DUDE PARTY - "Some Guy Making Noise and a Bike Wheel" - Tape - 2001

   Once upon a time in Chattanooga, a group of women got together and had a party where men were not allowed because they just wanted to all hang out together. Down the street, a bunch of guys had a party where we all took our shirts off, drank beer and threw darts. A few days later, I started a band with my friends and for some asinine reason, we called it DUDE PARTY.
   Daniel, Harry, Billy and I started this band because we all wanted to be in a band that just simply went on tour. We were having problems getting our other bands to leave town, so we specifically started this band to make a tape, go on one tour and then break up. At practice, we would spend hours working on a song and everything seemed so intricate and difficult. At the end of writing the song, we would say "this song has so many parts....it's gonna be too long." Then, we would play the song and it would only last a minute because we would play it so fast.

DUDE PARTY'S first show at the Rear Entry in Chattanooga. Daniel's dad on harmonica.

   We recorded this tape in one night at our practice space in Chattanooga. Some of us were on trucker speed. Others were drunk. Our friend, Mike recorded us on a broken 4 track, got so stoned that he passed out and we had to press the "record" button ourselves. I was playing with a broken crash cymbal that was formerly owned by the ZERO BOYS. Someone stole it off the wall of a pizza place in Indiana. I wish that we had a better recording of these songs because I think that something is really there. We spent a lot of time writing these songs and were, for lack of a better phrase, "going off". This was a special time in my life and I feel lucky to have played music with such gifted people. 

    Setting up our one tour proved to be quite an ordeal since (understandably) no one was too excited to book a show for a band called DUDE PARTY. I feel like we had to win everyone over every night, which was fun...especially in the PC warehouse in New Orleans where we supplied 200 dumpstered beers and proceeded to rationally discuss radical gender politics all night with the residents. On that tour, Daniel decided that no one could bathe, which was fine until the point where we all got bored in the van and started drawing designs on each other's faces with permanent marker. We had a day off in Pensacola and it happened to be the same day that GREEN DAY was playing the enormo-dome in town. We decided to plug in to a light post and play a show in the parking lot as their show was letting out. I somehow ended up getting a free ticket to the show (meaning a scalper got sick of trying to sell it and just handed it to me) and watched them in utter boredom. It was so bad. As they were breaking their shit on stage, I ran outside to set up my broken drums. We played in the parking lot to a few thousand people walking by us, acting like we weren't there. It was bizarre. Some people thought we were trying to get noticed and signed to a major label. Other people threw money at us and Daniel made them take it back. All in all, it was just another night of tour. We packed up, dumpstered some filing cabinets, finished our tour, scammed some food at Cracker Barrel and broke up. 

   Daniel now lives in Chicago and plays in a new band with a name that I forgot. He also finds the time to make it back down to Chattanooga to play in his long-running band, ADD/C...with Harry. Billy is no longer a teenager and now goes by Bill. He plays guitar and sings in the band, FUTURE VIRGINS. I'm just a poor schmuck who writes a blog and plays drums in a punk band. I'm happy to say that I am still friends with these guys and they're still working on amazing projects.

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Updated 4/2020