VELOCITY CD LAUNCHES INDIE BAND

DAMAGE

STRAIGHT OUT OF THE O.C.

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“What Is,” First Single From Debut CD Velocity , Voted #13 Out Of 15,000 Rock Songs All-Time

On Sir George Martin's World-Renowned GarageBand.com

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2004 Orange County Music Awards Best Hard Rock Band Nominees To Charter “Party Buses” For Local Fans To Attend Album and Video Release Party at Viper Room May 27

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Velocity Produced by Ronnie King, who Has worked with The Offspring, No Doubt, Rancid,

Pennywise, & Tupac; video for “What Is” directed by Top Indie Director Dave Basulto

 

Thanks to hard rocking, aggressively DIY bands like Damage , “The O.C.” is a helluvalot more than a top rated show on Fox—it's a hotbed of some of the country's most dynamic and progressive new sounds. In the year and a half since the trio -- guitarist/vocalist Michael Neufeld, bassist Pete Rogers and drummer Veeken Tashjian—celebrated its first official gig by winning a local radio station's Battle of the Bands at the Jumping Turtle in San Diego ( Rogers ' hometown), Damage ( www.DAMAGEtheband.com ) has been rolling nonstop in its takeover of all that's cool in SoCal.

Now with a lineup of five when playing live, they've gained legions of fans playing hot O.C. venues like The Galaxy in Santa Ana , the Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and Anaheim 's House of Blues. In association with NAMM, the huge Anaheim-based annual music manufacturers' convention, they played the 2004 Namm Jamm (the only local band to be invited) alongside classic old-timers like Dick Dale and the Pat Travers Band. Also in 2004, the Orange County Music Awards, sponsored by Live Magazine, rolled out the red carpet, nominating them for Best Hard Rock Band out of hundreds of competitors.

Now things are getting even more serious, and happily for modern rock fans who like to live on the cutting edge, there's alot more Damage to be done. The band is headlining and hosting a CD Release Party for its debut album Velocity at the Viper Room on the Sunset Strip Friday, May 27 at 8 p.m. The show, which will also feature special guests Erwin, Last Picture Show and The Business Machines, will include the debut screening of the video for “What Is,” the album's first single, which was directed by independent filmmaker Dave Basulto of Clarity Pictures, who has also licensed the song for use in his film “ The Clique ”, which is which is being distributed globally by Hollywood Wizard at the Cannes Film Festival.

“What Is” is already a big smash in cyberspace, ranking as high as #13 out of more than 15,000 rock songs all time on Garageband.com, the largest independent music site on the internet. Headed by Sir George Martin, legendary producer of The Beatles, Garageband.com was ranked best on the web by both the New York Times and Time Magazine.

“The song is about that one incredible day in someone's life where the moon and stars align and the future is achievable,” says Neufeld. “It starts out a little mysterious, questioning what we've been doing, how to change our lives for the better, then talks about moving forward and how things are coming together for the good. The video is a mystical, sort of a rock and roll scenario shot out in a natural setting in the mountains near Pasadena . It's got a cool, creepy undertone that comes off like the Magical Mystery Tour meets Velvet Revolver. Making a video is a big undertaking for a young band, but it'll be great to have this visual presence out there. We've only been together officially for a year and a half, but we're swinging for the fences.”

Swinging right along are Damage's fans, which total upwards of 500 on the email list alone. Though the band has played The Viper Room and The Roxy in L.A. before, its main base is in the O.C. Realizing the impact a room full of wild, dancing fans has on the media and the industry powers that be, the clever, marketing savvy trio started the unique concept of a “Party Bus” to bring fans up to gigs in L.A. Damage charters a luxury bus, loaded with beer and booze and hot looking girls for the ride up the 405. Since The Viper Room gig May 27th is designed as a special launch party, the boys are footing the bill for the buses they are chartering.

Heavily influenced by classic and more contemporary rockers like Alice in Chains, Stone Temple Pilots, Led Zeppelin and The Beatles, Damage was just your typical gigging local band when a mutual friend hooked Neufeld up with fellow Newport Beach resident Ronnie King, a behind the scenes industry legend who has produced, written for, and/or toured with The Offspring, No Doubt, Rancid, Pennywise and Tupac. King was playing keyboards for The Offspring one night and invited Damage's guitarist and vocalist backstage to hang out. King listened to the band's four song demo and immediately reworked his schedule to work with them.

“He thought we were a viable band and that we could really make some noise,” Neufeld says. “Everyone out there at the time was trying to sound like Creed or Blink- 182, which is a great tribute to those great bands, but the local groups were starting to sound homogenous as a result. Our sound is hard but we try to be more melodic, with songs that have more changes that we think are more interesting for listeners. We also love and admire bands like Jet and The Darkness, which have done the whole retro thing. We have elements of retro, classic and contemporary rock. We're musicians at heart, and our basic idea is that if we're having fun playing a song, the audience will have fun listening to it.

“The songs on Velocity reflect our emotional state at the point when we wrote them, a time when we were changing our lives, breaking some bad habits, changing our m.o. to exercise our passions,” he adds. “We're addressing the past, present and changes for the future. ‘What Is' speaks to our belief that nothing really changes in your life until you reflect on the things you've done wrong and own them. ‘Floating' reveals a perpetual question mark on the choices we make, and our own personal angels above scratching their heads wondering what the f*** we're doing. Songs like ‘Cryin All The Time' and ‘Perfect Shade of Neutral' address our mis-steps in our personal relationships with the women in our lives, while ‘Johnnie Walker' cries out with pleas to get us out of the quicksand and get to where we want to go. There's alot of introspection about what the heck we're doing with our lives and how to reach the goals we have set.”

When they met some two and a half years ago, Neufeld and Rogers had spent several years writing with other songwriters and working as backup musicians. Pete was playing in the San Diego surf punk band called Dicky Parker, and the band's drummer called Neufeld when they needed a sub lead guitarist for a few gigs. The two clicked immediately, and on rehearsal breaks found themselves writing bits and pieces of music that laid the foundation of what quickly evolved into Damage.

The group's original drummer couldn't commit to the long haul, so they put an ad on the Craig's List website and found Veeken Tashjian, a resident of the City of Orange who was then and is still a philosophy major with a 4.0 GPA at Long Beach State . As a first generation Armenian American who spoke Armenian as his first language, Tashjian's musical dreams are very tied into the pride he has for his rich heritage and culture.

“One of the most exciting things about being an indie band is experiencing the way we're growing, creatively, business-wise and in our lives,” says Rogers . “We're looking forward to taking this to the next level, but right now, things are fantastic and we're having a ball. Recently, I was walking down the street and saw some people wearing our band T-shirts. You can't get much cooler than seeing an attractive girl in a Damage tank top!”