{"id":47104,"date":"2022-08-16T14:46:02","date_gmt":"2022-08-16T14:46:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/we-didnt-even-know-they-were-there-the-little-known-bands-finding-fans-years-later-music\/"},"modified":"2022-08-16T14:46:02","modified_gmt":"2022-08-16T14:46:02","slug":"we-didnt-even-know-they-were-there-the-little-known-bands-finding-fans-years-later-music","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/harchi90.com\/we-didnt-even-know-they-were-there-the-little-known-bands-finding-fans-years-later-music\/","title":{"rendered":"‘We didn’t even know they were there’: the little-known bands finding fans years later | music"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I<\/span><\/span>n December 2021, a band called Panchiko played a gig. Hundreds of fans were there, at Metronome in Nottingham, England, singing along to their songs. All of this might seem like a standard routine for bands, but for the three members of Panchiko, it was a marvel. \u201cHaving a show where people have paid their money and they really want to see us is really nice,\u201d says Owain Davies, 40, who plays guitar in the band.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\u201cPeople knew the words to the songs, which is crazy,\u201d says Andrew Wright, 40, who also plays guitar.<\/p>\n

Davies remarked on the joy of making eye contact with people at a gig like that. \u201cWhen you play to nobody\u201d \u2013 which they had done \u2013 \u201cif you make eye contact with someone in the bar, they might not want to meet your gaze,\u201d he says with a laugh.<\/p>\n

The last time Panchiko played a show was 20 years prior, in 2001, at a festival in a tiny town called Sutton-in-Ashfield, and there wasn’t much meaningful eye contact. Wright said they played \u201cto people milling about, buying a hotdog and staring at you weirdly\u201d.<\/p>\n

Panchiko disbanded not long after the 2001 show. The band members spoke occasionally but didn’t see each other often \u2013 mostly at friends’ weddings \u2013 until an internet mystery unexpectedly brought them back together in 2021. \u201cIt felt quite unbelievable then,\u201d says Wright. \u201cAnd I think the following has kind of grown exponentially even since then, and it feels even more unbelievable now, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/svg><\/span>Panchiko play Metronome in Nottingham, England in December 2021.<\/span> Photograph: Tom Platinum Morley\/Courtesy of Panchiko<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In 2016, someone found Panchiko’s 2000 CD, titled D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, at a thrift store in the UK, but was unable to track down any information about them online. They posted to 4chan asking for help. From there, the songs and the search for their provenance spread online, \u201con Reddit forums, Discord channels, private chats and YouTube\u201d, according to a Vice article on the global effort to find Panchiko. It took four years before Davies, Wright and Shaun Ferreday, 40, who plays bass in the band, finally learned a dedicated group of internet sleuths were desperately searching for them.<\/p>\n

Shocked that they suddenly had fans wanting to hear their old band, the members of Panchiko gradually began to put more songs on Bandcamp, then Spotify, and then later on cassettes, vinyl and, of course, CDs. They started with D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L and then began adding more. Davies had been keeping much of their music on CDs and minidiscs carefully tucked away in wallets for years (despite no longer owning a CD player), but there were some songs they had recorded that none of the band members even had anymore \u2013 they had to ask around to see if any friends had them. \u201cWe had all this stuff and then there was an audience,\u201d Davies says. \u201cAnd then we weren’t having to make the stuff, we were just sort of finding things and presenting it to them: ‘Here you go, here’s something we did 20 years ago.’\u201d<\/p>\n

D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L, despite its name, is not death metal. The Panchiko song that inspired the album title was written in the late 90s, when nu-metal was enjoying mainstream success. The song, which opens the album, is gorgeously mellow with clear trip-hop influences. Warped strings glide by easily, punctuated by chopped-up spoken word samples, a looped melody played by keyboard chimes and electronic beeps. It’s gently moody with earnest vocals, conjuring a calmer version of Broadcast or Tricky. They hoped the mismatched title would be clever. \u201cIt seemed a good idea at the time to give it a title that would be the complete opposite of what was going to come out of the speakers,\u201d says Davies.<\/p>\n

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<\/svg><\/span>Panchiko in their early days.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Panchiko.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Some of the earliest versions of Panchiko songs floating around the internet were ripped from the thrift store CD, which had begun to rot. Fans liked the added sound of the distortion. Panchiko have now included those versions on re-releases of the music, under titles like D>E>A>T>H>M>E>T>A>L_R>O>T.<\/p>\n

Now they’re working on recording a new album and preparing for a US tour beginning in October, which is already partially sold out.<\/p>\n

A few years before Panchiko recorded their first music, a band called Visual Purple was also going through a similar process in Canton, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. Like Panchiko, Visual Purple broke up not long after recording their album, and now have also found a new following decades later. One key difference: the three members of Visual Purple were only 11 years old.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just did it because it was fun,\u201d says Kevin McGorey, now 37, the lead singer and guitarist for Visual Purple. \u201cIt was just kind of innocent. There was no self-consciousness to it at all.\u201d At the time, he was n’t thinking that in 26 years, his tapes would be selling out in multiple rounds of releases on Bandcamp. K Records, the label founded by Beat Happening frontman Calvin Johnson, and whose logo was tattooed on Kurt Cobain’s arm, also distributed copies of the album, which immediately sold out.<\/p>\n

K Records posted on Instagram about the album, \u201cand people were kind of freaking out\u201d, says Shelley Salant, a musician who runs a record label called Ginkgo Records, which released the Visual Purple tape in March of this year. \u201cYou know, I see why people are freaking out. It’s really good. And it’s kind of amazing that it was made by an 11-year-old.\u201d<\/p>\n

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<\/svg><\/span>Visual Purple in 1996.<\/span> Photograph: Courtesy of Kevin McGorey<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

By the time they recorded their self-titled album, McGorey had already been playing guitar for two years. In third or fourth grade, he brought a guitar to school to play Lola for his class (\u201cI was really into the Kinks,\u201d McGorey says). His dad, Chris McGorey, said his teacher enjoyed it so much, he brought McGorey to the teachers ‘lounge to do an encore for the faculty.<\/p>\n

Visual Purple was McGorey’s first band, with his friends Paul Rambo on bass and Matt Carlson on drums, and their biggest gigs were at the sixth-grade talent show and their Dare graduation ceremony (a photo of the Dare show serves as the cover image for the album), where they played nearly all original songs except for Pink Floyd’s Another Brick in the Wall (which one teacher tried to cut off, due to the anti-education lyrics, McGorey’s dad says).<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought they were very original,\u201d says Chris McGorey, a musician himself. Chris McGorey, who describes himself as \u201cthe George Martin for Visual Purple\u201d, recorded the trio in 1996 with \u201cone decent mic\u201d and the four-track tape recorder he had previously used for his own projects. \u201cI was extremely impressed that they were writing all their own material,\u201d he says. \u201cIt was a raucous, joyful sound. Kevin was belting out vocals with no filter, straight from the pre-adolescent heart!\u201d<\/p>\n