Brett, My mom never had an 8 track tape player, it was my old JVC portable. She was always playing a compilation tape of songs from several soundtracks. The tape was made for her by long time friend Rob Eggelston. MYTH (the very short version) The original Myth Band was started In Jimmy Parsons parents Garage not far from the boat house where Jeff used to live with his first wife. Kelly, Jimmy and Richard new each other from school , and had talked on several occasions about getting together and jam, but this did not happen for awhile because none of them were old enough to drive. So I drove kelly to his first jam session at Jimmy’s house, I guess he must have been 14 at the time. (incidentally Richard did not play base at that time, he played rhythm guitar).several weeks later we moved the band into my moms basement, ). The guys originally had Peavey back stage 30s Jimmy had one of those plastic ludwig drum sets. no one had any money to speak of, so we had to build most everything from scratch, Kelly’s speakers (12" Jensons) I found in a garbage can behind B&B autoparts in Redmond, the wood for the speaker cabinets was pinched from a local construction site, for effects we turned an old revox reel to reel in to an echo plex (still have theold tapes form that machine). Fred Oneil the bands longtime friend and then lightman & I built the band a light show out of stove pipe and a bunch of colored light bulbs they swiped from a local neiborhood. There were other singers, a girl whose name escapes me, a guy by the name of John Monda (who went to school with them)and for a short time a guy named Harvey B. for a short time the band played covertunes, but that quickly faded. Regardless who sang for them, they were amazing to watch, here were these 3 punk kids from no were putting out a sound unlike anything before, droves of young teenagers would come to watch and I recorded every bit of it on cassette. Kelly, Richard And Jimmy were always in awe of Jeff, they used to go to lake hills and watch Jeff back when he played with Adam Brenner in Tyrant, they would come home and just sit around wishing he would come sing for them. When I found out why they were bummed, I said why not go ask him, they looked at me like I was some kind of idiot with a lot of mumbling thrown in, so I said that’s it we are going to go talk to Jeff end of story. I don’t remember who all was in the car when I drove over to the boat house, but to make a long story short, Jeff was blown away, I remember the first thing he said to me after listening to the tape I had recorded "how did you get the snare to sound like a whip". When the Mob EP was recorded Kelly was there, so was Randy Gane, that very same EP sat on the shelf for all of a year before Jeff actually joined the band that was to become Queensryche, it happened one hot summer day at Richard gibsons parents house off the old brick road in Redmond, I remember that day well I had just driven up to the practice shed and could tell that something was wrong, both Jeff and kelly with heads hung low sat on one of the logs that were around the parking area, when I asked what was wrong they said they had had another band fight , I stood there for a while then said " You have to do what you can to get someplace then you can do what you want" . I expected Jeff to tell me to #%^@$&#& off, but instead he just looked at me for awhile and then said you know I understand that now . That was the last day as far as I know that Jeff was with Myth. If not for MYTH there never would have been a Queensryche. A lot of people would disagree with me, But hey I was there from the start, where were they, I ran sound with Mike fisher at the End Zone for the MOB I even designed the stage built by Brent Cristianson they played on. There is a lot of dissinformation floating about, but one important thing remains, MYTH changed a lot of peoples lives, and in spirit, 20 years later, is one of the biggest bands to have ever been. Jeff said something once that summed all of this up "you have to want" and that is in fact what made Myth what it was, a group of kids without a penny to their names who had the balls to be something more than society made them out to be. Maybee somday I will tell the whole tale as I know it, including all those people who made it happen, but for now I must go. Dee PS the Tri Ryche thingy in fact came from Artist Wes Grizwold (Queensryche EP), it is the way he always signs his artwork, I remember him doing it all the way back in high school, started out I think as a peregrine falcon, but you know how big business is, they just took it and ran, then all the credit hounds planted their flag..
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