I got a little upset the other day. I was surfing the net and I found a band called Twelfth of Never. I think it's a death rocker band. I always wondered if our name sounded more metal than our music. Such a great name. We've had it for years. It's very frustrating to me.
In 1996 I was walking up the stairs at Chris Wilson's parents' house. We had considered a bunch of different names for our band--the Incredible Shriking Head wasn't doing it for us. Chris asked me, "When are we going to be good?" Out of frustration I answered "The twelfth...of NEVER!" The perfect name was created.
Anyhoo, we had the name back in '95. I'm sure there was probably someone who had it before then, but at least we had it in '96.
The twelfth of never got going when I played on a baseball team with Chris. Chris was the only kid in the league that held his baseball pants up with a weaved leather belt. He was taking guitar lesson and thought about Nirvana every waking second of the day. Since I had been playing in a band called Pet Virus, that was famous for its covers of Nirvana's "Polly" and "Today" by Smashing Pumpkins at junior high band concerts, Chris was very interested in getting together. There was another kid on the team, Nick Hansen, that had a drumset. Our Nirvana cover band was officially formed. top
Chris played the guitar, I played bass, Nick played drums and we played a lot of Nirvana. Nick left his drumset at Chris's during the week and within a few weeks Chris was better at the drums than Nick. From that point Nick got tossed out of the band and there were about a million different people that played with Chris and me.
Rhett, bass player extraordinaire, joined the band in the fall of '95, making the the twelfth of never lineup solid and potent. It was this configuration that created nearly all of the material written for the band's first album, Grkn, which was recorded in '96.
A little bit before the album happened, Dave Updike joined the band as the second guitarist. When Rhett was forced to move to California, Dave filled in as the makeshift bass player. All of the plans were set for Rhett to fly back in for our recording sessions, but ended up not making it. Chris played all of the bass parts on the record.
The band stayed strong through '97. Dave's energy for the band fizzled away as he suffered from high school senoritis. Chris and I spent the summer of '97 playing 2-man shows, just guitar and drums after we became acquainted with the punk rock world.
Seeing SLC Punx like Homesick and Hospital Food made the D-I-Y ethics become reality for us. We finally had a different rock and roll model than that the one Kurt Cobain had created for us. And that's when the music started to change...
left foot forward
...I fell in love with ska the first time I saw a Stretsch Armstronng show. Everything changed for me. I went to a Ska Patrick's day show with Skankin' Pickle, the Aquabats, Dance Hall Crashers, and Stretsch. I was amazed by how much fun the bands were having. The crowd was dancing, everyone seemed to really be enjoying themselves.
Chris hated ska. He hated everything about it. However, once we saw kids our age playing punk and ska it changed how he felt about it. I was really anxious to give it a shot. With Rhett gone, and Dave gone off to college, we decided that we needed a bass player.
Ryan Courtright, bass man, fix-it guy, tuba player, entered the mix. The Ryan Courtright period was the start of a new era. We started playing ska/punk which led to us trying out our hand at real ska. We put together a rudimentary horn section.
We couldn't be the twelfth of never anymore. It wasn't the same music or the same deal at all. We weren't playing Tonight We Die at shows, so it was time for a new name. We were also the ORIGINAL Left foot Forward. Born in 1998.
It was about ten times harder to work with a band double the size of the original group, but the music created a very positive energy. We were a part of the ska scene during the six months when ska ruled the world. It was great.
Everything goes away. Before I moved to college we recorded the Thug Life EP with half-hearted goals of sending it out to record labels. We should have recorded all of our material while we were in the studio, just so we could have had it. Left foot Forward faded away.
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