Yellow 5 “Botany” (1994)

I was 16 years old when I moved to Carrollton, GA. Shortly after my Junior year started, I met a drummer named Aaron Ford. Like most high school bands, Aaron and I started playing music together in his parents’ basement. His buddy Jason (Panko) would come over and join in on guitar. We were starting to write songs and knew we just needed a bass player to complete our band. We did what any normal band would do and hung up a flier at the local music store stating specifically “No Spandex Please”. Steve Abercrombie was the first person to call us and was an instant fit. We became Yellow 5. Little did I know, I would continue to play music with these guys my entire life.

After we had written a slew of songs, we got a pretty steady gig at Corner Cafe. These shows turned into tiny little carnivals that attracted the high school misfit-emo crew. The band was weird enough that the college kids that worked there didn’t hate us. Each show was unique as we actively rebelled against any norm. It’s funny to listen back on it now. You can hear how we were already being influenced by improvisational music even though we had no idea what we were doing at the time. I look back on it fondly.

We would set up a cassette tape recorder and a Radio Shack microphone in the back of the room. We released the tape “Botany” and sold it to our classmates at school. I found a copy and ported it over to mp3. Hopefully, it will bring back some good memories for the people who were there. It sounds pretty bad but I ran it through an EQ to clean it up the best I could. It’s one long track so I listed the song list with track times below in case you wanted to skip to certain tracks. Maybe I’ll come back and split it up later. Holler at me if you have any more recordings from this era. I lost most of them in a house fire.

• Matthew Williams – Guitar/Vocals
• Aaron Ford – Drums/Vocals
• Steve Abercrombie – Bass/Vocals
• Jason “McPanko” Wilson – Guitar