In honor of an old friend, Paul Botch, sending me some photos of my first band, The Fall of Id, I’ll submit the first entry of my band history. The year was 1998…
I came from nowhere. The small semi-rural town I grew up in, Fenton Missouri, never fostered any punks or scenes of mention save for my older brother Jason and myself. After my parents divorced at 5 we moved from a trailer in High Ridge to a 3 bedroom house in Fenton with 4 children and 2 adults. I proceeded to bounce around between the house and whatever apartment or co-habitation living situation my father happened to be in. My childhood was wildly unstable and full of fear and the constant threat of violence, both in my home life and at school.
Around age 11 my older brother, 3 years my senior, discovered punk and I very quickly followed suit. He took me to my first show at 12 and I could not be sated from that point on. I immersed myself in the history, in the myriad of branches of sub-genres, in the liner notes and thank you lists of every record I came across. I discovered Maximum Rock n’ Roll and began corresponding with anyone I could find in the classifieds and sending concealed cash in envelopes in return for records and catalogs and whatever else I could consume, I was obsessed.
Around 14 I moved into another trailer with my father back to High Ridge and found myself even more deeply isolated and thus even more engrossed in the classifieds of MRR, saving my lunch money to buy records and corresponding with other punks from around the country. I was rapidly failing middle school, being suspended 18 times my 8th grade year and was simultaneously becoming engrossed in obscure hardcore and power violence and finding myself bumming rides to more and more shows in the city.
Around this time I met a kid named Jeff Cristiani at a Good Riddance show as we both sang along to a song about animal rights (I began a vegetarian diet at 14). We exchanged numbers and vowed to start a band, he was a drummer and I had major aspirations to front a band.
Eventually Jeff recruited two friends, Kevin and Jacob, and we convened for our first practice in Jeff’s parents basement in an affluent St. Louis suburb called Olivette. This was the first time I had ever seen someone eat a sheet of dried seaweed. We eventually managed to barely squeeze out two grindcore “songs” and a cover by a band called Sickness. Jeff had gotten us booked on a Halloween show at a DIY venue in St. Louis’s Shaw neighborhood called the 2008 before we had any actual songs so we had a goal to aim for:
At the comical age of 15 my first show had arrived. I hadn’t memorized the lyrics yet so I read out of my notebook and although I can’t remember I’m certain we were completely incoherent musically. Luckily the novelty of our ages charmed all of the older folks in attendance and we became something of a 2008 house band for all of 3 shows we ended up playing. I can’t remember exactly why we broke up but I’m sure it was mostly due to the fact that none of us were old enough to drive and our parents were wholly unwilling to cart us around.
The 2008 era was such a fantastic jumping off point for my involvement into the DIY punk scene and everyone in that environment was so generous and nurturing that I can’t remember even a single feeling of negativity or a fight which is probably the only place and era of St. Louis punk that I can say that about. Cave In, Isis, Reversal of Man, Combatwoundedveteran and Song of Zarathustra are just some of the bands I can remember seeing there not to mention all of the great forgotten locals like Inanition, Love Lost but not Forgotten and Johnny Angel.
Luckily or unluckily a couple of our shows were documented:
Our first show, 10/31/1998, The 2008
Maybe our 2nd show? Also 1998, also The 2008. Photos by Paul Botch.
I booked this show but MK-Ultra had to cancel last minute because Ebro broke his leg. Everyone else still played.
I believe these were lyrics to one of the songs (yes, I still have every notebook I’ve ever written in)
The back cover of said notebook (the same one I’m holding in the first picture)
Thanks for joining me on this hasty journey through my hilarious past.—XO JWS