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Budget

About Me

The seeds of Budget were planted in 1994 when I, Tyler Rebbe (bass), met Brad Morrison (drums) through a mutual friend. He had just quit Simi Valley's "Strung Out" and wanted to do something completely different. Much jamming occurred in Brad's living room during the summer of '94 in between non-stop O.J. trial news on every TV channel. After moving band practice to a Newbury Park warehouse, "The Pad," we were joined by Mike Bowman (guitar) and Chris Brown (vocals).We debuted live at the illustrious "Mancini's Club M" (now a Mexican disco) in Canoga Park in late 1994. Budget played anywhere and everywhere in Southern California for the next few years. Some of the bands were April's Motel Room, Strung Out, Plad, Contradiction, Chump, 66%, Tree of Love, Amber's Will, and Mr. Ahnold. After playing the Cobalt Cafe about 17 times and reading that we brought a "bad element of drinking to the parking lot" in the LA Times, we met a guy named Marc Maxey. He actually liked us and wanted to release a 7" of Budget. "Who Poured Beer in My Shoe....?" (based on a true story) came out in 1995. We played even more shows in some cool and some horrible venues. A bad show being one such as "Club Mesa" in Costa Mesa where there was a dead body outside the front door. Chris wasn't allowed inside the venue until we played due to him being under 21. A good show would be when we got to play at a sold out Ventura Theater for a Surf Rider benefit, or the time we played the Roxy and had Budget trivia. Best questions: "How many members of Budget have not had their drivers licenses revoked?" (3) Or Chris Aiken's, "Which band, with a worldwide appeal, is in the motherfuckin' house?" (Plastiscene) We found a box of 75 neon blue Lycra biking shorts outside in the trash and threw them out to the audience for correct answers.One fateful evening, at what would most likely have been one of the "horrible" shows, Chris threw in the towel. He never showed up and disappeared. New York transplant Dan Arturi stepped in a few months later to replace Chris and we moved to rehearsal to the infamous 4070 Adam Rd. in Simi Valley. We started practicing nearly ever night for years without the cops ever coming to tell them us shut up. I don't know if this was because our neighbors were all illegal immigrants. Maybe they didn't really want the cops to come over at all. This has to be some kind of garage band record.We played more shows and wrote more and more songs. We recorded probably 4 or 5 more demos at good ol' Curt Piar's garage studio. Jon Cordia was usually around tempting/inspiring us with booze and bad porn. We teamed up with Jon and Chris Aiken to record some horribly conceived Journey, Def Leppard and Spice Girls covers during this period. I had joined the band Pulley in 1997 and started touring nationally and overseas a little bit. One of these tours was with Lagwagon. Their singer, Joey Cape really liked Budget when I played him a demo tape. (wow, tapes??!?!?!) A couple months later he called and us and offered to record a few songs for us in a proper studio called Orange Whip up in Santa Barbara. We worked with him and Angus Cooke. We had to do four songs in one day, but Joey paid for it, which was really cool of him. Brad and I had to record live, but it was the first "real" recording we ever did.During this time, before we had mixed or mastered the recordings, things got a little more serious. One night after a rockin' night watching the Bug's Bunny Vest Guy's band play at the Tree House, we stumbled home across the street and found an amazing message awaiting us on Brad's answering machine (whens the last time you used an answering machine anyway? weird.) Somehow one of our idols, Bill Stevenson, got our demo tape and left us a message saying he really liked it and wanted to let us know. This was followed by another message saying he REALLY liked the demo and he "knew how we need to sound" and he needed to work with us. It was funny because he was so humble and kept saying "Yeah, this is Bill again, I work at a place called the Blasting Room." Yeah, no shit. We knew who the fuck you are! Haha! So we called Joey and asked him if he would mind if Bill mixed and mastered our cd at his studio. Joey was cool with this. I'm pretty sure he didn't know Bill at this time because a year later he called us to get Bill's phone number. Soon after Lagwagon and a bunch of Fat Wreck Chord bands started using the Blasting Room for everything. I will never know if we had anything to do with that, but it sure seems like it. We put on a "hidden track" at the end of the last song, a weird phone conversation Dan had at work as a telemarketer selling printer tape and toner. He can be heard feigning excitement as a woman explains her cleansing diet to him for about 15 minutes. In the end, he closed the deal and made the sale. Good man.Our friends Sean Robison and Sammy Grant decided they would help us put out our 4 songs on a real CD with color insert and bar code and wrapped in plastic and all that jazz. This cost a bunch back in the day and was kind of revolutionary compared to a demo tape. (In fact, I had given a Budget demo to Stephen Egerton in 1994 at a show. Knowing what I know about touring now, it probably ended up getting thrown out of the window of the ALL van during a "record release party") So, Sean and Sammy printed up a thousand or so Budget Eps called "EePee." We played some bigger shows with Strung Out and also had a real booking agent ask us to open for Lagwagon at the Palace in Hollywood. We made some crappy t-shirts and hats, too. In the end, we got good reviews for the cd Mean Street, Flipside and Maximum Rock'n Roll. that was about all that happened, though. I still have a big box of cds in my closet almost ten years later.In 1999 we recorded the "Brown 28" demo at Bob Pace's studio and eventually parted ways with Dan. We kept at it for a few more months, still writing songs without a singer. I know they were pretty damn good but I can't remember what they sounded like for the life of me. I do remember the best title we ever had was "(Saw Gary Wilson in his Green Travelube Van Today) I" So we all eventually quit playing in Budget. A new regime took over at the 4070 house. The cops came A LOT this time. I moved back to T.O. and kept playing in other bands. Brad now works in behind the scenes in the movie industry, Mike is climbing the corporate ladder at Fast Frame, Chris moved to San Diego, and Dan is M.I.A. This page is for us and our friends to look at and laugh about all the dumb stuff we used to do. It's also for the random people who ask me about Budget on tour to this day. I still have no idea how you ever heard about us.

My Interests

Music:

Member Since: 15/09/2005
Band Members: Chris Brown - Vocals -1995-97Dan Arturi - Vocals ---1997-99Mike Bowman - Guitar --------Tyler Rebbe - Bass ------------Brad Morrison - Drums --------
Influences: All, Dag Nasty, Decendents, Big Drill Car, Goo Goo Dolls, Samiam, The Police, R.E.M., Rush, Sugar
Record Label: Mindpower Records / Wonder Dog Records
Type of Label: Indie

My Blog

Budget cd's

I have a bunch of Budget "EePee"s in my closet. Email me through here if you want one.Tyler
Posted by on Sun, 25 Jan 2009 18:48:00 GMT

Budget Bio

Yo. Check out the new bio I wrote. I know it's really long and has way too much information. But hey, it was fun and cathartic. Let me know if I missed anything.
Posted by on Mon, 26 Feb 2007 21:45:00 GMT