You've been there.
Generational Permanent Phase Rock
Wherever you grew up · Former Member Records
No permanent member list is kept. The archive has reconstructed five lineups.
Membership is open. The requirement is one door, closed harder than necessary.
Members leave on their own schedule. Most do not notice when.
Former members are not contacted. They are, the label reports, everywhere.
Archive note
The archive began with one index card. Name, genre, origin, label, tagline.
It now holds five lineups, fifteen former members, five records, a guitar case and the whereabouts of a rubber stamp.
There are still no years on file for the band. The band did not start. It has not stopped. The lineups have years. They are filed below.
Lineups on file
Five lineups the archive has been able to reconstruct, 1978–2003. Each formed the band. None founded it. The guitar case went from one to the next.
1978–1981
Rehearsed in: The room over the garage
Bass, guitar and a snare drum. The name was painted on the guitar case in house paint. It is still legible.
Record: Not Hungry FMR-001 · 1981 · 7-inch single, 45 rpm
1982–1986
Rehearsed in: A back bedroom with a swamp cooler
The case arrived from a garage sale in Ohio, with a guitar in it and the name on the lid. Nobody painted over it.
Record: Grounded FMR-002 · 1984 · Cassette, C-60, dubbed
1987–1991
Rehearsed in: A finished basement, partly
The case arrived by parcel post from a cousin in Arizona. The note inside said: your turn.
Record: Fine. FMR-003 · 1989 · Cassette, C-46
1992–1997
Rehearsed in: A bedroom with the door off its hinges, as a consequence
The archive cannot account for the case between the fall of 1991 and June 1992. It next appears in a pawn shop on Brainerd Road.
Record: Nothing's Wrong FMR-004 · 1995 · Compact disc
1998–2003
Rehearsed in: An attic room. The ceiling slopes. So did the attitude, according to one parent.
The case was sold through a classified ad in a free weekly. The buyer sent a money order for forty dollars and a drawing of a door.
Record: You Wouldn't Get It FMR-005 · 2001 · Burned CD-R, hand-labeled
The file
Eight pages, in order. Assembled from letters, liner notes and fifteen telephone calls, most of them answered on the second try.
Page 1 · No date
The archive looked for the year the band started. It did not find one. It found a guitar case with the name on the lid, a rubber stamp, and five records made by fifteen people in five towns who mostly never met.
Each of them formed the band. None of them founded it. When asked, every former member on file said some version of the same thing: it was already called that.
The archive has filed the band without years. It has filed the lineups with years, because they had them.
Page 2 · 1978–1981
In the fall of 1978 Denise Kowalczyk, Mark Hruby and Kevin Sopko began playing in the room over the Kowalczyk garage in Parma, Ohio. The room had a space heater and a door that shut properly. It was chosen for the door.
Denise painted the name on Mark's guitar case in house paint left over from the shutters. She has never explained the name.
They played a church lock-in, two backyards and one battle of the bands, where they finished third of three. In August 1980 they recorded two songs onto a borrowed reel-to-reel. In March 1981 Denise quit, two months before graduation. The band ended that week. The case went into the garage.
Page 3 · 1981
The week after she quit, Denise bought a rubber stamp at an office-supply store on Ridge Road. It reads FORMER MEMBER RECORDS in block capitals. She stamped all three hundred sleeves of the band's single at the kitchen table. That is the label.
The label has one rule, and Denise made it that week: only a former member may use the stamp. A band cannot stamp its own record while it is still a band. It has to ask someone who has already left.
Every record on file since has been stamped by a member of a lineup that came before it. The stamp has travelled by mail three times. It has never been lost. At the time of filing it is in a desk drawer in a grocery store in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Page 4 · 1982–1986
In July 1982 the Kowalczyks held a garage sale. A man from down the street, who was being transferred to Arizona, bought Mark's old guitar in its case for fifteen dollars for his daughter's birthday. Mark had left it there in 1981. The archive has confirmed the sale with the Kowalczyks, with Mark and with the buyer.
Lisa Gutierrez opened the case in Mesa, Arizona, on her fifteenth birthday. Her mother offered to paint over the name. Lisa declined. By the end of the month she had a keyboard player with a church keyboard and a drummer with a kit from the classifieds, and a band with a name already on it.
They rehearsed in the back bedroom under a swamp cooler that drowned out everything but the drums. In 1984 they recorded eight songs with the cooler off. Lisa wrote to an address in Parma asking who should stamp the tape. Denise wrote back and asked for the J-cards.
Page 5 · 1987–1991
Lisa left for college in the fall of 1986. In March 1987 she mailed the guitar and the case to her cousin Jason in Overland Park, Kansas, with a note that said: your turn. Jason was fourteen. He did not know what it meant. He had a band by June.
The Overland Park lineup rehearsed in a basement that was finished on one side. The drums lived on the other side, by the furnace. Amy Ostrowski ran the rehearsals without anyone noticing, and the record came in three weeks early.
In 1988 Denise mailed the stamp to Lisa in Phoenix, with a note that said she had done it twice and that was enough. Lisa stamped the Overland Park tape in 1989. The lineup played a snow day, a parking lot and a homecoming week it was not invited to. In the summer of 1991 Amy left for college and Jason sold the guitar and case to a pawn shop in Kansas City to put toward a car.
Page 6 · 1992
The archive cannot account for the case between the fall of 1991 and June 1992. It has written to every pawn shop on the route between Kansas City and Chattanooga that was in business at the time. Two wrote back. Neither had a record of it.
In the fall of 1991, with the Overland Park lineup over, Lisa mailed the stamp to Amy Ostrowski. Amy held it for four years with nothing to stamp. In 1995 a letter arrived from Chattanooga with an inlay card and a return envelope. She stamped it the same evening and was asked, by return post, to stamp four hundred and ninety-nine more. She did. In 1997 she mailed the stamp itself to Travis Kell.
Nobody in either lineup has been able to say how the Chattanooga lineup found her address. The Chattanooga lineup says the address was written inside the lid of the case.
Page 7 · 1992–1997
In June 1992 Shawna Pruitt bought the guitar and case at a pawn shop on Brainerd Road with forty dollars of birthday money. She went over the faded name with a marker that night. Travis Kell and Melanie Duvall were in the band by August.
Shawna's bedroom door was taken off its hinges in the fall of 1993. The band rehearsed in a room without a door for nine months. When the door went back on, they rented a practice room instead, because by then they could afford it.
In 1995 they pressed five hundred compact discs, paid for by Travis in cash from the grocery store. The flyer for the release is still on the break-room board. In the summer of 1997 Shawna listed the guitar and case in a free weekly, with a line that said the name stays on.
Page 8 · 1998–2003
The ad was answered by Kyle Brenneman of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, with a money order for forty dollars and a drawing of a closed door. The case arrived eleven days later, with the Chattanooga disc in the pocket and three addresses in the lid. In 2001 the band mailed its disc labels to the last address. Travis stamped them in the grocery break room, on his lunch, and mailed them back.
Kyle rehearsed sitting on the floor of an attic room with a sloped ceiling. Jess Hoover joined in the fall. Priya Raman's drums lived at the township fire hall, where the band practiced on Tuesdays until the siren went.
They recorded on a home computer and burned every copy themselves. In June 2003 they played a graduation party in a backyard. It is the last entry in the archive's log. It is not the band's last show. The archive's window closes in 2003. The band's does not.
Former Member Records
Five records, four formats, one rubber stamp. Every one was stamped by someone who had already left.
FMR-001 · 1981
7-inch single, 45 rpm
Two songs. Paid for with babysitting and lawn money. The sleeves were stamped by hand, one at a time, by someone who had just quit.
Read the sleeve →FMR-002 · 1984
Cassette, C-60, dubbed
Eight songs, recorded over a summer with the swamp cooler switched off. The band considers this the cost of the record.
Read the sleeve →FMR-003 · 1989
Cassette, C-46
Eight songs. Finished three weeks early. The furnace can be heard on side two and was left in.
Read the sleeve →FMR-004 · 1995
Compact disc
Ten songs. Five hundred pressed, paid for in cash from a grocery job. The only Former Member release made at a plant.
Read the sleeve →FMR-005 · 2001
Burned CD-R, hand-labeled
Nine songs. Recorded on a home computer. Every copy burned and labeled by hand. The last record on file.
Read the sleeve →Sign-out sheet
Fifteen entries, 1979–2003. Places are as the former members gave them. Times are as late as they could get away with.
Sign-out sheet · Please write legibly
| Date | Where | What | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| FridayNovember 16, 1979 | Church basement, Parma, Ohio | Youth-group lock-in | Unplugged by the youth pastor at 12:40 AM. Resumed at 12:45, acoustic. |
| SaturdayJune 14, 1980 | Backyard, Parma, Ohio | Graduation party, not theirs | Asked to play quieter. Played the same. |
| FridayMarch 20, 1981 | High school cafeteria, Parma, Ohio | Battle of the bands | Third of three. Denise quit the following Tuesday. |
| FridayOctober 28, 1983 | Garage, Mesa, Arizona | Halloween party | Door up. Neighbors on lawn chairs at the end of the driveway. |
| FridayDecember 21, 1984 | Roller rink, Mesa, Arizona | Last day before winter break | Played between the couples skate and the limbo. Not asked back. Asked back. |
| SaturdayMay 17, 1986 | Back bedroom, Mesa, Arizona | Last rehearsal, door open | Lisa's parents listened from the hallway. The first time the door was open. |
| FridayJanuary 15, 1988 | Basement, Overland Park, Kansas | Snow day | School closed at 6 AM. Show started at 10. Eleven people walked over. |
| SaturdayAugust 19, 1989 | Church parking lot, Overland Park, Kansas | Back-to-school car wash | Played from a flatbed. Raised $212 for the youth trip. |
| FridayOctober 26, 1990 | Driveway across from the high school | Homecoming week | Not on the program. Played until the band director came out. He stayed. |
| SaturdayJuly 24, 1993 | A rented community hall, Chattanooga, Tennessee | First all-ages show | Rent split three ways. Door was a coffee can. Made back the rent. |
| SaturdayDecember 16, 1995 | A coffee house, Chattanooga, Tennessee | Record release | Melanie's brother home on leave. Stood in the back. Arms folded. |
| FridayMay 30, 1997 | Backyard, Red Bank, Tennessee | Last show of the Chattanooga lineup | Played everything on the disc in order, then the first song again. |
| SaturdayOctober 30, 1999 | Township fire hall, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania | Auxiliary Halloween dance | Played two sets. Stopped once for a call. Resumed when the trucks came back. |
| SaturdayAugust 25, 2001 | Church youth room, Lancaster, Pennsylvania | Record release | Ninety discs burned the week before. Sold sixty. Gave away the rest. |
| SaturdayJune 14, 2003 | Backyard, Lancaster, Pennsylvania | Graduation party | The last entry on file. Not the last show. |
Sideband Label Archive
Progress report
Term: ongoing
StudentGrumpy Teen
| Subject | On file | Grade |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Perpetual / Evolving | — |
| Subgenre | The Phase That Never Really Ends | In progress |
| Designation | Generational Permanent Phase Rock | See comments |
| Origin | Wherever you grew up | Yes |
| Label | Former Member Records | Pending |
| Years | Not on file | Ongoing |
| Lineups | 5 on file | Ongoing |
| Records | 5, all stamped | Satisfactory |
CommentsPresent.
Parent / guardian signature
The shelf
Every few years the format changes. The archive has checked. The mood has not.
Late seventies
Vinyl, borrowed
Mood: unchanged
Eighties
Cassette, dubbed
Mood: unchanged
Nineties
Compact disc, scratched
Mood: unchanged
Early two-thousands
Burned disc, unlabeled
Mood: unchanged
Statements
Received from people who were there, or who lived down the hall. Initials only.
My daughter was in it in 1984. I could hear it from the driveway. I could not tell you a single song. I could tell you the drummer was very good.
R.G. · Mesa, Arizona
I was at the snow day. Eleven of us walked over. I still think about it when it snows.
K.M. · Overland Park, Kansas
I bought the compact disc at the coffee house for eight dollars. I have moved six times. It has moved six times.
D.T. · Chattanooga, Tennessee
The fire siren went off in the middle of the second set. The drummer kept the tempo going until the trucks were out of the bay. Then she stopped.
J.E. · Lancaster County, Pennsylvania
I was in it. Different town. Different years. Same door.
A former member · Wherever
I was the youth pastor at the Parma lock-in in 1979. I unplugged them at 12:40. At 12:45 they started again on acoustic guitars at what I can only describe as the same volume. I have been in ministry forty-four years and have not unplugged anything since.
Name Withheld · Parma, OH
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