My Musical History, Episode 12: Evicted

After a handful of shows, Upper80 wasted no time in prepping a few songs for recording. For a studio, we chose Jackpot! Recording, since I had met the owner/engineer (Larry Crane of Tape Op magazine) at the NxNW music festival and he seemed like a really cool guy.

So, we went in and laid down four tunes, including a version of something that you may have heard in Second Player Score's set. Then, we decided to name the EP...oh wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...

Holy cow, look at that hair!!

Right around the time that this was all happening, there was an interesting little incident at our practice space. If you recall from Episode 11, the space we were renting was a storage unit in downtown Portland - basically a small room in a building where the other tenants were mostly just people looking for a place to stash their excess junk.

Portland, however, is home to approximately two-and-a-half gajillion bands, and the amount of available practice space is so limited that most places have a waiting list longer than whatever is super incredibly long. So, once word got out that our landlords were renting out storage units to bands (us) and letting them (us) practice there, other bands descended upon the building like a mad swarm of hungry termites.*

Next thing we knew, we had tons of new neighbors that not only practiced their music at the place, but also did a lot of...let's call it "hanging out." Now, I'm not judging them one way or another, but what ended up happening was that, one particular night - when we weren't there, mind you - a fire was accidentally set in one of the rooms. Yup, that's right, a fire. Fortunately, no one was hurt and nothing was really damaged, but needless to say, the landlords were not too pleased. They immediately terminated the leases of every band that was renting a room there, including us.

So now, we were out of a practice space. Fortunately, we were already well-rehearsed for the already-booked recording sessions, so that wasn't an issue, but since we had no place to practice once the sessions were finished, the forecast for Upper80's future was cloudy at best (see what I did there? Upper80, like a weather forecast? You know, "high temperatures in the upper 80s, lows in the lower 70s"...okay, never mind. You can stop groaning now)

Oh yeah, so to memorialize our getting kicked out, we ended up naming the four-song EP Evicted. We sent it out to a few places, sold a few copies, and then slowly faded away into the place that bands fade away into when they have no place to rehearse.

Next: Hiatus, Then A Chuck Palahniuk Novel Reference

* If the building were made of wood, which it wasn't, but you know what I mean