Fraud began in June of 2002 as a joke.
I had become burned out with real bands, the practicing, the hauling equipment regardless of whether or not it was for a few hundred kids or 10. I decided that for a X-Mas present for all of my friends, I was going to make a CD on my computer using Acid Pro and Sound Forge. Something entirely written by me. I had been twiddling my thumbs for a while and was feeling creative again so it was kind of a natural progression to want to do things on my own time without the headaches of others.
I started writing these stupid joke songs, and one just came out after another. I laced the CD with a couple serious ones, since I'm a pretty depressing person, and wha-la! Fraud was born.
Fraud is more of an extension of me and who I am than anything I've done before, because I'm doing it all MY way. Every single song either lives or dies by how I made it. If it sounds shitty, it's my fault.. if it's awesome... well that's my fault too.
I started playing and writing stuff in probably 1993, which would mean I've been making music for well over a decade. Needless to say, it sounds a hell of a lot better than it used to.
I had become burned out with real bands, the practicing, the hauling equipment regardless of whether or not it was for a few hundred kids or 10. I decided that for a X-Mas present for all of my friends, I was going to make a CD on my computer using Acid Pro and Sound Forge. Something entirely written by me. I had been twiddling my thumbs for a while and was feeling creative again so it was kind of a natural progression to want to do things on my own time without the headaches of others.
I started writing these stupid joke songs, and one just came out after another. I laced the CD with a couple serious ones, since I'm a pretty depressing person, and wha-la! Fraud was born.
Fraud is more of an extension of me and who I am than anything I've done before, because I'm doing it all MY way. Every single song either lives or dies by how I made it. If it sounds shitty, it's my fault.. if it's awesome... well that's my fault too.
I started playing and writing stuff in probably 1993, which would mean I've been making music for well over a decade. Needless to say, it sounds a hell of a lot better than it used to.
Throughout most of the 90's I recorded every song I could think of, covers, originals and so on. Most of that stuff ended up as boombox recordings called The Pocket Lint Project. It's some of the worst stuff anyone will ever hear, but I'm sure I'll surface some of it on this site. If anything, it shows the natural progression I went through musically.
From late 1995-1998 I played in a Green Bay, Wisconsin based band called the Vanilla Jacksons for a few years, they did pretty well, got to play shows with some of my favorite bands including The Muffs, The Donnas, Groovie Ghoulies, Chixdiggit, New Bomb Turks, and Teen Idols.
After that band, I moved on to the Pistol Pez Whatleys, who lasted about a year or so but but did pretty well in the same scene.
Shortly after the end of the Whatleys, I became pretty dejected and stayed out of the music scene for a very long time. And in the mid 2000's I was in the Bay Park Squares. There were actually quite a few Fraud songs that were adopted by that band, and it was probably the last time I'll be in an all-out group that plays live. The breakup was sudden and pretty heartbreaking for me, so I pretty much vowed to stick to solo stuff for the rest of my musical life.
Now Fraud has produced 4 cd's and taught me a lot about producing music on my own. This project has slowly but surely went from something meant to be a joke to a small labor of love for me. It's the one place where I can write everything the way I hear it in my head, and nobody can change it. It's an amazing thing to do and it makes me feel musically free on a daily basis. I just hope people who hear it can hear the time and effort and thought that I put into it. It's far from perfect, but it's 100% musical freedom.
Thanks for taking the time to read this,
-Jesse Wait (Fraud)
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