About the only consolation of a miserable childhood in central Ohio was finding similarly miserable folks to play music with. I played with a lot of good folks there, but my favorite folks to play with were two of my classmates from Columbus Ohio’s performing arts high school, Fort Hayes. We studied there under an insufferable bastard who played bassoon in the Columbus Symphony.

We shared an admiration for music that was outside of the usual music school nerd canon: The Replacements, the Descendents, the Meat Puppets, and our hometown heroes, the Royal Crescent Mob. Our ouvre fell into four categories: songs about bands that were more successful than us and, therefore, we hated; girls that did not like us; being broke and miserable; and revenge. We were bored suburban teenagers with a desire to play loud, fast, numbingly cretinous music. And we did. To an audience of zero.

We didn’t have two nickles to rub together (see lyric theme #3), so we were never able to make the kind of record we wanted to make. We tried to make a DIY record several times, but were never happy with the quality of the recordings, and the raw tracks always remained unfinished. Our best attempt at recording our stuff was in late 1991 and early 1992. We borrowed a whole mess of equipment from everyone we knew and holed up in a warehouse on the north side of Columbus.

The songs were recorded on a relatively decent Tascam cassette 4-track using relatively decent mics. 4-track technology being what it was, we could only record two tracks at a time. We recorded drum and bass tracks for about ten songs. We could never get guitar or vocal sounds that we were happy with, though, and the tapes sat idle and unfinished for a looooong time. By looooong time, I mean a couple of presidential administrations.

I had intended to take the raw tracks into a real studio and clean them up, but lacked either the time or money (as above, see lyric theme #3) to do it. About a year ago, I was corresponding with the drummer, Jose Nelson, and he mentioned that he had been thinking about taking the raw tracks into a real studio to clean them up. Jose hopped on a plane to Chicago, and we took our humble homemade tracks into Mike Hagler’s studio to clean them up and add overdubs. Mike is a miracle worker — he took our dinky homemade tracks and honed them into radio-friendly, arena-ready rock. The bass tracks, for example, were recorded on a borrowed Cort bass (one of those godawful Steinberger copies) through a Peavey guitar amp. That there is any low end at all is testament to Mike’s knowledge of the black arts of recording.

In all we finished enough tracks for a six-song EP. The results, considering the humble beginnings of the tracks, sound surprisingly good. See below for a sample track.

The personnel for the track:

• Joe ‘Jose’ Nelson: drums and percussion
• Kenneth ‘Kip’ Rainey: Guitar and vocals
• Robert ‘Rob’ Wuebker: Bass

Thunderwear: I’m Going Deaf (MP3)