some odd reason, she thought that Dave hated her, and she never showed up.  Andrea Rusolovski showed even more interest. However, she never showed up either. Marcie Johnson, a friend of Dave had a friend, Kim Alamandy, who went to school with a girl named Brenda. Brenda managed to show up! She's in! Finally someone to show up! We played our songs... "Solvent Alcohol", "The Fugue," and she put a melody over them. A scratchy one, but a melody at that.
So, we decided to keep her.

This picture has been included for posterity's sake. We hope you can make some sense of it.