User:Occasionalists/sandbox

The Occasionalists are a Brooklyn, NY-based live karaoke band, currently comprised of four core band members -- John Allgood (guitars, keyboards, bass), John Marshall (keyboards, guitar, bass, drums, vibraslap solos), Barry Stelboum (drums, bass, guitar) and Mark Vincent (bass, guitar, drums). However, prior to thrilling small but enthusiastic crowds by playing its unique brand of live band karaoke in which they seamlessly move from punk to soul to classic rock to rap to Gregorian chants, the band had a long, sometimes sordid, history where new facts, rumors and half-truths are being discovered on a daily basis.

To help understand how the band got to be Brooklyn's premier live karaoke band, one has to go back to small town of Bergen, Norway (population 290,000) in the late 1960s. It's a little known fact that many of the most popular bands got their start and first taste of rock and roll stardom in Bergen. Syd Barrett learned to play guitar from local legend Bjorn Axeheimer (and the plucked open E string at the beginning of "Interstellar Overdrive" was the first note that Syd learned from Bjorn); Mick Taylor honed his blues skills at the Grotte Klubb, the legendary blues bar where Mick Jagger and Keith Richards first heard the young Taylor weaving fluid blues lines not unlike those made famous by Norwegian blues legend, Gjørmete Vann; and it's where four young American upstarts honed their craft playing Norwegian folk tunes and songs by the most inspirational band to come out of the British Invasion -- Gerry & the Pacemakers.

Over the years, the band attempted many stylistic changes, such as Kentucky Psychedelic, German Reggae and Chinese Country, and went through a long list of additional personnel including Bill Bruford on drums, Davy Jones on saxophone, Mark Bolan on guitar, Nico on vocals, Robert Wyatt on drums and vocals and the aforementioned Mick Taylor on lead guitar. While, in 1972, Taylor wrote the band's only #1 hit (in Norway, Finland and Ghana) "Astrid, Where Have You Hid?," the band was not overly impressed with these musicians and decided that the synergy among the four original members was the best way to get them where they wanted to go.

After years of covering other artists' songs, the band's self-proclaimed "songwriters," Allgood and Marshall, began to write "original" songs, incorporating both of their primary inspirations (Norwegian folk music and Gerry & the Pacemakers), to craft infectious pop songs in the hopes of one day getting on Toppen av Poppene, Norway's top-rated showcase for new bands, and, daring to dream about leaving the idyllic fjords of their home country -- with Brooklyn, NY in the United States of America being on the top of their list! After some fits and starts, the songwriting duo came up with what they believed to be an album's worth of pristine, perfect pop music and the band entered Kloster Vei recording studios with famed Gerry & the Pacemakers' producer, George Martin. In just 74 minutes, the band recorded and mixed their first album, "The Occasionalists -- Will Anyone Care?" Unfortunately for the band, no one did.

Frustrated by the abject failure of "Will Anyone Care?," the other two members, Stelboum and Vincent, often referred to for reasons they never understood as the "Ringos" of the band, tried their hand at writing the band's music for their follow-up up. Sadly, or some might say, fortuitously, the label dropped the band and the world never got to hear what magic the Ringos claim they devised. There were rumors that Vincent's song, "While My Harpeleik Restlessly Sleeps" was a masterpiece but the world will never know as all known recordings of the song were burned in a suspicious fire at the petrol station where the band stored its masters. Allgood, interviewed at the scene, said "I thought I heard something by the fuel tanks so I threw my cigarette and lighted match to the ground and the next thing I knew 'boom.' Crazy, just crazy, man"

The band took this as a sign that it should give up its dream of hit songs, Toppen av Poppene and Brooklyn, New York in the United States of America and just focus its energy on entertaining local crowds with their eclectic live band karaoke performances and enjoying a quiet family life with an occasional night out at the bar playing other people's hits. And so they did. But, then, one night in 1982, everything changed for The Occasionalists. It was a sleepy Tuesday night (or day, hard to tell) in Bergen and The Occasionalists were doing their usual set list...with one new edition -- "Don't Stop Believin" by Journey, described by Stelboum as "the best new band since Gerry & the Pacemakers" (which he later denied ever saying). A local talent scout, Oddvar Cowell, heard the band perform this song with a group of six drunk women taking on lead karaoke vocals and he knew he had the next big thing. He didn't and they weren't. In fact, The Occasionalists were accused of faking the vocals of the six drunk women and became the laughingstock of Bergen.

The band made a collective decision to sell their farms and resettle in a place where no one would know them. And so the band got to live out one of their childhood dreams as they and their families made their new home in Brooklyn, New York in the United States of America. They carved out new careers as doctors, lawyers, teachers and chiropractors. For Vincent's 50th birthday, the band got together with some old friends and had a small live karaoke show in Vincent's home. The evening was so successful that nearly a year later they played again and then again five months after that. They soon realized that Brooklyn, New York in the United States of America loved The Occasionalists and they started to play almost enough so that their name started to make even less sense than before.

When the now ex-fascist dictator of their adopted country was elected in 2016, the band took a stand -- a microphone stand, many in fact -- and began giving back to its adopted country by performing an endless series of benefit shows for at-risk populations and communities and donating all of the proceeds from its shows to benefit organizations representing such populations. To this day, they try to get together as often as possible to entertain and build its community. The band even has a website-- occasionalists.com -- with videos, news and upcoming shows.