Unedited Bio:

The Exasperating, Long, Unedited History of Love Button

In the beginning, 1990, Adrian Fallwell worked at Molly Murphy's, a novelty restaurant where waiters dressed in costumes. Here he met Sky, a musician. They, along with others, formed the band Flesh Protest. In late 1991, Dan Warren came to work at the restaurant. Although neither Adrian or Sky still worked there, they met Dan at a Molly's party, playing guitar in the basement. Dan had been playing in a band called The Infidels, but had quit recently. Dan had a band called The Pink Invaders. They did songs Dan wrote about an ex-girlfriend, which were all based on how much a bitch, slut this girl was. They were very witty and funny. Adrian and Sky soon replaced the the drummer and bass player, and were joined by guitarist and friend Tim Wolfenbarger. By the way, Dan was way into the Rocky Horror Picture Show scene, performing for several years.

Around this time, Adrian was also introduced to a guitarist named Evan Henley, by his neighbor and best friend's father, whom Evan met at a party. Adrian, living in a portable building behind his grandmother's house, recorded and practiced with several bands. Adrian started playing drums to Evan's songs, and Evan named the band Gold Thread. Adrian, playing drums for several bands at this time as well as befriending several others, such as Black Indian and a very early manifestation of Barnyard Slut, decided to create a record label. His friend Tim came up with the name M.S.I., standing for More Stupid Initials, and they set out to create a DIY style cassette sampler. For the sampler, Dan wanted to record some songs of his which weren't about his bitch, slut ex-girlfriend, but were instead just the opposite, songs about love and happiness. He played guitar and bass on the recordings, and Adrian did the drums. Not wanting to associate the music with The Pink Invaders, he came up with the band name, Love Button, for something to put in the liner notes of the sampler. He got both of the band names from a porn magazine. In the MSI sampler, the Love Button songs are actually credited to be written by Chaplin, one of Dan's many pseudonyms. Many of the people in the circle, such as Adrian and Sky, were very found of the catchy love songs, and encouraged Dan to start a second band with Love Button. Of course, Adrian would play drums, since drummers were scarce, but they needed a bass player. So Adrian thought of Evan. Granted he was a guitarist, but any guitarist can play bass too. Right? So, in May of 1992, Evan agreed to play bass....and Love Button was officially formed.

They all three were influenced by the Violent Femmes, and it showed, especially since Evan's guitar-like style of playing bass carried the melody, with Dan playing chords for rhythm. They immediately learned a dozen songs that Dan had written and stashed away in his brain, and after only three rehearsals, they played their first show at the Tiger's Den in Noble, OK. Their friend Sky was so impressed with their playing, he wanted to take them into the studio. So Sky dished out the money for them to record at Carumbo Studios in Norman, where Sky and Adrian had previously recorded the Flesh Protest album. They recorded 11 songs, and the album was titled Don't Breathe on Me, aptly named because Dan was sick through the whole recording process. They had only been together for a couple of months at this point. Although extremely appreciative of Sky's enthusiasm and money spent putting them into the studio, the band was unhappy with the clean and overproduced sound of the recordings, wanting to sound more raw like the Femmes. So the decision was made to not spend the money to reproduce the cassettes. At this point, the band became more interested in playing in front of people, but with little experience, had trouble getting shows (not to mention it's Oklahoma, which makes it automatically hard to get shows). So, again inspired by the Femmes, Evan, the electronically gifted of them, rigged an amp to run off a car battery, which they ran bass, vocals, and some guitar through, while Adrian sported simply one snare drum, and they began playing on the sidewalks of Campus Corner in Norman, OK. This was an incredible experience, with people walking by, some stopping and grooving along, some drunk and screaming into the microphone. Every time was a different experience. Sometimes trucks would drive up onto the sidewalk and act like they were going to run them over. During these experiences they had one guy who several times went and brought them beer, whom was aptly titled the beer fairy, and this guy would later show up in Love Button's history. The band decided to take their street show to a bigger audience, and headed down to Deep Ellum in Dallas for a weekend. Finding a coffee shop to park in front of, they played in front of thousands of passers by...a constantly moving procession of people and cars. Having to play for several hours in a row, and getting very tired of repeating themselves, the band spent all their extra time writing new songs and learning covers. Exhausted, but exhilerated, the band returned to Oklahoma, where they finally began to get some club gigs, while still doing occasional performances on street corners and in parks.

In late 1992, they did a three hour show at Kelly's in Norman on Main, where they recorded and documented their now large reportoir of songs. During this time, Dan & Adrian managed to find time to do a side project with friends Bob Thomas and Jason Potter, called My Little World...a metal band with rap like vocals and guitar work by Bob that immitated hip-hop sounds, not much unlike a band that would come much later called Rage Against the Machine, but not nearly as heavy. Another side note with Love Button, all three wanted to change the name of the band, finding the name rather dumb and gay sounding, but the three could never agree on a new name, so it never happened. Also to be noted, all three of them were coffee junkies, and spent hours upon hours hanging out in various Dennys' and Kettles, where they would come up of crazy shit to sing about, and would dream of becoming a famous band. This is where the song "Speed" came from.

In the summer of 1993, the band was invited to play a friend's birthday party. As everyone walked through the front door, the hosts warned everyone not to drink the jello shots in the refrigerator, because they were not alcohol, but liquid jello with hits of acid in them, but not everyone was listening. While the band was playing in the front room, the hosts got excited and started to pass the not yet hardened shots around. Love Button was in the middle of playing, so the hosts first approached Adrian, pouring the shot down his throat while he played. Adrian heard the hosts warning, and being no stranger to acid, gladly gulped down the shot. Same with Evan. But Dan didn't hear the warning, and thought the shot was alcohol. Dan had never done hallucinogencs before, and before the other members could stop him, he gulped down two shots. Oops. Dan had what one might call a "bad trip" and went home with his girlfriend to lie in bed and freak a little. This is mentioned because it became a turning point in Love Button's history. Up until this point, most of Dan's songs were about love and relationships, and Dan refused to play with any effects, playing only a clean, undistorted guitar. Well, after Dan's experience, things began to change. From the experience, he wrote several songs, including "Insomnia", "Fear of Commitment", and "Walk Me", the later two in reference to Dan's concern of becoming an insane invalid. While we are talking song orgins, I should mention that "Release" and "God is Dead" were actually Pink Invader songs first.

Anyways, in the fall of 1993, Love Button met Corey Roberts, who had a small studio in his house with a reel-to-reel 4-track. Offering a very low price to record, the band went in and recorded their self-titled ep, also known as the White album. Recording with Corey was a fan experience. He was willing to experiment with the band, such as singing through a telephone on "Sliding Down Your Spine", and Corey got the raw sound that Love Button was unable to get with Carumbo. This would prove to be a lasting relationship, but more on that later. So, around this time, Love Button began playing shows at a new coffee bar on Main called the Liquid Lounge.

More to come...we're just getting started.