it's alright (1999)

BUY IT!

URT could have saved rock and roll, if rock and roll would have let us. I actually believe that. This epiphany came during an incredibly tedious set from some "modern rock" band called Sunna, who were opening for A Perfect Circle with the most humorless music I think I've ever heard in my life. Rock music had lost its sense of humor, and humor was one thing URT had in spades. Not in the music itself, but everything about the band was a little off-kilter.

The band was Gene Sato and Derek Koch on both guitars and vocals, myself on drums, and, in chronological order, Tim Johnston, Eric Bachenheimer, Craig Urban, Chris Frantisak and Mike "The Roast" Shust on bass. Derek and Gene, both of whom I had jammed and/or performed with in college, approached me about it and played me some of the songs they had been working on. It wasn't necessarily my thing at the time, stylisticall, but they were really good songs, so I was in. Initially, I was calling the sound "punky power pop," but that didn't really do justice to all the aspects of the band. Eventually, I settled on "progressive emo," and I think that works. Emo covered the exuberance, the big pop hooks and the naked emotion of the lyrics, and there was a bit of a prog, or even math rock, element taking the band a bit further into left field.

I guess the encouraging thing about my "career" in original rock band is that the major parts of it keep improving on past performance. One of my proudest achievements is it's alright, the first and only full-length CD we put out with URT. While it may not have been exactly what I had envisioned (and those visions are always going to be mitigated when others are involved), it's a damn good effort. And it garnered airplay on both Q101's and WXRT's local music shows, as well as some college stations. We got a positive review in the Sun-Times, and were made fun of in The Reader.

The downside is that, with as much potential as we had, URT wasn't able to get any farther than it did. A lot of this had to do with my shortcomings as a "manager." I can book gigs, and can even get some modest level of radio and press coverage, but the next step eludes me. Or, I'm not willing to put in the amount of work it takes to take that next step. For that matter, no one in the band was. Some of it just comes down to personality types, as it takes a certain kind of person to sell yourself to any and all of those who might be able to help you gain momentum, and with three geeks from the University of Chicago, that just wasn't going to happen. In the long run, though, this realization shouldn't overshadow what we were able to accomplish, which is still better than a lot of bands slugging it out locally.

I think that I had a big reorientation coming into this band, and it helped a lot. Basically, URT went a long way to crystallize the notion that you only play something that helps the song be what it is. That doesn't necessarily translate into "keep it simple, stupid," either. My approach to creating parts was still a matter of doing things that were a bit counterintuitive when they fit the music, and the other guys actually encouraged some of the weirder moments. But by and large, the modus operandi was to keep any flashy display of technique on a short leash, which would go a long way to maximize it's impact when the music actually called for it.

One way to help this was to maintain other projects away from URT that allowed me to flex muscles that would have been inappropriate in this band. What was funny about that was that this cast some doubt on my commitment, when in truth, the whole point was to keep me focused and "on message" when I was playing, writing, etc.

The demise of URT is a bit complicated. The easy version is that Gene and Derek have both moved to the New York area, but that transpired mostly after the last rites had been administered. Gene had thought he was moving back in late 2001, so we were starting to power down. Then that changed, but we were ostensibly in a different mindset already, and couldn't bring back the momentum. In my own opinion, I think the end started much sooner, with the recording of the CD. As great as that turned out, it created some a lot of confrontation and disagreement over things as trivial as the amount of silence between tracks. I also tried to shift into strategic marketing guy mode, and that didn't really work as a band concept. With limited resources in actually promoting the record and the band (and I'll take some blame for shutting people out a bit in that process), not enough was happening to capitalize on any boost the record would have given us. We only played something like six shows in all of 2001, as the band started to take a back seat to other real life concerns. We needed a dedicated manager, badly, and that just never happened.

If I really wanted to trace it back, I think the seeds were sown by two separate changes. First, Derek bought a house and we started rehearsing in his basement. It was small, dark and gloomy, and not conducive to having any fun at all while rehearsing, which became more of a chore than anything else. Also, we stopped hanging out. One of the more enjoyable things about the early days of URT was the "band brunch," which was generally just me, Derek and Gene shooting the shit over french toast and eggs while thinking impure thoughts about the waitstaff at Jane's. As time went on, we stopped this practice, and the result was that Derek's house became the base of operations for non-practice activities as well. Except that with rehearsing itself being more chore-like, band meetings afterwards were met with a stunning lack of energy and enthusiasm. It may have been more subconscious than anything else.

Visit urt.net for MP3 files and lots of pictures. I'll see if I have anything unique to contribute here.