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	Gypsymoth History 1989-2006 By Greg Antonowicz 6/9/03-3/5/06 The Gypsymoths began in Litchfield New Hampshire in 1989. It all began at the brand new Litchfield Middle School, where our eighth grade class was studying. (First ever to graduate from the new school) Every year the eighth grade class had a weeklong field trip to Washington DC, on this field trip the initial idea for The Gypsymoths was conceived. I remember sitting on the bus on the way home from the Washington trip talking to Paul M, Bart P, and John Ricard about a fictional band, we were thinking up names for it and talking about all the crazy antics this band would perform on stage. The conversation went on for hours because Washington DC is very far from Litchfield. At the end of the ride I remember making some sort of a pact with John and Paul about us somehow getting instruments and forming this band we had just created in our minds. Bart didn't want to be in the band at all, but I think he wanted to help write songs. It's hard to remember the details of that day other than John, Paul, and myself were going to somehow convince two other friends, Tom S and Dave S to also john the band. Somehow, a few weeks later they agreed a band would be fun. We would record with a regular cassette recorder and pass tapes out at school. The original plan was as follows. John Ricard-Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar Tom S-Guitar Paul M-Bass Dave S-Drums Mid way into our freshman year at Alvirne High School, John, Tom, and I realized Dave and Paul wouldn’t follow through with the band. Dave had just become to cool to hang around with us because of his new sophomore/junior friends and his growing popularity. Paul’s story was simply that his parents wouldn’t let him have a bass. That Christmas Tom and I got guitars, John also bought a guitar with money he saved up right before Christmas. The guitars were synsonics brand guitars; they were $100 and had built in speakers. They are perhaps the worst sounding/playing instruments ever made. We began having jams right away and we recorded everything. At first we kept changing our band name, some of the names were, Profanity, Seegahs & Geetahs, & Johnny Metal & the foul moth boys. Tom only jammed with us once or twice before he drifted into a different crowd at school. Paul also began hanging out with different people. (*Note* Paul M would later get a "real" guitar and amp, take lessons, brag about how awesome he was, give up, then sell his guitar and amp to John Ricard for $200) After Tom and Paul were out of the picture, it left only John and I to start a band. By now we were listening to The Beatles constantly and we decided the name of our band should be a bug, to copy The Beatles. Gypsymoths were a notoriously hated insect in the northeast in 1989, and the most annoying, we knew it was the right name for us. John was to be the singer because of his "Beave’s mother" impersonation; he could screach really high pitch for lengthy intervals. My brother Daniel could also scream, so he participated on the first few Gypsymoth tapes as a full member of our group. He eventually got the infamous Phantom headless bass but he never learned how to play it. We have used it a lot through the years. Daniel still plays it when his very awesome band, The Endoplasmic Reticulum get together. (*Note* Endo-Daniel Antonowicz, Michael Pendilton, Jason Richardson) Early on, we knew that two very loud, out of tune, cheap guitars and screaming was the right sound for us. Other kids wanted to sound like people they heard on the radio, we wanted to destroy what was on the radio with good ol' noise. Our first two albums, Death Comes To Those Who Wait and In The Graveyard were recorded as follows. John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar Daniel Antonowicz-Vocals Keith Turner, a long time friend of Johns and mine, who had a reputation of being a total wacko around school, was a Moth fan from the start. He began contributing ideas around the time we started working on "Generic to the core". Another important thing happened around this time as well, although John and I lost Paul and Tom as potential band members, we became friends with Bill Metzler and Dave Ricard who were from Hudson. We didn’t know them until Alvirne because they were in another school district; Alvirne was a high school for two towns back then. Bill Metzler loved the loud obnoxious craziness of the moths and agreed to be our drummer. We recorded "Seemahds Powah Howse", "70 Years", "The Dark Album", and a Christmas EP called "Kill All The Santa’s" all in 1991 I think, our sophomore year. The personnel was John and Myself with help from my brother, Keith, and Bill whenever they felt like it. Bill never bought drums like he wanted too; his stepfather was a real bastard and wouldn’t let him. Bill used buckets with screwdrivers, or anything else sorta drumish instead of actual drums. I always wondered what the Gypsymoths would have become if he had gotten drums at that time. Over the next year John and I recorded "Albuquerque Ave", "Earth Day" EP, "Live in the basement/A trip to Doodles", "The Quest for the hog of knowledge", "From Halofax to Trinidad", "Rats in maze", "Bang your head until your dead". By now I had upgraded guitars to an Epiphone strat copy with an applause 10-watt amp, and John had a Guild "blade" and crate 10-watt amp he bought from Paul M. Before we had that stuff we used our synsonics, or "SYTRONICS" as we called them through old home stereos with input jacks on them. We had some real wild sounds from my parents 1970's 8-track rack system and johns sisters’ old grey radio. A lot of times we used crapy keyboard drums as a backdrop for our guitar chaos. Soon after Dave Ricard (*Note* no relation to John Ricard) bought a bass and amp and joined the Gypsymoths. Through high school this was the band lineup. John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar Dave Ricard-Bass Keith Turner-Keyboards Bill Metzler-Buckets We recorded "Subliminal Soup", "The skip day jam"(W/Danny F), and "The Atari Album" with this lineup, and a few people actually heard these albums (cassette copies) and liked them. After high school Bill left the moths and started a punk band with another friend, Andy M. I recorded some drums with them once, and I think John did some guitar. Bill ended up singing in a lot of different bands before joining the army. Senior year I had began jamming with Danny F-Bass and Jerry P-Drums under the band name "Spy" (I didn’t come up with that). Shortly after graduation, Danny had joined the gypsymoths. Somewhere here Dave had left the band, only to return a year later. John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar/Drums Danny F-Bass/Vocals John, Dan and I recorded our first "real" album in 1993 thanks to a friend, Jeremy H, who had a 4-track machine. Jeremy is a real sound engineer now; he graduated from U-Mass and works in a studio. We recorded this quickly and never hooked up with Keith. The album was "For sale or trade for farm animals", which came from a sign sitting on an old truck Danny saw while in Alabama. FSOTFFA is still one of my favorite moth records. I overdubbed the drums on this album because we were drummer less, something I have gotten accustomed to. By this point, we were using fairly decent equipment, John and I both had mexican fender stratocasters and 30 watt amps, Danny had a rickenbacker bass and a 30 watt amp, plus we had some used TKO drums that Danny, Jerry, and myself had bought. In 1995 Jerry P joined the moths as the drummer, and Dave Ricard came back too. This meant the end of Spy and a lot of members in the moths that each had a direction they wanted to take the band. We were seeing less and less of Keith, but he still contributed a little bit, and John, Dave, and myself always liked his input. John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar/Drums Dave Ricard-Bass Danny F-Bass/Vocals Jerry P-Drums Keith Turner-Keyboards We recorded a double album with a 4-track I had just bought called "psychedelic Reality". The sessions were long and full of tension, and John was rarely there. Jerry seemed to have issues with everyone in the band except Danny; strange enough the two of them were by far the worst musicians in the band. If it wasn’t for the fact that their apartment was the only place we could play I think John or Dave would have told Jerry off. I was trying to keep us all together, while ignoring the bad drumming and the fact that we had 2 bass players. I tried to steer Danny over to singing to keep his mind off playing the bass, which Dave could do better. Thanksgiving day 1995 Danny called me to say him and Jerry were quitting the moths. I was upset because Danny was a good friend, and he was a good songwriter. But I was relieved that we wouldn’t have to deal with drama anymore, and recording and jamming would be fun again. Dan and Jerry said they were going to start a serious band, unlike the fun loving moths. Danny was going to continue playing bass, and Jerry was the guitarist, rumor has it he bought an Ibanez guitar and a Peavey amp. This guitar/amp combination is something that makes John and I vomit. A year later Danny showed up at my work trying to pawn off his bass to me. Last I heard Jerry had formed a band with a bass player named Rob, who went to Alvirne high school as well. But that was 1996, I never heard from Jerry or Danny again. So now the band line up was this. John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar/Drums Dave Ricard-Bass Keith Turner-Keyboards (whenever he was around or felt like it) This felt like the core moths was back, and we could get back to making our normal music. The next album we made was What Doodles Wants, referring to the sandpit in Litchfield. Keith Turner contributed to this record more than any of the others; he had some part in 5 of the 14 tracks. I think Dan and Jerry had intimidated him. By now we had decent equipment, I was using a Gibson Les Paul and a 1966 Fender Jazzmaster I bought in pieces from a friend. John was still using his Mexican Start, but by now he had modified it quite heavily. Dave had a Rickenbacker and Fender Precision. We had even upgraded the drums a little bit; Dave bought a very old set of Royce drums from some guy he worked with. All of our guitar and amp collections would grow in the near future, but we were still using the 4-track cassette machine I had bought new for $200. Around this time 1996-1997 I had been Jamming with two other friends, Aaron Miller and Mike B. We called ourselves The Sarcoptic Mange after the gross dog disease. It wasn’t long before we were recording and John was getting involved. We recorded an album called Live Basement Improves, because it’s just as it sounds. No practicing or overdubbing, we just plugged in and hit record. The next moth album was Brown Ave, a loosely knit concept album about a road in Manchester NH. By the end of the recording we had actually found a drummer, Bruce Cormier. Bruce played on the live version of Life is like and Atari game, Aaron Miller guest sang on James Brown Ave. The next project was to be an Atari 2600 epic tribute album, recording started as normal but it would never be finished, like The Beatles "Get Back" album, LOL. The songs we did record for this ended up on the second disk of, The Lost Years 97-01. I should also mention that those Atari songs are the last Keith Turner songs, we havents seen or heard from him since. He just fell off the planet or something. Even though Brown Ave was a great record, and we were getting better, the future of the moths looked bleak. I can only tell my side of the story, the other guys will have to add their own to be fair. I wanted to get serious about playing live and practice, and send demos to indi record labels. Dave was content to continue recording for ourselves and hand tapes to friends. He wasnt least bit interested in playing live. John wasn’t interested in doing anything, and I really thought he was going to quit music altogether. Bruce had the desire but no ride and no equipment (drums). Plus we didn’t have a place to practice. It was a dark time for the moths. I confronted Dave asking him if he wanted to get serious and he said no. That was the end of Dave, or was it..... At that point I put all my effort into playing with the sarcoptic mange, John and Bruce came and went as they wanted. We did record a lot of good songs during that time, some in a real studio. All of this, and more are on The Lost Years 97-01 album. But after a couple years it became clear that Aaron and Mike were not too serious either, so I reluctantly gave up and went back to school (that’s when I took Web Design and made this site). Not long after that John became interested in playing again, quite serious too. He began auditioning people for the moths, and auditioning himself for other bands. He played with The Romans and more recently, Caustik. In 2001 one John and I decided to record as the Gypsymoths again and overdub everything ourselves. I bought 2 reel-to-reel 8-track recorders, and Aaron and Bruce still contributed tid bits whenever they wanted to. That’s how we made Cog Factory. Since then we have been very busy with personal things, but have remained recording whenever possible. Albany Nights and The Dragon Epic are the result, and now with Dave back things are starting to pick up again. So watch out! the current line up is... John Ricard-Guitar/Vocals Greg Antonowicz-Guitar/Drums/Vocals Dave Ricard-Bass/Vocals Aaron Miller-Vocals/Bass (whenever he is around or feels like it) Bruce Cormier - Drums (whenever he is around or feels like it) More coming soon...

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