tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-71095578903469555452024-03-12T17:48:48.736-07:00Zombie Apocalypse NOW!The Blog of a Really Nerdy BandBeta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-63575262954548878402011-12-07T11:41:00.001-08:002011-12-07T14:40:48.351-08:00Part 7: Hell Comes to the SuburbsYeah it’s been a while. But I’m fairly certain no one really reads this blog too much anyway so I’m gonna call it “good.” It ain’t like I got a bunch of e-mails asking for more.<br />
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Let’s talk a bit more about <b>Darin Bluhm</b>.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dA7g0fkR7Dw/Tt_inKOZZPI/AAAAAAAABaA/mfbymIij7WI/s1600/Darin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-dA7g0fkR7Dw/Tt_inKOZZPI/AAAAAAAABaA/mfbymIij7WI/s200/Darin.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Darin Bluhm</td></tr>
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I feel I might have skimmed a bit over the importance of Darin to <b>Zombie Apoclaypse NOW!</b> last time so I’ll try to fix that today. Basically if Darin hadn’t joined the band the band wouldn’t have made the jump from barely-playing-basements-amateurs to venue-playing-professionals (Or “Talented Amateur”, if you prefer). The reason was, in my opinion, two-fold:<br />
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1) Darin had a lot of connections and a lot friends in town so while I was being a big dopey nerd with no real idea where to start with things like booking shows Darin would just call up a buddy or a co-worker and say “Hey, do you think we can place this show on this date? <i> Nice</i>.” This is how we played at <b>the Strutt</b> and at <b>Papa Pete’s</b> as much as we did, at least in the beginning. I don’t know if the Strutt would have ever let us play if I or super polite <b>Travis </b>had checked in with them. Darin’s outgoing nature is what taught me how to book shows and any success we had in 2009 came because of that.<br />
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2) Darin was ambitious, more so than me or Travis. While I was, am still am, a very long term goal oriented sort of person who likes to take it slow and steady and Travis is more “Go with theFlow” Darin was a “Right Here, Right Now” type of guy when it came to making music. Now this obviously had some good points to it and some not so good points to it. On the one hand he had far grater expectations from us than we could sometimes give, which could result in some in-band issues from time to time but on the other hand he tended to force our hands into doing something we weren’t planning on doing at the time but seriously needed to be done. And when they worked out they tended to work out big time. Case in point the release of our second demo “<b>The Sellout Demo</b>” which we would have never done in the Winter of 2009 if Darin hadn’t insisted on it.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yMI2Lz2K5LQ/Tt_li-y9NtI/AAAAAAAABaI/eH5xRsCPPgM/s1600/GR.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yMI2Lz2K5LQ/Tt_li-y9NtI/AAAAAAAABaI/eH5xRsCPPgM/s320/GR.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">First band photo of the new version of ZAN</td></tr>
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More after the jump.<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ruxE3zHv3zo/Tt_nIHpD5tI/AAAAAAAABaQ/LaZ9__ToTjY/s1600/Louie2.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ruxE3zHv3zo/Tt_nIHpD5tI/AAAAAAAABaQ/LaZ9__ToTjY/s320/Louie2.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Playing in a tiny corner of a tiny bar. We have arrived</td></tr>
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Following our semi-successful show in Grand Rapids Darin, taking the lead, suggested we start doing Open Mic shows at the Strutt as well a basement show here and there. This was really the beginning of our band starting to make a name for ourselves in Kalamazoo and for the first time people were asking me when was the next time my band was playing because they liked what they heard. Darin suggested we do a demo and while I had wanted to do one for a while at this point he’d only been in the band for a few weeks and I thought we might want to actually be more comfortable with each other as a band before we started recording anything. But, as I said, Darin was ambitious and he insisted. Now ultimately this was a good decision and it would eventually lead into the band penultimate moment (But I’m getting ahead of myself). He called up his buddy Ben who offered record us in Darin’s basement at no charge.<br />
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While this was happening, as I said, we were playing Open Mic Night at the Strutt a lot and while many of these shows kind of blur together I recall one time particular there was a pretty good sized crowd at the bar and everyone (Except for some guys I can only describe as being “Bros”) seemed to really dig our sound. I was excited because this felt like a preview of things to come. But that night has a special meaning to me for another reason because that was the night I first met <b>Dave Andrews</b>.<br />
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I was introduced to him by my best friend <b>Mr. Kaze</b> but he had mentioned the guy to me once or twice before. Mr. Kaze was a bouncer for the Strutt at the time and had told me he’d seen this dude play acoustic covers of NOFX songs, which sounded pretty cool to me (The number of punk kids I ran into in Kalamazoo was pretty low compared to all the indie and folk guys that populate the scene). He was set to play the open mic a bit later and had literally just missed us but we had a brief conversation:<br />
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Dave: Yeah, I’ve been dying to get back into a band. It’s been a while. I’ve been looking around town but so far I haven’t found anyone.<br />
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Jay: Huh. [Pause] Good luck with that.<br />
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And then I left the building. I wasn’t trying to be short with him (But I was totally short with him) but to be it didn’t occur to me that this punk rock guitarist could be someone I should, or even could, recruit for ZAN. I think it was mostly because I barely considered myself a proper musician in a proper band at the time. But over the next few days it would hit me. It was probably something like this:<br />
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Jay: I don’t know, man. I think Heroes just isn’t the show it used to be and-Holy shit, I should have asked Dave to audition for my band. FUUUUUUCK!<br />
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Or something; it was a long time ago. I knew I had messed up; Zombie Apocalypse NOW! needed a rhythm guitarist and I may have let one slip through my fingers like a dummy. I had absolutely no way of contacting Dave on my own though so my best bet was to go to the next Open Mic and hope he showed up. So the next Tuesday, on a day that was much less populated than the last time I was there, by the grace of Xenu, Dave did in fact show up to play, armed with a Legend of Zelda t-shirt. After his set, which was amazing and full of acoustic <b>Lagwagon </b>covers, I approached him and talked to him about my band and asked if he’d be interested in auditioning. He said he’d like to but he had a problem: he didn’t have an amplifier as his had been stolen fairly recently. Since Darin had a basement full of equipment I told him in the short term it wouldn’t be a problem but he’d need to get his own ASAP should he make it into the band. He agreed.<br />
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He later told me that he had been going to these open mics for the main purpose of being scouted/recruited by a like-minded band and I had basically fallen into his trap. However I maintain this: what kind of dummy tries to get recruited into a band when he doesn’t have the equipment needed to be in a band?<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMGJRfLvZ70/Tt_oH5PLtwI/AAAAAAAABaY/f-Njix7ld5g/s1600/DaveIMG_0306to+edit.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aMGJRfLvZ70/Tt_oH5PLtwI/AAAAAAAABaY/f-Njix7ld5g/s320/DaveIMG_0306to+edit.JPG" width="212" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dave from the Suburbs</td></tr>
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I should say a few things about Dave. He’s, in total honesty, the perfect person to be in a band with me. He’s like a weird version of my evil twin…or maybe good twin, I’m not sure. We’re both punks (Him more so than me by far) so our songwriting is rooted from the same source but at the same time we wrote very different type of songs. We’re also strangely from he same area; while I’m from Detroit he was from the “Metro Detroit Area” aka the goddamn suburbs, hence my nickname for him; “Dave from the Suburbs”. When I was growing up I was completely isolated from any sort of music scene because that shit doesn’t seem to float around the Detroit High Schools in the slightest. Meanwhile, only a few miles away, he’s going to shows all the time and building a relationship with all these mysterious “Detroit Bands” I hear so much about but have never really seen. He also was the only person in the band who really stood up to me. If something sucked he’d tell me and usually what would happen was I’d blow up at him, storm off and then at the next time say something like “Dave had a really good idea last time. Let’s try that.” This happened all the fucking time. To keep up with him I also felt I had to get better as a bassist and a songwriter so he being there greatly helped me as a musician. We’ll get into more details about Dave later.<br />
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Anyway he auditioned and while it didn’t go super great it was clear that he’d be a good person to have on board. Oddly Darin was super against having him join and kind of hated him for weeks. He said it was because Dave didn’t really play the songs well (Though this was because he didn’t know the songs as he had just heard them, meaning he was only a bit worse than the Darin who only weeks more experience) but the real reason was that Dave had rubbed him the wrong way by talking some serious trash about the Doors. Dave tended to say things that pissed people off. A lot. He didn’t give a shit because he was punk. That is why I recruited him; so someone who didn’t give a shit would tell me how it is and not pussyfoot around with it. In this regard Dave was invaluable.<br />
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So we agreed to let him in the band but we wouldn’t let him play shows with us for another month. He did come to our demo recording and gave input but wasn’t allowed to play anything (He’d only been with the band two days or something maybe less). The recording of the demo took two days, and by two days I mean six hours over two days and I don’t think the mixing took a long time either (And was full of reverb). It was the smoothest recording we’ve ever done, including our most recent one (“Bandora’s Box”, Out 1/14/12). The three song demo, featuring our three most popular songs “<b>What’s Up with Dave?</b>”, “<b>Sellout</b>” and “<b>Justice Girl</b>”, was named “The Sellout Demo” in keeping with the naming scheme form our previous, less awesome first demo. Now armed with a decent recording, that we have to fucking EVERYONE, and having finally attained a full four-piece and the ability to book shows Zombie Apocalypse NOW! was finally, finally, ready to invade Kalamazoo. What followed was the best summer of my life.<br />
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Next time ZAN spends the summer playing all over town.Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-4962050089857566232011-08-13T20:10:00.000-07:002011-08-13T20:10:38.680-07:00Part 6: In Which ZAN Begins in Earnest<div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Before I get into anything with the band proper I’d like to take this time to acknowledge an important part of the <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b> team: <b>Stephanie Friedersdorff</b>. She’s not a member of the band officially but we usually think of her as the fourth/fifth (Depending on how many people are in ZAN at the time) member of the group. I hesitate to call her our #1 fan, not because she isn’t probably our biggest fan on Earth because she is (Though I suppose technically when you have three fans it isn’t that hard to be number one) but because she does so much for us that goes far and beyond her duties as a fan. She is the main force behind the production of our t-shirts as well as other merchandise and the last few years she’s been basically our personal photographer. If you’ve seen a girl hanging with us at a show it’s probably her. Steph is pretty much the fan that all bands wish they had; she comes to damn near every show (Sometimes bringing other people), helps promote the band, and makes merchandise without complaint.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lJBUj5_3xac/TkcmGYWYP2I/AAAAAAAABNI/rlYO4XI5rX8/s1600/AdorableZAN.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lJBUj5_3xac/TkcmGYWYP2I/AAAAAAAABNI/rlYO4XI5rX8/s320/AdorableZAN.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Drawn by Stephine Friedersdorff and not in fact a 3-year old</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">I don’t really remember exactly when she started coming to our shows on her own but <b>Travis </b>and I did know her beforehand as she was dating our roommate back in the day. So she often heard us practicing in our basement and likely caught some of our early basement shows so she’s been a fan for years. I often wish we had more folks who seemed to dig us half as much as she seems to. Then we’d maybe play in front of more than ten people a bit more often.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The return of Zombie Apocalypse NOW! after the jump.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><a name='more'></a><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-beUmiFnw0B4/TkcrFxhm8xI/AAAAAAAABNM/7O7A9qmSCVk/s1600/Grand+Rapids.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-beUmiFnw0B4/TkcrFxhm8xI/AAAAAAAABNM/7O7A9qmSCVk/s200/Grand+Rapids.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Live in Grand Rapids</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In the end of 2008 I decided that Zombie Apocalypse NOW! had run its course. After more than two years of failure to launch I had had enough and decided that I was wasting my time trying to do the "music thing". However by the top of the following year I had quit my extremely stressful and will sapping job at a local downtown Kalamazoo restaurant (I won’t name names but the place can go to hell nonetheless). With that dark cloud off my head I felt a bit more optimistic about life in general and was more open to not just giving up on ZAN. Some time earlier, while Travis and I were drinking a bit more than we should have he revealed a horrible truth: he had gone back to college to study criminal justice so he could eventually enter the police academy but it turns out that he didn’t actually want to do that at all. He was only going through with it because he felt it was the thing he had to do but in fact all he wanted to do was play music professionally. Despite this he had convinced himself that it would never, ever happen and resigned himself to a fate he himself admitted deeply depressed him. We drunkenly agreed that we would make the band a success so that Travis could fulfill his dream. And by 2009 I had effectively turned my back on that promise. Once my overall mood lifted I knew I had to try again (This promise, however, would haunt me later, and even to this day, but more on that in future blogs).</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">In any event with renewed vigor and a sense of fraternal obligation I decided to once more attempt to get the band off the ground and to do this we again needed a drummer. <b> Mark Horner</b>, our most recent drummer, had implied he’d be interested in coming back after his schedule became manageable but I didn’t bother contacting him because I was still unreasonably and stubbornly bitter over him leaving back in November. So yet again we were searching, possibly in vain, for a new drummer so we could do as little as play a show. It was around this time that I got an e-mail from <b>The Common Good.</b></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">A bit about The Common Good, if I may. </div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The Common Good is a West Michigan band that I’ve been a fan of since I saw them years and years ago. A rock outfit with Grunge influences I think it’s safe to call them the most underrated band in the area. They always have solid shows, they have awesome hard hitting rock songs, and they’re genuinely decent guys which is more than a lot of bands can say. The fact is that these guys are probably the best band in West Michigan you've never heard of. Travis and I first saw these guys a while back at the (Now defunct) <b> Ground Sphere </b>in Allegan, MI during a battle of the bands where they , in my opinion, unfairly lost due to the winning band’s fanbase voting for their inferior group and then leaving before the other bands even got a chance to play. Even so we ended up becoming big fans of the Common Good, making sure to go to any show they did in Kzoo and over time we became decent friends.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KDK2g4Va2Ww/Tkc1G1Lag7I/AAAAAAAABNQ/F0xkY2nFkMs/s1600/TheCommonGood.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KDK2g4Va2Ww/Tkc1G1Lag7I/AAAAAAAABNQ/F0xkY2nFkMs/s200/TheCommonGood.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Common Good</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Last time I heard The Common Good was looking for a drummer. <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=5&ved=0CDMQFjAE&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fthecommongood&rct=j&q=the%20common%20good%20facebook&ei=6C5HTtnsMMifsQKjlJSSCA&usg=AFQjCNECx5dmaREUJw36oaweKTPCr_dJhg&sig2=LFzsOwQTvEXcke9C9oYjRQ&cad=rja">Check them out ASAP</a>.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anyway they were playing a show in Grand Rapids at a bar called Louie’s the first week of March and wanted us to come check them out since they knew we were in a band. Now this is pretty much the same type of scenario as last November so I was hesitant to agree since I didn’t want what happened then to occur again. Still there’s no motivation quite like the pressure of an upcoming show so in the end I agreed BUT told them we may have to pull out since we didn’t have a drummer and may not find one in time. They agreed and we attempted to increase the intensity of our search. After a short while of failure our roommate Mr. Kaze had a suggestion.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Mr. Kaze worked at <b>The Strutt</b>, a local venue that as of this writing is either doing really well or really poorly depending on who you ask. Apparently he knew a cook who also worked there who was really, really interested in joining a band, any band. Eventually I told Kaze to go ahead mention us to the guy only to have a surprising conversation a week and a half later when he finally got back to me:</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Kaze: You know that cook I work with?</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Jay: Yeah?</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i><br />
</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>Kaze: Yeah, it was Darin. I forgot you knew him.</i></div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b>Darin Bluhm </b>was the drummer I jammed with way back in 2004 and then later recruited him for <b>the Janissaries</b>. He left that band because he moved to Germany for a little while. He came back eventually and I ran into him once or twice by chance but I had no idea he was still in Kalamzoo in 2009 let alone a co-worker of my roommate. In any event I got into contact with him immediately, he being as surprised as I was about the whole situation. We jammed out a bunch of songs to the point where we felt it was good enough for playing that show. Though we hadn’t played together in a while Darin and I knew each other’s playing style pretty well so jamming ended up being a bit more relaxed than it had been in the past.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jFsPGAnOAjM/Tkc4y6f0B7I/AAAAAAAABNU/H0SDYlDQBO0/s1600/Darin.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jFsPGAnOAjM/Tkc4y6f0B7I/AAAAAAAABNU/H0SDYlDQBO0/s320/Darin.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Darin Bluhm's first show with ZAN</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The show, which I’m told wasn’t exactly the best sounding ZAN has ever been, went off without a hitch unlike the last disaster. While in Grand Rapids Travis’ brother took a ton of promo pictures for press kits which is why they’re have been so many images of the three of us all over the place. A new era of ZAN had begun. Now with a drummer in tow we finally had the ability to book shows and, unlike Mike our first drummer, Darin was extremely eager to do so. The fact that he worked at the Strutt and was friends with the booker of Papa Pete’s (Another Kzoo venue) it looked like we would actually get the chance to gig like we were actually musicians!</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">There was one issue that was a possible complication; Darin had been in the process of preparing to move to Korea to teach English (A great use of his degree in German). He said he was supposed to leave that year but would likely miss the opportunity and instead leave the following year. I nodded since that was a ways away, but I took what he said with a grain of salt. March of 2010 was in the distant future, as far as I was concerned, and a lot could change in that time. Regardless now armed with an enthusiastic drummer the band could now begin the plan I laid out to Travis more than two years earlier: build a fan base locally and spread out more and more until we were playing regular shows throughout Michigan, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin.</div><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WpjudIbhTG4/Tkc6q4mLVDI/AAAAAAAABNY/08vWJtm2_4g/s1600/ThreePiece.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-WpjudIbhTG4/Tkc6q4mLVDI/AAAAAAAABNY/08vWJtm2_4g/s200/ThreePiece.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The nerdiest street gang ever to roam Grand Rapids</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Obviously this did not happen. But before our vision for Zombie Apocalypse NOW! came crashing all around us we first needed to climb up high enough to where it would hurt when we fell. Next time ZAN begins recording an actually decently produced demo and a new member joins the band.</div>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-53033499333912297582011-06-15T13:22:00.000-07:002011-06-15T13:52:55.701-07:00Part 5: Countdown to Corner BarThe logo of <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b>, the Transformers-like jack-o'-lantern, was not chosen at random. While I guess you’d assume our logo would be something zombie-themed I actually wanted to avoid that. I really wanted an image that was unique and be something that would eventually be synonymous with the band but without being completely obvious. That said I still would like to have a “Z-Buster” image as a secondary logo but that day hasn’t happened yet.<br />
<br />
Anyway the seeds were originally planted while I was on the <a href="http://saturdaymorningcartoonshow.blogspot.com/"><b>Saturday Morning Cartoon Show</b></a> and we happened to be playing<b> It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown</b>. I joked with my co-host DJ Muppet that it’d be funny if the Great Pumpkin was real and went on a violent rampage across the world (This was prior to <b>Robot Chicken</b> doing that very skit, I should mention). I ended naming it the “<b>Doomsday Pumpkin</b>” as a combination of “<b>Doomsday Clock</b>” and “<b>Smashing Pumpkins</b>” (The album <b>Zeitgeist </b>had recently come out and I kept hearing about the song everywhere). It wasn’t until later that I even thought about using it as a band logo. That we can thank <a href="http://www.mopedarmy.com/"><b>the Moped Army</b></a> for. Kind of.<br />
<br />
So for those of you who don’t know the Moped Army are basically a nationwide group of moped enthusiasts which started out in Kalamazoo years ago but now has chapters all over the US. The Kalamazoo chapter call themselves “the Decepticons”. Now I’m the kind of guy that gets pretty frustrated when I get caught behind mopeds while driving and I was always pretty disappointed when (As a big time Transformers fan) I saw stickers all over town of the Decepticon logo and got really excited until someone told me that was actually for the Moped Army and not the toyline. A buddy once joked that we should become “Autobots”, put the appropriate logo on our cars, and become a rival gang. That kind of stuck in my head; not the part about being a rival gang but about having a Transformers logo. I soon got the idea that Zombie Apocalypse NOW! could have such a image to promote ourselves and that whenever I saw a Decepticon sticker somewhere in Kalamazoo I would put my own sticker right next to it as a counterpoint. I’m not sure why I eventually decided to use the Doomsday Pumpkin character to do this but I do know is that I really, really wanted a Transformers grinning pumpkin to represent the band. Probably because I’m a nerd.<br />
<br />
My buddy Mr. Kaze, who also made a lot of out T-shirts, offered to design the logo based on my specifications. Here’s the original proof of concept.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lsJT8QDz80M/TfkGqT2-lbI/AAAAAAAABKk/hPFhnN5cfwU/s1600/ddp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lsJT8QDz80M/TfkGqT2-lbI/AAAAAAAABKk/hPFhnN5cfwU/s320/ddp.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Th earliest Doomsday Pumpkin logo</td></tr>
</tbody></table>I thought it was pretty good, but <b>Travis </b>didn’t really like it and suggested the image needed to be wider to invoke a scarier picture. Mr. Kaze went back to the drawing board and came up with what we decided would be the final product.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VT67as49p5M/TfkHBlEZyXI/AAAAAAAABKo/AXM-S-6dBB8/s1600/doom.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="166" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-VT67as49p5M/TfkHBlEZyXI/AAAAAAAABKo/AXM-S-6dBB8/s200/doom.png" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pumpkins in Disguise!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>We loved it and almost immediately began making shirts of it. These days most of our fans know that logo pretty well. Per Mr. Kaze’s suggestion I (Eventually) wrote an accompanying song to make a stronger link between that picture and the band, appropriately titled “Doomsday Pumpkin”; a story of the Great Pumpkin declaring humanity to be too corrupt and thus bringing about the end of the world as punishment.<br />
<br />
The disaster at the Corner Bar after the jump.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J99NdEHzb90/TfkHTqhz54I/AAAAAAAABKs/N06QXoYEqvc/s1600/CornerBar1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-J99NdEHzb90/TfkHTqhz54I/AAAAAAAABKs/N06QXoYEqvc/s320/CornerBar1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking back we put a lot of work into playing a place that was "under construction"</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
On the last part <b>Mike Zupke </b>unexpected left the band and even to this day we have no idea why as we haven’t seen or heard from him since the summer of 2008. So after a lot of trying to contact him and a lot of waiting for him to get back ot us fnlly in October of that year I wrote him a very nice e-mail (Because he wouldn’t answer his phone) kicking his ass out of the band. Literally the same day I did this I received an e-mail from <b>The Plurals</b> asking us to play a show with them at <b>The Corner Bar</b> a month from then.<br />
<br />
A word about The Plurals, if I may.<br />
<br />
The Plurals are a Lansing, MI based band who also are possibly the most DIY band I personally know. It’s a bit hard to describe their sound, although they are clearly punk-influenced without being a punk band. The term I most like to use for them is “fucking awesome”. On top of that they are some of the nicest bunch of guys we’ve ever played with. I became friends with them before ZAN was really doing anything, so during the days when I was just one of the local kids going to shows. Because I’m almost always the lone black dude at the venues I tend to stick out in a crowd and I love interacting with bands I think are cool so a lot of bands who came through to places like <b>Kraftbrau Brewery</b> and The Corner Bar tended to know who I was. The Plurals were one of these bands, of course, and I got on really well with their lead singer <b>Tommy McCord</b> and drummer (And singer) <b>Hattie Danby</b> (Although based on what I heard from other Lansing bands Hattie is basically the nicest person in the world). Anyway even though I haven’t seen or talked to these guys in years they are still active so please, please, please <a href="http://www.facebook.com/theplurals">check them out</a>.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K_KiMhdlKS0/TfkIl0EQ4XI/AAAAAAAABKw/W9kwAHloJTQ/s1600/The+Plurals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K_KiMhdlKS0/TfkIl0EQ4XI/AAAAAAAABKw/W9kwAHloJTQ/s1600/The+Plurals.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Plurals from Lansing, MI</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Anyway I got an e-mail from these guys asking if ZAN would be down for a show but of course we had been officially drummer-less of several hours by that point so it would be tricky. Ultimately we decided that a month was enough time to find a drummer and teach him enough songs to get through one show. With a little over four weeks until D-Day we agreed to play despite the handicap. Luckily, for the only time, we actually got a fair amount of takers once we started advertising our need for a drumme. We eventually settled on a dude named <b>Mark Horner</b>. Mark was awesome; he was a punk drummer, though a little rusty with punk speed as he had been in reggae bands the last few years, and he came off like an easy going guy but was very enthusiastic about playing with us and seemed to really like what he was hearing from the band. In general he was a better fit than Mike was. <br />
<br />
So over the next two weeks we jammed as much as we could trying to teaching Mark enough so that our show, a show that I should probably mention would be our first performance in an honest to God music venue, wouldn’t be a complete train wreck. I was feeling very optimistic about our chances. Just a month ago we weren’t even sure if our drummer was alive or dead but now we had a guy who seemed like a serious musician on our side and a big show coming up in a few weeks. I literally thought that this would be the first step to ZAN becoming a relevant force in Kalamazoo. But because optimism is for pussies you can probably guess that things fell apart pretty soon.<br />
<br />
Two week until D-Day Mark told us that he’d have to not only step away from the band for a few weeks but he’d have to also miss the show. He had really good a good reason; he needed overtime at his job in order for his family (Including a kid) to be able to afford to move into a larger house and simply was not able to commit to the band as he thought he’d be able to. He told me it should only be for a few weeks and that I should give him a call after that (He seemed like he still wanted to be in the band but understood if he wouldn’t be invited back) but I never bothered with doing that and to this day I regret it. I was pretty angry at the time since I specifically told Mark at his first audition that we needed a drummer who could play that specific date and that was the most important thing but really I shouldn’t have been. I did understand that his priorities couldn’t be the same as mine and Travis' as he had a family to take care of and realistically speaking he was making the correct decision but I guess I still felt hurt over it and couldn’t bring myself to getting back in contact with him. Looking back I wish I has at least kept in touch with him because out of all the former members of Zombie Apocalypse NOW! Mark is one of the coolest guys and the only one whose reasons for leaving I fully respect. Even if the timing was horrifyingly bad it was still a very amicable departure, unlike practically every other time. I’m not sure what he’s up to these days but I know a while back he was in a reggae band called <b>Item 9</b>. Regardless by that point ZAN had lost three drummers in less than two years.<br />
<br />
With only two weeks left we were going crazy over how in the hell we’d be able to play that show. We didn’t want to back out because we didn’t want to start our relationship with the Kzoo Music scene with a cancellation. Luckily after a few desperate rants on MySpace our buddy <b>Tony Dipiazza</b>, who if you’re from Grand Rapids you might recognize as the sound guy from the <b>Mixtape</b>, gave us a call. Tony was a buddy of ours who we knew from <b>Midnight Radio</b> (Because he was the replacement of another good friend of ours also named “Tony”) and when he heard of our bind he offered to fill in on drums, something he would do again months later. Unfortunately he could only make it up for <b>one </b>practice but luckily Tony is one of the best goddamn drummers we ever played with and he picked it all up shockingly fast. It wasn’t perfect but all things considered it was pretty good.<br />
<br />
So the day of the show and it was fairly dead at the Corner Bar, as it often is. ZAN was limping but we had made good on our commitments and that’s was the important part. So <b>OF COURSE</b> as we were setting up for our set my beloved bass <b>Olivia </b>(My Ibanez SR 300) broke right there on stage before the sound check had even started. The whole output jack and attached wiring fell the fuck out of the shell making it completely unusable. I had to borrow a Fender from <b>Nicolas </b>of The Plurals (Because their nice dudes, as I said) but unfortunately I hate Fenders because they’re fucking hard to play (i.e. “heavy”) so I blew every song we performed making us look like even bigger amateurs than we were. The show was a disaster and the only saving grace was that there was hardly anyone there to see how much we sucked.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yjDBpcia9Fg/TfkKjtrYSDI/AAAAAAAABK0/4e4gtizG8t8/s1600/CornerBar2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="213" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-yjDBpcia9Fg/TfkKjtrYSDI/AAAAAAAABK0/4e4gtizG8t8/s320/CornerBar2.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Pictured: ZAN + Tony Dipiazza<br />
Also Pictured: Jay Stuart's laughable inability to play bass</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
My bass my broken, we had no drummer (AGAIN!!) and <strike>we</strike> <b>I</b> (Because Travis is always awesome) had just fucked up our debut show. I was already feeling like this was my “last chance” band beforehand but after the fall of 2008 I was exhausted. We’d been a band for over two years and had nothing to show for it in all that time. Zombie Apocalypse NOW! was a failure and I was certain it would never get any better. I was done. In December of 2008 I decided that ZAN was over, lest we embarrass ourselves further.<br />
<br />
Next time we’ll talk about how ZAN ended up not being over after all.Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-90135572280184505152011-04-20T19:33:00.000-07:002011-04-20T20:03:16.433-07:00Part 4: "Somethng, Something" in FrenchHello again fellow survivors. It’s been a long while. Sorry. It’s partly because of me being a busy with my current life situation and partly because I had been working on<a href="http://betaisdead.blogspot.com/"> my other blog</a>. I’ll try to resume regular work here.<br />
<br />
2008 was yet another non-starter year for <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW</b>! though compared to the last two years it was the height of success. In a lot of ways it was an extremely frustrating time (As we’ll soon get into) but the silver lining is that I wrote a ton of new songs. Let’s talk a bit about a few of them.<br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N8zbfbv85bM/Ta0MxaooRlI/AAAAAAAABE0/5cSpoOHDZXw/s1600/The+Fete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="299" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-N8zbfbv85bM/Ta0MxaooRlI/AAAAAAAABE0/5cSpoOHDZXw/s400/The+Fete.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">ZAN, ill-equipped as always. Possibly playing "Sellout" for the first time</td></tr>
</tbody></table><b>Sellout:</b> Easily one of our most popular and well liked song. It’s the one that people come up to me after shows and compliment me on the most. <b> Toman </b>from our good friends <b>The Common Good</b> loves the song so much that he always tries to get us to let him sing on stage with us whenever our two bands play together. The content of the song is a bit of a mystery due to the no-so-clear lyrics but a lot of people have assumed that it’s a commentary about the state of music these days and bands that have “sold out.” In reality I actually wrote the song about…a girl (WHAAAT?!). And a real girl too, not like<b> Justice Girl</b> where the whole story is obviously fictional. Long story short in early 2008 I met a beautiful girl who I almost immediately fell for but I could never actually pursue her due to many, many hurdles that popped up over the next year not the least of which being that TWO of my best friends “saw her first”. I wrote this song as a way of getting over her, which by the way hasn’t really worked yet. But writing about my “feelings” was lame so as a joke I purposely wrote a bass line that was extremely simple, a repetitive verse and a chorus intentionally poppy and imitable and meant to garner a specific reaction: a catchy tune that is hard to get out of your head, like something you might hear on the radio, that forces you to happily sing along to. Upon hearing the joke <b>Mike Zupke</b> suggested we call it “Sellout” due to its poppy nature. So yeah, no commentary there. Incidentally I laugh every time someone tells me they love the song as it means they fell into my trap (Mwahahaha) but even so it’s one of my favorite songs to play.<br />
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More after the jump.<br />
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<b>Zombie Apocalypse:</b> I don’t think I ever finished this song while Mike was in the band but I basically wrote this for him as he once drunkenly suggested I write a song titled after our band name like <b>Black Sabbath</b> did (Mike, like Travis, was a big metal guy, though actually I think that that Sabbath was named after the song). Truthfully I had been thinking about doing something like that anyway so I did it. I wrote a very Black Sabbath-like tune and was very proud of it. I then forgot what I wrote two days later. D’oh! I re-wrote the song later that week but it was completely different. But if you were wondering why that song sounded more metal than what we usually write it was because I was trying my best to write a Sabbath song and failed. By the way the song is just about a dude in his final moments of a zombie story, right up to his death. Again, nothing here about the state of the music industry. While all songs are open to interpretation the only deeper meaning I was thinking about as I wrote it s the feeling of muted shock, terror and loss as one watches their loved one die in front of them and then the hubris of trying to die in order to stay with them forever. As <b>Anti-Zombie Rock</b> says such a thing is valid.<br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<b>What’s Up With Dave?: </b>Unlike our other songs I wrote this one years ago when I was seventeen during the time after I graduated high school but before I started college, hence all the swearing. I wrote it about some dude I used to know back in the day, NOT future guitarist <b>Dave</b>. The original version of the sounded much different from what ZAN now plays. Basically I went so long without playing it I forgot much of the tune but when I jokingly told the lyrics to <b>Travis </b>and Mike they responded very favorably and convinced me to re-write it. The song currently sounds better than ever thanks to Travis’ good ear for backing vocals and his tasty double tapping.<br />
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In the likely chance I didn’t really talk about who Mike Zupke was allow me to rectify that now. Mike was older than me and Travis by a small bit. He was already graduated from college when me met him in 2007, lived in alone in house he basically owned, and by 2008 had a real honest to God career-like job. In short, unlike the rest of ZAN at the time, he was an actual factual adult. That’s fine, of course, but as I went on to realize when you’re at that point in your life your priorities aren’t really the same as, say, a couple of screw-ups who didn’t even really know what they wanted to do with their lives.<br />
<br />
Top of 2008 ZAN was not in the best position but we were making the best of it. Any time we performed it was in our basement in front of our friends and various students from Western Michigan University’s Comparative Religion grad program (FYI those guys knew how to drink). But we were constantly practicing, constantly writing new songs and refining old ones. Here’s a few videos from this time.<br />
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<object height="240" width="320"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/572876284292" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/572876284292" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="240"></embed></object><br />
<br />
The first video is obviously a cover of <b>Weezer</b>’s <b>We Are All On Drugs</b>. The second is an early version of <b>The Dead Walk Again</b>. These videos make me want to hide in a dark hole, by the way.<br />
<br />
Things weren’t going really well but at least we were working on technique which is certainly a good thing. Still it’s not enough; playing shows regularly is what being in a band is all about. The previous summer my buddy <b>Mr. Kaze</b> and I ended up going to the <b>Fête de la Musique</b> in downtown Kalamazoo. If you don’t know about the Fête it’s a cool celebration of summer, that started in Paris and has since become an international event, where various musical acts play on street corners and cafés on a large scale. All around Kalamazoo bands of every genre were playing outdoors. In fact that was the first time I heard <b>the Hex Bombs</b>. But what always stuck out to me was the show <b>Nice Try</b> put on as it was a really awesome time all around. Being as in love with that band as I was (and am) I was determined to do what they did. On Kaze’s suggestion the next year I signed our band up for the event.<br />
<br />
My plan at the time was that, since our name would be plastered all over the place in fliers and maps, this would be our coming out party. No one would have heard of us before this show but we could walk out with a hell of a lot of people at least knowing we existed, which is a lot better than my last band. We were scheduled to play outside the Arcus Foundation. Not only did we play the show but we had a great turnout, better than a lot of other groups that day (Even attracting a crowd of little children who happily rocked out). It was a blast and easily the most fun we had had up to that point. Better yet my plan, in theory, had worked; Kalamazoo knew there was a band called “Zombie Apocalypse NOW!” and bands that were previously unaware of us were suddenly now open to playing shows with us. <br />
<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1ZD4Yg5550/Ta0O53oZuHI/AAAAAAAABE4/WBA7d7TFLlw/s1600/ZAN+247.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-g1ZD4Yg5550/Ta0O53oZuHI/AAAAAAAABE4/WBA7d7TFLlw/s200/ZAN+247.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kids fucking love us!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Actually it wasn’t all good news. The maps called us “Zombie <b>Apocolypse </b>Now”. Lame. Here’s another video.<br />
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<object height="240" width="320"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/602611270142" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/602611270142" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="240"></embed></object><br />
<br />
The problem was that the day of the Fête (June 21st) was the last day Travis and I saw Mike for a whole month.<br />
<br />
Now when we did see him again Mike’s explanation was that he had to quickly leave town for a while because, if I recall, his grandmother had taken ill and as a coincidence he had broken his phone right before he left (Hence why he didn’t return any of our calls). Okay. Sure. I have no reason to believe that this isn’t 100% true and rather was just a bad bit of luck and timing. That kind of shit happens from time to time. But unfortunately when we got back together in August I felt a lot of our momentum from the Fête had cooled down.<br />
<br />
New plan: WIDR, the local college radio station that I myself had a show on (<a href="http://saturdaymorningcartoonshow.blogspot.com/"><b>Saturday Morning Cartoon Show?</b></a>), had a annual battle of the bands in September where the winner got to open up their big music show in October Barking Tuna Fest which has hosted some pretty goddamn big indie bands. If we could just be accepted into the battle, even if we came in dead last, we would still get a lot of local attention. I mentioned that I was about to send our (Noticeably awful) demo to the station. And I think that was the last time we ever saw Mike Zupke again.<br />
<br />
I assume he didn’t die or anything like that, but I suppose it’s possible that he did and really we would never know. So as far as I can tell what happened was that Mike makes the decision to not answer his phone, to not return our calls, to not return our e-mails, to keep out of contact with us. For a month we tried to get a hold of him and it resulted in nothing. There was no fight, there was no “Hey guys, I ‘m unhappy with the band so I’m going to quit”. One day he was in the band, the next day he was gone. To this day I don’t know why he decided to leave though I assume it has to do mostly with the fact that he wasn’t looking to be in a serious band. I guess he just wanted to casually play music with buddies. He never really seemed comfortable with playing shows and, unlike the two of us, he seemed to be developing an actual life. In a “best case scenario” ZAN would turn into a working band that travels a lot and play shows round the clock, but even if we never became that successful it still wouldn’t fit in a cozy 9-5 lifestyle. Maybe he just wasn’t interested in that life. Maybe he hated us and seeing as I’m a really hard guy to like that’s not impossible, though I always thought he and Travis were good buddies. Maybe he hated our music; again, not impossible. But regardless he never told us so I don’t know the reason. Eventually, because he wasn’t retuning phone calls, I had to write him a very nice e-mail that told him he was fired though if he got back to us then we could still work things out. When it was all said and done, however, ZAN was again drummer-less.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N4n8Ycj5PtQ/Ta0QtlsvaTI/AAAAAAAABE8/TOGGVfjMgvI/s1600/Fete.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-N4n8Ycj5PtQ/Ta0QtlsvaTI/AAAAAAAABE8/TOGGVfjMgvI/s200/Fete.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the bright side that gig was pretty sweet</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
As it happened the day I sent that e-mail I received one of my own; from the Lansing based band <b>The Plurals</b>.<br />
<br />
Next time we’ll talk about the fall of 2008 and ZAN finally playing an honest to goodness venue…with no drummer on board.Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-65910882123275843742011-03-29T16:55:00.000-07:002011-03-29T18:24:07.522-07:00Part 3: The Eternal Damnation Cocktail<link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Sorry that I haven’t updated recently. I’ve had some personal hiccups on the road called life lately. If I can I’ll try to post two uploads this week to somewhat make-up for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Let’s talk about “genre” for a bit. I was chatting with my buddy <b>DJ Muppet</b> not too long ago and when I posed a question about the genre of a certain band (I think it was <b>Asobi Seksu</b>) and she just shrugged and said “There really isn’t such a things as genre these days” or something like that. I agree with that to a point as even <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b> doesn’t fall neatly into a category. Now if you ask the average guy hanging out in the Kalamazoo music scene what type of music ZAN plays they will likely respond “Punk Rock”. This includes various members of the press and venue bookers who we’ve dealt with before. This is fair; after all ever since I was seventeen I’ve been all about punk in as much as a kid from Detroit can be. So it’s not hard to see that, I have a lot of that influencing me when I write music. Add to the fact that <b>Dave Andrews</b> was <b><i>actually</i></b> punk so when he was in the band during our high point he brought us even closer towards that. But then again <b>Travis</b> is a metal guy and always has been and he writes his guitar parts. Plus there are a lot of songs we play that don’t fit into Punk Rock. Bottom line I feel like calling us “punk” isn’t really appropriate; it’s just the closet thing most people can think of.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Originally when people asked me what type of music my band played I would say “<b>Punk Influenced Hard Rock”</b> as that was the best way I could put it without having to answer a lot of offensive follow-up questions (“But what bands do you sound like?”). Eventually I started thinking that if we were supposed to be a band that opposed zombies then we would n fact be <b>Anti-Zombie Rock</b>. I liked the sound of it and started using that. Eventually I started using it was a catch-all term for songwriting outside of the box; song that don’t necessarily fall under typical song tropes. Theoretically I can write a song about comic book characters, horror films monsters, or how awesome <b>Shingo</b> from <b>King of Fighters</b> is and it could just as valid as any other band writing about their feelings or whatever. That’s what Anti-Zombie Rock is to me.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hkBG7gI0yiw/TZJoPnME3aI/AAAAAAAABB8/G_G9255_WEI/s1600/shingo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hkBG7gI0yiw/TZJoPnME3aI/AAAAAAAABB8/G_G9255_WEI/s200/shingo.jpg" width="160" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fuck yes, Shingo!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So yeah my point is that if you were to classify us in a genre it must be Anti-Zombie Rock. Well, I guess <b>Max Brooks-Core</b> works too; that one I’m going to claim as our own (Feel free to become an Anti-Zombie Rock band, though).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Zombie Apocalypse NOW! starts their second year after the jump.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EalAngq3KKY/TZJo8Z88SiI/AAAAAAAABCE/s6i5XH-2700/s1600/firstgig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EalAngq3KKY/TZJo8Z88SiI/AAAAAAAABCE/s6i5XH-2700/s320/firstgig.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A basement full of friends<br />
Must be their first show </td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It had been over a year since Zombie Apocalypse NOW! formed and we hadn’t played a single show because we couldn’t find a drummer in all that time. I’m not sure if I can really express how much this has bothered me over the years. Yeah sure, I can concede that a lot of this can be contributed to the fact that Travis and I really didn’t know what we were doing as far as recruitment goes but even so what kind of people can dare call themselves a band when all they do is practice songs in their basement?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At this point, late September 2007, we had just gotten back the master CD of our first and not particularly good (And drummer-less) demo and we were giving them out like hot cakes but the primary reason we made it so that potential drummers could have a sense of the type of music we were hoping to make. People told us the CD was pretty good, though I now suspect they were being nice, and most folk I talked to said they’d like to hear more. We had to find a drummer, we simply had to.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">After a few weeks my other roommate <b>Mr. Kaze</b>, who also design the band’s logo and made the shirts, suggested I try looking at craigslist.com to which I replied “I ain’t looking for a used Xbox, I’m looking for a goddamn drummer, dude.” So <b>OF COURSE </b>literally twenty-four hours after I posted an ad on the site someone responded. Awesome. I GUESS I SHOULD HAVE DONE THAT A FUCKING YEAR AGO!!!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So the guy who responded to the ad was named <b>Mike Zupke</b>, a guy who was a little older than Travis and me. He apparently had been checking craigslist for a while looking for guys who were in need of a drummer. These days I now believe the problems we would eventually have with Mike stemmed from an early misunderstanding he and I had when I got into contact with him: I suspect he was looking for guys he could just jam with in his free time as a hobby while we were looking for a guy to play regular gigs, record albums, and eventually tour with. So yeah, you can see where this might be a problem. Mind you I don’t actually know for sure what the real problem was but I’m getting head of myself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So Mike was really interested in playing with us. He had only been playing drums for five years at that point, a good chunk less than me and bass and much lower than Travis on guitar, but he was pretty good and we weren’t getting any other hits. Thus Mike became the second official drummer of Zombie Apocalypse NOW! But obviously that was only half of it. We had a drummer now so we needed to play shows ASAP.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Um, how do we do that again?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">…<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><b><span style="font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">FUUUUUUUUUUCK!<o:p></o:p></span></span></b></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Back in 2007 we didn’t really know proper procedure for booking gigs and we didn’t really know too many other local bands who would throw us on their shows. In this kind of situation its best to fall back on <b>DIY</b> ethics. If you can’t book a show make your own show. Mr. Kaze was a big fan of throwing house parties so we decided that we would play our first show in the basement while it was going on. Our friend Brent (As in the founder of the Janissaries) was also helping in the planning stages and I believe coined the name “<b>The Eternal Damnation Cocktail</b>”. It was a Halloween party but it was in fact the weekend after the holiday (I don’t remember why it was. I guess it was a timing issue). Ever since then I’ve dreamed about having an annual Halloween themed concert by that name that would always be the weekend after the holiday and be billed as “your last opportunity to show off that costume” and in theory it wouldn't conflict with other parties and themed shows. I tried to set up <b>The Eternal Damnation Cocktail II </b>in 2009 but unfortunately the bookers at the two venues I was looking at the most didn’t get back to me until months after I first contacted them. Par for the course, I’m afraid. Anyway the problem with doing this party was that we had less than a month before the show to teach Mike the songs I had written. We had three sessions with him, including his audition, before we played that show so we were obviously not ready to play in front of people. Also we didn't have proper equipemnt for vocals so no matter what we knew we would sound like shit. Maybe not the greatest idea but after the large amount of “doing nothing” instead of performing in my last band did I figured we’d be better off at least trying.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Travis had a badass Scarecrow costume by the way.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jVvLzjDS0aY/TZJoi-G5kZI/AAAAAAAABCA/l4VRj0hcQGU/s1600/scarecrowandjaystuart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-jVvLzjDS0aY/TZJoi-G5kZI/AAAAAAAABCA/l4VRj0hcQGU/s320/scarecrowandjaystuart.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Sinister Scarecrow covers for Travis for a few tracks</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Here’s a video from our first show ever. Notice how awkward and terrified I am (I’m no less terrified but I have long since learned to FAKE being confident on stage). The song is “<b>Marry White</b>” which is not in fact about a girl named Mary White but rather about the race my mother demand I eventually marry. I wrote this song a while back since I was somewhat offended by my mother’s weird racist attitude against black people (She’s black, what the hell?) as well as some other stuff she’s said over the years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><object height="240" width="320"><param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" /><param name="movie" value="http://www.facebook.com/v/554161987892" /><embed src="http://www.facebook.com/v/554161987892" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" width="320" height="240"></embed></object><br />
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Editor's
Note: <i>Satan is no longer ZAN's lord and
master. They have since switched allegiance to Xenu, beloved leader of
the Galactic Confederacy. HAIL XENU!!</i>)<o:p></o:p></span></div><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Geez,
that was somewhat painful to listen to. We
played sort of early into the party and then played second set later that night when more people showed
(Though that one we were a bit drunk and it was at least twice as sloppy) and people
seemed to like it though there was a lot of room for improvement. The important thing was that ZAN had played its
first show, ill prepared or not. Even so
it would be damn near a year and a half before things with the band started to
pick up. Between this first gig in 2007
and our first gig of 2009 I had given up on the band and was ready to give up
on the whole thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Next
time we’ll look at 2008 and the disastrous events that made Jay Stuart declare
that the band was over before it even began.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-35576292363816962762011-03-17T08:53:00.000-07:002011-03-17T08:53:02.304-07:00Part 2: ZAN is Born (Kalamazoo Doesn’t Notice)<link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Hello again, fellow survivors. Let’s get back to it, shall we?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It’s mid-August in 2006 and <b>Travis Stickel</b> and I have just moved into together along with a few of my other friends. After several years in self imposed exile Travis was now back in Kalamazoo to study Criminal Justice at Western Michigan University with a semi-long term plan to apply to the police academy (We’ll get into <b><i>that</i></b> situation soon enough). I had just had my Rock & Roll dreams crushed when my band <b>The Janissaries</b> faded away (But didn’t technically break up, as I mentioned last time) but I decided to give it one last shot. I would form a new band and if that one failed I’d quit music. Now nothing against Travis, of course; he’s one of my dearest friends and easily one of the major reasons <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b> had any sort of local success, but at that point I was just desperate. Don’t forget that I had never heard Travis play guitar before so I had no idea how good he would eventually turn out to be. He was a convenient guitar player so I asked him to join up. Had anyone else been living with me at the time who could play guitar I would have asked them as well as I didn’t have to look very far. Now I know that sounds kind of bad but it all worked out for the best and he was happy to be asked. It went something like this:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Jay Stuart: Hey Travis, wanna join my band that I just made up?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Travis: Fuck yes I do!<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">And that was the formation of ZAN. Not the grandest of stories, I know.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Click below for more.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Before I asked Travis to join up with my so-called “band” I debated what I would call it. Unlike the Janissaries this was going to be my project and I could pretty much do whatever I wanted, which as you can probably guess makes a man feel like a <b>MAN</b> when presented with that much control. My number one pick for a name was <b>The 7 Gold Shovels</b>. That might sound kind of random but it’s actually a reference to one of my favorite poems “<b>We Real Cool</b>” (From the opening line of “THE POOL PLAYERS. SEVEN AT THE GOLDEN SHOVELS”) by <b>Gwendolyn Brooks</b>. However now that I had Travis on board I decided to go with something that felt more like it belonged to both of us rather than just myself. As we became friends while discussing what to do and what not to do during a zombie outbreak the logical answer was to reference the undead in some way. The obvious thing was to call the group Zombie Apocalypse Now, the reference clearly being the film <b>Apocalypse Now</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">BUT that was not the whole reason I picked that specific name! The “Now” being written in all capitals and with the exclamation point was influenced by a completely different source and to this day only one person has ever figured it out without any hints or clues. It is a tribute to the <b>Nickelodeon</b> cartoon and <b>KaBlam!</b> spin-off <b>Action League Now!,</b> of which I was a huge fan of as a kid.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LkrhnOuAc1c/TYIj6Cqe93I/AAAAAAAABBA/eB_PdIjz078/s1600/actionleaguenow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-LkrhnOuAc1c/TYIj6Cqe93I/AAAAAAAABBA/eB_PdIjz078/s1600/actionleaguenow.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">To clarify: Neither Travis nor myself are super strong or super naked</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So really when you’re reading our name I’m hoping you read it like this: “Zombie Apocalypse…NOW!” I warned you this was a nerdy band.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anyway I asked Travis what he thought of the name and of course he loved it and we’ve been calling ourselves that ever since. So we had a band name and we had a few songs (That I had previously tried to get the Janissaries to play) so really all we needed was a drummer to play shows, and after the debacle with the last band I had decided to go the punk rock route and try to play as many shows as early as possible regardless of how prepared we were. A drummer was the least we needed to do this but in the early days we actually had agreed that we needed a rhythm guitarist and a lead singer as well. Back then I could not sing and play bass. Hell, an argument could be made that I still can’t, but in 2006 my ability to stand there, play an instrument and sing was pretty much non-existent so I felt we needed a singer badly (Travis refused when I asked him to sing. He later got over that, thankfully). Finding a drummer, however, was the priority; we could play a show without a singer but not without a drummer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Allow me to move off-track for a little to talk about <b>The Dead Walk Again</b>, ZAN’s first zombie tune and as Travis often put it in the early days “Our signature song.” I technically like our name but one of my biggest pet peeves in this band is how much people tend to judge us by the fact that we have “zombie” in our title. The average person who has heard of us usually refers to us as “that zombie band”. It’s this belief that we mostly only play songs about zombies. In reality we, by a wide margin, play mostly non-zombie related music. Hell, our EP doesn’t have a single song about the undead on it at all! We have TWO songs about zombies (I recently wrote a new song actually that may also count but it isn’t <b><i>actually</i></b> about zombies in the long run). The Dead Walk Again was the first one and for a while our only one.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">There was one point during Travis’ several years out of town where he came back to Kzoo for a visit. This was so he, myself and our friend Courtney could all head to Grand Rapids to see a <b>cKy</b>. During the car ride Travis and Courtney got into an argument about whether the song “<b>Escape from Hellview</b>” was about zombies or about a town full of slashers. In the end Travis, as he usually does when he’s in an argument, calmly proved with citation and evidence that the song was indeed about slashers, not zombies. Afterwards there was an awkward silence in the car for a long while until I spoke up some time later and said “You know what? There SHOULD be a song about zombies.” Obviously there are plenty of songs about zombies but twenty-year old Jay Stuart either didn’t know or didn’t care (I don’t recall which). For the next week I spent literally all my free time trying to write this song, even bringing my bass to campus and playing in-between classes. I was trying to write a song about the undead while also trying to emulate cKy’s style. Now if you’ve ever The Dead Walk Again you know that at eats part of that was a complete failure. Ultimately the Janissaries played it a bit before tossing it aside. One fo them even said he didn't like it becuase it would be a "gateway song" to other dumb ideas such as a vampire song. The obious retort was to form my own band.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’ll jump ahead briefly to 2008 and share a very early video of ZAN performing The Dead Walk Again. On drums is <b>Mike Zupke</b>, our first long time (But second official) drummer whom we’ll get into in more detail next time.</span></div><object height="360" width="425"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="movie" value="http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=32979440,t=1,mt=video"/><embed src="http://mediaservices.myspace.com/services/media/embed.aspx/m=32979440,t=1,mt=video" width="425" height="360" allowFullScreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent"></embed></object><br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">(Note that Jay Stuart eventually got better at singing)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Back in 2006, as I said, a drummer was the priority but a problem soon arose that I either hadn’t counted on or simply tried to downplay at first: neither Travis nor myself knew anything about being in a band or how to recruit members. Travis had never been in a band before and most of my bands fizzled out before we even played a proper gig. So with that hanging over our heads we basically were doing a lot of things incorrectly as far as recruitment goes. Another issue was that I think these days (<b>The Age of Digital Music!!!!</b>) most musicians would be hesitant to audition for a band they’ve never heard of who have no music samples available somewhere. Thus for the next thirteen months we couldn’t find a permanent drummer at all. Meaning we couldn’t have shows our entire first year. I swear to God we must be the only band I’ve ever heard of that formed and then played their first show over a year later. This was so disgraceful that even now I’m still pretty sore about it. A whole fucking year wasted.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Well not wasted I suppose. During that year I spent so much time writing music and singing lyrics in our basement I eventually learned how to sing and play at the same time, which negated our need for a lead singer. Had we found a drummer soon after we formed we may have then recruited a singer and Zombie Apocalypse NOW! would likely be a very different band. What really sucks is that back then I was obsessed over the idea of the band playing shows with local outfit <b>Nice Try</b>. I LOVED Nice Try and to this day I feel that no band present or dead from West Michigan was nearly as good as they were at their best. Not us, not your favorite band, no one. The only band that came close was <b>Wow! Laserbeams </b>who I also loved. But back in 2006/2007 I was slowly going insane over this. The guys in Nice Try, who knew me very well as that black dude Jay who ALWAYS showed up at their gigs, had told me that whenever I got my band figured out I could open for them and I was convinced that when that happened our bands would become best friends and tour the world together and get signed to major labels and all that other good shit. Naïve? Fuck yes, but what can I say? Being young and being wide eyed and foolish go hand in hand. <o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anyway I was getting desperate to uphold my end of the deal with Nice Try. By the summer of 2007 I had managed to convince my buddy Christopher Bell, who I had jammed with before, to try-out with the band but only if we could get him a drum kit since he didn’t have his own. These days if a drummer asked me that I’d tell him to hit the road but as I said I really, really wanted to play shows with Nice Try. So I managed to borrow the drum kit of my friend Tony who was the former drummer of another band I really liked at the time from Grand Rapids called <b>Midnight Radio</b> (He was replaced in Midnight Radio by another drummer named “Tony” who we’ll get into eventually). Drums provided Chris did a decent enough job for me and Travis to wholeheartedly agree to let him join right there and then. The next day he stopped talking to us for at least six months, maybe a whole year. Our first official drummer had one practice with us before bailing without notice. Eventually I ran into him and he apologized but this would set the precedent for our luck with drummers. If you are a fan of ZAN you know we go through drummers fairly quickly and usually if we’re on hiatus it’s because we’re in-between drummers. What a sad state.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">By August I had had enough. I had a buddy, Zack Webb, who recorded bands pretty regularly and mentioned to me that he could theoretically fake drums should ZAN ever want to record with his studio (<b>Ill Tempered Studios</b>, located in his apartment). After thinking about it for a bit I declared “Fuck it, let’s do it.” I had convinced myself that lack of recorded music was hindering our search for a drummer and f we could create a demo that gave an indication of the type of music we played then they would be more inclined to respond to our flyers and ads. Thus we recorded “<b>The Amina Demo</b>”.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f-XESzDA_C8/TYIkq-Ovy3I/AAAAAAAABBE/x_VDTriEO4Y/s1600/nothingtosneezeat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-f-XESzDA_C8/TYIkq-Ovy3I/AAAAAAAABBE/x_VDTriEO4Y/s200/nothingtosneezeat.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jay Stuart desperately trying to avoid sneezing on Ill Tempered Studios</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It wasn’t good. Obviously we did it without a drummer, but it was also our first experience in a studio of any kind (And also the studio was an apartment) and to make matters even worse I for some reason was allergic to all of Zack’s cats that he had running around so my voice was even more fucked than usual. That said with all that in mind I think it could have been much worse. Unlike <b>The Sellout Demo</b> in 2009 this recording wasn’t really meant to be given out; just to give a sample of what we theoretically sounded like and in that regard I think it was successful.</span></div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T_rjzLGmmRk/TYIk-p4UHjI/AAAAAAAABBI/HpDlz4Mk7aQ/s1600/onetaketravis.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-T_rjzLGmmRk/TYIk-p4UHjI/AAAAAAAABBI/HpDlz4Mk7aQ/s200/onetaketravis.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Travis' infamous reputation for finishing in three takes or less began here</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anyway after about a month Zack sent us the finished results and I then opened our myspace page with the tracks. This was late September. By mid-October, a day after a put an ad on Craigslist, we got an email from a guy who seemed very interested in playing with us. By the end of that month we finally played our first show.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Next I’ll talk about ZAN’s less frustrating and terrible, but still pretty frustrating and terrible, second year or as I now refer to it “<b>ZAN Version 1.0</b>”.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-64548537375572837532011-03-12T19:20:00.000-08:002011-03-12T19:20:20.539-08:00Part 1: The Before Time<link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Hello again, fellow survivors. Logically the place to start this blog is when <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b> was first formed but really I think we need to go back a bit farther. While ZAN officially began in the fall of 2006 the seeds were originally planted in the fall of 2002 and the groundwork for the original sound was laid out in 2005.</span><br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cu_tROhYoag/TXb7l6CaL4I/AAAAAAAAA_M/j2CsjQF24qI/s1600/Travis+and+Jason.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-cu_tROhYoag/TXb7l6CaL4I/AAAAAAAAA_M/j2CsjQF24qI/s200/Travis+and+Jason.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Pictured: Travis and Jay @ Toga Party</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">Not Pictured: Sobriety </span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span><b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Travis Stickel</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"> and I met fairly early into my first year at Western Michigan University at the local anime club’s weekly viewings. As I recall he and I both were usually the first two people there, due to the fact that we were both the type of people who consider “on time” to mean “early”, and from there we struck a friendship. With that said I think two things are apparent: #1) Travis and I to this day tend to be the first to arrive to shows and often far too early and #2) That we met at an anime club makes it clear that we were huge dorks even before we started a band.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Click below for more.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">I’m pretty sure that Travis and I didn’t ever really talk about music that much back then, although we knew we both were musicians. I think I once brought up the idea of us playing together. I was jamming with a few guys at the time and I suggested we bringing in Travis as a second guitarist but the guy on lead, a person we’ll refer to as <b>Robot Mike</b> who was a good friend of both of us, wasn’t comfortable with another guy on guitar so it ended up not happening (Also that group went nowhere at all, so I guess it’s just as well). No, music wasn’t what we bonded over.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">It was zombies. Obviously.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Travis Stickel is a man of many tastes and has many different interests but I think I would argue that his two favorite things are music and horror films. I’m not sure how it started but somehow he and I would end up having many discussions about zombie movies and the zombie apocalypse in general. Now the concept of zombies freak me the hell out, especially when I was nineteen, but I didn’t really know much about them. Travis is kind of an expert on zombie film tropes and whatnot so I’d often ask him what was the best strategy for surviving such an event. Hypothetically, of course. He’d tell me what were the best weapons, where would be the best places to go, etc. It was fun, maybe kind of silly, but it was a good way to waste hours in the dorm cafeteria. We did a lot of hanging out over the next two years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Unfortunately all good things come to an end. Travis at the time was undeclared but he had realized that he wanted to try studying Sound Engineering. However WMU apparently didn’t offer it and if he wanted to pursue it he’d need to go elsewhere. He decided to leave Kalamazoo and return to his hometown of North Muskegon to prepare to find a school to help him achieve his new ambition. It would be a while before I saw him again.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Although sometime after Christmas of 2004 Travis gave me a really cool gift: a copy of <b>The Zombie Survival Guide</b> by <b>Max Brooks</b> in order to serve as a sort of replacement for him as my zombie apocalypse advice giver (He also gave me a Cardcaptors board game as a joke, but goddamn it if I don’t still own it).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">An interesting side note to all from the fall of 2004 following Travis’ departure: I had just started my first playwriting class and the teacher (A very pretty grad student as I recall) had us do an ice breaker exercise where we had to mention a few things about ourselves. I happened to mention I played bass. After the class some dude ran up to me as I started walking home. He asked me if I really played bass and told me that he was a drummer and that we should jam sometime. And we did with fair regularity for the rest of the semester (Playing a lot of <b>Offspring</b>). The drummer’s name was <b>Darin Bluhm</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anyway by the beginning of 2005 I had tried to form a band several times since moving to Kalamazoo but either I was asked to depart for whatever reason or the project itself just fizzled out before it began. Around this time my friend Brent realized that he knew a group of musicians and then, despite not being one himself, convinced them all to form a band with him. Now the line-up changed several times over the short period we were all together (Including Darin Bluhm on drums pretty much right before we broke up) but the main group was me on bass and a little bit of back-up vocals, <b>John Maltby</b> on guitar and <b>Black Brent Peterson</b> as the lead singer. The Brent that formed the band to begin with was asked to leave early on partly because he kept skipping practice and partly because he didn’t know how to play the keyboards despite declaring that he would be the keyboardist of the band.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">At Black Brent’s suggestion we called ourselves <b>The Janissaries</b>. A bit pretentious, sure, but it was unique and I really liked it (Although a buddy of ours jokingly suggested “<b>Your Parents Having Sex</b>” and I wished to God we had used that instead). One weird thing I always notice about this band is the number of people who claim to have heard of us. Now I’m not saying that this isn’t possible but dude; we played ONE gig ever and it was at a talent show. So unless you happened to be a member of that particular Catholic Church I suspect you may be thinking of a different band.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So I bring up this band mainly because if I never joined the Janissaries Zombie Apocalypse NOW! likely wouldn’t have happened, or at least been much different. During the reign of this band I started writing a few songs. In fact I wrote <b>The Dead Walk Again</b>, <b>Requiem for Detroit</b> (From ZAN’s first demo) and the intro part of <b>Amina</b> for this band. I guess the guys were just not into my song writing skills because aside from Requiem we didn’t really use any of them (Also I should point out that the vocal melody for that song as it appears on that demo was written by Black Brent and he has apparently been very happy that I continued used it).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">In retrospect the Janissaries had a ton of problems which is why we failed. For one thing John and I, despite getting along as people, did not have enough in common musically to function together properly as he was an alternative country fan and I was mostly into punk rock. Plus the band’s line-up kept changing and that didn’t help anyone. But the main problem I think was that we were being cowardly as far as playing shows went. We spent months trying to perfect our sound and write music, even turning down shows while we fiddled with things. We dicked around so much that by the next summer we hadn’t done a single damn thing! We were together for literally a year and did NOTHING! As several members were leaving for the summer (2006 by this point) we took a break but we were never all in the same room ever again. It would be another couple of years before I think we ever officially broke-up. The last time I talked to John was several years ago and he asked me if it’d be cool if he used the name for his own project in Chicago, which was fine by me. I don’t know if he ever ended up doing it or not but I hope he did.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Anyway the absolute failure of the Janissaries caused me to become very depressed. This would mark, I think, the fourth failed attempt on my part to start a band in Kalamazoo but this one seemed to be the most likely to do something since it seemed to have all the tools. When it went down I started thinking that perhaps I just wasn’t meant to play in a rock band. Back then I was really into the local West Michigan bands <b>Nice Try</b> and <b>Midnight Radio</b> and I had been hell bent on forming my own group so I could play shows with them but it was looking like it just wasn’t going to ever happen. Also my self-confidence was shot as I had worked hard on song writing but was basically told “DO NOT WANT” by my former band mates. I started thinking that I should concentrate on my true passion, which was writing. I love playing music but at the end of the day I think of myself as a writer before anything else, so I was thinking that perhaps it was time to give up the whole band thing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Around this time Travis informed me that he had given up on the Sound Engineering thing and had gotten interested in Criminology and therefore would be returning to Kalamazoo to pursue a degree at WMU. Since the house I would be moving into that August was looking for more roommates it was the obvious choice to have him move in. Ultimately that was probably the best decision we ever made.</span><br />
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-LVtHlsIva90/TXb7-V0wAaI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/XLfmQc54oeY/s1600/Major+Victory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-LVtHlsIva90/TXb7-V0wAaI/AAAAAAAAA_Q/XLfmQc54oeY/s1600/Major+Victory.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;">This picture tells you everything you need to know about ZAN</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Next time I’ll talk about the official formation of Zombie Apocalypse NOW! and our insanely terrible and frustrating first thirteen months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-28091531499365194152011-03-10T21:01:00.000-08:002011-03-10T21:01:21.015-08:002008-2009<link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">If you haven’t heard of <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b> before you may be sort of curious of what kind of band we were. So for you all who wandered onto this blog without prior knowledge of us I figured I’d throw a video at you so you at least have an idea of what this was all about. Below you’ll find a slideshow of pictures from various sources depicting ZAN from our first public show at the 2008 <b>Fête de la Musique</b> in downtown Kalamazoo up through a year later at the same event in 2009; a full year of adventure. When I made that video I thought it was a cool way to showcas our past year as well as thank all the people who helped us out. The music featured here is from our second demo “<b>The Sellout Demo</b>”: <b>Justice Girl</b> and part of <b>Sellout</b>. I’ll be talking about many of the happenings in these pictures over time, but for now just sit back and enjoy.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">The blog will have its proper first blog within the next few days while I continue to finish up a few details.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;"></span></div><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/pG6QMX1lNkg" title="YouTube video player" width="480"></iframe>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7109557890346955545.post-79702838623012654182011-03-07T15:47:00.000-08:002011-03-08T19:57:08.668-08:00Intro<link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_filelist.xml" rel="File-List"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_themedata.thmx" rel="themeData"></link><link href="file:///C:%5CUsers%5CGuest%5CAppData%5CLocal%5CTemp%5Cmsohtmlclip1%5C01%5Cclip_colorschememapping.xml" rel="colorSchemeMapping"></link><style>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Hello, fellow survivors. My name is <b>Jay Stuart</b>. I am the founder, bass player, lead vocalist and primary song writer of <b>Zombie Apocalypse NOW!</b>, a rock band from Kalamazoo, MI. I’m not ashamed (In fact I’m rather proud) to admit that it was an incredibly nerdy band. Since February of 2010 we have been on an official hiatus. I formed the band in 2006 when I asked my then roommate <b>Travis Stickel</b> if he would like to join, which he did enthusiastically. That was around four and a half years ago. Today ZAN is hanging on by a thread; all current members are living in different cities, we haven’t played a single show since July of 2010, and any hope for a future for us is at best theoretical. It’s not like we we’re a big deal either. We released one EP, never got to tour, and certainly weren’t one the top local bands in our area.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Despite that downer note I feel that, had we not fallen apart beginning in December of 2009, Zombie Apocalypse NOW! could have done...something. Maybe we wouldn’t be famous, but I truly believe that at our best we were as good as any band that is able to make a living in music and that we could do at least that. We never got a chance to prove that, sadly. As it is no one knows us and likely will never know us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">Fuck that.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">As of this writing ZAN is scheduled to play a show on April 1<sup>st</sup>, our first gig in nine months. I was convinced to do this by the band’s most recent drummer <b>Doug Porter</b>, a young man who is significantly more idealistic about the band than me or Travis. As we prepare to get together possibly for the final time I began thinking about how pathetic it was that everything we did, all the hard work, all the mistakes and all of the good times ZAN had would be forgotten about in just a few short years; three at the most, I’d wager. I don’t know if we’ll ever get things going again but I wanted to leave a record of the band, even if it’s just on a tiny blog on the internet. I want there to be something out there that details our little story so that our name doesn’t completely disappear. Basically I want proof that we existed. Yeah, maybe I'm just being arrogant but I went to school for writing so I might as well use all that crap for something that was so important to me during those years.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 12pt;">So what’s going to happen is over the next few weeks is that I’ll be detailing Zombie Apocalypse NOW!’s history as best as I can recall it (I will likely post some journals concerning the current dealings with the band as they happen). Now I didn’t smoke pot and I didn’t really do any serious drinking so in theory my memory should be decent, but I’m still pretty awful at the whole “remembering things” deal so details may be fuzzy and I apologize in advanced if I mess some things up. Really I just want me and the rest of the guys and what few fans we had to have an account of what the hell happened with the band, how it started and why it ended.<o:p></o:p></span></div>Beta Magnushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12090196394955870455noreply@blogger.com0