Seven Watt Media: SFTB #1 : Skybox and the Secret Past of The Basement

It's only appropriate that I start of my "Sounds from The Basement" series with the band that started it all : Skybox

Originally, The Basement was intended to be a ska/punk specialty show. I grew up in what is lovingly referred to as the "AZ Ska" scene in high school and spent most of my weekends and hostess paychecks on tickets to shows around town. It's actually where the name "The Basement" came from in general, as a tribute to the small stage in the basement of The Nile Theatre in Mesa. I'm sure many people who were around in those days can attest to the fact that despite the fact that the volume of shows increased over the years, not much can compare to nights spent inhaling sweat mixed with cigarette smoke mixed with the smell of Mesa at The Nile. It's when things were truly organic, you found out about shows from people passing out flyers outside and you felt part of a real community.

My very first show was January 22, 2006, shortly after the start of Spring semester of my sophomore year. I slotted a prime-time slot : 8PM-10PM on Sundays. Lots of people home doing homework and directly competing with The Edge 103.9's ska/punk show. I was going to just go off the playlist as planned, but a few weeks prior, I saw that Skybox, a local band that I had worked with on a show the Spring before, was releasing their first full-length CD the Friday after my first show. I really enjoyed them and they got a lot of praise at the show, so I reached out on MySpace (myyyyyyyspaaaaaaace) and asked them to come in and play a few songs and promote since it happened to be the same week. As it were, Skybox had very little to do with ska or punk, but with The Blaze's local show up in question and having done a few misc. in-studios during the Fall, I figured it would be fun.

The morning of the 22nd rolls around and I'm on my way to my horrible retail job, bright and early at 10AM. I have a bad habit of turning off my phone before I go to sleep because my friends have bad habits of texting me at 2AM, so I didn't look at my phone until I stopped at the gas station and saw about 4 missed calls from Tim, the lead singer of Skybox. I check my messages and hear:

"Hey Ashley, it's Tim. So, we're outside The Blaze right now and it's locked. It's about 7:30AM, which I think is when you said to come in but no one's really here, so yeah, call me back."

I quickly called back, freaked out that I had told them 7:30AM, even through I meant 7:30PM. I talk to Tim who realized that their drummer had misread my message (that did say PM) and they had all gotten up, battled their hangovers, and were ready to play at 7:30AM on a Sunday. This still goes down as one of my favorite stories from The Basement. Ever.

Needless to say, they all went home and went back to bed, came back and did an incredible set between my ska/punk music (since I didn't really have a formula at that point) and provided the very first recording of the show that they had up on their MySpace for a while, the songs "Crickets" and "Batman on Crack". "Crickets" is the song featured on Sounds from The Basement and is a fuzzy, organic tune with so much amazing instrumentation, it takes a few listens just to pick up everything that was going on in round-robin they set up in the room.

Ultimately, this performance inspired me to change the format of my show to one hour ska/punk, one hour local music and bring in more guests as the semester progressed. Eventually (as we all do) I grew out of ska/punk music and as I dug deeper into the local scene, I decided to dedicate the entire show to local music and a weekly live performance/interview. Skybox made me realize the kind of resource I had and the good people I could work with and expose some great music.

Skybox has since moved to Chicago (and MO, respectively), gone through a few line-up changes and shifted the direction of the music. They are gearing up to release their next full-length, with the lead track "In a Dream" released for free on their website and is an incredible example of what this band is capable of. They continue to play shows in the Chicago-land area (including recently with Ben Folds) and I am anxious to see what's next.

Check out more at:
www.skyboxmusic.com
www.myspace.com/skybox
www.purevolume.com/theblaze1260am to download "Crickets" for free.

In a Dream