THE ROAR HEARD 'ROUND THE WORLDThey came from the North to eat sandwiches and rock the planet. And they're all out of sandwiches.From haunted woods surrounding Detroit came two carnivorous animal children, raised within the odd atmospheric pressure changes of the surrounding Great Lakes of Michigan (state motto: Proud To Be Passive-Aggressive), and baptized in the hallowed dirt of St. Iggy. It was an ideal and pastoral childhood for all two of the scrappy boys, but the good times were short-lived.As they say in the history books, war came, and with its arrival, sanity packed its steamer trunk and took off. It was during these tumultuous times that Justin Zeppa met Thomas McCartan on a park bench in occupied Paris. "I had just purchased a baguette from a street vendor who was peddling baked goods on Pont Neuf while transmitting messages to the underground via his wooden shoes," Zeppa later recalled. "War does strange things to people.""I had just finished some charcoal rubbings of Hammurabi's Code at the Louvre for my dissertation on charcoal rubbings, when I spotted this bloke who was dressed like a chimney sweep and was cradling this loaf of bread," McCartan mused after the war. "And I was so hungry."Reports vary as to what exactly happened next, but it is almost certain that the bread was broken in two (as was customary at the time), one half was bigger than the other, tempers flared, and they settled on forming a band, The Royal Tampon Bombs. A power trio known for unorthodox setlists and ever-increasing tempos, TRTB became such a powerful power trio that they had to break up. McCartan found solace as the low-man for alt-country legends, Flatfoot, while Zeppa vanished without leaving a forwarding address.Once more, the weathered hand of history served as a catalyst for the completion of the puzzle, bitch-slapping the Great Lakes state with a series of assaults waged by the great warrior Tecumseh on the frontier settlements. Chaos ensued, and McCartan fled to the safety and security of New York City, where he responded to an ad for roommates: 'I'll let u live w me if u pay my rent.' The desperate tenant? Zeppa. The result? The Roar.While the lads set to work on writing and recording The Roars self-titled debut, the search for a drummer began. Upon discovering that Keith Moon was still dead, The Roar settled on the next best thing, one Sean Tuccillo, a minstrel vagabond hailing from north of the city, with a reputation for being in 12,000 bands at one time."Sean really sold us on his drumming skills when he drove us to this creepy estate and got us drunk in a field reminiscent of the Battle of Cowpens," McCartan mumbled in his sleep last Tuesday."They made me sign a pact of blood and chrome in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, which I thought was unusual," Tuccillo remembered, brushing a tear away from his right eye. "Normally when I join a band, we just go get drunk on Miller High Life at Chili's. But then, this isnt a normal band.""And if you do end up at Chili's," Tuccillo added, "order the appetizer sampler. The potato skins are awesome."
