Year : 1989-90 (Metallic Blue Records Edition 2023)
Style : Glam Hard Rock
Country : United States
Audio : 320 kbps + scans
Size : 148 mb
Bio:
I’ve been playing the bass guitar since I was about 9. I grew up 6th in a family of 8 kids and everybody played piano and/or guitar. A big part of why the bass appealed to me was that it was something different that nobody else in my family did. I played bass through high school, and my band the Celler Dwellers was a staple at graduation parties, school events, talent shows, and block parties. After high school I kept playing, but the band broke up when most of us went off to college.Part 1: Formation: A year or so later I was visiting my good friend Ken Dudek, and for whatever reason we were going to visit Jeff Juliano a few houses up the street. I knew that Jeff played guitar but he was only an acquaintance; he was a year or two behind me in high school, and had recently graduated. We started talking and Jeff said “yeah I’m putting a band together, we need a singer and a bass player” he stopped and pointed at me – “Hey Phil you play bass, don’t you?!”. I enthusiastically replied “why, yes I do, and I’d love to get in a band!”. That was it.We were all kind of killing time before getting serious in life, attending the local community college in preparation for going away to university or starting a career. It was that awkward year or two after high school when those of us suburbanites who don’t go straight off to college kick around and try to figure it out. Lots of people plan for this these days and call it a “gap year”. First practice I got to meet Taylor Lee, Jeff’s drummer friend. We instantly clicked as a rhythm section as they taught me an original composition “Holding My Heart”. It was a cool instrumental composition that flowed very nicely. Nobody could ever put a good melody or lead vocal on top of the song and we didn’t think it was strong enough to stand alone as an instrumental composition. (In hindsight, we were completely wrong. The song kicked ass; it absolutely was strong enough to stand on its own, and it should have been the 11th song on the album we eventually recorded.)We kicked around in the basement and became fast friends, hanging out with Jeff’s other companions playing Nintendo (“Double Dragon” and “Super Mario Brothers” were constantly in rotation). We looked for a singer, but not aggressively – we never really reached out or put want ads out or anything like that. I didn’t know anyone who could sing because I had mostly been the singer in my high school band, and I knew my voice was not suitable for the kind of music we were making. Taylor and Jeff put the word out in their circles of friends. We started writing – Taylor had a great creative spark and wrote most of “Lost Innocence” in those weeks. We tightened up “Holding My Heart”, and started working on learning covers. We had a keyboard player Pat who liked to play the opening riff to “Runaway”. He was a great kid and full of enthusiasm, but not musically competent at the time.One day I received a very exited phone call from Jeff Juliano – “Hey man – xxxx just broke up – Jeff Wiersema may be interested in hearing us!”. I replied “Sounds like that’s a good thing?” - “Wiersema is a F**KING AWESOME singer, dude!!!! This is the best thing that could ever happen!” Jeff Wiersema was in a fairly established band (xxxx is not because I don’t want to mention them, I simply forgot the name!), and Jeff Juliano was extremely psyched to have him come out and play with us. Jeff W came out and listened to what we had going on, sang some covers with us, got a good feel for what the band was going to be capable of. He knew Jeff Juliano so he knew what he was getting on guitar, but needed to know the rhythm section was going to be up to the musical level of Juliano, as well as the established band that he was leaving. One of those very first practices with Jeff is captured in the “Lost Innocence (demo)” track on this CD. That was one of the first times that Jeff Wiersema ever sung with us, he had just learned the song, and was probably the last before we let our enthusiastic but inadequate keyboard player go.We took about 4-5 months putting together a setlist of popular / favorite covers and started working on compositions. Finally the day came that one of Juliano’s friends was playing at a local rock bar the “Rabbit’s Foot”, and they asked us to open for them. Even to this day the first gig with a new band is a weird and unique experience every time. When you play live music (or perform live theater, etc.) it’s like you’re going into battle with these people. You have to completely trust that the band members aren’t going to play too many clams, they’ll remember the arrangements, sing the backing vocal parts - on key (a huge challenge for me even now when I know my voice so much better than I did back then), won’t suffer stage fright, won’t have a technical gear failure, will present an appropriate appearance, will engage with the audience instead of staring at the neck of their instrument. It’s a big ask and no matter how much you practice you just don’t know how someone’s going to perform until that first real gig together. We did fine. We didn’t knock anyone’s socks off, but we did just fine. I think Wiersema was happy he had joined.The first song we really wrote in a collaborative fashion was “One On One”. My friend George Richman from the Celler Dwellers came out with a 4-track cassette system and we spent a day or two cranking out the demo included here. We loved the song. It felt like we just wrote our first hit single. Between our ever increasing cover repertoire and our newfound composition capability we were ready to take on the DC and Baltimore bar scene.Part 2: Bar / College band years.After the Rabbit’s foot, we spent a few months playing about once a month at a little bar in Washington, DC called the “Safari Club”. It was a total dive, but our friends loved coming out, and they let us play without having to deal with professional booking and management. We honed our live show there. After playing there a few months, writing more material, and learning more covers, we started hooking up with other local bands to have big double bills. One of the bands we played with a lot was “Sinister Grin”. We would open for them on Friday at “Palamino” in Stanton, VA, then on Saturday they would open for us. We scrounged up some money to produce a 4 song demo at a basement 8 track studio in Falls Church. Ben DePaw recorded the band, and we produced a low budget 4 song demo tape “Just A Few” which we were all fairly happy with.There was a local club Jaxx that did all-day all-ages pay-to-play shows on weekends. We hooked up with other friends’ bands such as “Fraidy Cat” and did our part – sold tickets to our friends – and played some good stuff. We played the legendary “Bayou” in Georgetown, DC. Baltimore crowds were particularly enthusiastic about our original material, we played “The Rage” on regular rotation.We never hooked up with a manager who was as capable and enthusiastic at promotion as the band was at making music. We kept on writing and rehearsing, and played our fair share of gigs over the next couple years, while we continued our studies and (mostly) full time jobs. We made pizza, worked retail, repossessed cars, studied, and rocked out. One day a generous benefactor Jack Shupe saw the band and was impressed enough to offer funding to record a demo cassette for us to use for promotion and sales. We somehow made the time to attend sessions at Cue Recording Studios “Studio A” in Falls Church, with Jim Ebert as our recording engineer. 9 of the 10 songs were staples that we had worked to death both in rehearsal and live, and we banged them out in no time. One song, “Too Much” was written during the recording process. The backing vocals in “Too Much” were one of the absolute last things we recorded. We recorded the song with the lead vocals, and I took it home and worked out the harmonies for the next day’s recording. The recording process was absolutely a blast – we loved every second of it. The team at Cue (which is still there – and still recommended if you’re recording in the Washington DC area) made us feel like rock stars recording onto 2” tape on a 24 track Studer machine in the big studio “A” room. Somewhere there is a VHS tape of the sessions that I would love to find. During these sessions Jeff Juliano was completely transfixed by the engineering and recording process. He fell in love with that part of the business right then and there.Jack hired Liz Wolf, a friend of his who was a professional artist, to paint a cover for us. We met with her and described exactly what we had in mind for the cover. She thought it was funny and proceeded to knock our socks off with a fantastic cover painting. The painting, the tape, and the credits template went off and in a few weeks we had some boxes of Cassettes.The ultimate culmination of this era was a gig at a bar that I can’t remember the name of in College Park, MD. The full band photo you see here was taken during this gig. We were set to open for a band called “Mirror Mirror” that had been kind of in hiatus for some time. They were one of the more established bands in the area and had a following, and this was their big “return” from whatever break they were on. I don’t remember how we got the gig; we weren’t specifically friends of theirs, though as with all cities the band scene is such that so many people know so many others. At this time we were at the absolute height of our powers. We had 10 solid originals to perform, and since we were only performing a 40 minute opening set we decided to make it a showcase and perform only original material, no covers. (We may have thrown in “Suffragette City”, which was Jeff Wiersema’s only break; the only song he didn’t sing in a long night of work). We absolutely killed it; it was probably the best performance we ever gave. From what I understand Mirror Mirror was not very happy that we may have kind of upstaged them. We just packed our gear and left after we played. Even now, if I’m playing with a group of bands at a local brewery or venue I like to sit and listen to at least some of the songs the previous or next band is playing out of common courtesy.Part 3: Dilution and Dissolution: The first to leave the band and go to really start his life was Taylor. His enthusiasm for the band had been visibly waning for a while and he had been talking a lot about going to Carolina to college. The rest of us handled asking him to leave poorly. It’s a very difficult thing to do firing a band member. One of the toughest things about being in a band. This is somebody you’ve gone to battle with, related on the deepest level making music together, partied with until 3AM, been a trusted partner with; and you’ve gotten to the point when you won’t make music with them any more. I’ve never been divorced, but I think it must be like that. We let Taylor go and soldiered on with drummer Scott Spelbring who had been managing us learning the material for future gigs. Scott was a fine player, learned the material from the cassette competently, and we continued to write songs – which started being more riff based at this point. Scott would throw out a beat and I would start playing a bass riff and Juliano would turn around and say “What is that!! That is cool as hell!”. I would just say “that’s nothing we just came up with that just now out of thin air” – we would try to remember it, play it again, and turn it into a song. I don’t remember any of those songs; I only recall one title “Bad Influence” which was about a fling. I wish we would have recorded them, even just demos would be nice to have today.We soldiered on for another year or so, continuing to play, doing some oddball fund raisers, a few events at the local community college, and a few more pay-to-play day-long all ages parties. A friend Darren Redick played keys on stage with us for a few gigs. I had played the keyboard in the studio on the recording, but we never had keyboards on stage – we always played like Van Halen and The Who with just guitar bass drums live. I personally love that arrangement. So much air between the instruments. Darren is a very talented player and probably took less than an afternoon to learn my super simple keyboard lines.GIMMIX never recorded again. Eventually the band just dissolved. I don’t even remember how it ended. Jeff Juliano set up his first 8 track studio in what had been our practice space, and he was fully set into the recording / engineering phase of his musical career. I went back to my career path in IT. Jeff Wiersema rebranded and continued in the local area for some time; I played with him as a hired gun a few times before a motorcycle accident derailed my playing for a few months and my IT career moved me out of the area. Taylor went off to school and started his career. I re-connected with everyone briefly when I ripped the DAT and burned CDs for nostalgia at around the turn of the Millenium. I’ve kept kicking around in bar bands ever since, with occasional wedding band work. As of this writing in Feb. 2023 I’m playing bass and singing in two active gigging bands with no plans to stop.I am incredibly proud of the music we made in GIMMIX and consider it one of the most treasured musical experiences of my life. I am thrilled to be able to share it with a wider audience, even if only 12 people ever listen.
Album:
GIMMIX was a glammy band from the D.C. and Baltimore Maryland area from the late ’80s / early ’90s. GIMMIX released by themselves an EP in 1989 and the full-length ”Gimme Your Gimmix” in 1990. These indie releases became a bit of collector’s pieces among the underground hair metal collectors from that golden era for the genre.Though GIMMIX was somewhat short-lived, their fans loved the band’s fun, radio friendly songs that were easy to sing along to: catchy summertime feel-good tunes filled with infectious riffs, loads of backing vocals, hooky rhythms with the right amount of keys. Some kind of a mix between Poison and Rock Candy.Now Metallic Blue Records is releasing today “Gimme Your Gimmix [Remastered +7]” for the first time on CD, including the 1990 full album, the 1989 EP and 3 early demos, all fully remastered. These were professionally recorded tracks, so sound quality is very good.If this album does not make you want to go to the beach and soak up the sun, nothing will!
Line Up:
Jeff Wiersema – Vocals
Philip Hamm – Bass, Keyboards
Jeff Juliano – Guitar
Taylor Lee – Drums
Tracklist:
01. Gimme Your Gimmix
02. Only A Fool
03. Lost In You
04. Carry Me Away
05. One On One
06. Too Much
07. Want You To Know
08. Lost Innocence
09. I Can’t Wait
10. Beach Song
11. One On One (EP Version) (Bonus Track)
12. Only A Fool (EP Version) (Bonus Track)
13. I Can’t Wait (EP Version) (Bonus Track)
14. Lost Innocence (EP Version) (Bonus Track)
15. One On One (Demo) (Bonus Track)
16. Only A Fool (Demo) (Bonus Track)
17. Lost Innocence (Demo)(Bonus Track)
Download links for all albums only on our blog here: http://goodmetalandhar.do.am/
