No Reason XXX Part II- The End

Though we had the CD on our final tour it wasn't until No Reason broke up that the vinyl version of our LP came out. I still think the songs are good, but boy oh boy do I hate the recording. The 7" and second demo are much, much better. Good thing FIVE of those nine songs made it to the LP. "Paper Hero" from the LP is one of my favorite songs I have ever written, it's too bad the recording turned out how it did. Paper Hero was named after a great episode of Robotech that my brother and I loved growing up. The subject matter (first verse) was about a friend of ours who had recently stopped hanging out/ being straight edge, the second verse was about a girl I really liked who, of course, thought I was a dork. Eventually, I stopped writing songs about girls in my late 30's. I'm trying to track down the tape we did BEFORE going to Trackmasters that we tracked live at Watchmen studios as pre production. I think Eric still has that DAT, if he does, I'm going to transfer it and check it out to see if it is as good as I remember.

We were originally slated to record in the small room at the original Salad days studio in Boston with Brian McTernan. When I called to get directions the week before we were leaving, Brian informed me the studio had flooded and that the recording couldn't happen on the dates we had booked. This led to my utter panic. We had a summer tour booked and needed our LP done so the cd would be out in time! Our drummer Blake very much shared that sentiment. Glenn, our fifth member at the time, suggested we go to Trackmaster, a local studio where the Goo Goo Dolls had recorded a Boy Named Goo. That record had gone platinum so I figured that meant we would get a platinum level recording, right? WRONG. Glenn really struggled matching some of the rhythm guitar I played and with some of his leads. I just think, though he had fun and live brought great energy, the style we played wasn't something he could play. Also, I don't really recall Glenn being in a band with two guitarists aside from evergreen and that was at least 5 years prior. I remember that there is a lead in one song he worked on for HOURS trying to nail. Literally hours, I walked in the booth and made a suggestion about taking a break or something along those lines and he said "one more fucking word and I'm walking out of here." He quit the band two weeks later.

It's a real shame how the LP turned out as a whole, because Blake and Eric played so well on it. The energy level is just perfect but the production values paired with my brother's sick/ asthma attack attempt at singing brought it down. Also, Mark, the engineer, didn't help. "Oh, so you guys are a hardcore band? Like SNFU, right?" Yeah, Mark, EXACTLY like that.

No Reason xxx.

No Reason xxx was a band that formed right on the heels on Halfmast's breakup in 1996. The idea was to still be a fast "youth crew" style straight edge band like Halfmast, but with a more updated and sometimes more "punk" sound. No Reason xxx was a fun band to be in and to write songs for. The Original Line up was My brother and I, the Ellman brothers and our cousin Abe. Abe played on the demo then moved before our first show, leaving us a four piece with Eric Ellman moving from guitar to bass. 

At our first show, Immigrant Sun records was talking to Chris Colohan, who was in Left For Dead at the time and asked us to do a split with them. We, of course, said yes; but shortly after, Left For Dead kind of fell apart. This was good because it gave us the opportunity to do a 7" with Immigrant Sun records, which people to this day still tell me they love. Ebullition Records refused to carry the record in their distro citing that it promoted violence against women. We used the Gator stuff because it was supposed to represent a loss of innocence for us and the world of skateboarding and because there was "No Reason" for him to do what he did. But I guess we never explained that to good old Kent McClard, but it made for a cool looking record sleeve.

Our local shows were ALWAYS incredible with kids singing along and having a good time. We played a lot of shows in the 1 1/2- 2 years we were together. On top of great local shows, we had some good shows on weekends we spent out of town in Chicago and Toronto. We broke up after playing a few shows at home after recording an LP we weren't happy with and losing our asses on a terrible tour that was plagued with cancellations. However, A good show we played in Toronto is shown here, though I think the date is a year off. We cover "Ready To Fight" by Negative Approach at the end, which I had zero recollection of until seeing this vid.