Transmission Entertainment » From The Mind Of Adi #56: Steve Terebecki’s Firsts

From The Mind Of Adi #56: Steve Terebecki’s Firsts

Firsts: Sh*te that happened before other sh*te happened.

Today: Steve Terebecki’s Firsts! This time, we examine what inspired White Denim’s amazingly talented bassist Steve Terebecki. Purchase White Denim’s stellar new album Fits via U.K. label Full Time Hobby. The album will be released Stateside on Downtown Music in October and the band will kick off a U.S. tour at The Mohawk on the 24th of that month.

• 1st favorite song: I guess it might be "Oh Yeah" by Yello, but I liked the whole record, I was about 4.
  
  
  
  
• 1st favorite musician or band: I don't know for sure, my earliest memories of music are when I was 4 and they're mainly of The Residents and Yello, I know I loved both of those groups. My first favorite band that I felt like I "discovered" was probably The Descendents in the 8th grade.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 1st vinyl purchased: It’s tough to recall because I was given so much vinyl...In high school I remember getting a new record player and then being impressed with this band Le Shok's live show and the fact that they had pink vinyl and the fact that the cover was pretty much pornographic. If not that it was probably a Volcano Suns record from Wax N Facts in Atlanta.
  
  
• 1st album recorded on a cassette tape: This goes way back too, the first thing that comes to mind is either Michael Jackson's Thriller or The Residents’ Commercial Album.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 1st cassette tape purchased: Also purchased from Wax N Facts in Atlanta, Eberhard Weber's Pendulum. He's this bass player on ECM Records who built his own 5 string electric stand up bass and just totally jazzed out.
  
  
  
  
• 1st concert attended: I went to Ensign, Kill Your Idols and a local Atlanta band called the Bloody Sods. It was a pretty interesting line up considering it was a straight edge show and the Bloody Sods were pretty much alcoholics. So I was overjoyed at watching hardcore dancing and moshing and stuff (and the bands were amazingly tight) but terrified with the fights and shouting matches (that I learned happened every time there was a show at the 513 Club).
  
  
• 1st CD purchased: The first CD I purchased was the Smashing Pumpkins’ Melon Collie And The Infinite Sadness with money from my 11th birthday. At the time, "Bullet With Butterfly Wings" was just too cool of a single for me to go without playing on my brand new CD player boombox. There was no technology to hear it otherwise so I had to go buy it.
  
  
  
  
• 1st album downloaded: Good question! I probably downloaded records on Skin Graft or Public Bath records like Zeni Geva and Killdozer. That stuff was impossible to find in Norfolk, VA and Napster and Audiogalaxy had everything.
  
  
• 1st personal band: The first band I played in was called Too Cool For Bandanas, a band from the future that played Nirvana covers and weird chanty originals like "Heavy Feet." We had a lead singer who was in a wheelchair for the entire show but stood up for the last song and a man who stood and held the wheelchair still until the end when he did a backflip into the dogpile we made.
  
  
• 1st recording: Well, the Too Cool For Bandanas show was video taped, but a few weeks before my first semester in college, I got a Korg PXR4 digital 4 track (which was just recently stolen) and made several genres of music, the first of which was a song called "Stripers At The Gates Of Dawn" by J Razor Club North 2009. Then, I thought in the year 2009 I might be popular which is scary because the song was about seeing the future and it’s 2009 now and just look at my MySpace -- I have like 3500 plays!
  
  
• 1st live performance: Well, Too Cool For Bandanas was the first live show and my first band I suppose. It was new years 2000/2001. Before I would just jam nameless and work on covers in people’s garages.
  
  
• 1st national (or international) tour: My first national tour was about 2.5 weeks starting in October of 2007 with the band White Denim. We managed to fit in a wonderful Mercury Mountaineer and I don't think I drove because I didn't have a license. Highlights include playing with Monotonix in Columbus, staying in a haunted hotel in Pennsylvania, playing with a band that had a member with a permaboner in Philly, and playing to an excited crowd of breakdancers and crowd surfers in an Ttalian restaurant called Boots in my hometown, Norfolk.
  
  
  
  
• 1st "something" I didn't ask you about: The first time I got so drunk I threw up was in Harrisonburg, VA at Macrock when I was 17. I had a 40 of Steel Reserve in about 5 minutes and I took a shower at a basement show with my clothes on, met a dude named James that was robotrippin' that I called admiral, and spewed out of the passenger window of my '94 Plymouth Colt on the way to an Econo Lodge.

Past Firsts:
• Adi’s Firsts
• James Petralli’s (White Denim) Firsts
• Chris Rose’s (Car Stereo (Wars)) Firsts
• JP’s (Built By Snow) Firsts
• Lauren Larson’s (Ume) Firsts
• John Farmer’s (What Made Milwaukee Famous) Firsts
• Martín Perna’s (Ocote Soul Sounds) Firsts
• Adrian Quesada’s (Grupo Fantasma, Brownout!, Ocote Soul Sounds) Firsts
• Marcos Cabral and Jacques Renault’s (Runaway) Firsts
• Ben and Jeff Brown’s (No Show Ponies) Firsts
• Jeramy Neugent’s (Learning Secrets) Firsts
• James Moody’s (The Mohawk) Firsts
• Nancy Whang’s (LCD Soundsystem, The Juan MacLean) Firsts
• Jen Rea’s (Team Fabrication) Firsts
• Richard Henry’s Firsts
• Matt Ragland’s (Nelo) Firsts
• Shane Lawlor’s (Electric Touch) Firsts
• Graham Williams’ (Transmission Entertainment) Firsts
• Jaylinn Davidson’s (The Boxing Lesson) Firsts
• Daniel Ash’s (Love and Rockets) Firsts
• David Garza’s Firsts
• Shay Tisdale’s (Oak is Keeping) Firsts
• Bryan Keplesky’s (Misprint Magazine) Firsts

Thu Aug 27 2009 · Posted in Interviews