No Good and New Mooves

The song No Good (an unfinished version) saw its debut performance at the last pre-mission Only Anything show. This was in the backyard of the Richin's house on March 27th 1997. Although strongly influenced by New Wave groups such as The Cure and Depeche Mode, through our high school years we had added some new sounds to our record collections (Primus, Weezer, Smashing Pumpkins). I was noticing I had a particular affinity to funk music and as I was the bass player I started exploring the funky qualities of the electric bass. The song No Good was born out of this exploration and it wasn't till 1999 when Jon Stone was back from San Fransisco and ready to start up a new band with me that the song was finished and ready to perform in its entirety.

New Moves, maybe not as cool a name as Only Anything but I liked it because it had a groovy sound and I had an idea that this project would have more of a dance vibe than a rock vibe. Also "mooves" was a term we had thrown around for years (doing mooves with chicks!), we opted for the traditional spelling for the band name so as not to confuse it with what a cow says.

To complete the trio we recruited drummer Justin Bernard, a solid rockin' drummer that could play as steady, loud and fast as you could ever wish to hear. The dance vibe I had in mind partly due to listening to Jamiroquai's Traveling Without Moving album a lot never really happened exactly but overall I had a more funky style for my bass lines than for the OA catalogue. No Good, Champion, Hammer all had pretty funky lines that involved some string slapping. We never really nailed down a sound however and although we had some good moments, the band didn't last long enough to really go deep.

In our short history we played some gigs around downtown Tucson in 2000, mostly in quirky little bars. In two of our shows we didn't even have the regular lineup, one show featured Kelby on guitar instead of Jon Stone and in another Dave Priniski sat in on the drums. I'm guessing that it was all a wild conglomeration that audiences had a hard time making sense of. This impression may be innacurate as it is only based on my imperfect memory and the video from the Here and There performance, the only recorded media we have of the band. There are definite moments that make me cringe when I watch that, I really wanted to put something professional together and it clearly is not. It was not however a wasted experience, it was a step along the way. Maybe not a step up from Only Anything (which I have much better feelings about) but I was learning new things in that time.

The song Never Told was originally a New Moves song but I believe we improved it and gave it its due years later in the electronica project Lancaster, another Stone/Thwaits venture. That's the way I like to roll.

J.G.T.