You’ve got dozens, if not hundreds, of CDs and there are bound to be a few in the collection that you’ll never stop listening to by bands that put out one or two great records and then just vanished. Poof. Gone. Of course there are millions of reasons bands break up – from losing record deals to bad drug habits to financial instability – but that doesn’t mean these bands are forgotten about. The internet has made it easier to track down members of bands that you once liked. For instance, Seaweed’s lead singer Aaron Stauffer is now fronting The Blue Dot; Miles, former guitarist for For Love Not Lisa, is now in The Echo Division; ex-Best Kissers in the World singer Gerald Collier has been putting out solo albums since BKITW’s demise (though when they came to an end is still a mystery).
But for all of the bands whose members you can track down – and who are still involved in the music biz – there are musicians that have either completely gotten out of music, have started new bands but haven’t made themselves easy to find, or have just fallen off the face of the earth.
So, here’s a list of bands that I at one time really enjoyed that only released an album or two and then were never heard from again.
- Fretblanket – Brit-rock band that owed a bit to both Nirvana and Blur. After two albums, and one semi-successful video (“Into the Ocean”), Fretblanket was done.
- April’s Motel Room – Okay, so these guys probably appealed to a more mainstream/frat crowd than I associated with while in college, but I really dug at least one song (“California” – check it out on the MySpace page).
- Seed – Okay, I actually found out what happened to the guys in this band – Gabriel Ordonez (singer/guitarist) is in Billion Stars; Chad Salls (singer/bass) is performing as a solo artist; Dean Truitt (guitar) has played with a few bands since Seed’s breakup and also does some music writing for various magazines; and Kyle Schneider (drums) is currently playing in O:A.
- Dig – After a lengthy hiatus, Scott Hackwith and Johnny Cornwell, and Jon Morris reunited and have been supposedly working on a new Dig album.
This list could go on and on and as I come across bands that I thought were long-lost but that I’ve been able to find, I’ll post updates.
So, the question of the week that I’d like YOU to answer: What band did you love that has fallen off the face of the earth?