Prefecture is one of our current bands. One of two current, functioning bands. Right now, Prefecture is the only band actively playing live shows.We have no interest in playing bars or so-called music clubs, if we can help it. We prefer to play house shows, art spaces, record stores, community centers, parties of any kind and basically any basement that will let us plug in. I’m not saying that we’ll never play a bar show, because we may at some point. I’m just saying that as long as there are house/basement shows to play…that’s where we’re happy.
Prefecture started about mid-summer of 2006. Ann and I did not have an active band at the time; just a few odd projects to keep us busy. Those projects are great fun, but nothing lets you exhaust yourself like playing live shows and being part of a regular band. We recruited our drummer Scott, first. We met Scott when he asked us to play The Regulations on our radio show when he was booking a show for them the previous winter. We started going to see Scott’s bands play, and we figured that if he was in two already (Cardiac Arrest and at the time…The Breaks) that he wouldn’t mind being in a third. So, we started rehearsing songs I had recently written for this new project and a few other stragglers I had left over that didn’t work for those other music projects. After a handful of practices, we were ready to find a singer. We decided to contact our friend Christian (or ‘Xian’) who had played drums in The Adult Toys. He decided to come to a practice to evaluate the songs. Things clicked and before we knew it, we had a set worked up.
As with our other past bands and failed early shows (you’ll read this later…) our first show as Prefecture was iced out. The winters are mild in
Shortly after that, we recorded a demo and a song for a local compilation. The compilation project fell through as so many do, but we released a 6 (or 7 depending on how you look at it) song demo. The demo was/is a CDR that was sold or given away at our next few shows. It was recorded in the basement of our house by Ben Smith and his mobile studio known as The Compound. At the time (November of 2006) we were thrilled with the results. After a couple months of playing shows and rigorous practice; we realized the recording may have been a bit premature. We had become much tighter, but that was probably a result of getting to listen to the songs without playing them at the same time. This is probably pretty rudimentary stuff, huh? Either way, a few people liked the sound, but we knew we could do better.
We played a buncha shows during the winter-spring of 2007. Our last one was in May (or June, depending on varying memories of the band members) of 2007. Since then, we’ve been having regular practices and working on new material, but didn’t play out the remainder of 2007. No real good reason. Scott is busy with two other bands…Civic Progress and still with Cardiac Arrest. Xian, me and Ann are just busy with work n’ crap in general. I do admit that part of it was just laziness. Sometime in spring or so, I sent a copy of the demo to Ryan from Sack o’ Shit Records with some records or something we were trading. He liked it and offered to release a 7”. Between conflicting schedules, illness and figuring out how to record the band, it took us a little over two months to finally record three songs for the 7”. I recorded the songs in a couple hours on our 8-track recorder. It was all done live in a couple takes. In true Prefecture fashion, as of the end of January…I still hadn’t sent the master to Ryan. The master disc was mailed awhile back now…and we’re finalizing the sleeve art. No, really!!
Prefecture was on hiatus for most of January and February of 2008 while Scott was living in
0 comments:
Post a Comment