Bio Point of view: Geoff ( vocalist )
Oct.26, 2004, The Ugly Things made their debut performance at the Bovine Sex Club in Toronto. I remember racing to print out handbills at a cyber cafe just before running to sound-check, so my former significant-other could cheerfully entice people on the street into the depths of the Bovine; one of the most unique bars in the city.
I'd met Dave Kiner (formerly of Malhavoc) the previous spring. At one of our "lifelong buddy" jam sessions up in Guelph, (thanks to Russ, Sean, Rob, and Barry), my long-time friend Jon Billings (of Professor Plum) casually said to me, "hey, we should start a rock-band". This was about a week before I'd met Dave, who was looking for a new singer to work with. I don't know if Jon expected me to call him a couple of weeks later with the news that I'd found the perfect guy to get something going with.
I knew that the combined energy and contrasting styles of Dave and Jon would hit a nerve as soon as they got together in the same room. Those guys will go on for hours talking about gear or albums that I've never heard of; a good sign that two guitarists will get along.
We hooked up with drummer a and "utimate frisbee champion" Matt Sypher, and started writing songs and rehearsing. Those first bunch of shows featured Dave and Jon passing the Bass and Guitar back and forth, since we'd yet to find our bass player: Craig Dean. Now there is a dedicated dude. When Craig first came to jam with us, he was recovering from a serious back injury and played a lot of the session lying down. Oh, and don't worry, Craig's not nearly as evil in person as he appears on stage.
By summer of 2005 we'd played in and around Toronto to crouds varying from hundreds, to just the other bands who were playing that night, and it was about time we got some stuff recorded. Ian Blurton (C'mon) pulled seven songs out of us as producer in only 2 days of recording at Chemical Sound. It was a frantic pace, but the timing was right. I somehow managed to record six of the seven songs back to back before I was ready to fall over and had to let the boys take-over and record guitar solos.
So, what's up on this site now are the first mixes from those sessions. We'd like to know what you think of the songs . Not to be pigeon-holed into any pre-existing genre, we liked to refer to ourselves as "dirtbag rock". The songs are hopefully fun, agressive, energetic, but also are all telling stories in some-way (some of them true). "The Ugly Things" may not so much refer to us, as it does to the subject matter of the songs.
Krist Ladva played one show as drummer in Nov, 2005
