Dale Crum writes: The Quadrofiends formed during summer of 1996 in Fayetteville, Arkansas. We named ourselves that because we had four members, all of us consumed with the Who’s double album, Quadrophenia. We had Zack Wait on lead vocals, Travis DeWitt on Lead Guitar, Dale Crum on Bass and Billy Hobbs on Drums the lineup eventually included a fifth member, Brian Lowe of local Kung-Fu Grip fame on Rhythm Guitar. DeWitt, Lowe and I were best friends in High School and we hung out everyday. They were actually my first true friends when I first moved to Arkansas. DeWitt singlehandedly pulled me out of the Rap scene (Run DMC and Too Short in those days) and threw me kicking and screaming in to the wonderful world of Death Metal, then Grunge and finally Punk.
Musically, the Quadrofiends had been a ska/punk band with a heavier influence in melodic punk stemming from previous band ventures including the exceptionally melodic Cathode Ray featuring DeWitt on Lead Guitar and Crum on Bass joined by Jason Anderson of Squad Five-O fame, a contemporary Christian band from Savannah, Georgia. We dressed in spikes, multiple zippers, leather jackets complete with homemade, white paint-pen graphics and thousands of painfully installed aluminum studs.
Zack's lyrics reflected his own personal experiences, songs such as “Crossbones” examining the complications and injustices of the 1996 Olympic Games. Held in Atlanta, Georgia. The city issued a "clean up" making homelessness criminal which eventually lead to the arrest of some 9,000 people, the displacement of approximately 30,000 low income families an the demolition of 2,000 public housing facilities. The Olympic gentrification was a major point of Zack's lyrics for this particular song. (opening line: "Summer 96, metro unloads/Days old vomit and urine stench assaulting my nose and now I'm barely awake, smashing down concrete, get up from the floor and I spit out some teeth.")
We had eight songs and played about thirty gigs. Our shows were pretty crazy. This wasn't a stand around kind of band, everyone but the drummer would be running around the stage, jumping around, though it did take us a few shows to get to this stage. It was surprisingly difficult to keep the beat while jumping around. The pros make it look so easy. All of the Quadrofiends enjoyed being on stage in our own way. DeWitt would get all the ladies running up after the show and I would always get the secret wink from the girl with the boyfriend in the back.
Not only did we love to play shows but we traveled together extensively to see our favorite bands as well. We went to so many Dropkick Murphy shows we became friends with them. Mike McColgan had asked us for a demo tape which he passed along to Radical Records. They loved everything about the music except for Hobbs' drumming. We were told that if we could find a new drummer we were a shoe-in. At this point DeWitt had us convinced this needed to happen and the fact that Hobbs was still a semi-beginner wasn't helping, especially since DeWitt and Crum had been in previous bands playing with Jason Anderson of Squad Five-O and Aaron Humphries of the now famous, Austin, Texas based Paper Chase. We eventually removed Hobbs in hopes of gaining a new drummer, but were unable to do so and thus the Quadrofiends staggered their way into the annals of those who tried to rock.
Crum went on to start his own advertising business Doc4
( www.doc4design.com ) eventually selling his bass and amp equipment, Hobbs returned to school in order to achieve a degree in Graphic Design, DeWitt moved to Austin, Texas and began working for a popular bookstore and was never heard from again while Wait continues to perform with local bands and works at several restaurants in Fayetteville, Arkansas.
Get yourself effed off by listening to the Olympic games anthem Crossroads here.
2 comments:
The song is called "Crossbones", as in "Argh, I'm a pirate!" not "CrossRoads", as in "loser movie starring Britany Spears" Not to mention several of these facts are completely opposite and convoluted from the original submitted story. For example: The band was not named Quadrofiends because they had four members, I'm not sure how this conclusion was drawn, it was named after the Who's Quadrophenia album. Several other facts are wrong here as well and I've tried to get this corrected so I may post the story I originallly submitted here at a later date.
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