Broke Box - History

This is a detailed history of Broke Box, written by Steve.

October 1993

Dave Clapp (vocals), Steve Kolb (guitars), and Kevin Ronson (drums)
form Circle 9 and begin writing songs.
April 1994
Live - "Ogrefest I". First show as Circle 9. We played on askateboard
ramp in someone's backyard. Crowd : 100.

Circle 9 changes their name to Novogode.
May 1994
Damen joins Novogode as a bass player only to quit 2 practices later.
June 1994
Kevin Ronson leaves due to musical differences.

Dave & Steve turn to computer module tracking.
July 1994
Novogode doesn't show up to a show in Green Bay because we were informed
it was cancelled.

Novogode offically becomes Broke Box.

Steve lowers guitar tone from E to C.

Dave starts to use multi-effect processing on his vocals.
September 1994
Live - "Ogrefest II" in Green Bay, WI. First official show as Broke Box.
We played in someone's basement. Crowd : 50-75. Dave's first show using
vocal processing, and Steve sets precident by bleeding after the first
song of the set from playing guitar.
November 1994
Live - "Pauls Pantry Benefit Show", Kutska's Hall, Green Bay, WI.
Relatively mild set. Crowd : 100. Everything went well, no problems.
Live - At the Gallery, Green Bay, WI. A show in a bar in front of about 20
people because the owners screwed us over. It was pretty lame.
December 1994
Live - Green Bay, WI. We played a birthday party for a fan in her basement
with our friends Pulse. Crowd : 20 or so. That was a riot. We practically
destroyed the basement. Food was being thrown everywhere and a bunch of
things got wrecked. We collaberated with Pulse after everything was done
with a 20 minute noise set. Everyone was bleeding by the end of this one.
Janurary 1995
The Bellicosity full length demo was recorded and mixed in two weekends.
Dave and Steve had a hellish time. We also recorded a Pulse demo during
one of the weekends. We managed to cut 12 songs all in all. The quality
was not the best, but considering the amount of time and money we had, we
were happy with the results. We recorded everything on a Fostex reel to
reel 8 track.
February 1995
Dave leaves to spend a college semester in England until late May.
March 1995
Steve works solo on dubbing copies of Bellicosity; while Dave is living it up in England.
June 1995
Yay! Dave returns and Broke Box begins practicing again.
Matt Bacon joins Broke Box as their bass guitarist. A month of heavy
practicing resumes to teach him the material.
July 1995
Live - Kutska's Hall, Green Bay, WI, with Pulse, Milkweed, and Pedro Lopez
and His Hovering Sombreros. Crowd : 75. This was honestly our worst show.
We played pretty well, but the sound man was a complete moron. We sounded
like shit. We were really upset, he almost got decked by all the bands. It
didn't help matters that it was in the mid-90s outside. Steve's guitar
broke in the middle of the set (thanks to a music store screwing it up).
It wasn't a very good day. Free beer for Dave and Matt, while Steve sat in
a parking lot 2 miles away getting harassed by cops for 2 hours and then
had to walk back to the hall to get his car.
August 1995
Live - Perkins Park, Green Bay, WI with Pulse and Pedro Lopez and His
Hovering Sombreros. Crowd : 203-. Steve rented a park shelter and held a
free show/get together. It was over 100 degrees that day (sweat sweat
sweat). It went well despite the cops showing up and threatening to
arrest us for supposively giving minors alcohol. (innocent smile).
September 1995
Live - Concert Cafe, Green Bay, WI with Whitehouse and FuckFace. Crowd:
100-150. It was a real honor for us to open for Whitehouse. Our set went
well, and we played 2 encore songs at the promoter's request. I think it
was the first time we were mixed well through a PA. We also got a
recording of the show off the mixing board.
Derek Dolan joins Broke Box as a metal percussionist and for added live
destruction.
October 1995
Dave buys a PC (he was Amiga), and we start using SAW for audio recording.
November 1995
Live - Mass destruction at the Concert Cafe, Green Bay, WI with Pulse,
Alien Harvest, and Go Jiva. Crowd : 225. We co-headlined this one. This
was Derek's first show with us, and his presense was noticed. Smoke, power
tool grinding, sparks, broken electronic parts, it was chaos. The sound
man was a moron ("You guys use steel barrels, eh?"), so the mixing was
horrible, but we were so loud that it really didn't matter. The Concert
Cafe majorly screwed us over and paid the bands hardly anything despite
the huge crowd. We rented a smoke machine and some strobe lights, but only
received 20 bucks at the end of the night. We resisted hanging the
crooked manager from the rafters (barely).
February 1996
Live - "3rd Annual Titletown Noisefest" at the Concert Cafe, Green Bay,
WI. Crowd : 450. This was a huge show including around 22 bands and
running from 12pm to 12am. We got the opening slot of the whole thing. It
was pretty weird to be playing a concert at 12:45pm in the afternoon.
We had fun though. We only got to play 4 or 5 songs, but the sound was
good. Derek and Steve destroyed several computer keyboards at the end of
the set. The bands we played with are too many to list, but the highlights
of the show were The Flying Luttenbachers, FuckFace, and Nostril, and
Crawl. This show was videotaped.
March 1996
Live - Youth Center, Port Washington, WI with Alien Harvest and Millipede
Burger. Crowd : 30. This show was rather amusing. During our first song
"Attack", Derek set off the fire alarms from using the power saw. They had
barely any mixing equipment (one mic), but we still got it to sound okay.
Dave wasn't able to use vocal processing. Steve broke a string, but used a
spare guitar. Matt's other band Millipede Burger opened so he was pretty
mellow. The crowd for the most part was very lame. We video taped this
show.
Live - DMF, Madison, WI with Hate Dept. Crowd : 200. Click here for further info.
April 1996
Steve raises guitar tone from C to D.
May 1996
Live - Fun Lovin' Productions, Appleton, WI with Millipede Burger and
Idiot Baby. Crowd : 40-60. This show had lots of problems. The venue was
weird, they had booked all these bands before our show. We were pretty
pissed off obviously. We were the ones who had booked this show. Once we
kicked the other bands out, things were okay. The mixing equipment was
primitive but pretty loud. No vocal processing. We had a bunch of cheesy
props cramped up on a stage, among other things a glowing pumpkin head and
some tvs. The sound ended up being okay with it. Usual grinding mayhem
with Derek smashing a metal keyboard out in the audience. heheh.
June 1996
Live - Steve's House, Green Bay, WI with Idiot Baby. Crowd : 15 or so.
Steve held a small party and the band played. It was a great set for us
actually, one of the best that we've had. We rented PA equipment and had
plenty of time to set it up to get the sound we wanted. We were all pretty
drunk, and ended up playing almost every song we've ever written for an
hour and a half. We tried out a new song or two and did some noise at the
end of the set. We had a blast.
July 1996
Wanking off mostly.
August 1996
Dave and Steve move to Milwaukee under one roof. So, Broke Box has also
re-located to Milwaukee as their headquarters. Dave is attending graduate
school at Marquette and has a TA position, and Steve is going to UW Milwaukee.

Recording. Recording. Recording.
October 1996
Broke Box decides to get some gear. Dave and Steve buy a new fx processor, EQ, DAT machine, and Digital Only sound card.

Derek Dolan quits Broke Box on good terms to pursue other musical ventures.

Live - Saturday the 26th at The Santuary, Milwaukee, WI. Crowd : About 7 or 8. Scaling down to a three piece, we did pretty well at the Santuary. Unfortunately, we played at 4pm and there was nobody there besides the people who came with us, the staff, and the other bands. We played a long set for the first time with the DAT. Also, our Zoom fx processor puked in the middle of the set forcing Dave to sing clean for the remainder. Click here for the image index to see live and after-show pictures..

Chris Craft donates two analog keyboards to Broke Box: A Moog Prodigy and a Korg Mono/Poly! Dave and Steve go insane playing with synth loops.

Broke Box makes an agreement to appear on a cd compilation entitled "Conception" by Breathing Wall Communications. God Damn Divine has been selected to be our contribution.
November 1996
Recording/Writing.
December 1996
Recording/Writing.

Steve gets a new PC.
Janurary 1997
Dave buys a new fx processor dedicated to vocals (live at least).

Recording Netsplit Detected
Feburary 1997
Broke Box gains a new member, Peter Graf, on drums/percussion.

Live - 5th Annual Titletown Noisefest @ Concert Cafe, Green Bay with about 20 other bands. Crowd: 100. Broke Box played a short and sweet 25 minute set of songs and noise. Because of the venue scheduling us too early, Matt couldn't make it due to work, and Peter had legal trouble at the time as well. We added our friend Kevin Krueger to the band as a synth manipulator (Korg Mono/Poly) and power saw grinder. Dave also played the Moog when not singing, and Steve did some Mono/Poly manipulations at the end of the set. Overall it went allright. We sounded better with the additional equipment. We ended the set with 5 min of intense tribal synth/noise with grinding and smashing of a keyboard.

Kevin Krueger joins Broke Box doing live carnage and misc.

Broke Box buys a 10 space SKB rack.

Recording/Mixing Netsplit Detected.
March 1997
Broke Box finish Netsplit Detected!
April 1997
Broke Box receives a Mackie 1202vlz and Sovtek Big Muff.

May 1997
Live - Saturday May 17th @ Warehouse, La Crosse, WI with Christ Analogue. Crowd : 50-75. One of our best shows to date. The Warehouse treated us well and gave us a nice sounding mix too. We got a sound check, imagine that! This was our first show with our new metal percussionist, Peter Graf, and he did really well. We thought Stalemate sounded especially good with him banging on tire rims. Matt and Steve had a very nice tone at this show, since both of them use the same type of distortion for most songs now. Dave didn't use distortion on his vocals, but he did use just about everything else with help from our onstage mixer. Due to Christ Analogue's use of power tools and smashing objects, as well as our lack of organization to find materials, we didn't break or throw a single object at the crowd. A lot of pictures were also taken, and you can find the JPGS at our Image Index. Christ Analogue had an awesome set too, and I would suggest checking them out if they tour in your city. They are very aggressive live despite their tamer electro recordings and have an impressive amount of electronic drums.

Dave and Steve do a re-mix for BioFeedBack entitled "Re-Live" and re-sculptured it into something much different the original.

June 1997
Live - Saturday June 15th @ Steve's house in Green Bay. Small, but crazy house party at Steve's house with performances by Broke Box, Hit Vs Drag, Cock ESP, and several open jam sessions. The entire night was video taped too.
July 1997
Live - Saturday July 19th @ the Zartan house in Appleton WI. After getting good and drunk, we started to play our experimental synth set around 1am. We performed noise for at least an hour, completely losing track of any reference of time. There were about 10 or so people downstairs watching most or all of the set, but there were quite a lot of people upstairs whom I'm sure could hear us but couldn't handle the volume levels of below. Dave was manipulating the Korg Mono/Poly, and Steve was experimenting with the Moog running under 4 different distortions and multi-fx. Matt was torn away from the performance within 15 minutes, but he contributed some screeching feedback and strange sounding guitar echo loops. Our friend and Broke Box supporter, Jason Vogels, also joined into the action after Matt left by tweaking distortion pedals. Eventually we hooked Jason up with a microphone Steve had brought and hooked it into a side chain of one of the SE-50 fx unit. This resulted in some massively distorted and overdriven vocals which led Jason into drunken screaming tantrums, rolling recklessly around on the floor. Dave and Steve had both thought some of the noise we did was pretty good, considering we had never really done an experimental synth set like this before. Steve usually held the bottom end, giving off a tremendous amount of bass or obnoxious moog sounds. Dave tended to tweak a lot of knobs giving off eerie vibes or banging out more consistant synth rythems in patterns. The sound varied between being rather harsh noise to trippy experiments to ambience. Steve also used some 2 year old fake blood capsules, found earlier that day, and drooled on myself and spat a few times.
Broke Box beta tests OctaMED for the PC Win95 platform.

November 1997
It has been busy in the Broke Box camp these last few months. With Dave and I in school full time as well as some gear breaking down, we've been limited to practicing at home for the time being. Live shows have been pretty nill this fall, but hopefully some December shows will roll our way. As far as good news, we have been continuing working on a few new songs and learning new audio software programs which improve our production. Our gear situation is good and bad. I bought a Gibson SG Standard guitar in September which has been shaking the house ever since. On the bad side, the analog synths (especially the Mono/Poly) have seen far better days.
Other great news:
NMC (New Music Central) is an independent music promotion network who has been giving us great free promotion since May. NMC has now become a distributor and has a Online CD Store up and running, which features secure credit card transactions. Broke Box's self-produced CD, Netsplit Detected, and T-shirts will soon be available from them! Check out this awesome band support site: http://www.newmusiccentral.com (especially if you're in an unsigned band looking for ways to sell your releases on the web!)
CD and Tapes Update:
We've finally sent out a large batch of Netsplit Detected CDrs to parties who have been waiting months to receive them. We still have a list of people who need to get copies, so please be patient. I've sent out of 2 dozen demo tapes in the last 2 months to people who want to get a general idea of what we sound like and will continue to do so.
If you would like to receive a free tape, email me back at brokebox@execpc.com with your address, and I'll add you to the list. If you think you deserve a CD copy of our album (DJs, Mags, Labels, Re-mixers), try me. =)
Broke Box is also looking to re-mix other bands' material or receive our own stuff re-mixed. If you are interested, contact me!

Feburary 1998

Dave and I have been back in Milwaukee for a few weeks now after taking 2-3 weeks off to visit our respective families. Broke Box has been recording a new version of "Stalemate" that was featured on the Netsplit Detected cd. The recording of this song blows away anything we've put out so far because of the better equipment that has been gained. Our general plan is to work on recording 3-5 songs over this winter/spring and releasing it as an EP of some sort. In the past it had seemed that our recordings were very rushed, but we are taking our time to produce better quality songs.
As far as equipment goes, our main analog synth, a Korg Mono/Poly, has been fixed, and we also acquired a 5 string Carvin bass guitar and Remo Tubano drum. The new bass guitar has been used on the Stalemate recording already and has definately improved the low end of our sound. We've also bought a Yorkville MP8 powered mixer with dual 100 watt speakers so not hearing our sequences on stage is a thing of the past! We also now have the capacity to print out professional glossy inkjet'd cd layouts. They look great!
Broke Box also has some shows coming up in the near future. Although it hasn't been confirmed, we are assuming that we will be playing the Titletown Noisefest in Green Bay on Saturday Feb. 22nd at the Concert Cafe. I will post more details on that as they arive... We also have a show at Quarters in Milwaukee on Friday March 13th. Quarters is a bar located at 900 Center St (right next to Fuel Cafe). Also, we are trying to hook up with a show in the Michigan area, but a date has not been scheduled yet. 03/14/98
Our Netsplit Detected CD is now available for ordering from New Music Central! You can order it with a secured credit card transaction for 11 bucks + S&H at this url: http://newmusiccentral.com/brokebox.htm
Also, I have a MP3 of the 1998 version of Stalemate is now online! The running time is 1:20, and here is the url location to download it (make sure to hold the SHIFT key down when pressing this link): http://www.execpc.com/~brokebox/mp3/broke_box_stalemate98.mp3
PS. If you want the full length version in MP3, let me know
Okay folks that's all for updates, now check out the crazy night we had at Quarters!

Quarters - Friday the 13th
Here is a good story for you:
The show at Quarters last night was pretty interesting. Since the opening band called earlier in the afternoon and canceled on us, leaving Matt stranded in Appleton, we decided to play anyway. Peter our metal percussionist came over about 8pm and they carried all the stuff out to the car and to Quarters. I didn't carry anything because of my ACL injury obviously.
Well once we got to Quarters, there was nobody there. Between the bad slippery weather and several shows (The Damned was playing Friday), there were only 3 or 4 customers in there on a friday night! I guess this was about the most dead they had been. We played anyway, and the sound of the room was pretty good! Dave had a lot of time to set up all the equipment. We had to turn everything up pretty loud to drown out Peter's tire rim banging, but I was pretty pleased with the performance in any case. The only bad thing I could think of (besides the lack of crowd) was that Peter kept whining to either play my Gibson, or pack up all our gear and head to Santurary (this gothic bar on the south side) after we only finished playing 3 out of 12 songs. Broke Box does not fucking quit playing when we have the chance to. We played an hour or so, taking a few breaks here and there. I did okay sitting down in a chair, although it would have been nice to stand up at least for the last song.
After the set, we sat around for a while and packed up around 2am. Dave and Peter hauled equipment to 2 cars while I sat in my vehicle and watched. As soon as we headed home (which is only about 4 blocks away), Peter rushed out of Dave's car and ran down the block hopefully hoping to catch someone he knew coming out of a bar on the corner. This made Dave pretty annoyed because he had to haul up the gear himself up to our 2nd story flat. Peter eventually came back and rushed inside our house. Dave followed him up, and I guess he was using the phone. Peter than rushed back outside and ran down the block again. Dave had to continue carrying up all the gear while I watched outside.
Once all the gear was finally moved in, we decided that we were going to let Peter back into our house because of his erratic behavior. Peter came back to our house about 10 min after we were inside and obsessively rang our doorbell, pounded on the door, and yelled loud enough for us to hear him upstairs. Dave stuffed tissue paper into our doorbell so it couldn't buzz.
Peter continued on for about 5 minutes before we heard a loud CRASH!. This idiot put his foot through our front door! Peter broke the bottom square of our door and climbed inside. He bounded up the stairs and got immediately screamed at by myself and Dave. The first thing he did was make a dash for the phone and locked himself in his bathroom. By this point, I was really angry. I disconnected power on the cordless phone and eventually he came out of the bathroom. We yelled and yelled at him..
Some of the choice shouting at the time were: "You fucking bastard! You broke our fucking door! Get the hell out of here!" "You have no respect for anyone! You break every fucking thing you have, and then you go out and break everyone else's things too!" etc. etc...
After throwing my crutches at Peter and yelling until I didn't have much of a voice left, I had enough. Dave and I could not convince him to leave. He kept saying that he was sorry, but we didn't want his apologies. He even tried to get a ride home from Dave!
I called the police after I couldn't get him out of the house in 15 minutes. I pressed charges, and the police showed up around 3:30am. Our landlord also showed up and nail gunned a 2" pine board to the outside of our front door. Since we are not in a very nice neighborhood, our biggest concern was our security. Dave handled the police, and they set it up so Peter was caught and taken into jail. Dave went and picked Peter up and told him that he had to come back to our house to apologize to me since I can't leave the house very easily. When they pulled up at our house, the cops were there and took Peter away.
This whole incident ended around 4:15am. What a crazy night!
Peter has since been trying to call us collect several times this morning. In the space the call gives you to place your name, one time Peter ranted, "fuck you fuck you! I'm going to kill you". Dave had the police here this morning, and they are going to take his phone away in jail.
As you would suspect, Peter won't be playing with Broke Box anymore!
Steve

03/05/98
Hello everyone!
Here's another installment of the somewhat-monthly Broke Box email list. Here's what is going on with us:
Dave and I had spent over a month re-recording "Stalemate" (from the Netsplit Detected CD) over Jan/Feb and is now completed. We definately feel the production on this new track is the best sounding track we've put out to date! For those of you familar with Stalemate, we updated the track by replacing samples and adding additional synth melodies over the top of the guitars and bass as well as multi-tracked vocals. I will have the full length track in MP3 format available for downloading off our homepage within 2 or 3 weeks. If you wish to get a copy sent to you via ftp or email before then, email me at brokebox@execpc.com, and I'll be happy to send it along.
Our self-produced CD, Netsplit Detected, will be available for ordering over the web soon through New Music Central! The package was sent out yesterday after many delays, but we are finally happy with the layouts and packaging. New Music Central has secure credit card transactions available, so please visit their site: http://www.newmusiccentral.com
We have a show coming up so here are the details:
Friday March 13th @ Quarters
900 Center St (right by Mad Planet & Fuel Cafe), Milwaukee
Doors open at 9pm, $3 cover. Age is 21+
Limozine Feet will be the opening band.
In other news, I suffered a serious accident while skiing this past weekend in Michigan. I tore my ACL and AML ligaments in my left knee, and at this point, I can barely dress myself, let alone walk. I had an MRI taken earlier this week (Note: MRI machines make cool noise!!), and I have to go through re-constructive surgery in 6 weeks or so. This will not stop me from performing shows, but I will have to sit in a chair.
As far as the promo material I've promised people (CDs and Tapes), we are slowly cranking out copies. This knee injury will definately not improve my promptness, but we're working on it! =)
Take care everyone,

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