THE SUICIDE FILE
Suicide File started in April of 2001. Initially it was just something for Neeraj, Jarrod and I to screw around with on weeknights. I remember that Neeraj had just quit Hope Conspiracy and he and Jarrod were looking for a new band to play with in Boston. They asked me to sing for a “punk” band, and I enthusiastically agreed to join them. I guess that Jarrod remembered my “punkness” from when No Reply played a show to about 10 kids in Dallas with Death By Stereo. I had pink eye in both eyes and most of our set consisted of different people body slamming me over and over again while I tried to sing. Anyway…Neeraj, Jarrod and I practiced a few times and decided to record a demo. We settled on the name “Suicide File” after I sent Neeraj a list of about 300 names and he rejected all of them. Jarrod was recording with AN at God City, and Kurt generously allowed the three of us to leave his drums set up and demo 4 tracks. We ended up scrapping one of them because it sounded too much like Verbal Assault, but the other three became the Suicide File demo.
Boston had a booming hardcore scene at the time, and while our demo made the rounds among our friends a lot of them asked us if we wanted to play shows. We decided we that we did, and filled out our lineup buy asking my roommate John “Carpetbag” to play bass, and our friend Jason to play guitar. The five of us started practicing twice a week in Carpetbag’s bedroom and writing some pretty cool songs. The main thing that I remember about these practices was how hot Carpet’s bedroom would get (he lived in a basement) and how much it must have sucked in there after we all left. Our first show was Bane’s record release for Give Blood in Boston at Mass Art in November of 2001. We were pretty terrible I think, but we had a pretty good time playing the show, and decided to keep going with it.
When our friend Dave Mandel asked us to record a record for Indecision, we jumped at the chance. We recorded our 6 song 7” with Dean at Atomic Studios in Brooklyn in a weekend in the fall of 2001. Dean was an awesome engineer to work with, and we were really happy with how the songs turned out. I guess that up until then we didn’t really know what we sounded like, but once we got those songs recorded we realized that we were onto something pretty cool and we couldn’t wait to play the songs for people.
We started playing a ton of shows around Boston in early 2002, with great local bands like The A Team, Stop and Think, Think I Care, Mental, Panic, The Dedication and tons more that I’ve left out. Anyway, there was the sense that Boston’s Hardcore scene was really taking off again, and we were really excited to be part of it. Some of those shows at Suffolk College, the Berwick and at Exit 23 remain my all time favorites. I also remember a show in New Jersey with Panic where Gibby and I bought a bunch of weird toys to “spice up” our set. That was one of the more entertaining Suicide File shows.
In May of that year we also recorded 2 songs for a split 7” with the Hope Conspiracy on Deathwish. I can’t remember who wrote the riff for “Ashcroft”, but it will be stuck in my head until the day I die
In August of that year we went on our first tour with Hope Conspiracy, Count Me Out and Knives Out, playing the Midwest and the South. I was really excited to tour with Count Me Out, who were one of my favorite bands….The tour was really fun, and I’ll never forget playing in Nashville (which felt worlds away from Boston) at a coffee shop and seeing kids going crazy for us. It was the first time that I really felt like our band was something that was more than just something that only our friends were in on.
We also wrote Twilight that summer, and that was pretty interesting experience for me. I had never done a full length before, and mostly what I remember is crouching on the floor of Dean’s studio in 110 degree heat with a hand held mic while he worked his magic. I feel like Twilight was sort of the quintessential SF record. It had some flaws, but that was part of the charm. All of us were sort of branching out in our musical and other tastes, and the record is a really good illustration of that. I’m really happy we got a chance to do it.
In the Fall of 2002 RNR asked us to do a split with them and we were thrilled. The two songs that we recorded with Jim Siegal never really saw the light of day as a real release and that’s too bad. Both our songs and the RNR songs were great and I wish that record had been handled by someone legit.
We toured a couple more times with Bane and Give Up The Ghost, and there were a ton of great memories from those cross country jaunts. Going to Yellowstone with GUTG and staying in a haunted hotel, crashing a frat party in Colorado with Bane and playing shows in places like California, Seattle, and Texas. We met a lot of great people on those tours, and if any of you are reading this, we miss you.
By the summer of 2003 I was ready to go back to school and we decided that we didn’t want to half ass it as a band, so we called it quits. Jason quit over that summer, so we asked our good friend Jimmy from the A Team to play guitar on our last record and on our tours that summer. He wrote some really cool songs that were included on the “Things Fall Apart” 7”. We played our last show on October 11th of 2003, almost two years after our first.
I always think that these retrospectives come off as really self important and shitty, so I don’t really want to say too much more. The two years that I spent in Suicide File were a wonderful period in my life, and there’s nothing in the world that I would have rather done with that time. We got to play with some great bands, met some incredible people and made some music that we were really into. Thanks to all of you who helped make it worthwhile, and to everyone who remembers Suicide File fondly. I know that I do.
Dave Weinberg
Boston, February, 2004
