The History of Not Quite There - Look At Us, We're Cool - The Slews.
In grade 6, I started with Alto sax, played it until grade nine, they ditched it for guitar. In grade 8, I played in a talent show with some buddies (formed a band for the show) and we played "Serial Joe - Mistake" and "The Offspring - Original Prankster".
After the show, we though we sounded pretty tight, so we formed a band(in grade 9). Problem the bass player was already in a band, so we have no replacement. Thankfully, we met a other bass player (that was also good) and he joined up and we started our band called "Not Quite there".
After a year of playing at middle schools, and writing probably the worst music you'd ever hear, we started getting mad at each other. Eventually, I stopped going to practices just because I couldn't stand them.
Then in grade 10, all of the Not Quite There band members and I signed up for a class called "Rock school". It's a music class, where you form rock bands. First day, we all meet, not having been near each other and instruments for the summer, and said "OK, so we should be a band". However, to avoid the troubles and anger of "NQT" we changes our name to "Look at us, We're cool".
This was the meal ticket. We had some songs under our belt from NQT (covers) and we took on a couple Green Day numbers. By the end of the class, we were pretty tight.
Next year, in grade 11, we still have the original group, but we added a girl (Hey, a 10x8 room full of guys ain't cool). We played an Avril lavagna(typo!) song with her, but we started getting sick of her... you know whatting. The year ended, and we were mad because only the grade 12's got to take trips playing at other schools. Just before the end of the year, we made sure everyone would take the class again, but the bass player couldn't. He had some stupid idea about taking more classes and using up he free blocks with academic classes. He is presumed dead.
Grade 12. We have Me(oh smell that grammar!), the drummer, another guitar/vocals, but no bass player. Well, turns out the drummer fell in love with bass in the summer, and got it pregnant. He won't leave it. Now we need a drummer. This is harder then finding a bass player, because anyone can play the bass.. 3 strings right?
Once the class started up, we started looking for a drummer. Thankfully, being known as on of the more sucksessful (haha, get it?) bands, people wanted to play with us. Eventually, we took the Asian concert band drummer. He's Asian, and plays in the concert band, he's the perfect drummer!
OK, we have our drummer, bass, guitar, vocals, we're set. BUT, we need a new name, so we don't get caught up in that, "whatting", past from "Look at us, We're cool" We didn't know what to name our selfs now. Asian kid was no help because he didn't show up half the time, and we had already picked 2 names... already!
Here comes the wild card. ANOTHER girl (BTW, the first girl didn't carry over from grade 11) joins the band. A better singer then the last one, allowing us to play songs with more difficult vocals, boy or girl, and have her sing it. We were unstoppable now, so our new name MUST reflect that. And then it hit us, "The Slews". Its perfect! It has a "The" in it, which was cool at the time, and we had a girl. The best part about being named "The Slews" is when the teacher rights down the playing order. He picks the lead singers name, and a shortened version of your band. So for us, he wrote "Robyn - Slew". I have never seen a grown man cry so much from laughing.
As the year went on, we became the top band in the class, trouncing everyone that got in our way, and hitting them while they were down. We head lined every event in the school, and played an other events, including a gay pride festival (BTW, you know you've made it to the top when...).
At the end of the year, we all went our separate ways, saying high on MSN once in a while, still keeping alive the amazing force that was, The Slews.
SheepStar
