HMV, Sloan & CHRY

I had mentioned previously that our biggest show was upon us, but before we got to it there were other monumental steps to take. We were guests on the premiere episode of "The Seminal Load" a popular underground radio show on 105.5 CHRY. It was lots of fun as most of our radio appearances had been to date. I may have briefly mentioned this in a previous post but I recently discovered I had a recording of the show on cassette tape, so I decided to try my best to clean it up and I put it online. You can check it out by clicking the link below and hear everything that went down that night as opposed to me having to remember and write about it.

https://theobwc.bandcamp.com/album/grasshopper-radio-interview

The ultra hip record store "Rotate This" was still holding the odd show in their back room from time to time, and somehow we stumbled upon another opportunity for the band. Sloan were in town for a big gig, but somehow the owners of Rotate got them to agree upon playing an off the record set in the back of the store. So who would get the honours of opening up for them? Yours truly mans company of course. It was another big notch in our belt of credentials.

HMV had recently opened their "Super Store" at 333 Yonge street in Toronto, which had actually been open for some time now, and they decided to start having bands perform live in store. With us being essentially close to our peak we ended up landing a gig with a band we considered our rivals, they were called hHead. I can't remember how we landed it or who pulled the strings, but we hadn't been this excited since we were turned down for Breakfast Television because they felt our music was a bit too loud for the morning. 

From our perspective they (hHead) seemed like upper class suburban kids who's parents had money, as we were all from middle class suburban families with little money, yet we were kids who grew up in more urban environments clearly. The fact that their guitarist/singer used a lot of the same guitars and amplifiers and pedals that Derek used (or wanted) drove him nuts. That bit of envy alone was enough for D to dislike them, so naturally I had his back, there were however other elements about them that were extremely unlikeable. 

They were like... clean cut pretty boys who wanted to be grunge rockers. The way they carried themselves was as if they were better people than anyone around them in the room. An aura of douchey-ness encompassed them and it wasn't hard to see with the naked eye by any means. The few times we exchanged words with them they came across as very smug and pompous, inadvertently saying things that one might take offense to. We were easy going guys and weren't very judge-mental by any means, so naturally we didn't like feeling looked down upon or judged by others. They were talented musicians no doubt, but musically I felt like they were PG-13 and we were XXX.

Beef aside, Grasshopper was excited to play HMV as it just seemed like another great opportunity for us. We were packing clubs on the regular but I was still surprised to see the record store jammed with people in the middle of the afternoon. The coolest part was that the store had a wall on the outer exterior made up of numerous television screens, and they were filming the performance and broadcasting it live on Yonge street at the same time. This drew people into the already crowded store, more importantly people who may have never heard of us and were willing to spend their hard earned cash on our new demo tape.

All in all we killed the show and put on a great performance from what I can remember, I know the crowd loved it so that's all that really matters or ever mattered to me. I always said if I change even just one persons life with my music it makes it all the worthwhile, and worth more than any sum of money. In present time (2014) I ended up finding a few videos from that day at HMV posted on YouTube. The audio is quite horrible but I'm sharing them regardless just for the nostalgia and preservation of memory. I hope you enjoy...

The "NEW" Music

As the levels of "success" were rising for Grasshopper for all to witness, what people could not see was that tension levels were also rising amongst the three of us behind the scenes in our personal lives. Nirvana was huge now, so of course I didn't like them anymore. Anytime I'm on the cusp of discovering a new and excitingly unknown band I'm all gung-ho, but once said bands make it to the mainstream I generally tend to lose my love for them. I've always been a unique individual and the way I see it if the rest of the world is listening to what I am listening to then it is no longer unique, nor am I for that matter....at least that's how I feel. "Nevermind" had now become a trendy pop album to me, and to be quite honest I was sick of it, but Derek was still bumping it religiously. I started shitting on the album as well as dissing Nirvana in general, much to Derek's dismay.

Finances were definitely another issue that were causing rifts amongst us. We had long paid back our initial investments, yet myself and Mike weren't seeing a dime of the money. We brought this up to Derek, who reluctantly agreed to start giving us a cut of the money after each gig. You could see how painful it was for him to give up some chump change, and it was often causing debates amongst us. Mike and I felt like the backbone of the band yet we were in the shadow of the minimally talented frontman. We both started voicing opinions on a lot of matters, and I don't think Derek liked the fact we had opinions. I will be the first to admit that every band needs a control freak to keep the wheels turning in a productive manner, but we were starting to feel like we had no say in anything and it was time for us to change that. Mike and I were voicing our opinions more and we were definitely becoming more cheeky towards Derek. We both felt like he needed to be more of his own man as his girlfriend and her mother had him on a very short leash. I believe they felt like we were a bad influence on Derek as we could sense their bitter feelings towards us.

We were gigging three times a week on average and it was starting to get to us. There was a lot of traveling, not much sleeping, and it was beginning to feel like a thankless job due to the fact we never saw any money. Mike and myself were not grunge fans by any means but we were happy with the songs we had produced to date. I think one of the main issues was the fact we weren't writing any new music and we were starting to grow tired of our current set list. Our only real salvation was our rap group 3 n' Pass, it gave us a creative outlet of our own to break the monotony we were experiencing. As our passions grew in regards to our rap project it was apparent Derek was feeling more threatened by it and he always seemed uncomfortable whenever we mentioned it in passing or played some of our songs for him.

The creative bug had definitely bitten me. Asides from 3 n' Pass, I was still highly addicted to the premier Redman album, which had inspired me to start my own solo rap record. I was still in possession of Derek's four track, so I had began creating songs and writing lyrics for them. I had a vision and a concept. The songs would tell the story of my life in chronological order with lyrical content regarding all of the mischief and riffraff I had gotten into as my youth progressed. I was really stoked with the project, but I kept it all to myself as it was a work in progress. I figured I'd be working on this for awhile and I wanted it to be complete and perfect before sharing it with anyone. Time would only tell exactly how long the project would take, and I was in no rush to finish it as the big picture was miles down the road.

Speaking of big pictures, as winter turned to spring we ended up being interviewed and featured on an episode of "The New Music" on CityTV. The episode in question was all about the relation between marijuana and music. We were interviewed in a head shop on Yonge Street, where the three of us wore lays of hemp leaves. When it aired we were ecstatic, well most of us excluding my mother, who caught the episode. Her only feedback on the entire thing was "I hope none of my friends saw this." She was clearly embarrassed and disappointed to see her baby boy on national television promoting and supporting "the Devil's weed"

Even though there was disorder amongst our band, I still personally felt like things would just keep getting better for us. I suppose I was young and naive, but I honestly felt like we would be millionaires before my 21st birthday which was another 10 months away. Despite the endless gigging for mere dollars, Grasshopper now had a gig lined up that was surely to be our biggest and most important performance to date...

Da Mob Rulez

Despite missing the Rage Against The Machine concert, 1993 started off with a bang, and the ball of momentum known as Grasshopper was still rolling strong. On average we were gigging 2-3 times a week, and we were landing opening spots for what one might consider bigger underground bands. One band in particular that we would be opening for very soon were known as The Jesus Lizard. I wasn't a fan of them by any means, but Derek was a huge fan, so needless to say this show was going to be a very big deal to him.

The night of the gig arrived and we unloaded our gear into the infamous Opera House. The weather was terrible as it was winter, and there was a heavy snowfall that day. We got our equipment in without incident and it was time to rip shit up. I can't remember who the first opening band was, but they tried their best to warm the fans up who were still piling into the venue from the harsh winter outside.

By the time we hit the stage the place was packed from front to back. This was easily the biggest crowd we had performed in front of to date. Just as we were about to kick into our first song, the promoter came out on stage and informed us that The Jesus Lizard would not be able to make the show due to how bad the snow was in the U.S. We now went from mid-card openers to headliners in the blink of an eye. Not only that, he left it in our hands to inform the audience, who were not pleased at all with the announcement.

I almost felt like a thief, all of these people were here to see a certain band and now that band wasn't coming, which left us with their plethora of fans at our disposal. The promoter also told us we would have to increase the length of our set as to fill time voids. We came out strong and kept punishing the crowd's ear drums with song after song. The reception wasn't the greatest at first since most of the fans were sour about the Lizard not being there,but it seemed like each song we played warmed them up to us a bit more. By the end of our set we had the crowd eating out of the palms of our hands, and we received a great ovation from the audience in attendance. All in all it was a great night filled with great exposure for us. 

Another surprise was the fact we ended up getting paid five times more than we were supposed to. Since the Lizard couldn't make it that meant they didn't get paid, which in turn left the promoters with extra money, and they weren't too stingy to share the wealth.

Days later I was getting prepared to attend a rap concert at the Concert Hall, Ice Cube would be blessing us with his presence, and his crew Da Lench Mob were to be the opening act. I had seen the Mob once, but I was very excited to see them again, as I was much more familiar with their music now that their debut LP "Guerrillas in tha mist" had been out for about 4-5 months.

I started asking around my circles of friends to see who wanted to attend the show with me. I can remember being excited to tell Mike Myers about it, as I figured he'd be stoked. Surprisingly I was shocked when he replied "No I don't want to go. It's going to be all white people and Ice Cube doing 'throw your hands in the air' type sing-a-longs" I couldn't believe his response, but we laughed about it and I dismissed his theory.

The night of the show arrived and the Concert Hall was rammed full of people, and just like Mike had predicted most of them were white. They weren't white b-boys however, most of the crowd were grunge and alternative type people. I was quite surprised to say the least.

Lench Mob opened up the show and they absolutely killed it. Their sound was a bit rough thanks to the sound man, but their energy was great as they murdered track after track. I was slamming around in the pit, rapping along, and it was apparent that most of the people here weren't familiar with their music. The set was a bit short for my likings, but they still put on one hell of a performance regardless.

Cube was up next, and he came out with a plethora of music from his solo albums. Much to my dismay Mike had been correct in his prediction, as Cube was getting the crowd involved in sing-a-longs quite frequently. There was nothing funnier than watching a bunch of corny white kids trying to join Cube in participation, but it was getting old quick. All in all he put on a decent show, played quite a lot of great songs, and rocked the stage for a good hour or so, but to me Lench Mob were the highlight of the night.

On the way home I felt a bit dumbfounded. What had happened to hip hop? A mere two years ago if a white kid attended a rap show, he or she would be one of the few white folk in attendance. Now there were barely any black people attending rap shows, and the white kids who were attending them weren't even rap kids. They were punks, thrashers, metal heads, goths and grunge kids. 

I could only wonder what the future held for this once all-black art form...

Updates 11/07/2014

Greetings everyone, and welcome to yet another quick update post. First and foremost I just want to apologize for my lack of entries for the month of October. While most people generally celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, I personally celebrate the 31 days of Halloween. Most of the month was spent watching horror movies daily, as well as partaking in the Toronto Zombie Walk and of course Halloween festivities with my son. I've also been spending a lot of time with my significant other, Stacey.

I'm the first to admit I've been a bit sidetracked with my new love interest, yet at the same time she has been very inspiring to me, as she has pulled me out of my creative slump. Granted I haven't been too creative with the blog lately, but musically I'm back on track once again. A couple of weeks ago her and I were out shopping, and somehow we got on the subject of Boney M, which resulted in me singing "Brown girl in the ring" as we did the groceries. I told her I was going to download the album "Night flight to Venus" and see if there were any good samples on it I could use.

Sure enough when I returned home I got my hands on it and scoured through every song looking for ideas that could work. I actually ended up making three new songs with the samples I chopped. I'm really not clear as to what I'm going to do with the first two songs, but I'm pretty sure one of them will be used for the "Street Trash" project. The third song I made which is entitled "Night Flight" is going to appear on my latest full length effort "What's Below Remains Below" which is surprisingly almost complete, ahead of schedule I might add, as the pending release date is January 15, 2015, my 42nd birthday.

Night Flight turned out very interesting. Musically the structure is similar to the Boney M song, but obviously done in more of my anti-rap fashion. Lyrically the song ended up going in the direction of a fictional concept: myself and others are aboard a spaceship that is bringing us to a club on Venus to party down for the weekend, when in reality I am actually daydreaming while taking the bus, which is my "Night flight" to see my girl who is my "Venus"

I am very happy with how the whole idea panned out, and it really brought me back to my childhood, as my parents owned that Boney M record on vinyl. If you're up there in age as I am, I hope you can relate to this and experience the same nostalgic feeling. Needless to say with my new muse in my life you can expect a lot more happenings from me in the months and years to come. Please be sure to check out "Night Flight" via the link below... K

https://kabal.bandcamp.com/track/night-flight

London Rage

I could never understand why, but Derek seemed ashamed to admit the fact we were indeed from Brampton. We all grew up here, we all went to school here, yet D seemed to not want to acknowledge this. Granted he did leave high school in Brampton to attend an alternative school in Toronto, and his former business "Afterlife" was also in Toronto, but he actually lived in Brampton. Despite all of that he still considered himself to be from Toronto and he considered Grasshopper to be a Toronto band.

I don't know why, but back in those days I was always proud of Brampton, especially the music scene. It just always amazed me how many talented kids were doing their thing here. Hell, my rap band 3 n' Pass even did a song called "Straight Outta Brampton" our very own loose cover version of N.W.A.'s "Straight Outta Compton" it always amused me how Brampton and Compton almost rhymed with each other. 

The scene was always alive in Brampton, and club Tremors was the spot for live musical performances. We has been contacted by a band from town called "RundFunk" and they wanted to do a gig with us at Tremors. It took some deliberating and debating, but eventually we convinced Derek to play the show. I think the fact it was happening on my 20th birthday made him feel compelled to do the gig. It was actually on my birthday, so we advertised it as "Theo's 20th Birthday Bash" As suspected the show was a success, after all it was our first time gigging in Brampton. A lot of old and familiar faces came out of the woodwork, including dead beat leeches who assumed they could get something beneficial through us. And of course there were a lot of younger unfamiliar faces in attendance. I got completely fubar and to be quite honest most of the night is completely unmemorable to me.

After a night lacking in sleep, I was up and hungover, and now en route to London Ontario with Grasshopper. It was our first time playing London and we were quite excited. The Embassy Hotel was the location, and it reminded me of our home away from home, the 1150 club in Toronto. We put on a solid show and the turn out was decent. We we're invited to a party afterwards, so naturally we accepted the invitation. Somewhere along the way LSD was brought into the picture, and we were now tripping balls. The house party was fairly rocking, but the music was totally doing my head in. Someone put on an album called "Pure Guava" by a band named "Ween" and it was some of the weirdest shit I'd ever heard in my life. The acid was only making the music sound that much weirder, but we were all digging it. 

I had made eyes a few times with a tall, slim, gorgeous redhead, and I was getting the impression she was into me. I had seen her back at the gig and now here she was once again. Before I could make my move she left with a group of people to attend another party, as this one had gotten thin and mellow. I chatted up a local guy who was giving us the scoop on things and convinced him to bring us to the other party. He agreed, so I rounded up Derek and Mike and we were on our way.

When we got there it was much more livelier, and sure enough that girl was there. We kept making eyes with each other, then eventually she went down to the basement. I decided to follow her but I was awkwardly surprised when I got downstairs to find just her lying on a bed alone. I struck up some conversation and the next thing I knew we were making out. Time flew by as it does when you're having fun, and it was almost 4am. The guys were freaking out and ready to leave, as Mike had to work at 6am and he'd be running on no sleep. They were pressuring me to leave.

The girl, who's name ended up being Sue, begged me to stay the night and she ensured me she would drive me home the next day. I told the guys I was staying and that they could leave without me. They were a bit concerned for me, yet they were also a bit pissed off that I'd waited to tell them. They hopped in the van and rushed back to B-Town, as where I ended up in Sue's bed for the night.

The next day we stayed in bed watching movies and television. Sue lived with he grandparents and she didn't even actually have a car. She was relying on borrowing her grandparents car to drive me home, but they had plans which meant I was stuck here for another night. I really wasn't complaining, but I was going to miss a show in Toronto. Thankfully it wasn't one of our shows, but Rage Against The Machine were playing Toronto for their very first time at the Opera House. They were still fairly unknown at the time, and admission was only $5.00, but our MCA buddy Elliot Lefko had gotten us on the guest list. I figured missing them was worth the cause, and I knew they were going to be huge, so I assumed I'd get to see them play Toronto again sometime.

The next day rolled around and Sue's grandparents told he she could not use the car. I was totally freaking out, but she had a master plan. Her grand folks retired early for the evening, so she snatched the keys and we were on our way. We got to Brampton fairly late, so I called Jerry to see if we could crash at his place for the night, thankfully he agreed. We didn't do much sleeping that night, and by sunrise she was on her way home. I was totally smitten with this women, but unknown to me at the time was the fact I'd never see her again.

I've never had any regrets in my life, and I'd never change the way I've done anything during my time here, but had I known I'd never get to see Rage perform live I may have changed this one thing...

The Starter

Grasshopper was still rolling with momentum, and our merchandise was selling amazingly. Our "Born Loser" demo was getting heavy rotation on college radio, and we hit #1 on HMV's indy chart. Our video was also getting quite a bit of play on MuchMusic, and the Fusion episodes were saturating cable 10 in Brampton. Our shirts were quite possibly our best selling item though, as we seemed to constantly be getting more printed off.

Derek got a great lead on cheap blank shirts through one of his suppliers downtown where he used to pick up incense and other items to sell at Afterlife when it was still active. Thankfully he had kept this contact, as we were getting our shirts for next to nothing. We were making money off of them, but all of the money went back into the band and it's primary investor, Marsha, Derek's girlfriends mother.

Once again we had sold out of shirts, so I went with Derek one night to the supplier to pick up more. The location was on Spadina and it was like a wholesale head shop. All of the things you'd typically see in a head shop, or rock shop, but in endless abundance. The Indian fellow who ran the place brought us down to the basement to get more shirts, and that's when something caught my eye.

There was a shelf full of starter pistols, the kind they use for starting races and whatnot. They emit a loud bang when you pull the trigger, but they don't actually fire any type of bullet or projectile. I asked the owner if he could sell me one and he eagerly agreed for the low low price of ten dollars. I was always into collecting props of all sorts that could be used for theatrics, and this was an incredible piece to add to my collection.

We packed the shirts in the van, strapped ourselves in, and prepared to roll out. I discretely took the starters pistol out of the box for a quick peek at it. I was conscious enough to keep it down low in my lap to avoid anyone seeing it and getting the wrong idea. We drove down Spadina until we hit Dundas, here we waited to make a left hand turn. There was a police cruiser in the oncoming lane and he had the right away, yet for some reason the car sat stopped at a green light. The officer driving waved us through, so we made our turn.

The next thing we knew, the cop turned right and flashed his lights and ran his siren. It was apparent he was pulling us over. As Derek pulled the van to the side of the road I noticed a fleet of squad cars coming out of the shadows. We were completely surrounded by flashing lights and parked cars with their doors open, yet no police were in sight. Then a loud booming voice echoed through a megaphone "Slowly step out of the van" to which we obliged. The next command was to put our hand behind our heads and to slowly start walking backwards, which we also did. It was then that I noticed all of the cops hiding behind their open car doors with weapons drawn and aimed at us.

As we walked backwards we were greeted by groups of unfriendly police officers who immediately started going through our pockets. One of the cops even started searching through Derek's dreadlocks and he proclaimed "if I find a needle in here you're fucking dead!" Meanwhile other police officers were searching through the van, what they were looking for was still a mystery to us. This was all happening right in front of the 52 division, one of the largest police precincts in the city, and the audience of bystanders was rapidly growing in numbers. The next thing I knew we were in handcuffs being brought into 52 division.

After siting in a small room for what seemed like hours, two cops entered the room to explain why we had been detained. Apparently someone called the police claiming we were driving around waving a gun out of the window, which I knew in my heart never happened. Had someone seen me checking the starters pistol out in the van? Had the proprietor who sold me the pistol ratted me out minutes after taking my money? The answer was unknown to me, as it still remains to this day.

When the police figured out it was a starters pistol they became much more friendly. They were taking pot shots at the officers who called it in, two cops from a smaller precinct in Parkdale. The duo were now the butt end of all the jokes the 52 division cops slung about. They fed us McDonalds, processed us, and released us...but not before charging us with "weapons dangerous"

Here I was trying to live life on the straight and narrow, my criminal past behind me, and now I'd have to appear in court again. Derek was quite terrified as he had never dealt with police before. He was a wreck, shaking, crying, and totally freaking out. I tried my best to keep him calm and explained that I would take full responsibility for the situation, even though charges had been layed on him too. 

I didn't know it at the time, but this would be the pre-cursor of negativity that awaited in the wings for us as individuals and as a band...

3 n' Pass

Amidst all the madness of the Grasshopper happenings, I was spending all of my free time working on my passion... My rap group "3 n' Pass" with Mike C. and Mike Myre. As much as I was loving being in a band, rap music was my true passion at the time. I believe Derek felt somewhat threatened by this fact, as he always seemed uneasy when I spoke of what we were up to. Perhaps because I had so much fire in me when it came to this project... It was my baby... my brainchild... Regardless, I was pumped to be apart of two bands, one that was on the uprise, and one that was starting at the bottom.

Myself and the two Mike's had a few songs under our belt now. We had started off with "The Immigrant Rhyme" our track using Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" and it was quite a success. We ended up shooting a video for it even, and it was one of the most fun experiences I had partaken in during the year of 1992.

We had also made a few more songs using our same recipe of me looping beats on my dad's JVC tape deck, Myre providing keyboard and synth riffs via a cheap Casio keyboard as well as drum hits compliments of his cheesy little drum machine, and Mike C. cutting up records on the "wheels of plastic" yes, we had a shitty old plastic turntable. We actually had to tape pennies on the needle cartridge to prevent it from skipping when Mike was scratching vinyl. Since we were doing everything on Derek's four track recorder, we had to run multiple channels into a mixer, then run the mixer into the four track, enabling us to mix four separate tracks down to one track.

As far as microphones went, we were pretty ghetto in that department too, as we made due with a small plastic mic from a 1970's cassette recorder and "the rap mic" The rap mic was actually a novelty kids toy we found at Toys R Us. It had pre programmed beats you could rap over, or you could rap acapella. It also had a jack on it giving one the ability to plug it into anything. Since we only had two microphones we actually had to pass the mic off after we finished spitting a line, which meant two mics in rotation between three guys when recording vocals.

Our second song we did was called "Fry-Day" and as you can imagine it was all related to marijuana. We sampled music from The Jackson Five's "Enjoy Yourself" which was a happy, up tempo funky track. The lyrics were comedically playful, and we just had a whole lot of fun with this track. I'd say it was collectively the fave amongst the group.

Eventually Myre decided to try his hand at producing a track, and he came to us with a song that went on to be titled "3 n' Pass" named after our band of course. Mike used samples from Celtic Frost and RUN D.M.C. to put together this little ditty. In our first two tracks we attempted to emulate the Beastie Boys style of passing the mic, but for this song we decided to each do our own verse, which gave some nice separation and range to the track.

The song turned out so well that Mike decided to take another stab at production. Once again he used yet another RUN D.M.C. beat accompanied by some heavy synths. The track had a happy and positive fun party vibe, so we decided to write lyrics depicting a fictional party we attended together. This song came to be known as "Fryday the 13th" and I always got so pumped up and energized whenever I heard it or whenever we jammed it.

As our musical tastes expanded it began to show through in our music. For our next song we stepped out of the box and sampled a song from noise legends Sonic Youth. We incorporated it with a break beat from a song that escapes me now, but it gave the track some nice separation going from slow and low to fast and furious. We ended up dubbing this one "Weird n' Willy" a chorus that we came up with after the song had been completed.

We now had five songs and we we're excited to share them amongst our friends. Myres through together a little intro and outro, and we had enough material to make our very own homemade demo. As I compiled it all via Derek's four track, I decided to add on a bonus track. I still had live jams from the early days of our inception, one of which was a jam of Cypress Hill's "Real-estate" so I dumped the music into the four track, wrote some quick lyrics, then recorded them. Needless to say the guys were a bit surprised.

We ended up making a few more music videos as well with Mike's trusted camcorder. We shot vids for Fry-Day, 3 n' Pass, and Weird n' Willy. It seemed like each video we made just got better, as we were learning tricks to edit more smoothly as well as getting more creative in our cinematography. Eventually we aired all of our videos at our buddy John Waller's place one weekend, since he was having a party and coincidentally had a huge tv that was probably about 50-60 inches. Everyone got a kick out of the videos, and as insecure as I felt, I was happy that our friends appreciated what we had done.

We were always trying to do something different with our music, and even though we were inspired by the Beastie Boys, we strived to have our own sound and not come off as a complete and total rip off.  We had used samples of heavy music before, but this time we decided to get even heavier. We ended up using a loop from Slayer's "Seasons In The Abyss" for our next track, and it was heavy as hell. As per usual, we needed an uptempo breakbeat, so we threw in a loop from a SCHOOLLY D track. It felt like every new song we did got better, and naturally became our personal new favourite. This hit came to be known as "Straight Outta The Abyss".

We ended up doing a cassette single for the song, the original Slayer version, and a second version with just the simple beat from the rap mic with a bit of live guitar noise provided by Mike C. I even went as far as to create covers for our demos and to come up with our independent label "Weed Of Wisdom Inc" and "Bot-Spot Records" in ode to our session spot at Lester B. Pearson school, the birth place of our rhymes and ideas. Looking back at this stuff, the audio quality was terrible, a lot of our rhymes were corny, and we were lacking in rhythm for most of our lyrical deliveries. None of that mattered. We were doing what we loved with a fiery passion and we were having a hella fun time doing it.

I was curious to see where the road was going to lead this rap-tastic endeavor...

Stream or download the 3 n' Pass demo for FREE