FROZEN TEARSBy Nicky Baldrian
FROZEN TEARS
By
Nicky Baldrian
A long, long time ago in a town far far away "Karlsruhe-Germany that is" Frozen Tears guitarist virtuoso Crazy Peck got bored at his second unsuccessful shot at stardom in his previous band "We had a shot at major music stardom, with loads of money involved which resulted in two CD's." says CP, " I got bored just fiddling 'round on my six strings all by myself and decided to search newspaper ad's for a suitable band where I could easily play some rhythm guitar, without getting too involved! Actually I was looking for a cover band, because things are quite easier, for you don't have all the hassles of writing songs and all that stuff" he explains
"Well, the
first band I checked out was much like that, with some original
tunes, doing covers of the Stones, Eagles and Mellencamp which I
would have been pretty comfortable with...as my dad played that
stuff for me when I was a kid, and I still like all those bands
including some newer Country stuff and I easily would have
strummed my old acoustic for them but, the singer sucked pretty
much and couldn't hold a tune for nothing! But the other guys in
the band we're pretty fond of him and surely believed he would be
the "next" Mick Jagger to come!"
As time went on CP kept his eyes and ears open for new talent
"When that famous call came in and Michael Myers was on the
phone, answering to a message I had left behind earlier on his
machine! He told me their old band (Brent Spar) had broke up and
now they were looking for a replacement for their guitarist who
decided to go back to University,.well, I said to him that, yes
off course I was looking for a band and 80's stuff is just my
bag, but although I had tons of experience recording, writing
songs and with my american heritage it is a true passion of mine
breaking my head over out-of-the-ordinary lyrics, but when it
comes to guitar-wizardry I never really wanted to be the sole
six-shooter in a band and I could never see myself taking the
spotlight when it comes down
to soloing!"
"Michael convinced me at last (he said some stuff about a
very talented Vocalist and quite some other things that heated up
my curiosity!) to drop by to give it a shot that was late
December & 98 (and as it turns out now they never got rid of
me since, hahaha)...!!! Well, first we agreed on playing a song
everyone could easily play, which was Bryan Adams old classic
"Summer of 69" and off I went for the second audition
in my first 12 years of making music!" "Once I got
there to meet the band I was struck by the mess that surrounded
them and thought: Oh my god who's got me into this! Hahaha but
amidst all the trash, we managed to knock out one hell of a tune,
it just clicked and since then we have never played that one
again!"
"One of the first things we did was to tidy things up,
renovate and decorate, so everyone could be most comfortable
while rehearsing, by the end of that period, our drummer Jiri (a
Czech native) decided he couldn't live with the bands musical
direction (and just imagine the guy didnt know any songs such as
Bon Jovi or others!) and decided to leave the band! This was a
bad thing at first but later on proved to be the best thing that
happened to us, not that he wasn't talented, his style of playing
was totally influenced by Brit-Pop bands and would have taken us
in a completely other direction than what we had in mind!"
"So we built a complete stage in this rehearsal room, with
lots of blood,sweat and tears to end up with no drummer what a
bummer! But all efforts turned out to be a benefit, because we
could easily simulate a live performance on that stage just
without the audience, haha! So we plugged in that old faithful
Dr. Rhythm of old Boss fame to concentrate on writing material
and taking the time we needed to complete our five piece band and
really finding the right guy for the job!"
"So there we were trying to find the
concept, the songs and the image we wanted people to know as
FROZEN TEARS and believe me, sometimes a band is like a marriage
and you fight over things you later on don't even remember, but
even though we all have different musical backgrounds, we managed
to be influenced by bands like Dokken, Poison, Triumph, Danger
Danger, Queensryche, ACDC; Kiss, and countless others we have
grown up with, without copying them and sounding too much alike!
Some old stuff we had played in bands before has been reworked
with some new stuff added, others completely ignored when anybody
couldn't live with a certain idea to create our brand of Rock!
The Rock we would have fun with on stage and get our point across
wherever they'd want to hear us and to carry the spirit of the
eighties over into the new millennium, whilst still sounding
fresh and new! Back to the future, so to say!!!"
"Naming the band was a tough one too, we all had our
name-lists and endless discussions, when all of a sudden our
bass-player Charlie (a.k.a. Chuck) came up with FROZEN TEARS with
everyone quiet in the room we all suddenly knew, yeah that's it,
well I guess everybody in the band relates to something else when
thinking of that name, but for myself, I think of a great song by
a most underrated band of the late 80's a song called
"Frozen Tears" from Icon's "Night of The
Crime"I played that one to death, superb album!"
"Soon our paths had crossed with Dom, who formerly played
drums with local progressive bands and some time ago with Chuck,
our bass-guy, in a band called Illusion,and from then on the
talkative young man was part of the band! He easily picked up the
songs we had written earlier and added his signature style
playing without tearing the song structures apart, even though we
sometimes had to stop him in his creativity, hahaha!"
"It was out of the question that the band needed audio
material in order to get some gigs and local media attention and
soon after Dom joined the band we teamed up with the guys from
S.L.L-Recording-Studio (who in their early days were better known
as Smoked Lizard Lips the local heroes of 80's rock! to make a
first recording for the band! We all
wanted it to be pretty much live without too many overdubs and
gimmicks, just plain edgy Rock, with catchy hooks, flash and
style and a good production,no more no less!!! And it turned out
to be an almost live session, with
great fun doing it!"
"With everyone more than pleased, we ended last year by
playing some smaller gigs with Chroming Rose, Torrent and others
to get our live act together and promote our CD called
"Voodoo" And to our surprise, our somewhat dated music
was well received by both media and fans and all efforts and
money proved to be well invested in the bands future!"
"Since then lot's of things have happened, new material has
been written, lot's of time invested in countless little things
like building a homepage, legal things had to be done reserving
our name, writing credits and trying to distribute our songs
throughout the www via MP3.com, while one part of the band is
busy trying to get gigs, the other part is writing songs and
developing an idea on how the next recording should look and
sound! But our first priority will always be to get out playing
live whenever we can! The tough part is doing it all by
ourselves, but satisfying enough to know, we can do it just the
way we want it to be!"
"Well, the man that is now taking the spotlight soloing
(still not a guitar wizard, just a mean old Rock n Riffer, haha!)
is pretty much involved and bring us bang up to date with the
happens of Frozen Tears I will elave you now with the famous
words of our little big man on drums (as can be heard on our
multimedia track of "VOODOO"...SEE YOU ON OUR NEXT
TOUR!!
Please drop by and visit our website at www.frozentears.de!!!