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FULL ALBUMS
DOWNSIDE - HATED BY SIMPLE MINDS (1995)
DEMO TAPE
lead
vocals and drums by me, except "insignificant" (vocals
by scott)
copyright ©1995. all rights reserved.
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my thoughts and notes on the demo tape:
We
had been called Panacea for about six months before we changed our
name to Downside. We won 1st place at a battle of the bands at Club
Exodus in Port Charlotte, FL in summer 1995. The grand prize was
like $100 plus 5 hours of studio time at Paradox Recording Studio
(later Paradox City) in Sarasota, FL, which was this guy Rick's
house. He became our main engineer and ran sound for us quite a
bit from 1995 to 1999... very, very cool guy.
I sang lead vocals on four of these recordings. The song I am most proud of in the full history of the band is "Sometimes." I think it is an extremely catchy and creepy song about feeling like you want to die because a girl fucked you over, and then finally finding someone who isn't full of shit. I've yet to find this, and I'm 31 now. At the time of writing the song, I was dating this girl Carinda, who I loved but she was in love with Sal in my band. "Sometimes" is about her, basically entirely... especially the first verse, second verse and middle eight part... I threw in the positive lines in the third verse just to even out the pain in the lyrics... but the song is basically a negative song about how much she hurt me and how girls have hurt me in general. Some people have said I sound like Ozzy on this song, or at least sang like him. Well, it makes sense... I grew up on Black Sabbath and I used to listen to his solo records from the 80s (especially "The Ultimate Sin" from 1986) constantly.
"Prisoner" was about Sal's parents. They were pretty overpossessive of him at the time, and also tried to steer Carinda to him, because they are both Italian. Prisoner was my "fuck you, leave me alone, stop putting a stranglehold on my friend, and stop fucking with my relationship." Ultimately the song didn't help... I lost the girl and whatnot... but anyway, that's what it's about.
"Why?" is Scott's song and lyrics... I think it was directed at me because he oftentimes wrote lyrics about how he was sick of hearing about people's problems, and I was definitely the depressed one in the band. Nothing really ever went my way, and my lyrics clearly indicated that. Years later, they still do. I always write from the heart.
"Funky" is about Alicia Silverstone. I had a huge crush on her for years. It's a catchy little funkrock song... still fun to listen to, but still cheesy as hell.
"Insignificant" was another fully-penned Scott song... he took over the lead vocals. The song's music just fucking kills. It's so tight, with random stops and starts and syncopated drum fills, guitar riffs, and weird time changes. A masterpiece if I ever heard one. You can hear my watch beep, signifying 8:00pm during a pause in the song before the 2nd verse.
All the recordings here are tight as hell... we were all 16-19 years old when we recorded this on September 1st, 1995, me being the oldest and Sal being the youngest. The songs were all done in one take. Vocals in usually one take, two for track doubling. Listening back to all of them sure does bring back a ton of memories. Good times. We were headed for something good, but we changed our sound so much after this demo that it was impossible to find a solid following or get record label attention. I'm sure we could have gotten somewhere, though, if we stuck to this progressive punk/hard rock sound. The lyrics had depth (well, with the exception of "Funky"...) and it was just so fucking tight. For the first time being in a recording studio, I don't think it could have gone better. I can't believe all this shit was twelve years ago and we recorded this shit as teens. How time flies.
Oh yeah, there's a glowing review of this demo tape below, by Jim Santo who runs a site called Demo Universe. He used to write for Alternative Press back when AP was actually an indie/alternative mag before they hopped on the radio punk bandwagon. Also, I sent this tape to the punk band Pennywise, and got a wonderful, positive handwritten letter from Jim Lindberg, the singer. I still have it in my scrapbook. Man... I miss being 19.
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Sometimes
(lyrics by me): |
the
only review in existence: Downside evidently have a hard time fitting in, and I'm not surprised. Their swaggering, technically proficient rock is wholly opposed to the "aw shucks, think I'll hang myself" attitude prevalant in today's "pop" scene. Moreover, their style is at war with itself, mutating within a song from fluid jazz fusion to Van Halenesque power-pop and back again, with a dip into near-thrash ("Insignificant"). So, have they no place in the Universe? Au contraire! Skip (a hard worker, he sings and drums) and the boys deserve credit (and cash) for a first-rate effort; the band played its ass off and Rick Duncan got it on tape. At last, a good band from Florida! - Jim Santo, demouniverse.com
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