Suburban Dammit

Barely making it out of our troubled secondary school years, Aaron went off to art school and I continued a somewhat 'mainstream' education.

And we were still looking for a guitarist.

Aaron really excelled in his sphere. During his fine arts days, he represented his school at international events in Tokyo and Prague, fully sponsored.

We didn't have to go that far to find our guitarist. Justin was Aaron's classmate during their foundation year and when they got to talking, discovered that Justin could play the guitar.

Justin was short, but very proportionate in size. His tastes in music and heckcare attitude seemed to align with ours. His head of scruffy hair and wardrobe of slogan-ed T-shirts made him look like he could front us. But could he play?

We booked a session at the legendary TNT Music Studio. TNT was run by Ah Boy, and every old-timer/that-timer will know him. Ah Boy used to be a guitarist himself, playing in one of the early bands of that time. I think his band was called Transformer or something like that. Over the years playing there, we became good friends and often came in early or hung around after jamming to trade gossip and listen to his stories.

TNT was tucked away at the corner on the 4th floor of Parklane then. Gig posters, even some very oldschool ones - black and white but yellowed now - were pasted all over the plastic see-through exterior of the studio. Remember the bands like Four Sides and Stompin' Ground? Yeah, those were on the posters.

Ah Boy's studio, unlike Ah Boon's, was a real recording studio. He had professional gear in there to record music and in those days, he must have had the lion's share of the demo/album recording work from aspiring bands. Maybe he still has the lion's share.

Ah Boy himself was the sound guy who recorded and mixed the tracks and we must have spent countless evenings there arguing with him on the kind of sound we wanted and frustrated him continually with our weird ideas.

During the recording for Let's Cross, Ah Boy gave up when we wanted the L/R sound balance to shift quickly back and forth as the guitar riff played, in effect repeatedly making the tune come on in your left earphone only then right earphone and back again. Ah Boy got off his seat at the patchbay, scratched his hair hard in frustration, pointed at the vacant chair and told us to "do it yourself".

Anyway, our first session with Justin was good. He wasn't shy, which was important, and we seemed to be able to play the tunes together. Of course we weren't tight off the bat, it was our first session. We agreed that Justin was ok and onboard he came.

Justin.

Bit by bit we got tighter together and started writing new songs for our new band. One afternoon in the studio, we decided that we needed to confirm a name now - we have been invited to perform at the Substation! We have been thinking of names ever since Justin joined us and we never really agreed. We must have been setting up in the studio and itching to get on with the jamming when this question came up.

We stopped what we were doing to continue the great name debate right there. We were wasting time standing around with silent instruments. The clock was ticking our dollars down the drain. Finally Justin said "Ok, ok, how about Yank My Crank?"

"Ok, whatever."

"Yeah, yeah, ok, ok. Can we start tuning up?"

And we became Yank My Crank. We performed our first early few gigs with this name and Justin even wrote a song titled 'Yank My Crank' as a signature, the song we always started our sets with. We started getting playful slags from friends, fans and fiends.

"Hey guys, crack my butt."

"Nice set...Yank my dong."

"Heyyy! Here's the boys from Stuff my crank."

"Suck my dick."

Well that was enough for us. Some people liked our sound and energy but we were remembered more as the comedians of the line-up by virtue of our name. Now that's gotta change.

As one BigO journalist correctly noted, we weren't too great at coming up with titles and names. So, one evening after jamming, we somehow ended up near Wisma Atria. We sat behind Orchard MRT station, at the garden now known as ION with a complicated puzzle in our heads - what do we call ourselves?

Justin must have been mesmerized by Screeching Weasel's 'Hey Surburbia' when he said: "I don't care what the name is but it must have 'Suburban' in it."

And Aaron countered with "anything as long as it ends with 'Dammit'."

Anymore words I added would have made the whole damn thing a sentence.

Suburban Dammit.