Curious Yellow, My High School Rock Band
Brent introduced Eric and I to Dan some time around '95 or '96. The lineup was generally a three-piece of myself on guitars, Dan on drums and Eric playing bass with occasional contributions from Brent on keys, Travis on guitar, and Kevin vocals.
I was reading a lot of SF at the time and was on a kick of using objects and characters from Jeff Noon’s novels in everything from Quake and IRC aliases to song titles to computer names - which hasn’t exactly stopped, 8 years later my 15" powerbook’s DNS name is scribble. Oh, and ‘jokerbone’. At some point after a jam at Kevin’s house, I suggested naming the group Curious Yellow after an object in Vurt. Noon got the name from an infamous swedish film, over which the Supreme Court overturned anti-obscenity laws that regulated motion pictures. High school kids eat up that kind of name and I thought it sounded pretty hip.
Curious Yellow’s only real gigs were at battle-of-the-bands events. One was at our high school, another at the community pool. We placed second of the four at the pool show, for whatever that’s worth. We also made the local gazette’s front page with a large color photo thanks to our spot at first in the line-up. I think the photographer wanted to get in and out quickly. The reporter dubbed our sound revved-up blues rock. We played some sappy song that we’d written specifically for the gig and never ever ever played again, covered Zeppelin’s arrangement of The Lemon Song and probably something else, as a trio with no vocals. All of our parents have this newspaper clipping, I’ll update this with a copy at some point. The high school auditorium setlist was I believe a two or three track medley including me playing a 12 string acoustic on a stand with a violin bow before switching to my strapped-on electric. I don’t have recordings of either event.
Eric got a four track at some point and we began recording our practices. I only have a mix-cassette tape of various things that emerged from these weekend jams from which I’ve converted a few tracks. Brent and Travis were both around to contribute to a cover of The Funky Meter’s Cissy Strut, a song we played just about every time we got together in the style that was bootlegged into Pastorius’ Live in NYC, Vol. 2 with Hiram Bullock. Another song around this time with Travis on guitar was a cover of Jimi Hendrix’s Ezy Rider. We did have a handful of originals but the only two I have recorded are Eric’s Krista’s Eyes and a rhythmic experiment Dan directed called simply, Himeola.
Eric’s parents were generous enough to pay for studio time to record a three song demo at The Studio, a basement operation in Frederick from which was tracked two originals - English Voodoo and Sirens, as well as a cover of Pink Floyd’s Interstellar Overdrive. Not appreciating that studio time is an hourly arrangement, I was able to go back the next day and run through guitar overdubs on every track.
When we spread out to attend college, practices grew farther and farther apart and I gradually lost interest in playing guitar. Eric went on to play in a handful of other bands ranging from accoustic folk to metal.
Around 2001 we briefly toyed with jamming at UMBC by sneaking into an equipment room after hours in the fine arts building and setting up. From the second night of this, the simple but fun Drowning was snagged to Dan’s mini-disc recorder. This was one of the last times my guitar was out of its case for a few more years but I’m pretty proud of what we put together on almost no practice or planning. Dan and Eric formed a group with another guitarist closer to them that was in the wings at the recording of Drowning and living with Dan at the time which has since disbanded but recorded some really neat stuff.
MP3’s