Prologue: A House of Music
We grew up in a house of music, my brother Forrest and I. My mother Mary Gayle and our older sister Jennifer both play piano very well, and often the house was filled with the sounds of beautiful classical music. Yet if my mother and sister made it a house of music, my father Jack made it a house of rock. Dad is perhaps one of the great amateur rock historians in the world today, able not only to tell you who wrote and recorded almost any version of any song between the years of 1960 and 1980, but also play them in two or three different keys on the guitar. If dad's first love is his family, his second is music, and his third is the guitar. I cannot reflect on growing up without my memories turning to music. When I was barely old enough to operate my Fisher Price turntable, I had my own copies of "Beatles For Sale" and "The White Album" stacked atop my Sesame Street LP's, goofy albums filled with catchy kids songs like Cookie Monster's "I Lost My Cookie At The Disco". Admittedly, I must now wonder about the psychological effects on a 5 year old singing along to John Lennon's anguished declaration "I'm a Loser" at the start of "Beatles For Sale" 20 times a day. Where was I? Oh yeah, a house of music...There really was a stereo in almost every room, and I had a junior-sized Fender Stratocaster in my hands long before I had the hand-strength to play a chord. Countless nights we children fell asleep with the rock masterpieces of everyone from The Beatles (Perhaps dad's fourth love) to Ray Charles, to The Police, to The Eagles blearing from the monolithic pair of Klipsch Cornerhorn speakers in the living room below. I thank my parents for exposing me, and immersing me in this environment.
Now it seems I've begun to regurgitate, for lack of a less disgusting word, some of these almost endless influences into the chords and melodies of many of the songs The Spectacles have crafted together. My father also taught both Forrest and I to play guitar, and supported our endeavors into other instruments as well. Some more successful (Forrest and the Saxophone) than others (me and the trumpet). No history of this band could truly be complete without mention and praise of my greatest musical influence, my father. Through his love of music, I gained mine. Music is a liberating act of pure creativity that has the power to take us back to the places and times we might otherwise forget. Through melodies and lyrics, basslines and drum beats, guitar solos and vocal harmonies, music forges a direct connection to our emotions. The greatest and most powerful emotion of all is love, and this is what most of our music is about.

A Chemistry Experiment
I'm Kent, but you can call me Blen. We are The Spectacles, this is our story. The year was the 90's. I was living in the dorms of UNI studying graphic design with an emphasis on Nintendo. My jazz band days of high school seemingly long since past, I had committed myself (at least half-assedly, if that's even a word) to my studies. I didn't even take a guitar to school with me. My freshman year I was randomly assigned a dorm room opposite one mister Adam Thomas Gill. As I returned to my room from class one day, I heard the unmistakable sound of someone practicing bass in the room across from mine. But this was not the sound of any ordinary practice, and although Adam's modestly will perhaps end in the editing of the coming words, it must be said that, at least in my amateur opinion, this was the sound of a straight-up bass-master honing his chops to a level of seeming perfection I didn't think was attainable for someone, well.... in the room across from mine. Could someone my age, on my floor, actually have command of an instrument like this? Why wasn't this guy in some studio recording instead of living in the dorms? I had to meet this man, if only to see for myself who it was that could play Jaco riffs and Geddy Lee baselines with such seemingly uncanny ease (though I'd later learn that it was only with hours of practice of course). I wouldn't have to wait long. In the coming days we'd speak casually as we met in the hall in front of our rooms. I'd learn that Adam was a fellow art student, and soon we were sitting together in the art history class we shared, and hanging out in my dorm room. Always playing video games, but usually talking music. Soon I realized I needed to bring a guitar back up to UNI. A couple weeks later I did.
As the months went on, our friendship grew and we began playing together more and more. Eventually we began changing our focus from working out the songs we loved (Mainly Beatles and Police tunes) to collaborating on purely original joint compositions. Our first songs were written for a theme album we tentatively called "The Braino Album"--though at the time I had planned on calling it "Wood and Wire," named after the two primary materials of guitars and basses. Eventually we would record this album together in my rundown Gold Falls apartment a year or two later. The recordings of these songs are... strange to say the least. With no drummer, I fulfilled the drum duties using a fifty dollar drum set I bought at a local pawn shop. It had a bass drum, snare, one tom, and one cymbal. It sounded like shit. I am not a very good drummer, and this is obvious on the Braino album. I also have no skill at playing lead guitar. Therefore, the songs on this "album" are almost all less than 3 minutes because there are no solos. Finally, I am no recording engineer either, and the quality of sound I attained using my dad's analog 4 track is laughable. Perhaps sometime we'll put this album up on the web page, if only as a curiosity akin to Edison's phonograph recording of Mary Had a Little Lamb. Interestingly a few of those songs from "The Braino Album" lived on to be reworked as Spectacles tunes. "Laugh At Me" is probably the most noteworthy.
After we completed our weird little album, Adam and I parted ways. Though we had talked of starting a band on a thousand occasions, even auditioning a drummer once, we never did. Adam eventually moved back to Cedar Rapids and landed a great bass job with Greener, one of Cedar Rapids best and most respected bands at the time. I continued to write songs in my various apartments in Cedar Falls, with no plans to ever try and do anything with them. They were private songs, usually personal meditations or reflections on my life. Sometimes they were story songs written from the fictitious perspectives of the characters or situations I'd invented, and sometimes they were little more than exercises in chord theory. As the months went on I began to have quite a few of these songs piling up. When Adam came to visit me one weekend and we jammed on some of the tunes, the talk again began of starting a band. We agreed to try it, but there were two missing pieces, a drummer and a lead guitarist.

A Little Help From His Friends
Even in the dorms Adam had often spoken of a great drummer he knew back in Cedar Rapids that he thought would be the perfect addition to our hypothetical band. Cory Maddy was an old friend from Adam's high school days, who apparantly cut his chops on Bonham but had the versatility and creativity to craft a style all his own. He had influences all over the place, from classic rock like Led Zeppelin and The Beatles to modern rock like Weezer and The Strokes and everything in between. He was a musician's drummer who didn't play beats but rather wrote parts. Though Cory played a relatively small kit, in terms of actual number of drums, the gargantuan toms that comprised his set were the biggest I'd ever seen in my then 25 years on the planet earth! He played them with a such thunderous energy that he was soon given the nick name "Madd Dog."
Cory was already in another band as well, sharing lead vocal duties with his beautiful fiance Paula in the band Slacker. Although Cory loved singing in Slacker he seemed to have a need to drum and Slacker already had a drummer. Cory, like Adam, agreed to give the experiment a shot and was willing to juggle two bands should anything come of it. Also, luckily for us, Cory and Paula were buying a new house together, and they were already planning on having a practice room in the basement. Now this room could serve two bands and we would have a place to practice. This lack of practice space was one of the technical hurdles that had prevented us from starting the band before. I agreed that it sounded perfect, but before we could unchain the mad dog, we needed our lead guitarist.

Oh Brother Where Art Thou?
I knew we had to have a lead guitarist to play the kind of music I was writing. My influences, though varied, mainly fell into the broad category of guitar rock, and I couldn't imagine these songs without solos, or, worse yet, playing the solos myself! My only recorded solo on The Braino Album was described by Adam as sounding like Marty McFly in "Back to the Future," referring to the scene where he's playing guitar at the school dance and his hand keeps dissappearing! I don't even dispute that either... I knew of one person who I thought would be perfect for the task, but he lived two hours away. Despite that fact he was and is very close to me.
My brother Forrest was always super-musical. He could sing well, and played both guitar and piano at a young age. He was a great bass player, and he was a saxophone phenomenon. In high school he focused mainly on his sax, but he had casually played guitar all his life. Although he seldom practiced guitar as many hours as I did he was and is far better technically than I. On any instrument, it seems he is a natural. From just our occasional strumming sessions with my dad, I knew Forrest, or Loo as I call him, was a great lead player. I also knew that Loo would be able to sing harmonies with me. Even more fortunate for the band was Loo's interest in the technical aspects of music. His love of experimenting with guitar tones and his desire to master home studio recording meant that all the pieces were in place. Loo agreed to join, willing to make the commitment despite the long drives he would have for practice and for most of our gigs. The band was ready, and a dream that started in 1998 would finally become a reality in December of 2002! Now we just needed a name....

What's in a Name?
The members of our band had two things in common from the start. Everyone loved classic rock n' roll music, and everyone wore prescription eyeglasses. Now I know that judging the merit of our hypothetical names, of any band's name, is a fairly abstract goal. That said we knew our name needed to be catchy, and hopefully have some meaning for us. I don't remember who suggested the name "The Spectacles", but I remember thinking I loved it, right from the start! It seemed to say a lot. The "The" at the start of it, conjured the names of many of rocks greatest bands like The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Guess Who, The Beatles, etc... And the word Spectacles had a double meaning, suggesting both an entertaining event, and making a clever reference to our coincidental sight gag, the fact that we all wore retro looking black spectacles. It was agreed upon, and the truly final piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
That's the story folks, or at least the first part of it. Thanks for reading along, and be sure to check out the schedule for upcoming gigs! We hope to see you soon,
Blen