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Towards the end of my high school career and early college days there was a strong desire to play in a heavy metal type rock band. To quench that desire there were several outlets. The first was the band SKWAT, in which I played bass. SKWAT consisted of a bunch of my friends from school who had a passion for mediocre punk rock covers of musty old tunes and a love for the heavy metal sensation GWAR. In short SKWAT was a GWAR tribute band that included costumes and stage antics that would make the ordinary concert goer a little queasy.

You may have seen other bands...but they ain't SKWAT!

The goal was to be as funny and offensive at the same time, hopefully with some intelligence but not much class; we were after all still teenagers for the most part. Two of the brothers involved in the project even spent a summer living with GWAR learning how the band makes their costumes and stage props. Pretty amazing stuff. In the end, we really only ever recorded one original song tastefully titled S.B.D….Like I said pure class.

 

To hear the glory of SKWAT check out this ditty:

SKWAT–S.B.D.

After the untimely demise of SKWAT in 1995 there was still much music to be made and more chaos to be had. That’s where the Campus Music Network at the University of Puget Sound came in handy. Each year the network would put out a CD of all the bands playing on campus at the time. As a goof, my friend James (also in SKWAT) and Brian (founder of the Campus Music Network), and I recorded a tiny little hidden track for the CD that came out in ’96. We called ourselves the Sluts, the song title actually has a long sordid history that would be pointless to try and describe in writing, it’s more of a visual thing anyway. We recorded the thing in three takes and for what it was, it wasn’t half bad:

The Sluts–Through The Nina

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Once upon a time when the earth was still flat and I had less grey hair I played in many different bands. From folk to metal to Celtic punk the gamut was pretty broad. Now, what feels like several lifetimes later the desire to make music is still there; but, the time to commit to a band just isn’t as easy to come by. My dark muse still visits me from time to time and that’s what this section of the blog is for. Posting songs and compositions new and old. We’ll see….Like many artists I’m often not entirely happy with the end results of what I come up with, often wanting to revise, re-write, re-edit– in which case if anything is ever posted here, it’s probably a work in progress, but hopefully something worthy to put out into the world.