December 15th, 2001

WARSTARS @
Fred Meyer's Cabin
Wemme, OR

* * *

It was a dark and stormy night in December... literally. Warstars hadn't gigged for months, focusing instead on training a few fledgling musicians to play punk rock at the F.R.O.G. studios (Agent Smith's parent's house.)

Flashback to the summer...

* * *

While there was a time or two during which the Warstars enjoyed sharing a blunt and a beer at F.R.O.G. studios, the F.R.O.G. sessions yielded very little recorded material worth saving. Perhaps it was fate that caused Noah's younger brother to delete some 40 hours worth of jam sessions from the family computer's hard drive. If that material had fallen into the wrong hands...

During a brief conversation with his brother's fiance, Andy heard mention of a drummer who worked at a local pizza parlor in southeast Portland. A few telephone conversations later, and Andy and Noah were jamming with their latest drummer, Cody Pendant. The jams flowed very well. After the second jam, Cody mentioned that he may be able to have Warstars play "a big party out at Fred Meyer's old vacation cabin in the woods". The guys jumped at the chance to play.

Andy brought along his portable cassette recorder and recorded everything. Andy took the Wemme gig quite seriously, and you can hear that in his guitar playing. The rest of the band was more intrerested in drinking beer. You can hear that on the recording as well.

It was this fateful gig that would inspire Andy Warstar to take Warstars in a completely new direction. After seeing how poorly Agent Smith performed, and with Cody noting Andy's reaction, each of the Warstars went his own way. For the remainder of Winter 2001, Andy was hard at work producing the Warstars second album, "Ubik" and nine more albums worth of "live in the studio" material.