History of Strange As Angels

I was the singer for a rock band called Strange As Angels back when I was still in High School. People said we sounded like a combination of Black Sabbath and Rush. Unfortunately I was the guy who sounded like Ozzy. We were together for about a year and a half, until I left for college. They succeeded in finding a replacement, but who cares about that :-)

We played most of the big local rock clubs in Ft. Lauderdale, and even recorded a 4 song demo in the studio. Our 'single' (if you can call it that) Screw Top Soul even received some radio airplay on the 'local band' show, on WSHE 103.5, Ft. Lauderdale.

But there was life before Strange As Angels, and it was a nightmare. Literally :-). While I was a freshman/sophomore in high school, a couple of friends of mine formed a garage/cover band called Nightmare. We mostly screwed around in the guitarist's apartment, playing Dokken covers of all things. To be completely honest, we were pretty bad, which is probably why we never really got anywhere. Yes, there are some 'boombox' recordings of Nightmare, live, but trust me, you don't want to hear em.

Nightmare was (starting clockwise from the upper left):
Pete Frazzano, Rhythm Guitar
Wyatt Grant, Bass Guitar
James Semel, Lead Guitar
Elyse Rich, Drums (who says women can't play drums!)
Me, Vocals, what else

Picture taken in 1988.
Back to Strange As Angels. Well, things were pretty slow musically for a year or so, until one day during my junior year, my former Biology teacher, one Mr. Herb Slusher, approached me with an offer. His son was in a band and they were in need of a singer. Well, ok, I went down and hooked up with the band, auditioned, and didn't get the gig. Oh well. All was not lost.

Later that summer, Jeremy (the bassist), gave me a call. He knew I had a four track recorder, and was wondering if I'm mind engineering a song for them. I had nothing better to do, and figured it would be fun, so I said "Sure!". We met at the drummer's house (Dan) and after a few hours, got a pretty damn good version of the original tune Screw Top Soul. Unfortunately, they still had no one to sing it. Jeremy suggested I give it a shot, and I did. And, amazingly it sounded good. I was in!

Most of the summer was spent brushing up on tunes, writing some new ones, and trying to get enough songs to play out. I didn't have a hand in writing most of the music. At first, the lyrics were songs they already had, although I got to edit them to make more sense (some of them were BAD). Eventually, however, I wound up writing most of the lyrics (well most of the good ones :-)

Well finally, sometime in late October of 1990, we were ready to play out! Our first gig was at this club called Knobby's (now defunct, although I assure you this wasn't a cause/effect relationship! This is a picture of the band in front of Knobby's. From left to right: Kyle, Me, Jeremy, Dan). The audience consisted of most of our friends, our parents, and even one of my teachers came. It was hell of a lot of fun! We played for like 45 minutes, and for the most part, had a good show!

Well, apparently Knobby's liked us enough to ask us back, and we wound up playing there quite a bit. Here is one of our flyers for a December show we played there. Eventually we got bigger and managed to play some of the other big clubs in the area: Rosebuds, the Plus Two, Weekends, and even Summers on the Beach, one of the biggest clubs in South Florida (the other, the Button South, was played by the band in the fall of '91 after I left for college )-:

Early in 1991, we got a bit more ambitious, and decided to make tshirts and put together a studio demo. Amazingly enough we got a really cheap deal, like 400 bucks for everything, including tape duplication! Our demo contained studio quality versions of four songs: Screw Top Soul, Slipping Back, Origins, and The Long Walk, which was based on the Stephen King short story of the same name. We then proceeded to give them out to friends and sell them around when we could (hey it was only 4 dollars). It was a lot of fun.

The band (well the line up with me in it) didn't last much longer as summer approached, and I was heading off to college. They knew I was going to college, but apparently didn't tell me they were shopping around for a new singer. Finally I got a phone call from Jeremy the week before a show telling me that I didn't have to play it as they got a new guy. Kinda uncool, eh.

Well to finish up the tale, they plowed on for a while with the new guy (I think his name was Keith), and rerecorded the first demo with the new singer taping over my parts. I got a copy of this and not to be bitter, it never quite sounded right. Maybe it was just that I had been singing those songs for so long that I had a particular melody in my head. They eventually recorded a second demo, but by that time I was out of touch with them, being in college in Pittsburgh. We did manage to patch up the bitterness left from when I was 'kicked out' of the band, which ultimately is a good thing. I wouldn't want bad feelings about something that I really enjoyed doing. The next summer, I even caught a gig with the new guy and they weren't bad at all. I think eventually, however, they just died out.

Here is a promotional picture of the band that we used for one of our flyers.

Strange As Angels was (from left to right):
Kyle James, Guitars
John Santore, Vocals
Jeremy Slusher, Bass Guitar
Dan Grobman, Drums

Here is a list of songs I played with the band:

Screw Top Soul
Cold War
Dead of Winter
Insomnia
Slipping Back
Images
Eternity
Closing In
Origins
The Long Walk
Redline
Onward and Out
Secrets

Three live videos of us, several 4 track songs, as well as a few 'boombox' recordings from practice, and of course our 4 song demo, are available. If you're generally interested in hearing what we sounded like, I'd be glad to make a tape for you. Just send email to jsbh@andrew.cmu.edu

This history is dedicated to the memory of the song Onward and Out, performed only a few times near the end. It was one of my favorite songs, and without a doubt one of the coolest things we ever wrote. Unfortunately, no tapes of that song exist :-(

For a scrapbook of Strange As Angels pictures, click here.

Thanks to all my friends who have ever been to one of our shows.

John Santore
jsbh@andrew.cmu.edu

Last updated, 9/9/94