Oh yeah… I had a 7 Seconds cover band last year.

For a one-time Halloween show at Cactus Club, my pals and I got together and did a set as “Red & Black”. We played songs mainly off The Crew and Walk Together, Rock Together. It was my first time playing guitar in front of anyone (I’m a bass player.) We even went so far as to record and release a fake 7″ on Halo of Flies / Beer City Records. Halo of Flies provided the download codes (I make them for the label anyways) and Beer City provided the poly-bags.

Our drummer, Mark, went to a thrift store and picked up 40 random 45s. Kevin, the guitar player, and I spray-painted the center labels black using a simple stencil. We made some simple covers, each with a unique download code on them. We promoted the Halloween show, by telling attendees that they would receive a free “show-only” 7″ while supplies lasted. By the end of the show, they were all gone. I must admit, they looked fairly convincing. We even got Craig, a local DJ at WMSE to play one of the songs on his show. We let him in on the joke. He went so far as to play the sound of a needle hitting a slab of vinyl before cueing up the mp3.

We intentionally left out “99 Red Ballons” and instead opted for Sham 69’s “The Kids are United” as our cover song we’d play. Here’s a video from the set. To view the whole set, check out this YouTube playlist.