About

The band was born on a cold night back in December of 2010. Jordy, Melissa, and River were huddled together in an unheated basement with nothing more than a cheap bottle of bourbon and a box containing three keytars. Forced to drink to stay warm and play music to keep their fingers from stiffening into lifeless, pink icicles, the trio drunkenly played “Margaritaville” until 4 in the morning.

After waking up to realize that the room was actually heated, the radiator was just obscured by the keytar box, the three locked eyes and knew what had to be done. A coy smile came over River’s face as he knowingly nodded and said, “let’s grab breakfast at McDonald’s before they stop serving Egg McMuffins.” Later that day they decided to form a band.

The early recording sessions transformed the group from a couple of loner misfits into an unstoppable three-headed musical juggernaut. However, the music was still awful. After months of failed writing sessions, the band finally produced its first original single entitled “Love Me Do.”

Unfortunately, careful research subsequently revealed that there was already a song with the same name, as well as the same melody and lyrics. Put off by the stunning coincidence, the band went on a brief hiatus.

Two weeks later, rested and ready to buckle down, the trio worked around the clock to produce its first full album, an ambitious concept piece called, “Hey, Hey, Let’s Play in the USA!” A moderate success, the album sold over 73 copies worldwide, largely to the Clegg, Chiasson, and Greenblatt families.

Realizing that they had completely forgotten to come up with a name for the band, they were forced to pretend that it was a self-titled album and that they had been called “Hey, Hey, Let’s Play in the USA!” all along. Encouraged by the success of their dramatic debut, the three put to writing a new album based on the reggae music of their childhoods.

While, “Back to Kingston Town” didn’t share the commercial success of the “Hey, Hey,” it did allow the group a chance to flex its creative muscle. Still unsatisfied, however, the band sought a number one single, ditching the concept album idea altogether and instead working and a shamelessly poppy collection called “Time for Smiles (It’s Smiling Time).”

Sadly, despite the $800,000 invested in the project, it sold fewer than 10 copies. Even Melissa refused to buy one, calling it, “the crap-ster piece.” Deeply dispirited by the failure of their third album, the group parted ways. Melissa was kicked out of her apartment and began to hit the bottle hard. Jordy found work as an understudy for a clown at a small Schenectady based circus called “Crazy Chris and His Schenectady Sillies.” Meanwhile, River was forced to turn tricks at a Brooklyn street corner just to make ends meet.

By all accounts this was an all-time low point for the three young artists.

One year after that fateful December night, Melissa, Jordy, and River, humbled by their humiliations and diminished social standing, gathered at a Soho Coffeehouse. As they reminisced about old times, Jordy remembered that they had all worked together on the Yale Record humor magazine in college so they gave up on their musical dreams and started a humor blog.

-Jordy Greenblatt, Melissa Chiasson, and River Clegg