Loiter Cognition

Part one: VOYAGE INTO HAITI:

I first met my future wife, Joshua Ted Faulkner, at Hillcrest high "school" (midvale UT U.S.A.) during the 19 hundred and 99 school year. He was stupid and still is. I fell in love with him the very first time he talked to my poor and bashful soul. Joshua had mentioned to me that he was in a band called "last one out" (totally lame name) and I told him I didn't care. But something attracted me to that short, stubby boy -possibly because he was the only person I knew, besides me and my hundreds of friends, who was in a band (that was back in the day. now everyone and their leg is in a band). My band was cool. Called "negativity", we specialized in a sort of poppy/shit/grunge/punk. So it was only natural that our bands played together and what not. At school, we passed the time making fun w/ taint and tea bagging jokes. Joshy got kicked out of last one out (he was the first one out) in the summer of 2000 and was now desperately seeking affection for me. At school registration (of all places), he told me he was starting a new band and he asked me if I knew how to play ska. I took that as an insult and slapped him. After a failed stint in the Alaskan fur trade, I sold my Bow, arrows and buckskin to buy ska guitar lessons. -That was all when I was forty so I had to time travel back to the summer of 2000 and accept Joshies offer to play in his bandy. He said that he loved me then, out of nowhere, he offered me a spot as the girl guitar player in his stupid 'poly-punk slop-ska something rather' band. About a week later, I found myself with a giant whole in my shin with blood & guts rolling out onto the floor of our practice space. Our first practice was something special (can you say slap-sack?). on drums was Jay Hutchins -a vegan/morman/supersmartypants/hxc type, me on guitar, Josh on the vox, Jason -joshy’s former lover- on the vox.2, and no one on bass. We learned & played our first song, "infested" by choking victim, over & over again. Shaping the song into perfection. A few practices later (maybe it was the 2nd practice -it don’t matter, none of this matters) Mark Severence (aka curly sue) joined the band on bass. History was in the making, we all knew it.
The First loiter cognition song was writing at one of these practices. An upbeat ska/punk/hard core song about suicide entitled; "sorry mom". In these early days, Joshua would write the entire song at his home, alone, on a cheap guitar and a piece of toilet paper, and he’d come to practice & tell us what to play, and we’d all kind of expand on it in the little ways we could.
A few weeks in Jason quit the band and Josh started playing guitar (very amateur-esqe by all accounts) making the line up as follows:
Joshy -vox & geetards,
Rion -geetards,
Mark -bass & vox,
Jay on Drums.
We wrote a few more songs and played our first show, a vegan house party in some rich kid’s basement in Riverton, on Oct. 13th (it was a Friday) 2000. It was swell fun.
It was at about this time that my breakdowns were becoming too much to handle and I seriously thought about boat oars.

Our next show was a few days later -on Halloween. A free party at my other band's (negativity) practice area. this was my last show with that poor old band, and I wanted to kill myself. . We played a few more gigs here and there, and also did a couple 4 track recordings on the side. Trying to muster up a demo to get that major label record deal.
It wasn’t until Feb 2001 that things began to get interesting. Frustrated with Jay’s flakiness, we started a side project band called "Mr. syph's army", named after an ex lover of Josh’s, intended for the school talent show. The band was basically Loiter Cognition: me, josh, mark and Brian "cute-ass" Curtis. We covered Rancid's "Roots, Radicals" and got a foot-stamping ovation!

The next week we kicked Jay out of loiter.

That same day we called up brain and told him he was in the band. A week later we played our first show with Brian behind drums .

In October 7th of 2001, we started recording our first demo/ep (self titled) c.d. It cost us 100 bones to record and was worth even less. We were in the process of giving Mark the boot out of the band, so I over dubbed the bass tracks (the only overdubs on that recording, the rest was recorded live!). We released it on October 17th, 2001 at a show featuring Tha good LEFTOVER CRACK!!! It was at this fabled show, the great stz came up and sang "fucked Reality" with us. I was suicidal no more.

A few days or so passed, and we started practicing with a new bass player; Crazy Chris Bradshaw. It was at this juncture of time we started wearing our famous "loiter suits" which were two piece suits from the seventies covered in patches, graffiti, and sweat. The actual idea for the suits was our manager, Brian Epstein. The suits paid off…

We signed up for a battle of the bands, & won over tons of bands including lame ass e.c.o.
All right, some time past and we recorded our second ep/demo; "American Flag Syndrome" in Feb on presidents day 2002. We released it soon after to much critical acclaim.
It was here I began to notice we were getting quite popular with the young dumb kids that don’t know real music, and we were playing tons of shows. We recorded flags rags and things that burn sometime in here.

One night, down at muse music in the great city of Provo, we met a strapping lad named Alex Garcia. He told us he liked us and wanted to put us on his new label (never happened), and also told us he wanted to put us on tour and we needed a new c.d. to accompany us as well (our demos were out-dated and lame). So in October of 2002, we recorded our first LP: "Be all you Can Be".

Sometime around here, we got Two girl Trombone players, Lindsay and Bethea (early on we experimented w/ horn players Brett Baldwin, and Jesse stwert and we thought we'd try it again).

In Nov 2002 issues started a'risin' between the band and Chris. So we started practicing/playing w/ Peter Jex (him and josh go way back to the "last one out" days, and at the time, Pete was going out w/ Lindsay our trombone player. so he seemed like a great replacement for Chris in the band).
We left for tour on Dec. 26 2002. Lindsay and Bethea, our horn girls, couldn't go and I was upset that I didn’t get a chance to do them. We took Peter's old brown van that didn't have a fully operational heater and set off to Tucson with our balls clinging to our chins.

The tour took us through Arizona, back up through Utah, over to Portland (where we played the new paris theater), two shows up in Seattle (at the paradox, and a super fun beer soaked new-years party at some crazy house), Over to Boise Idaho, and a few more shows back here in Utah. overall it was a very cold, but fun tour.

At this point, we were playing an average of 2 shows per week. The trombone girls quit the band. Pete started being real flaky and rarely came to practice, I tried hanging myself, Brian was so cute, and Josh was in heat. Peter finally quit the band and so began the search for a new bassist: enter David Hill. A close friend to the band, Dave’s stint with Loiter didn’t last too long: One night he was on his way home to an got himself in a car accident. His car was totaled. He was forced to quit. Tears still fill my eyes when I remember finding that letter of resignation on my desk at the Loitronix laboratories.

The very second after we got off the phone w/ Dave, we got a chilling phone call from our good friend peter jex saying he wanted back in the band.
We played tons more shows, and peter started flaking out again. We figured he was going to quit again, and sure enough… One night, me, josh, and my friend Kindly were down in some town doing a radio show w/ Pete's sister -she was the show’s host- and she informed us, on air, that Pete joined the band "NIMH". Fuck.

In the bass player market again.

The band went a month or so with out a bass player and we recorded 'take a donate' ep w/ me and josh filling in the bass holes.

Seeking-bass-player adds are fun to make. We got one response: Jake Scabie. HE HE HE.
Jake was a loyal fan and knew all the bass lines perfectly.

Brian began to get sick of playing two shows a week and told us he wanted a break. We talked the idea over, and decided we'd take a few months off. It was during this break josh and I wrote tons of songs that would eventually find their way onto our next album: "NOISE"

End of Part One

This is Ri Ri Baggins, Signing off.