(Long and Boring Version)
Well, the Syzlaks has existed for quite some time now... although in a very different form. You see, it all started in 6th grade (I believe) when everyone was starting to explore music (mainly Blink 182...) and wanted to start a band named FMS. So, the original line-up consisted of
Dan B.- Guitar
Tim B.- Bass
George- Drums
From various stories I've heard, this was more like a little weekly jam session and not really an official band. In fact I've heard stories of their humbles beginnings in which they practiced with acoustics and George used a practice drum pad. Anyhoo, Tim left and joined One Size Fits All, which he is soon to leave. For a while from what I've heard (from various recordings on a tape recorder and from first hand accounts) the band at that point was basically George and Dan just recording them talking and playing a few covers. Then, Ian joined. They even went on to play Longview at a talent show sans vocals. Now here's where I (Greg) come in. George, being the kind-hearted soul he is, invited me to be the second guitarist for the band. I first was hesitant as I wasn't sure I was good enough or whether a punk band really needed 2 guitars (check out later in the bio when i contradict myself). After about two practices, Ian leaves. Now, we were left bass-less. Luckily for us though, it turned out (totally by coincidence, no one in the band had told him to start... no one at all... not me especially) my good friend Matt had been taking bass over the summer. George (rather quickly) asked him to join and I half-heardtedly agreed as I didn't think he was good at all (at that point in time).This was around the time the band name was changed to the Syzlaks, after our friendly neighborhood bartender, Moe Szyslak (note the different spelling) Then, Dan decided to leave to join another band with Ian and some drummer named Wesley. So, it was just me, Matt and George, pretty close to the current line-up. So around this time, it was finally time to get down to some real business, mainly writing songs. Well, looking back at the songs I had written with Matt over the summer, we had a limited number of songs to chose from. But we decided to do a very simple song as our first. This song was the Fred Song. At this point, we felt pretty hip about finishing a song (ONE WHOLE SONG, MAN!!) so we decided to enter into the school talent show with Fred Song. This is where our mentor (of sorts I suppose) Mr. Wallace comes into play. He let us practice in his room on certain days and gave us advice on what he heard. Some of this advice was helpful, some was hurtful, and some was just plain stupid. But in the end, he helped us out with our talent show performance... During this time of rehearsing for the show, George (rather quickly, like the way he invited me and Matt into the band) invites Pat to play second guitar for our band. After a short and terrible show at a friend's garage, we decided to get our act together and we wrote songs like mad to prepare for shows. It was during this period we wrote most of our punk/ska stuff as can be expected from some ripe-from-middle school freshmen. However, as our abilities increased and our ears became more open, we began to play around with other kinds of songs, such as acoustic ballads, psychadelic influenced rockers, and just whatever the hell we could pull out of our heads. We also started playing around with different instrumentation, such as harmonica, acoustic guitar, bongos and piano. It became obvious to us there's a hell of a lot more you can do with four people than we once thought and we moved quickly to take advtange of that. At our current point, we're pursuing writing a wide variety of songs and using our full potential as a band. However, we never take ourselves too seriously (ever heh) and we're not forgetting our roots and love nothing more than to just write songs about... well anything really heh heh. COME SEE US SOMETIME!
Oh and by the way, our talent show song sucked...
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