The Rolling Ball

The summer of 92' was quite a high point for Grasshopper as a band. We had recorded and put out our demotape, which was selling very well. In fact so well that in a mere few months we were gearing up to do another run of 500 copies. Stereophonicus Disruptus, the compilation cd we were on was also selling quite decently. I have to admit, I felt like a bit of a big shot being only 21 years of age and walking into HMV superstore to see our demo and the comp on the top 10 Indy chart. The way the momentum was picking up for us, in my young feeble mind I truly believed I'd be a millionaire before my 25th birthday.

Rough sticker design that evolved into our t shirt logo.

We had finally gotten some shirts done up as well using the profits we had made from selling our demos, after paying back the initial start up fee. We had used a lot of Sesame Street imagery over the last while for sticker and flyer designs, so we decided to stick with that theme for our shirt. We settled on the classic Sesame Street road sign logo, but replaced the words with Grasshopper, and where the CTW logo was, we replaced it with THC and a small marijuana leaf. The shirt was a huge success and they sold out really fast, which was great for us as it meant more money to invest in more demo tapes and shirts. Essentially all the money we made profit wise was recycled back into the band. 

Derek was still attending S.E.E.D., an alternative school in Toronto, so I decided to register, even though I had graduated high school the previous year. My main motivation behind this was the fact that students could rifle trough the secretary's files without question. So once I signed up for S.E.E.D. my previous high school had to hand over my school file to them, which I turned around and took from the secretary's filing cabinet. It was quite a trip to be able to look at everything ever entered in a file about ones self over the course of their scholastic career. It was mostly report cards, write ups, and photos, but it was so amazing to me to be able to go back and read all of this stuff. I never actually ever went to classes at S.E.E.D. very often, and when I did I never actually did any work, I just hung out and socialized.

Straight from my school file, evolution of a street wig!

My rap project 3 n' Pass was also coming along quite nicely. We had produced a few more tracks straight out of my bedroom and we had made a few more of our homemade videos with Mike's awesome cam corder. Our videos were improving as well as our music, as the whole thing was a learning process and we were embracing trial and error to improve our game. We had come so far with it now that we actually felt confident enough to play some shows. So we started planning out some future ideas to get that ball rolling. Derek always seemed interested to hear our stuff, but deep down I think he felt threatened by it. Knowing my love of hip hop rivaled aggressive music made him feel uneasy I believe, and in turn I truly felt like he thought we'd lose interest in Grasshopper and leave him high and dry.

I had also performed with Demon Barf a few times now, both as Jimmy the sheepwanker and Satan, my new BWF wrestling gimmick. It was always a fun and exciting time with the DB boys, who once again Derek seemed to have disinterest in due to their wacky hijinks and controversial song contents. Demon Barf hadn't really broken out of Brampton yet, and while Grasshopper made a point of supporting our friends bands and gaining exposure for them, Derek didn't seem at all interested in helping Demon Barf our. It was now a conflict of interest between us as I really wanted to help these guys. Only time would tell how this would all play out...