Pinch Point - 4-20-94

Here's a virtual stroll down memory lane from the members of Pinch Point...

Jim McNamee: This is what I remember. I was a freshman. I think it was in the beginning of the second semester, 1993. I'd been a DJ at WVFI (can't tell you how excited I was when I saw WVFI in the list of activities I could do after I first arrived at school). We were coming out of one of the meetings in LaFortune and Jason (the advertising guy) approached me and asked if I'd like to be in a band. Huh? I don’t remember how much we might have interacted before this.

Kelly Daugerdas: Just to set the record straight I was the Advertising and Promotions Director at WVFI. I think Jason was the Station Manager.

Jason Lyons: I was Program Manager at WVFI. Basically meant hiring DJs and putting together the schedule. Nothing glamorous like Music Director or Station Manager, jobs that required actual talent.

JM: Anyway, from what I knew he and Kelly (both seniors) needed a singer for their post-Bother band. We also needed a drummer, which is where Bob “Sticks” Hoffman came in. I think that Doug McRock [-Eachern] had passed his name along after they met trying out for the marching band.

Bob Hoffman: What is it with nicknames for drummers? Doug and I met freshman year and happened to be from around the same part of PA. I was (and am) really thankful to him for bringing my name up to the Pinch Point crew. I actually had a tryout, in which I vaguely remember getting grilled about my musical influences. We then ran through these very intense songs that Jason and Kelly had started putting together, and it became obvious that my job was to play the drums (every one of them) as fast and loud as I could – again, Doug was very cool about this, since I used his drums.

JM: I’m not sure that we had the name right away, but Jason had it in his mind from a warning sticker he saw on construction equipment: Caution: Pinch Point (somewhere you don’t want to press your boob or dick on I guess).

JL: The name Pinch Point did in fact come from a steamroller we used for paving on my summer job. How ironic, I thought – the whole friggin machine is one big pinch point, but it's this one little bit where you engage a lever where you might lose your junk.

JM: Jason would pick us up for band practice from the main circle in his minivan. I can’t remember where we’d practice. Did Jason live in the house with Joe C and Doug M? Either way, I think the songs were already written.

KD: Yes, we practiced at Joe, Doug, and Jason's house.

JM: We didn’t get to play many shows since we were only around for a semester, but all of them were a blast. Dalloway’s, the basement show with emiLy, Crain, and Unwound, Stonehenge, and that year’s Nazz. I’m fairly certain the Nazz day was one of our broken up days. But we pulled it together and shook some bolts in Stepan Center.

BH: There was a review of that Nazz show in the Observer that said something about us blowing over many a small farm animal… something like that. I have the clipping somewhere in my attic. I guess that’s a good thing.

KD: Don't forget - we had the pleasure of playing on the quads too. We put together the tape in Jason's living room I believe. He mixed it himself and I think Jim did the artwork, no?

JL: I recorded the Dalloway’s tape on my 4-track and mixed it down to cassette, and I forget who worked with me on the tape case – I think Jim and I scanned some photos and did the layout. Kelly and I got the tapes duped. I still have a few of them.

JM: I just want to point out that it was during the making of our cassette that Jason introduced me my first web browser (Mosaic). He worked in the computer lab and had put a picture up on a website and showed it to me on another computer. At the time it seemed pretty amazing. It wasn’t porn.

JL: Listening to the tape again after all these years I realize that it was less about song structure and more about pure sonic assault and occasional dynamic shifts. And it doesn't sound quite as clever now as I swore it was back then. It does still rock me though.

BH: I forgot about the song titles: Dead Fish, Amputee, etc -- kind of a dark (comedic) theme, Jim! Laundromat is the song I was thinking of in my comment about the lyrics -- I didn't get the line exactly right, but pretty close. I had also forgotten Kelly's spoken word role -- sounds like she's struggling not to laugh. Fourteen and a half years ago -- ouch. I still mess around with some of those old beats, usually losing my voice humming Jason's and Kelly's parts. If we only all had chops like that today...

JL: It's funny, I still have all my rock gear (Telecaster, Marshall, pedals, 4-track, mics and stands), even though the closest I get to rocking these days is "Elmo Live". It's all relegated to a tiny corner of the basement, surrounded by craptons of multi-colored Fisher-Price. My 3-year-old daughter calls it the "scary guitar." "Too noisy, daddy, too noisy!" She much prefers the acoustic. Kid, if it's too loud then you're too, um, whatever. My 18-month-old just shakes her ass and screams "Wow! Wow!"

JL: What really blows my mind is how long ago it all was, and that we were only around for a semester. We did manage to squeeze a ton of drama into a fairly short period (and by "we" I mean "I"). I think that Kelly's and my 15-year reunions are next summer. I wonder if Dalloway's is still there. Reunion show?

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