Wednesday, January 2, 2013

10 Years - part 1

From Charlie (Vocalist of .bipolar.)
2013 celebrates .bipolar.'s 10th whole year as a band. We've had five guitar players and five bass players prior to the current line-up. All of them were our friends and talented musicians making .bipolar. what it is today.  I wanted to share some of our history with the fans, friends new and old, and honor the past members.

.bipolar. was birthed in early 2003. Guitar player Longee, Brian, and I had started jamming together in a metal storage unit in Sacramento, Ca. (Tiger storage right next to the drive-ins). Longee's friend and former band mate Jeremy was playing bass occasionally for us but had other commitments and couldn't be in the band full time.
 We all had different influences and styles we wanted to merge together in this project. After a couple months we started to forge our own unique sound.
 Longee was a tenacious and highly talented guitar player.  He wanted us to surpass the expectations of our fellow local bands and had a strong vision of what our sound and image should be.
 Longee found bass player Mika. I'm not certain but I think it was from a flyer at a music store.
Mika brought a lot of passion and willingness to learn to the table. Mika had a great stage presence and was fearless. He wanted to be in a serious band and we offered that opportunity.

After the induction of Mika we soon moved to a more professional rehearsal studio and started working on the initial songs that would establish our groove.

On July 18, 2003 we played our first show as .bipolar. at Sweet Bean coffee in Elk Grove. We were scheduled to go on first as a new band, but a fire broke out near our rehearsal studios which closed down the streets leading to them. The guys were able to get their gear later but we had to play last. Here's a video of the fire:



Sweet Bean was a great venue. It didn't have a stage or a sound system but it was always packed with kids and fans which always makes a venue great.



We then hit the Sacramento scene running. We built relationships with other local bands and started playing shows throughout Northern California.
One of the goals we had was playing the historical Capitol Garage a Sacramento scene staple.
We did September 5th, 2003.


 We started to build a buzz. Powerslave.com a former Northern California music website came out and reviewed us on September 13th, 2003.


We recorded our first cd Dumbcane in November 2003. We released it in December. Within a few weeks we were getting played on the local radio stations KWOD 106.5 fm,  KYDS 91.5 and KRXQ 98.5.


Looking back at it, things happened pretty fast. We built a great fanbase, a good group of bands we networked with and a buzz less than a year of being a band. Things were going well.

In May of 2004 we were nominated for a Sammie from the Sacramento News & Review. We were shocked considering Sammie Alumni were bands such as Cake, Deftones, 7seconds and Oleander.

With help from our fans, Longee's amazing girlfriend Shannon who promoted votes for us every way she could, and the scene WE WON!

But before the win, about two weeks before we knew we won; Longee decided he didn't want to be a part of .bipolar. any longer. Mika and him left  and later formed a different project.
In the time of Myspace's hype we reached out to friends, posted ads, and looked around for replacments.
With two days we had found Steve Hood and Jason Tilsley.

---to be continued--