regarding Science Club.

I am in a band called Science Club. We recorded a demo last week, and you can download it here.

The group is the mightiest of power trios, consisting of myself on drums, Left of the Dial scribe Nate Adams on guitar/vox, and Nick Elmer of Nickmongo fame on bass/vox. Sometimes I scream stuff like "Hail Satan!" in the background. Our influences include ice cream, Midwestern punk bands, Star Trek, MxPx, The Mountain Goats, Ted Leo, and the stupid shit our friends do. Half of our current song catalog consists of Mountain Goats covers, one of which, "The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton," is included the download above.

Of the originals, "Song in the Sea" is my favorite to play. It's peppy and it's about Ecco the Dolphin for the Sega Genesis. That game features the second most disturbing drowning music, next to Sonic the Hedgehog 2, also for the Genesis. "1897" is fun to play too, even though it's about Jack the Ripper. I feel slightly hypocritical playing that one, since I used to rip on The Misfits and Saves the Day for writing songs about the degradation of women, but my girlfriend is a member of RAINN and she says it's OK.

A few notes of apology: 1) The demo is pretty sloppy. We've slowly but surely been turning "Funky C," our punkiest tune, into a song that does not fall apart in the middle. It's almost there. 2) Some of the lyrics for the songs aren't finished yet. For example, Nate didn't mean it when he sang "Tell me something that you wanna believe / And I can you show all the biggest butts that you've ever seen" on "Doowop Breakdown." That's just a joke between friends. 3) What you're getting here are six first takes recorded on a single microphone without any editing, which is why "Funky C" is 90 seconds of song and 99 seconds of us discussing Star Trek: The Next Generation. That said, I think the levels are good enough to function as reference tracks for us and sneak peaks for all of you hypothetical people out there. Anyway, shit's free.

QUESTION: Should we change the title of "1897" to "1888?"