Written by A. Chugg - Well, lets see here. I'm sort of going to write this stream of conciousness style with minimal grammar/revising/regret. Actually...who am I kidding. I'll probably change it around quite a bit. I am writing the bio because, believe it or not, I am the only member to have made it the whole way! Yes, I am proud. My earliest memory of FS was back in the spring of 2000. I was a freshman in high school, a wee wee. The force behind the idea shall be completely credited towards two very important gentlemen, Dave "The Rave" Ebel and Peter Mailloux. The idea was mainly prompted by a two main trips to the Burlington, Vermont area: one - Freezerburn, The River City Rebels (pre-Victory Records) and Edna's Goldfish at 242 Main as well as The Bazookas, Freezerburn and the Super Spies at some bowling alley. Anyways, we figured..."if these kids can do it, why can't we?" So, we'd talk every day about how awesome it would be to start a ska band (this is back when ska was cool). We'd talk about names - originally we were the Ex-Lunch Ladies (dont tell anybody). We thought this was an awesome name, only because we had a substitute in one of our classes that used to be a lunch lady - she had a cool nickname that I cant seem to remember. We must remember, this was all happening without...any practice...or talent whatsoever. (I didnt even own a guitar that I hadn't bought from a JC Penney catalog.) I ended up getting a guitar for my 15th birthday; one of the greatest gifts I've ever recieved, sentimentally and otherwise. (Thanks so much, Dad). Also, thanks to Jesse Charlstream (wherever you are), for teaching me how to play power chords. After quite some time of having people here and making noise on instruments in my dining room, our "first real practice" came around April of 2000. The practice consisted of The Mailloux brothers (Peter on Trumpet, Justin on Sax), myself (A. Chugg) and Ryan Donnelly on drums. The introduction of Ryan came at an ideal time - tying my shoes before gym class.I hear "Yeah, I just got a double-bass pedal." I think to myself, "Hmm, Who?" I tell Ryan that I'm an kick-ass guitar player, that sucker believed me. So, at this first practice we sort of just made noise for about 30 minutes until Ryan's dad came down and told us to start with something simple- quite possibly the best suggestion...ever. So we played 4 notes...down a scale....all playing the same note. It was genious. So, we got pumped to say the least. We slowly had more and more people showing up to "practices" that we had. Dave Ebel on vocals, Adam Popick on bass, Pete on trumpet, Justin M. and Matt on tenor sax, Sam Quinn on trombone, me on guitar, Andy Sears on guitar. So, it was basically just 7 people, quite literally, making shitty shitty noise. Let me rephrase that - we rocked hard. The next most glorious moment in FS was when Ryan learned how to play a "punk" beat. After Adam spent some time screaming "No! It goes 'Boom, Chick, Boom Boom, Chick!'" Ryan's dad came down once again to play the beat for Ryan. Ryan never forgot it. We wrote "Shiny Lake", later known as "DMV". Perhaps we wrote "Senseless" first, it is in constant debate. But, I think we wrote "Shiny Lake" first. Oh yeah...Matt Dunn was at practices. Woo. This is getting long, but I don't care. So, eventually we started playing shows. Our first show was at the VUHS cafeteria with I7, Cheat to Win, Cheux and probably some other crap. Oh yeah, Table 4-4. I mean, whatever...it wasnt crap - i just happened to remember it after i typed the word "crap". We played a show at 242 with Joe Glidden on drums (for shameful reasons). Summer of 2001 --> Around this point we had a line-up...one that made a little more sense musically, but a lot less sense socially: Me on guitar, Popick on bass, Ryan on drums, Matt . on sax., Sam Quinn on trombone and Parker Shorey on Trumpet. We thought it would be cool to take pictures (around this point we had about 5 or 6 songs). That summer we recorded our first "album" 4 songs on Adam's analog 4-track. 1) No Way 2) Senseless 3) DMV 4) Vergennes Dump City. Oh, by the way, this was by far the best album we ever recorded. Completely DIY, completely genious lyrically, and Adam was ashamed to sing in front of us. It was awesome. We would write lyrics on napkins, it took about 30 seconds to write a whole song. Our main theme lyrically was about seeing girls in the hallway at school and not waving to them, because....thats what punks do, right? We spent a lot of time jumping on Parker's trampoline, drinking Ryan's generic brand soda and not really finishing songs. We had bits and pieces of songs for about 6 months before we actually focused for 45 seconds and finished such hits as "Anti-Social" and "B-Slap". It is Flat Stanley tradition to make each song an anthem; timeless classics that reign for 6 months before the next song is written. So, we jump to 2002 where we finish some songs on the newest album - "Quiet in the Corner", "Sick" - and achieve our goal of being chosen for the Homebrew Battle of the Bands. We get psyched, put on our HAZMAT suits, fros and nerd glasses and proceed to break a string. Parker jumped into the crowd at the end of the show, hardcore. Yeah, and at the end the frickin ass-DJ teased me and said our name after he was going to announce the winner. Needless to say, I prematurely freaked out and embarassed myself in front of the world. But, the DJ got fired and it was cool. So, a year passes...we are welcomed back to the BOB and we actually play a really tight set and end up winning. This catapults us into more shows, free gear, more radio airtime, and so on. Now that we hadscored a bit of a name for ourselves we began to sort of lose a little bit of motivation in the songwriting aspect. We began to realize that we would soon be graduating and going our separate ways...Matt to NAPS, Sam to Harvard, Andy to Emerson, Adam to Tufts. But...needless to say, here I am...at school....writing the band bio. Its sort of exciting to know that the band could break up any day, the band could get signed any day, the band could rest, the band could talk online...the band could do whatever. I really cant predict the future of FS. But, I know that this has been one of the most sincerely exhilerating and emotional experiences of my life. To finish, I just want to say...we dont deserve this...its all because of you guys. Needless to say - this WOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED WITHOUT SOME VERY IMPORTANT PEOPLE- youre probably one of them. Keep rocking.
much love - A. Chugg, and the rest of FS. |
