It all began with a call from Dusty Rhodes. He and Todd Daley had been talking and wanted to know if I had anything from the MIDIAN days. Neither of them even had a recording. Over the course of the next week or so, we decided to see what we could gather together. We ended up making the MIDIAN RIP Facebook group in February 2014 to gather old members, friends, family and fans, to see what we could collectively piece together.
After Dusty Rhodes contacted me, one of the first things I did was to go down into the basement to see what I personally had. I had a copy of our letter featured in Grafitti, some of the promo shots taken by Jeremy Bungard, a photo taken of us at the Brassworks Halloween show, a couple fliers, the MIDIAN Christmas card, and the Rock Out Censorship magazine issue that featured "MADIAN." That was it.
Dusty had a Metalfest '95 ticket, a set list, and I think a flier.
Brett said he might still have the MIDIAN baseball cap I made him (It hasn't turned up yet). More importantly, he found a cassette tape that had copies of Darker and Toward Zero on it. It turned out to be a full copy of Toward Zero and a partial copy of Darker, but Dusty immediately set to work transferring the songs to digital and remastering them as best he could. He said that it surprised him, but we were so tight that he was able to seamlessly patch sections that were a bit messed up with sections that weren't.
We got to hear those songs again for the first time in two decades in April 2014. We were really impressed with how well the songs held up against our memories of them!
Since we briefly considered re-recording MIDIAN's old songs to give them the mix they deserved, we set up a Midian - Parkersburg, WV page in July 2016 as a public page to complement the private Midian RIP Facebook discussion page.
I called up Davy Cain, He said that he was sorry for how everything played out there in the end. I asked him if he had anything from the band, but apparently Loretta had made an ultimatum at some point after MIDIAN: the band stuff (including the demos and promo shots) or his family. You have to understand that Davy characterized this as his last shot. That family versus the band fight was something that was there from the beginning. Band practice versus family time. Money spent on the band versus money spent on the family. That sort of thing. In my opinion, Davy wasn't a saint, but he had his priorities right. He always picked family over the band. In fact, concerning that ultimatum, he got rid of the band stuff. She divorced him anyway.
Before I could contact Jon Siders, the man who'd recorded our first demo, his house burned down. He lost a lot of stuff. Brett said there was no way anything would've survived and, besides, he was pretty sure Jon hadn't kept any master recordings of Darker. We did salvage a few songs from Darker from a cassette tape Brett Green had. They're available to listen to on our Playlist.
There were also live practice recordings (both video and audio), a taped interview with Angie asking the band about MIDIAN and where we saw it going, and video recordings of the Sportsman's gig. And, of course, the Band Log, entrusted to Jamie Nichols in the aftermath of the band, some time in 1998. If that stuff still exists, Jamie is keeping it to himself. In all likelihood it rotted away somewhere due to his neglect. That's just who he is as a person.
Logically, I called Mark Minear next, asking if he still had any recording of Time. Unfortunately, he got rid of all of his cassettes, including the Time demo master.
Moving down the line, I contacted Cass next. His wife answered and, once I told her why I was calling, she handed the phone to our former drummer, who seemed slightly embarrassed and amused. He regretfully informed me that he had nothing from the band. He also reminded me that Trax didn't record us; something about the equipment being down, so we never got a live recording of that gig.
That reminded me that Common Grounds was one of the venues that offered bands a free recording. I called them up. Well, I tried to anyway. The all-ages club has been out of business for years. What remains is a ministry by the same name that has nothing to do with music. The lady I spoke to had no idea if anyone had the old recordings, but she doubted it.
Buzz didn't have anything either. I couldn't find a way to contact Jeremy. Initially, Jamie didn't speak to me either. And it bears repeating that he offered nothing to help us.
I called up Davy Cain, He said that he was sorry for how everything played out there in the end. I asked him if he had anything from the band, but apparently Loretta had made an ultimatum at some point after MIDIAN: the band stuff (including the demos and promo shots) or his family. You have to understand that Davy characterized this as his last shot. That family versus the band fight was something that was there from the beginning. Band practice versus family time. Money spent on the band versus money spent on the family. That sort of thing. In my opinion, Davy wasn't a saint, but he had his priorities right. He always picked family over the band. In fact, concerning that ultimatum, he got rid of the band stuff. She divorced him anyway.
Before I could contact Jon Siders, the man who'd recorded our first demo, his house burned down. He lost a lot of stuff. Brett said there was no way anything would've survived and, besides, he was pretty sure Jon hadn't kept any master recordings of Darker. We did salvage a few songs from Darker from a cassette tape Brett Green had. They're available to listen to on our Playlist.
There were also live practice recordings (both video and audio), a taped interview with Angie asking the band about MIDIAN and where we saw it going, and video recordings of the Sportsman's gig. And, of course, the Band Log, entrusted to Jamie Nichols in the aftermath of the band, some time in 1998. If that stuff still exists, Jamie is keeping it to himself. In all likelihood it rotted away somewhere due to his neglect. That's just who he is as a person.
Logically, I called Mark Minear next, asking if he still had any recording of Time. Unfortunately, he got rid of all of his cassettes, including the Time demo master.
Moving down the line, I contacted Cass next. His wife answered and, once I told her why I was calling, she handed the phone to our former drummer, who seemed slightly embarrassed and amused. He regretfully informed me that he had nothing from the band. He also reminded me that Trax didn't record us; something about the equipment being down, so we never got a live recording of that gig.
That reminded me that Common Grounds was one of the venues that offered bands a free recording. I called them up. Well, I tried to anyway. The all-ages club has been out of business for years. What remains is a ministry by the same name that has nothing to do with music. The lady I spoke to had no idea if anyone had the old recordings, but she doubted it.
Buzz didn't have anything either. I couldn't find a way to contact Jeremy. Initially, Jamie didn't speak to me either. And it bears repeating that he offered nothing to help us.
Syd Edwards, the godfather of Midian, confirmed that he had a copy of the Towards Zero demo, complete with the cover jacket, but we haven't been able to get our hands on it yet. We do have a photo of it (below).
I built MidianRIP.blogspot.com in 2016 along with the Facebook page as a legacy site to archive what remains. Because despite all of the drama, we wrote some great music.
- Tony Breeden, former vocalist, MIDIAN
No comments:
Post a Comment