So Many People are gonna miss you guys...

This may be a bit late in coming, but I've been too busy lately for this to have settled in my mind, I guess. But since it's finally sunk in and I've finally got time to blog about it, I have to say I'm a bit of a sad panda.

I'll start from the beginning, and I guarantee you this won't be a short story.

It all started December 3, 2007, just after midnight. I had the night off at the convenience store, but it was the middle of the holiday season so I had a ton of stuff to do at the shop. I'd planned to stay all night. Lindsay had come over to chat. Kourt and I had made plans for a middle-of-the-night dinner, so as soon as Lindsay left I headed home. I listen to the radio in my car because I have an old Oldsmobile that isn't equipped with a CD player, and at that point I usually listened to a local station that plays lots of 80s music. I'm not sure why, but that night I switched over to one of the local rock stations for the short commute home.

I didn't know it at the time, but I tuned in just in time for "The Evolution," which is a full hour of metal. Generally, it's crappy metal. Sorry, E-Man, but you play some awful shit on Sunday nights. But I forgive you because on December 3, 2007, you played So Many People by Neurosonic at the exact moment when I was driving home.

Of course, you didn't bother to tell anyone that's what you were playing. I had to go home and google the lyrics to figure out what it was. And that's exactly what I did, which is also really unusual for me. Usually when I hear an interesting song on the radio I just make some kind of mental note to look it up later, and then promptly misfile the note. This time, though, I made Kourt wait while I googled the song before we left for dinner. My search turned up the video:



After dinner I came back to the shop and googled Neurosonic again, thinking I'd look up the rest of their music and see if it was any good (because we all know having one good song isn't necessarily indicative of the quality of the rest of the catalogue). I listened to the samples on iTunes, and then went to their MySpace page to see if they had full-length songs on there. And to my surprise the first things I saw on the top of the MySpace page as it loaded were:

December 3
Springfield, MO
Remmington's

My first thought was that they were a local band, and the radio station had played them because they had the show coming up, but no, they're from Canada. And I suppose they probably included the song in the playlist that night to promo the show, but the weird thing is that the concert was sponsored by the OTHER rock station in town. The venue also happened to be right across the street from my shop. At first I figured it would be imprudent to spend the money on a concert ticket, especially since I had to work that night and would only be able to see a couple of songs at most, but for some reason I clicked through to the details about the show.

Because it was sponsored by 106.7, it cost $1.06 to get in.

Of course I went. Only got to see two songs, but they were awesome. Oh, and later that night they stopped at the convenience store to fill up, and I got to have a very short conversation with Jason Darr as I was ringing up his purchases.

Anyway, I was totally hooked. In the spring of '08 they opened for Puddle of Mudd, and Kourt and I went all the way out to Oklahoma City to see them play. They fucking rocked. Plus, I got pics with all of them, a signed poster, and big sweaty hugs from Troy and Jacen.

I also almost gave them all the flu, but luckily I think I never heard anything about them all coming down with anything.

We didn't even stay to see Puddle of Mudd.

After that tour they kind of disappeared, periodically posting short updates on their MySpace page and releasing one more video, but no more tours were announced. I hoped they were in the studio working on another album, since they'd been playing some new material in their live shows when we saw them.

Meanwhile, I got sucked into the world of NIN. To be honest, Neurosonic had a lot to do with that. They got me listening to that rock station more often, which happens to be the only one in town that consistently plays any NIN at all. And Darr's a huge NIN fanboy.

Anyway, the announcement recently appeared on their MySpace that Neurosonic is no more. Troy and Darr both got married (lucky girls, whoever they are) and Shane and Jacen both have other projects going. I was really hoping that once the NIN/JA tour was over and the dreaded "break" hit us, I'd have new Neurosonic to keep me occupied for a bit.

But I guess not.

Anyway, I'm sad to see them go. They were fucking awesome live, their one album (Drama Queen. Go get it now.) was amazing (seriously, So Many People is probably my least favorite song on the album now), and they're just genuinely nice guys.