"techno song"
The origin of GIANT SQUID MARCH ON WASHINGTON can be traced all the way back to 1996 as best I can remember. I started hanging out with this guy, Doug - who quickly became one of my best friends - during the summer before 10th grade as we were the only people in the town that we lived in who happened to know who Soul Coughing were.
Doug: So, do you wanna start a band?
Aaron: Yeah, sure.
As it happened, our band didn't really work out back then, as I knew even less about music back then than I do now. Thus, we didn't actually get down to brass tacks until '99 when I went to visit him in Manitoba. It was then that we wrote and recorded our first few songs. Other than a cover of Filter's "Hey Man, Nice Shot", I can't really remember what most of them were about, but I do recall most of them were pretty fucked up. One song was called "Frosty The Snowman", and it was basically about what a huge cunt he was. The only other song I remember was called "The Brandonator", and it was about this fat kid with bad acne and a shitty attitude that we met in an internet chatroom. Basically, we just recycled the main riff from "I Wanna Be Your Dog", which, in itself would not make it noteworthy. The song is memorable for me if only for the first two lines in it - "The Brandonator/He's a rock and roll BAS-TARRRRRRD".
With our first hit song in the can, we began to plot the most direct route to total fucking world domination, but before we could really get underway, our new musical project needed a name. But what? Eventually, we wound up referring to it by two different names. I can't quite recall what Doug named the band, but I called it Reindeerhead. I would later use this name in 2003 when I began to make myself a presence on the internet, at which time, I produced a "song" which was really more of an ambient noise piece which can still be found on the internet under the title "The Helmet Children". After its release, I was beginning to feel stifled creatively. There was only so much I cared about producing using artificial methods, thus, I began to actively seek people who were creating music via more organic methods. Winter 2003, I met a young man named Anthony who I immediately hit it off with, on a musical and human level. Basically what won me over was this song he wrote called "Her Korner". I was blown away by how well written it was, and to this day, it's still my favourite song that he's written.
Thanks to a friend of mine, Max, we wound up playing one show and we fucking sucked. We were out of key, off time, and generally all-around unpracticed and incompetent, as far as being a band went. Half of our songs didn't even have vocals. Not only that, halfway through our horribly messy set, our drummer thought it would be totally awesome to get up in front of the microphone and start ranting. I don't remember specifically what he said, but I know that he mentioned Jesus more than once.
After our show, (I almost forgot to mention - it was in a mall), the band just kind of disintegrated. Anthony eventually moved back to NB, where he is currently, and I suppose I plodded away at trying to find another band. I was playing with this technical death metal band, but unfortunately, at the time, I was hardly as technically adept as I am now, so they found another bassist. I wasn't too upset about it though. They were really nice guys, and I can say that I truly learned from the short time I played music with them.
Though, it would be the last real band I ever played with.
Thus began the saga of GIANT SQUID MARCH ON WASHINGTON. Intended to be more a collective of musicians indulging in their grossest than what is typically thought of as a musical group, due to the oft fluid and unreliable nature of the concept of "BAND". No more do I care to appeal to the static attitudes of the masses with such limitations as "punk" or "metal" or "jazz" or "pop". Everything is good. Everything is shit. The alpha and the omega and all that horse cock.
Cheers,
Aaron
Download the "City" ep free of charge here:
published under Creative Commons licensing.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
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