A scene from a wonderfully misspent youth

That’s George Scriban on bass, and Yours Truly doing the vocals.

Before I was an accordion player, I was a synth player. During my colorful academic career at Crazy Go Nuts University, I played keyboards in an grunge-y alt-rock band named Volume from 1992 through 1994, where I fit myself into the sound in the same way Roddy Bottum fit his into Faith No More. The rest of the band were:

• Andrew Pirie: Drums
• Chris Walmsley: Guitar
• George Scriban: Bass
• Mike List: Vocals

In order to give Mike’s vocals a break, I’d get to take over vocals for one number: a medley of Right Said Fred’s I’m Too Sexy and the Public Enemy/Anthrax version of Bring the Noise. That’s right, we were taking two radically different songs and mashing them together years before Norman Cook even came up with the alternate identity of “Fatboy Slim”.

The photo above was taken by Chris Phillips, who took the photo at a house party gig held somewhere in the “student ghetto”. That’s Yours Truly up front, and George on bass, and wow, are we looking as early ’90s as all get-out.