“George and I are kids of the CD generation, the time when you hooked your thumbs in your belt loops and waited in that long line at Tower Records praying that the guy with earrings behind the counter didn’t notice the “Parental Advisory” sticker on your CD.”
“My father was a touring DJ with a few of his longtime friends, so I grew up with the older pop hits in my house. He hated the idea of CDs being mass-produced, stamped, and shoving his beautiful vinyl to the side. One of the only times I’ve seen that man buckle in his step is when he had to sell most of his collection in a garage sale. Something was over for him, but I was too young to comprehend that. Only years later, looking back on that now that I’m older, was I able to comprehend losing something so integral to who you are. That’s what our song “Reach” is about.
The first album I ever bought was Dookie by Green Day. Like everyone else in the world I was nodding my head at my first exposure to punk rock music that was streamlined enough to make it on the radio. Ten songs, straight forward, and a brand new attitude came with that album. Music is memory. The happiest song can remind you of the darkest day when you lost the girl, or you were broke, it’s like a filing system for your soul. Dookie was my adolescence, I practically hit puberty all over again whenever I hear it.
My big album from my early collection was Rage Against the Machine’s self titled record. This album force-fed me my first taste of heavy music with a real message to carry, the harmony of man’s struggle against societal bounds, with riffs and lyrics that hit like a brass knuckle. It had seamless layers and true character. It wasn’t your standard rock and roll front man screaming about his lonely life on a tour bus and too many narcotics. It was about humanity, and breaking the chain. Something that inspires me to this day.”
—Justin Bonifacio, vocals/guitars
“The album that affected me probably more so than any other was Nirvana’s Nevermind. I had never heard so much raw honesty translated through musical aggression.”
“The pitch and whip of Kurt’s voice struck a chord in me that I had been waiting to hear my entire life, I think that album was that way for a lot of people. The angst of being a kid is often overlooked, feeling different; but Nirvana harnessed that and spearheaded a message that people could believe in and actually relate to. When you feel like an alien your entire life, a stranger in a strange land, to finally hear someone screaming what you feel in the spotlight? It’s tremendous. It gives hope.
I was exposed to vinyl in my father’s collection. At first they were just “records” not vinyl, but I heard the magic when he played Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. So real, so smooth, that jazz attitude through his floating notes, once I heard that I was done. Jazz had me and it had my attention. It was accessible, complex and it influenced my writing like nothing else did, or has since.”
—George Woods, guitars/vocals
