Uh, We're Liquid Diet, and This Song's Called "Chili Meat"

15 years ago today I stepped onto a makeshift stage at an indoor skate park on the east side of Indianapolis wielding an off-brand, buddy version of a Fender Precision Bass. I wore an old Wendy's uniform shirt on which I had written the name of my band: Liquid Diet. We were playing our first show. Joining me were Brian Fuzzell (drums) and Tim Gober (guitar).

We opened with "Summer Days," a song about the travails of summer jobs, SAT-taking, and seasonal boredom. It was followed by five equally wretched songs: "Dead Frog" (about being a misunderstood teen surrounded by mindless peers), "Chili Meat" (about the horrors of working at Wendy's), "Lost" (about isolation and hopelessness in suburbia), "Implode!" (about not much of anything), and "F Plus" (about our junior-year trigonometry class).

Liquid Diet made its debut in front of a few dozen spectators that Sunday night at the TA Skate Shop. We were the second of four acts: Siphon—also playing its first gig (aside from a battle of the bands competition a few months earlier)—started things off; Beneath the Wheel played third, and Blinky's Evil Twin headlined. Beneath the Wheel dissolved shortly thereafter. Blinky eventually become Biscuit Head and had a nice stay in the Indianapolis punk scene. We didn't think much of Siphon after their July 10, 1994 set, and they didn't think much us. But the members of Liquid Diet and Siphon ran into one another several times during the next few months, and the two bands ended up sharing the bill on three shows in December 1994 and January 1995. By that time, Liquid Diet had become Drywall, and Drywall and Siphon—Andy Cook, Chris Elmore, Eric Dedert, Matt Wittlief, Phil Wittlief, and Jeff Lucas—had become close friends and each other's biggest fans. Along with The Lids, Siphon and Drywall (LSD) would form Homeskillet Records, easily Indiana's best fake record label in the late 1990s.

Pictured: a flier from the show. (We made the flier before we knew that Siphon and Beneath the Wheel would be on the bill.)

You can download four songs from our July 10, 1994 set list (later recorded for our 1995 No Mustard and Feege Against the Machine cassettes), though I would advise against it:

• F Plus


• Chili Meat


• Dead Frog


• Lost

And here are some songs that Siphon played on July 10, 1994 and later recorded for their 1995 Can I Finish? record. (I hope they'll forgive me for posting them without permission. Also, by the time these songs were recorded, Adam Brenner had replaced Jeff Lucas.)

• Me Infect


• Out of the Blue


• Cardboard

One more thing: Liquid Diet drummer Brian Fuzzell's current band, The Nobility will be playing at The End in Nashville one week from today.