Except for the ones the music industry enslaves, bands don't usually last very long. It's really hard to keep multiple musicians on the same page for years on end, especially when the forces of reality come into play. Below is an incomplete list of my own defunct projects/bands.

(Last Updated: April 21, 2007)

Lord Mylo: 1985-1991 The Jeff/Matt Chronicles: 1985-1990 Prodigy: 1987-1988 The Harpur Jazz Ensemble: 1989-1990 Godspell: 1989 Mustard: 1989-1992 Skankenstein: 1990-1992 Dolemite's Total Experience: 1991-1992 Green-Eyed Monster: 1991-1993 Fourth Generation Copy: 1993 Gingham: 1994

Flywheel: 1994-1996 Fun: 1994-1996 Stevie Blacke Band: 1994-1995 Mud Hut: 1995 Jesus Christ Superstar: 1995 Mumble & Peg: 1995-2002 Dreamland: 1995-1996 Herb: 1997-1999 Species Being: 2000-2001 Boarbaby: 2001-2002 Dropsy: 2001-2002

In the beginning was my solo project Lord Mylo. Even at the young age of 15 I knew "Matt Lebofsky" would not cut it as a stage name. I came up with various pseudonyms, including Lloyd Marlowe which evolved into Lord Mylo. I liked the shape of the word "Mylo" so it stuck.

Basically this was just me and my 4-track cassette deck. I recorded over 300 songs in these 5 years, all using the cheapest, worst sounding drum machines, keyboards, guitars, basses, and microphones. To me, it isn't about execution as much as intention. The best of these songs ended up on two cassette compilations which I handed out to a handful of friends and relations.

During one fiery recording session in 1991 the 4-track jammed, destroying the cassette and the song I was feverishly trying to complete. Being the passionate, tortured artist that I am, I flung the 4-track across the room in frustration and anger, insuring that that piece of shit would never be used again. This was the sad, abrupt end of Lord Mylo. Once in a while these songs resurface in current solo performaces.

Though I only just barely started screwing around on guitar and bass, I really leaned on these instruments when I met Jeff Swinkin during my freshman year in high school. A fellow freshman, he was a truly gifted pianist/composer light years ahead of me in skill and fortitude. It was immediately obvious I had no chance competing against him for various piano gigs so I turned to my guitars and became Jeff's right hand man. A total case of "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Jeff seemingly had infinite time and energy to scribble scores for me to read. Yeah, we did all the musicals, all the jazz bands, and all the annual Spanish Fiestas together (along with random drummers and singers). But in between all those my after-school hours were peppered with performances at random bizarre functions: A little league game, a synagogue service, several recitals at the local community college, even Jeff's brother's bar mitzvah, to name but a few. As well, Jeff composed these epic Jim Steinman-esque songs once a year, arranged for me, him, a drummer, and a bevy of aspiring teenage singers.

While I found his taste to be not exactly in line with mine, Jeff was brilliant, a nice guy, and always quite thankful, and I did get a lot of musical experience of out the deal. At least I wasn't cooped up in my house alone with my piano and ignored by everyone.

We both went off to separate colleges, but it doesn't end there. The next summer he got me a spot playing with him in a four-piece orchestra pit for some semi-pro theatre production of "Little Shop of Horrors" somewhere in Westchester. And the summer after he was conducting the pit for "42nd Street" back at the old high school, and asked me to play bass for that (since nobody else would or could). I felt kinda creepy sitting in this teenage orchestra pit now that I was a post-pubescent, bearded longhair, but it was a nice throwback to the good ol' days. The original deal was that I was doing this just for kicks, but after closing night Jeff mailed me some cash as a nice gesture. What a guy!

That was the last thing we did together, though I heard his name popping up from time to time. After a decade of no communication I happened to find he was living in the Bay Area as well, and we exchanged some e-mails. Small world.

The first rock band that had me as a member was Prodigy. Bill the keyboardist was quite stern about being the only keyboard player in this unit. Fine. I would have rather played bass, but we couldn't find a guitarist. So there I was, stuck playing guitar.

We had a major flaw: thinking we stood miles above every other high school band in talent and artfulness. Just because we played prog rock covers we thought we ruled the world. I was convinced, being the most educated and well-versed rock musician in the entire school, that any band I was in was automatically the best, and we'd be a force to contend with. Well, you live and learn.

You see, this all exploded in our faces during our one and only performance at the annual High School Battle of the Bands. Basically we learned the harsh lesson that nobody cares about high-school level renditions of Genesis and Marillion tunes. We were the complete opposite of "crowd pleaser." It was embarrassing! I still toss and turn at night thinking about that evening.

Well, whatever. We were young and learning the ropes. I'll get over it someday, but I can safely say that single experience instilled in me a feeling of contempt for the music biz that affects me to this very day. It would be a while before I could stomach joining another rock band.

One of the smarter things I did while attending Binghamton University was to join the University jazz band, a.k.a. the Harpur Jazz Ensemble. I just showed up to the spring semester audition my freshman year. My skills on sightreading bass parts or deciphering jazz piano charts were a not as strong at this point in my life, but since I could just confidently manage on these two rhythm section instruments I made it into the main ensemble (as opposed to the lowly "b" ensemble).

The first semester was a moderate ass-kicker, but that summer I bought a new bass and stuck with that as my only instrument from then on - it was much more fun. Plus the endless stream of great drummers I was grooving with really whipped my rhythmic sense into shape.

Each semester I had to audition, but somehow I'd manage to get in regardless of the competition. I guess I had seniority and my pleasant demeanor going for me. The toughest audition was sophomore year - I was up against a freshman, Ted Kamp, and a junior, Holden Nagelberg. Both were smokin' players, had much better axes than me (Ted had a nice Fender jazz fretless, and Holden had the super-duper 6-string Pedulla), and were easily miles ahead of me in sight-reading ability. Al Hamme, the band director, while a knowledgable and generally open-minded guy, loathed fusion-y bass playing. I think Holden's penchant for "lead" bass in lieu of holding down a simple groove went against Al's aesthetic, so me and Ted got the job (sharing bass duties).

Ted and I were pretty much the regular bass players from then on in, and I managed to keep my ego in check, as I feel I learned a lot from Ted through osmosis. As well, Ted was a good guy. Example: at one big end-of-the-semester show a string popped on my bass mid-song. Ted spotted this and played the remainder of the song in the shadows while I mimed playing with my volume down.

All told, I gained a lot of experience in this band, from learning how to spell 13#11 chords to dealing with nerves while soloing. I also got a good sense of voice leading on the bass, which I find an invaluable skill. But in my junior year I wanted to take a skiing class, which conflicted with jazz band rehearsals, so the latter got trimmed from my busy schedule, and I never went back. Oh, well.

I got a call in my dorm room out of the blue from a woman at the local Methodist church. They were putting on a production of the musical, "Godspell" but were short a bass player. So they called the University, got forwarded to jazz band director Al Hamme, who then forwarded them to me. So for a couple months of weekly rehearsals resulting in a few public performances, I was offered $100. That was a good deal for me at the time.

It actually wasn't in Binghamton but in a smaller town many miles away called Windsor. I had no car, but they gladly drove out of their way to get me. The pit was a four piece. If I remember correctly, there was a mother/daughter team on keyboards and drums who were church regulars. Then it was me, the jew on bass, and a young Binghamton local, Chad, on guitar. Turns out Chad was well versed in prog rock, so we had lots to talk about during breaks. Long story short: he was the first person to convince me that Frank Zappa was actually worth listening to. Eventually I got rides to the church from Chad's mom.

These rehearsals nicely broke up what was turning out to be a very depressing and lonely freshman year in college. And despite being instilled with a fear and hatred of all Christianity as a child, I found these people to be incredibly nice. Before one of the performances they served dinner and were deeply concerned that, since it contained ham, I wouldn't be able to eat it. When I said I wasn't kosher and eat bacon all the time, they were quite relieved.

The shows were well attended by the church regulars. Let's face it - the play is totally silly, but everybody was so light-hearted about the whole thing you couldn't help but have fun. I got paid and got back to finishing my spring semester.

A month later they called me again. A sister church in Pennsylvania wanted them to perform "Godspell" down there. Chad couldn't make the gig, so his equally cool and talented guitarist friend Steve filled in. After one refresher rehearsal we piled into vans and brought the whole production over the border. I think this was the first time I ever went on "tour." Weird. For this extra, unexpected performance I got a $40 check. Sweet.

Back in high school, my buddies were in a band called Mustard. Its previous names were, Fuzzy Green Thing, Head of Lettuce, and The Evil World of Dr. Shit.

Once our college careers started, they would still get together to jam and stuff. One summer it came to pass that I would be their singer. The lineup was always in flux. At this point it was Dave on drums, Evan on guitar, Eric on bass, sometimes James on guitar, and maybe Ethan on keyboards.

They already had a bunch of doofy original tunes. Since I was still learning to sing at that time I liked the idea of cutting my vocal chords on this stuff, especially since I didn't write any of it (so who cares if I ruin it?). We even recorded a bunch of material in Dave's basement - all going live into a mixing board and then into a cheap cassette deck.

Dave and I later spent a whole evening "mastering" these recordings with my Quadreverb. Once finished, we found the rest of the guys and many other friends had went to some party with informing us. So we spent the wee hours sitting on the hood of Dave's car, parked by the reservoir, eating a pack of Klondike bars under the stars. In any event, we had a finished demo tape!

Now what?

A few weeks of being a lead singer in a band, and then the dream was over. Becuase of conflicting college schedules and whatever, the band pretty much fizzled out immediately. Until..

Years later Dave and I ended up at the same college, and we convinced Evan to come up and play a Mustard reunion show on campus. I sang and played the bass (since Eric didn't want to do it). At least this material finally got to reach a few ears. Some might argue whether or not that's a good thing.

Despite countless hours practicing in my dorm room, performing with the Harpur Jazz Ensemble, and recording endless streams of fully orchestrated instrumentals on my 4-track, I never got any real-life band experience until Skankenstein.

The band existed in a half-assed state under a different name before I joined. It contained Ted Kamp (which I knew from the Jazz Ensemble) on voice, guitar, and various horns, my dormmate (and future housemate) Joe Lyman on voice and guitar, and Mark Cusa (who I didn't know previously) on drums. Their previous bass player lamed out, so I got asked to fill in on bass and barking a few backing vocals. I was happy just to be noticed, so I didn't care what kind of music it was.

And what kind of music was it? Well, ska, of course, hence the name. And since nobody in the band could agree on anything, the band mostly played ska-ified covers of all kinds of popular songs. I immediately suggested adding a fifth member - another dormmate I just met named Sam Godin who was an actual pro with touring experience playing with reggae bands. Sam played keyboards (my keyboard in fact - for some reason he never brought his to any rehearsals/shows), and sometimes for kicks we'd trade keyboard/bass duties.

I knew nothing about ska before all this, but I faked my way through it fairly well. In fact, it was in this group where I felt enough push to get my bass chops up to snuff. Before I knew it, I was gliding through Fishbone's "Bonin' in the Boneyard," in my sleep. After playing several well-attended (and some very poorly received) shows on campus and in local night clubs, I felt I conquered any last remnants of stage fright. It helped that we dressed up in all kinds of ridiculous clothes supplied by Ted and Joe.

Examples from our set list: "Nite Klub" (Specials), "Ugly" (Fishbone), "Boys Don't Cry" (The Cure), "Sunday Papers" (Joe Jackson), "We're Not Gonna Take it" (Twisted Sister), "Superman" (REM).. well you get the point.

After one school year, Ted decided to head to Montreal. Fair enough. We were all ready to move on. But Ted returned during the spring of my senior year. We all liked playing together, so why not briefly reunite the band? We squeezed more ska out of the Skankenstein machine and even recorded one doofy original for a compilation CD before I graduated. It was called "Who's Got Da Funk?!"

Oh, there are actually all kinds of humorous war stories revolving around being a scrappy cover band in a freezing college town in the middle of nowhere. Things like my car full of equipment spinning out on the icy main street downtown en route to a gig (I miraculously avoided hitting any parked cars). Here's one anecdote involving our last gig ever:

At the end of my final semester in Binghamton, we managed to get added onto a gig opening up for the Spin Doctors. I knew nothing about them, except they were some hippie jam band on their way up the fame ladder for no apparent reason. We begged all our friends to pay $11 for tickets to see this show. When we arrived we found there was a second opening band - another hippie jam band called Jiggle the Handle. The asshole management of the Spin Doctors wanted us thrown off the bill that very night, but we somehow somebody convinced them to let us play for fifteen minutes. Insert your Andy Warhol joke here.

Setting up was a nightmare. The Spin Doctor roadies refused to move any of the equipment out of the way, so we had to cram all our stuff at the front rim of the stage. Meanwhile, the club was way too hot and packed with people, as the doorman refused to let people back in if they went outside for air. We didn't have time to soundcheck and fought our way through four songs completely out of tune before getting the axe. In a huff, I packed up. I noticed some fancy guitar chords nearby - I figured if I could get anything from the shitty gig I'll get those, so I threw them in my bag and left the stage and quickly fled the club.

I met Joe back at the house, and we bitched to each other about the lameness of the show. I told him I at least made off with some of their chords. Turns out they were Joe's, and he was psyched I found them. The punchline: later while checking my bag, I noticed only then I was missing my own patch chords and a wah-wah pedal (netting a total loss of about $100 for me). Fuck shit damn! I hate the Spin Doctors. May they and their corporate hippie fans rot in hell!

And that's that.

Over the following years I've bumped into Ted and Joe during the course of various national tours with other bands. They had a knack for randomly attending some of my worst shows ever. One Mumble & Peg gig in Seattle I showed up and only then realized we were opening for Ted's current band, Ponticello. Funny how that happens. As well, I had brief visits with Mark in NY and SF shortly after graduation. He furnished me with many live Skankenstein recordings on cassette a couple years after the fact. Ah, little treasures that nobody will ever hear.

The only other group worth mentioning from my college years is Dolemite's Total Experience, sometimes called Mazel Tov Cocktail. The history could be summed up like thus: two rehearsals, two shows.

I liked this band a lot since the three of us (me on bass/vocals, Jeremy Fulton on guitar/sax/vocals, and Rich Nettleton on drums/vocals) all had a unified vision and advanced musical talent, meaning we could write a bunch of amazing and silly songs really quickly. We only had two shows, each fattened with funny cover tunes. What's with all my college bands playing funny cover tunes? Anyway..

The first show was for the annual campus "Battle of the Worst Bands." I wore nothing but a leather vest and a pair of boxer shorts covered in hearts. Rich was dressed like a sorority girl. Jeremy looked like a 70's cartoon character. Musically we were pretty frickin' solid except I borrowed Ted's bass amp which was farting distortion all night.

A year passed, Rich graduated, but came back to visit and we played a second show in the lobby of the student union. Hundreds of people crowded around to witness the spectacle. This time we were all dressed like butchers, but wore fuzzy slippers. I made the guys work in the Primus tune, "To Defy the Laws of Tradition." I'm such a bass geek all of a sudden.

Despite the fun music, I grow very sad reminiscing about this band since after graduation Rich, one of the nicest guys ever, was randomly murdered during the infamous "Black Rage" shooting spree on the Long Island Railroad.

Over ten years after the fact Jeremy (we still kept in contact) sent me an unlabeled videotape in the mail. I popped it in the VCR - it was a recording of the first Dolemite's Total Experience show. Good times, good times.

So I lived in a big, decrepit house with six other dudes my final year in college. What a party. Since most of us were musicians in some form or another, it was only a matter of time before a house band formed. It was a band out of convenience, but ended up being pretty damn fun.

The lineup: Me, Joe (also in Skankenstein), Rick, and Ben. We all sang and switched off on guitar, bass, and drums, pretty much. Basically, it was a lot like Skankenstein, but more classic rock. However, it was a lot different in that it was pleasantly democratic, and the other guys were perfectly willing to let me run the show on a few of my originals. Now that I think about it, this was the only band I was in until Three Piece Combo where the other members had absolutely no issues about playing my songs. God bless those guys.

But for the most part we played shlocky or bizarre cover tunes, like "The Kiss" (by the Cure) to "Soup Song" (by Robert Wyatt) to "Tinman" (by America) to "Should I Stay or Should I Go?" (by the Clash). Our claim to fame was being the first college band in Binghamton to cover "Smells Like Teen Spirit." We did so at a party at our own house, and the whole living room bounced up and down as about 40 people moshed with much vigor. I'm quite surprised the floor didn't collapse through to the basement, and frankly, I wish it had. That would have been really cool.

Among our originals we had one fave, "Magenta," which I created the night before a gig after we realized we barely had enough material for one full set. We ended up recording that song for the campus radio station's CD compilation. It has a bass solo and everything.

Being a fun, low commitment project, there wasn't much motivation, so outside of a few gigs at the campus pub and the aforementioned house party, there's not much else to tell.. Except for this:

After moving to California, I actually visited Binghamton the following summer. All those guys were still at that same house, and we jammed in the basement just like the good old days. That night some of our other friends were playing at the Taz (the site of the fateful last Skankenstein show). Their band was called Psquelch. They rocked. After their set nothing else was going on, and they were kind enough to lend us their gear, so Green-Eyed Monster had an impromptu reunion show. What a blast! If I remember correctly, we only played four songs. The soundguy said I had the best mike technique he's ever witnessed at that club. Imagine that.

The next day I left Binghamton and haven't been back since.

So I moved from New York to California in 1992 and embarked on a long stream of awkward, painful sessions with various weirdos and formative bands who posted "bass player wanted" ads in the classifieds of BAM magazine. We'd meet in dank, scary rehearsal studios that were carved into the basements of condemned buildings in the "bad parts" of San Francisco.

That's how I met Jai Young Kim. Undaunted by previous bad expriences, I answered his ad and found myself driving down to Palo Alto to jam in his not-so-dank rehearsal space. Just me on bass and him on keyboards.

The music we worked on was fun, but more importantly we found we had quite similar musical upbringings and influences. A couple days later Jai Young met a like-minded drummer, Adam Weissman, and called me back for another rehearsal, this time at Adam's space in Berkeley.

What a hoot! Adam was fresh out of Berklee with chops to spare. Jai Young had his sampler on full volume, and I started reaching new levels of ability on my 5-string bass. Before long we found ourselves regularly meeting up and rocking out for hours, recording everything on cassette via boom box.

However, despite the fact we had a blast playing together, there was no real direction. We came up with lots of half ideas during these sessions, but putting them together to form actual songs proved difficult. It didn't help we also couldn't decide on a band name. Basically we couldn't agree on anything outside of the music itself.

Nevertheless, we scraped together one 10 minute epic about sex in space (or sex on acid, depending on which band member you ask). Yeah it was a wanker tune with stupid lyrics. Give us a break - we were still in our early 20's. Nobody writes anything worth anything before they are 25. Nobody.

Basically about 4-5 months from the beginning I found the band splintering in two - the Matt/Adam half and the Matt/Jai Young half.

Adam and I felt we had a special drum/bass bond, and kept working on ideas together while hoping to find that special guitarist/singer to eventually fill out the high end. We embarked on holding auditions of our own, finding many guitarists, ranging from desperate losers to snooty jazz snobs. All of them sucked, or at best didn't work out in their own special way.