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FULL ALBUMS
DOWNSIDE - "JAY/BOB VOCAL VERSIONS" (97/98)
DEMO TAPE
drums,
samples, occasional vox by me
copyright ©1997/98. all rights reserved.
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my thoughts
and notes on the recordings:
Most
of my thoughts on Downside are on the previous
Downside page.
This incarnation of the band was... interesting, to say the least. The original four guys (myself, Scott, Fred and Sal) had met these two guys Jay and Bob (yeah, like the Kevin Smith movies!) at a convenience store. As it turns out, Bob and Jay could rap, and extremely well. Jay came from a gangsta rap project in Detroit called Mad Trauma. Bob was his good friend. They both moved to Cape Coral, FL from Detroit, at the suggestion of their friend Marco.
Fred was the one who met them initially (and became friends because they all stupidly smoked pot, something I've never been into and never will be)... so Fred invited both of them over to one of our practices. They came over and rocked the fucking mics. Bob was way more shy than Jay, but when he finally got around to spitting rhymes, he blew us away. They were in the band.
We immediately went into the studio to record a bunch of tracks (this was summer 1997). We played a bunch of shows as the six of us and maintained our reputation in southwest Florida as "the most energetic rock band of the 90s south Florida scene." We didn't disappoint, live. Ever.
In November 1998, we got a steady weekly gig on a Wednesday night at the Indigo Room in Ft. Myers. One of our most important (and heavily promoted) shows, Bob was a no-show. As it turned out, we found out he missed the gig to smoke crack with Fred's latest sexual conquest, some slutty mom. So we did the show without him. And it went really well. Shortly after that, we kicked Bob out because rule #1 was - you made practice, you made the gig, no matter what. Plus, the crack-smoking thing was just too much for us. Weed was one thing, crack was on a whole other level of stupidity.
So anyway, here's the result of Bob's year and a half stint in Downside. My favorite tracks are "Turnstyle" (a song I actually kicked a full verse in), "Fatherless Son Remix" (with Sal and I whispering... "this is how the story goes... in my mind, nobody knows..."), and "Kick Back", another pot-smoking song, heavily influenced musically, by 311. Bob's raps were fast and very sloppy, but we all dug it. And he did this "chicken dance" when he was performing... it had to be seen to be understood. Always made us smile and get into it more.
Good times.