The cover to the Darker demo cassette. Tony Breeden designed the logo. Jamie Nichols picked out the art. The cover was designed shortly before the gig at the Sportsman's Lounge, possibly even before the first Brass Works gig.
Speaking of which, we've uncovered a few live shots of that first show at the Sportsman's Lounge.
Bassist Brett Green is the only band member you can see clearly in this photo. Vocalist Tony Breeden is partially visible in the left of the photo. Davy Cain is behind the drum set. Also visible behind the drums is MIDIAN's banner, hand drawn by Tony Breeden.
Another shot of Brett and Tony (with the ponytail).
Brett again.
Brett gets into it.
Guitarist Jamie Nichols. Tony Breeden in the foreground.
Jamie again. Davy Cain on the drums. This is literally the clearest photo we have of him.
Jamie experiments.
The flier for the Darker demo party at Cedar Grove Community Building on April 30, 1995. This was Davy Cain's last gig.
Like most of our fliers, it featured artwork by me (Tony Breeden). I developed an entire font for MIDIAN. The two gargoyles were named Glenn and Phil, after Glenn Danzig of Misfits/Danzig and Phil Anselmo of Pantera. I was into runes at the time. I even wrote my journals in runescript. The bindrune in the lower righthand corner became a symbol for MIDIAN and was featured prominently on the Maplewood Drive Inn (Point Pleasant, WV) flier and the flier for the band's final show.
This flier was for one of the first Powerhouse shows at Brass Works (Parkersburg, WV), dated May 25, 1995. Powerhouse Thursdays was one of the only outlets for a metal band in the area. Jamie had the idea for this flier. I (Tony) put the collage together.
Another Brass Works Powerhouse flier, dated August 10, 1995. Cass Dalton is listed as one of the band's contacts. This is probably fro the show that got us kicked out of Brass Works for a month. Note that we re-used the Darker cover concept in this flier. And, of course, Glenn and Phil were featured on this one too.
This set list belonged to Dusty Rhodes and its from one of his first shows with MIDIAN. It might be from a Brass Works gig, but it could as easily be the set from the first Parkersburg City Park Pavilion show or Trax (Charlottesville, VA). We almost always started with "When I Wake Up" after we wrote that song and "Don't Push Me" as our exit, so this must've been a single set gig. You can listen to most of these songs on our Playlist.
I wish we'd thought to put the date on these MetalFest 95 tickets. MetalFest was our second show at the Parkersburg Pavilion.
The Brass Works Halloween show was one of our best shows. We started off with "Armageddon is Near" at midnite and it just went insane from there out!
The MIDIAN Christmas card. The top pic is the front [right] and back [left] of the card. Note the shameless promo for our Toward Zero demo. The bottom image is the interior of the card, featuring one of the promo pictures taken by Jeremy Bungard.
Speaking of which, here is a pic of the front cover of the Toward Zero cassette, courtesy of Syd Edwards, the "Godfather of MIDIAN."
Syd Edwards' Rock Out Censorship article, "Unsigned on the Dotted Line," in Issue #20 (Dec 95/Jan 96) mentioned the Point Pleasant, WV gig. The band's name was misspelled as MADIAN, but these things happen. This ended up being R.O.C.'s last issue. The demo Syd refers to in the article was the Darker demo; he said even back then that we needed a better demo, so we recorded the Time demo with Mark Minear shortly after. Full text here: http://www.theroc.org/roc-mag/textarch/roc-20/roc20-21.htm
While we were playing at Common Grounds (Charleston, WV) on Jan 12, 1996, we noticed that my letter to Graffiti magazine promoting the new Toward Zero demo had printed in the Letters section of their January 1996 (Vol 7. No 1) issue as "The art of self-promotion".
MIDIAN's last show was a two night show at Roger's Nightclub (Parkersburg, WV) on October 4 & 5, 1996. The word "Ben" written in the upper righthand corner refers to a bass player who practiced with us after Brett Green quit. Ben moved before he played even a single gig. Brett came back to bail us out or we wouldn't even have been able to do the show.
The MIDIAN bindrune appears on this one. The Celtic cross headstone was modeled after one I stood next to in one of our promo shots. I almost put Phil and Glenn on this one, but it broke up the stark background too much. The runes around the circle actually say something. Upper left: "Alas, Cabal has destroyed MIDIAN." That was a reference to Clive Barker, as well as an admission that we'd conspired to end MIDIAN. Upper right: "All things must die to be reborn." Lower right: "All things must come to their eventual evolution." And, last but not least, Lower left: "Arise Hate I Preach and show them." So we basically admitted we weren't through. We were just changing the name.
Even so, MIDIAN was no more.
The whole thing "last show" thing was a publicity stunt. We had no intention of breaking up the band. We were simply changing our name to Hate, I Preach, mostly because we could use the acronym HIP. Other bands in the area had changed their name (most notably, No Excuse had become Sick World, and Blessed Altar had become Autumn Mourning) and I guess we thought it was time. It wasn't my idea. In fact, I thought it was a bad idea, but we'd burned so many bridges at that point that it was a necessary evil.
HIP had a definite schtick. At left is our debut flier for the Roger's Halloween show, our "Symphony of Hate." The design was mine, inspired by Todd McFarlane's "Spawn," which explains why one of the faces in the dark on the right hand side seems to be Violator. The jester stick with its mouth sewn shut was called Preacher. At right are images of the front and reverse of our HIP Notes, to be included with CDs/cassettes and redeemable toward merch if you earned enough "preacher bucks."
HIP was short-lived mostly because "MIDIAN under a new name" was spiraling wildly out of control. Practices failed. We lost members. Just wasn't MIDIAN anymore and I think that's why it was doomed from the moment we concocted our mad plan.
No comments:
Post a Comment