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So here's the scoop, and it's accurate as far as I remember it...
So the story of The Schematics starts in the Summer of 1997. After Lettuce Boy broke up, I(Chris) spent pretty much the next 2 months pissing and moaning about how he really missed being in a band, yadda yadda yadda, and pretty much driving everyone who knew him nuts with his bitching. Now since I'm also a big time procrastinator, it took me like a month to get around to putting up flyers, and upon doing so, Seamus responded to one of them and the the world, as they say, was NEVER the same.
On September 9, 1997(and yes that was the date and yes I'm kind of a freak for remembering that,) me, Seamus, Ingrid, Rich Carpinone(on drums), Lewis Greeney(bass), and Emily who Rich wanted to sleep with but i can't remember her last name for the life of me on sax got together in the basement of McKenna theater at SUNY New Paltz and actually didn't suck(okay maybe we did and i'm just looking at the past with rose-colored glasses.) Anyways, it was a start :-)
About a week or two later, we added Dave on trombone(because he showed up to symphonic band before the other trombone player) and Matt Kneitel became our full time bass player(Lewis just sat in for the night -- matt had a better mullet too.) We also replaced Emily with Jaime Lavallee on sax and played with that lineup for about two months or so when we decided that a)we were pretty good and b)that we needed a singer.
After a not terribly long audition process where we tried out a handful of people, we added Dan Flanagan on vocals and began getting ready for our first show, which was sometime in December at the Stone Ridge Cafe in, well, Stone Ridge. It was supposed to be part of open mic night, but none of the other people were going to play showed up, so it ended up being, quite possibly, the shortest show ever.
We played a few more shows after that and then over two days in the middle of absolutely freakin nowhere, we recorded Stunning, Dangerous, Sexy, a 4 song EP which also doubled as our first recording EVER. We released the tape at The Chance in May on a show with Cooter, Next II Nothing and Mephiskapheles -- in what would be the first of many shows there as we took over for Lettuce Boy as the area's "token local ska band that gets on most of the good shows that come through."
Shortly after the release of Stunning, Rich left the band and was replaced with Johnny "Hedgehog" Watson on drums, who actually had filled in with us for a couple of shows and, well, he drove a kickin tan escort wagon, so we took him. With this lineup, The Schematics hit the road.
We spent a lion's share of the Summer of 1998 at Dave's sister's house, working on a 1974 school bus that was going to be our first(and as it turned out much later,) only tour bus. We probably should have thought better of buying a bus that had spent the last 2 years in a field, but DAMMIT we wanted to tour and Charlie only wanted 100 bucks for it, so we gave it a shot. And we actually got as far as Rosendale before it died(for those of you without an intimate knowledge of the Hudson Valley, Rosendale is the town right next to New Paltz.)
As far as the tour itself, we did make it doen to Baltimore and played a show at a place called the Alley with a band that to be honest, I don't remember all that well, but I DO remember them having a really hot mom that Dan thinks he could have hooked up with, though I think everyone else is pretty sure he's full of shit on that.
When we got back from tour, we kept playing at local hotspots Snugs and The Chance and started also playing shows in New York City. By and large the first shows we played in the city weren't THAT great, but we could say that we played NYC pretty regularly, and that was cool. That fall Matt decided that his time as bass player was nearing the end, so we replaced him with Shawn Charniga on bass.
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