User:Blaguymonkey/Boombox-45

Origins and early tours (1993-1994)
Boombox-45 was formed in late 1993 under the name Radio Thrash after Travis Birkhimer met Mark Hopkins while attending Abraham Lincoln High School during their freshman year. The two shared a love of bands such as Screeching Weasel, The Queers, the Descendents and the Dwarves and decided to form a band in a similar vein. Since he already had experience with the instrument, Birkhimer became the band's guitarist and vocalist while a musically-inexperienced Hopkins chose to play bass. Without a drummer, Hopkins suggested getting his neighbor Gordy Costanza, as he played drums for the local blues band. Birkhimer initially scoffed at hiring Costanza, calling him a "fuck-up" and a "weirdo", but relented when the two could not find another drummer. The band was christened "Radio Thrash" by Birkhimer based on graffiti he had seen in an alleyway in West Oakland. Explaining the meaning of the name, Birkhimer said "When you add an 'h' to trash, it becomes this whole other word which symbolizes youth energy yet retains the dirty, grittiness of it all. The name represented the utmost anarchy. We wanted to be the crudest, rudest and loudest band in all of California. We weren't playing music, we were playing Radio Thrash." After Birkhimer and Hopkins got out of school for summer vacation in June 1994, the band embarked on their first tour, which consisted of basement shows and VFW halls where the setlists consisted of songs left over from Birkhimer's previous band The Numbskulls and early versions of songs that would later appear on their debut EP, Drunken Indecency.

New members and Drunken Indecency EP (1994-1997)
After the tour, tensions between Birkhimer and Costanza came to a head. "All he ever did was really cause problems. He wasn't even that good of a drummer," Birkhimer remembered. "He always whined about not having a girlfriend, not getting laid, how much he hated women, how bad his life was, all that shit. Quite frankly, I was fucking tired of it. Especially once he got paranoid that me and Mark were talking shit behind his back and started spying on us." After an argument between the two, Birkhimer fired Costanza in September 1994, leaving the band without a drummer. Difficulties arose with finding a replacement for Costanza and the band went inactive for a short period until they met met Stephen Storkel in December. Storkel was an employee at Streetlight Records in San Jose, which Birkhimer and Hopkins frequently visited. Storkel, who was a drummer, had seen Radio Thrash's ad in the store's window and decided to audition. The two decided to hire him, as Storkel had a punk background playing in various high school bands. After hiring Storkel, the band spent the next year continuing their pattern of playing basement shows and VFW halls throughout the Bay Area until becoming disillusioned with their stagnating success and decided to start considering recording their material. During this time, Birkhimer's skills on the guitar had been improving and, wanting to focus on his guitar playing, found vocals less desirable. Hopkins had also been writing more songs, so Birkhimer suggested that he take over vocals, to which he agreed. However, Hopkins was not able to play bass and sing simultaneously, so the band recruited Cody Grimes, a punk rock enthusiast who had been dating Birkhimer's cousin at the time, as their new bassist. This new line-up recorded the Drunken Indecency EP in Travis' basement on a Tascam 8 track recorder and released it on Go-Kart Records in June 1996. The EP proved to be successful in the local underground scene and generated buzz for the band, resulting in a three-week tour across California where the band played in cities such as Los Angeles for the first time.

Name/style change and Check Mate! (1997-1998)
Shortly after the group's three-week tour, Grimes had requested to change the band's name. "Truth be told, I never really liked that name," Grimes said. "It just sounded so childish to me. I was wanting something that didn't sound like such a generic 80s hardcore name." Hopkins suggested the name "Boombox-45", which the rest of the band liked and decided to use as their new name. According to Hopkins, the name was a reference to "Cody's boombox being a piece of shit. It was always so quiet, so I'd tell him to turn it up to 45 as a joke." Along with the name change, the band also changed its sound after hearing the Blink-182 album Dude Ranch. "When we first heard Dude Ranch, we decided to put more emphasis on melody while still keeping our sense of humor" Hopkins said. "We were already kind of wanting to mature with our sound a bit, and with that album, we figured out how we wanted to mature." Another album that heavily influenced this phase of the band was NOFX's Punk in Drublic. "Punk in Drublic was a big thing for us when we were kids", Hopkins said. "It was like nothing else before it. It was tight, fast and melodic. It was always a goal of ours to make our own Punk in Drublic, but when you're a couple of kids with cheap equipment and not much skill on your instruments, that's kind of a hard task to achieve." It was also around this time that Hopkins began playing guitar more after practicing singing and playing simultaneously while Grimes started writing more lyrics for the band and wanted to be the lead vocalist. Although Birkhimer initially did not want another vocalist, Hopkins opted to have the two of them trade off singing duties, which Birkhimer accepted.

Between January and February 1998, the group went to Art of Ears Studio in Hayward, California to record its second EP Check Mate! with producer Andy Ernst. Released in May, Check Mate! featured a much more melodic pop punk sound and was only pressed in a limited quantity of 500 copies due to Go-Kart's low funds. Birkhimer was not a fan of the EP, however, calling it "embarrassing" and admitting to burying the master tapes in his backyard after it was released. The band embarked on a tour shortly after its release which featured its first dates outside of California in cities such as Las Vegas, Portland, Seattle and Vancouver. The tour was the start of tensions between Birkhimer and Grimes, however, as Birkhimer would refuse to play any of the songs from Check Mate! live. In response, Grimes refused to play songs from Drunken Indecency, only agreeing to play the band's newest compositions and cover songs. The two would agree on playing one song per EP at later dates; "Goddess Joey" for Check Mate! and "Numbskull" for Drunken Indecency. During this tour, the band's success began to grow, with their shows gathering larger crowds and the merchandise often sold out. "That made us think," Birkhimer said. "Obviously we were getting bigger, so we thought maybe the next option was to get a better record deal and actually get our music out to as many people as we were playing to."

Major label signing, Public Enema, No. 1 and mainstream success (1998-2000)
The band severed ties with Go-Kart Records in August 1998 and recorded a promo disc to send out to various record labels. The disc featured early versions of songs that would later appear on the band's debut such as "Holden McNeil" and "I Wanna Be a Wastoid" and is a highly sought-after collector's item. Despite getting interest from major labels, Birkhimer initially opted to sign to a "bigger indie label" such as Fat Wreck Chords or Epitaph Records. "It was a life-long dream of mine to be on Lookout Records 'cause of Screeching Weasel and The Queers," Birkhimer said. "By that time though, Larry Livermore had left the label, so I lost interest and decided to go with either Fat or Epitaph instead." Hopkins and Grimes, however, rejected the idea and decided that a major label would be a better choice to reach a wider audience. The band signed a contract with Warner Bros. Records in September 1998 and began preparing for their debut studio album. The band was set to record their debut by the end of the year but were delayed due to Storkel breaking his leg at one of the bands parties. Production for their debut album began at Studio 880 in Oakland, California during February and March of 1999. Mark Trombino was chosen as the album's producer due to the band being impressed with his work on Blink-182's Dude Ranch and Jimmy Eat World's Static Prevails.

Public Enema No. 1, named after an inside joke between Birkhimer and his high school friends, was released on July 7, 1999. Despite peaking at number 18 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart and the singles receiving airplay on radio and MTV, critics wrote the band off as "Blink-182 wannabees", saying the album's title was "too similar" to Blink-182's Enema of the State and also cited similarities with both groups' sound. Birkhimer has constantly denied any connection with the album names, saying it was "purely coincidental." The band spent the latter part of 1999 on tour gaining exposure by opening for bands such as Blink-182 and The Offspring. During a tour stop in Dallas, Texas on October 9, 1999, Storkel and Grimes were arrested in their hotel room for cocaine possession following a call to the police that they were being too loud. Storkel would later comment that the incident was "like a scene straight outta Bachelor Party! Hookers, drugs and all!" The two spent the next day in jail and, as a result, a scheduled appearance at the Granada Theater was canceled. This incident further escalated the tensions between Birkhimer and Grimes, with Birkhimer threatening to fire Grimes if anything of the sort happened again.

Halfway There and break-up (2000-2003)
After the tour in support of Public Enema, No. 1, the band went to Conway Recording Studios in Hollywood to record the non-album single "Strangle" with producer Jerry Finn. Released on June 25, 2000, the single was seen as a departure from Public Enema, No. 1, showing a subtle emo influence. Birkhimer had shown an increased interest in emo music around this time and decided to incorporate its influence into the band. The new direction did not sit well with Grimes, however, as he considered emo "pussy music." Hopkins was also reportedly dissatisfied with the new direction but "went along with it to shut Travis up." When the band began writing songs for their next studio album in August 2000, tensions escalated even further between the band as Grimes had been writing pop punk material similar to Public Enema, No. 1, while Birkhimer was experimenting more with emo. The band went to record their second album, titled Halfway There, at Conway Recording Studios in Hollywood in early 2001, with Mark Trombino serving as producer/engineer again. These sessions were filled with in-band fighting, with Grimes often walking out in the middle of recording, leaving Birkhimer and Hopkins to fill in on bass for certain songs. Hopkins would also refuse to perform at times, but usually relented with the exceptions of "Existential Crisis" and "Lack of Reason", which both feature Birkhimer playing all of the guitar parts and bass. "That was the beginning of the end for me," Birkhimer said. "I felt betrayed by them. We were supposed to be a unit and work together, but there they were refusing to play 'cause they hated emo so bad. Cody just didn't like anything but the pop punk sound and Mark couldn't think for himself. If Cody was around, he'd side with him but if it was just me and Mark alone, he'd side with me. There was my best friend acting like a mindless drone and going with the crowd. Lots of hurtful shit was said to me just to be 'popular' with Cody and that really hurt me. I know it sounds stupid but to cope with that, I started drinking." Storkel also stated when reflecting back on the recording sessions, "It didn't make much sense why we started playing all that slow stuff. Cody and Mark, those guys were upset and I see why. I wanted more funny songs about sex and stuff people can drink and party to but all of a sudden we started writing about My So Called Life and Dawson's Creek and it's like, I can just watch TV if I wanna see those shows. I don't wanna play their music. I like to party and have fun."

Halfway There was finally released in August of 2001, with another addition being released three months later with new artwork. Allegedly, the main reason for the sudden reissue was due to the label not being impressed with initial sales and hoping another release would capture an audience. The album received mixed reviews from critics, with some praising the maturity of the songwriting while others criticized it for being "uneven" due to the drastic difference in sound from song to song. The group embarked on a tour across the United States in support of the album, during which Grimes would walk off stage when it came time to play songs from Halfway There, excluding those he wrote, and this would sometimes cut concerts short. Other times, Birkhimer would be too intoxicated to play, which resulted in many of the tour dates being cancelled. During a show in Seattle on April 3, 2002, Birkhimer collapsed onstage and was rushed to a nearby hospital. After recovering, Birkhimer suggested taking an extended break while he tried to kick his alcoholism and "hopefully feel better about each other with a break." The tour concluded in October 2002 and was seen by all parties as a failure. The band's label and management lost millions of dollars due to all the canceled dates and refunds requested because of the band's poor performance. After the tour, the four of them seldom communicated. "It was hard to deal with," stated Grimes. "When you've joined a punk rock band, you wanna make punk rock music. Nobody wants to buy an album from a party band just to hear some dramatic wuss signing about his identity crisis. I felt ashamed being on stage and having to play those stupid songs. The tour was a wreck because our guitarist took it upon himself to throw his diary out into the world like people actually wanna read that shit. If we had kicked him out of the band before we began recording the thing, then we might of been bigger than Def Leppard!" In February 2003, after months of not talking, the band met at Birkhimer's house to discuss future plans, which later turned into an argument over what direction they would take. "I was talking about getting more progressive with our sound instead of sticking to the basic pop formula and the guys jumped all over me, and that was it," Birkhimer said. "There's a certain point where you can't take it anymore. I felt like I was selling out and I knew I couldn't live with myself if I had kept going in this party-pop direction so I got up and told the guys I was quitting, just like that." Over the next few months, Grimes and Hopkins struggled to find a guitarist to replace Birkhimer but to no avail and ultimately decided to break up the band. The label put out the band's final release, a live album called ''Enema on the Loose! Live! in March which was recorded during the Public Enema'' tour. The live album also featured a studio outtake from the Public Enema sessions called "Falling Out", which was also released as the group's last single.

Band members
Main line-up
 * Travis Birkhimer - lead guitar (1993-2003); lead vocals (1993-1996)
 * Cody Grimes - lead vocals (1998-2003); bass (1996-2003)
 * Mark Hopkins - rhythm guitar (1997-2003); lead vocals (1996-2003); bass (1993-1996)
 * Stephen Storkel - drums (1994-2003)

Original members
 * Gordy Costanza - drums (1993-1994)

Discography
Studio albums
 * Public Enema, No. 1 (1999)
 * Halfway There (2001)

EPs
 * Drunken Indecency (1996)
 * Check Mate! (1998)