Thursday, 08 October 2009
I grew up in Olympia WA, lived in an apt with my Mom, Dad, and three younger sisters. I've never been what you call "higher class" always average, but we got by the best we could. Life was sorta boring and casual, (the normal life of a pre teen boy) nothing amazing happened that much you know. Until the summer of 06' when I went to my first punk show downtown oly at the Manium. I remember Down and Out put the show on (a band I later became the lead singer of) And the well known american hardcore band MDC(millions of dead cops) was there as well. It was just Dave Dictor and bassist Mad Mike Smith, and it was acoustic. It was so badass though. Right when I showed up to the venue I heard Dave Dictor doing the cluck cluck cluck part to Chicken Squack I moshed a little, and then met a few people who would later become my good friends, and we got drunk of course, had fun then went home. That whole summer was just a big party down town oly for me and all my friends really, it was amazing...everyone was friends, no drama(well not that much drama) you didnt even have to call anybody, you could just take the transit down town, walk down 4th avenue and you'd run into plenty of people. After that summer was over it was time for highschool as a freshman, north thurston sucks. It's just a big fashion show and everybody thinks they're better than you. I was the only kid there who looked the way i did, long mohawk, tight jeans, studs and what not. And people thought it was okay to be judgemental, thats probably the biggest reason I hated that school, i did have quite a few friends, but still i just wasnt very comfortable. During this time I had contacted seth (lead guitarist of Down And Out) and told him i was interested in singin for the band, so i went to practice, and everything worked out great. We had some pretty origional songs, my favorite was veins of oil. We never really had a sturdy drummer or bassist; always finding new ones and what not, it sucked but we worked with it. We played our first show as a newly formed band downtown olympia at the midnight sun, it was supposed to be at the Manium, but it was during that gnarly storm of 06 (i believe it was 06) and the power wasnt working. So we just used the midnight sun which worked well. We had MDC (Dave and Mike) come, and it was amazing, Dave Dictor is such a cool guy to talk to, it was an honor to play on the same stage as him. It was a benifit show for these two teens who were put in prison for a murder they didnt commite, and we raised money for dna testing and stuff; i wish i rememberd the details but i dont. I recall how nervous i was that night, i chugged like two monsters before we went on so i was all jittery lol. And when i started to sing i felt like i was about to puke, thats how nervous i was haha.. But as the set went on i became very comfortable and energetic on "stage". Then the next day we had a show scheduled at Hells Kitchen, with the same line up, the bands i remember was Us (down and out) Millions of dead cops, Better off naked, and some other skate punk band(they were great, reminded me of the decendents) and Nervosa(they were assholes!) That show was fun as well, my voice was completely gone after the previous show so i drank numerous ammounts of hot apple cider to help my vocal chords, and it worked fine; after our set at hells kitchen i couldnt talk like at all. Down and Out played one last show at the midnight sun and our drummer ditched out on us didnt evne call or nothin so we had to have a guy we knew in the audience cover for us last minute, we only got in 3 songs since we didnt have much time to teach him everything ( the video is on youtube, search down and out 3 songs). I would say it wasnt our best preformance, I wasnt feeling too well and my throat was pretty sore, but that happens. Soon after that Down And Out broke up I dont exactly remember why, but we did. And once I left, the band was pretty much done. (I plan on starting the band back up with Seth here soon, we both miss it a lot)
A few days before i turned 16 me and my family move to shelton. God i was so pissed, i did NOT wanna live here, but i didnt have much of a choice. Once we moved stuff started going down hill, my parents fighting constantly just family issues. We moved downt the street to a better bigger house that would be more fit for a family of 6 and a dog. School was alright, didnt mind it at all, everyone thought i was like the sh*t or somethin cause i had green spots in my bleech blond hair and i had a leather jacket and a guage. I was probably one of the first people at objh my age to really dress however the f--k they wanted.
I was always the skinny guy, and I got tired of that, so around this time i started lifting a bit, nothing too serious. Then once i got into SHS i got serious into it and got real good gains, from there i fell in love with it, working out everyday, eating healthy drinkin lots of water all that good stuff. This is around the time athletics came to be a huge part of my life. I decided to join the wrestling team, it was really fun, got in great shape; only crappy part is that i was inelidgable all season just because one class! ( Mr.Baugh) man was his class hard... But i still practiced with my team and stuck out through the whole season. Then I joined rugby, which was even better. It's amazingly fun and it really does toughen you up a lot, smashing the sh*t out of people with no pads is a rush haha. I also got into mma ( about a half a year before this) and that was a good expirience as well, tought me a lot; ill actually be getting back into that, doing muay thai training in olympia probably around next month. It's just so hard to do that with school work and other events that take up time in life.
I didnt really get into full depth of everything, just felt like writing a little about myself because I'm bored..Hope you enjoyed it :p
