These were the first demos that Toxic Sunshine ever put out. I think I was 15 when we did this. Around New Years of 2002 I decided to form a new band. I was in a band called Accidents with Brett "Vermin" Dell'Alba and that fizzled out after putting out one song. Max Eschbach played bass in the band and we became really good friends.

When I first formed Toxic Sunshine it was hopefully going to be myself, Max and my friend, Mike Harden. Mike ended up getting arrested for assaulting a cop in Pen Argyl so he couldn't stay in the band. Max and I played as a two piece for awhile until I decided to ask my long time friend, Brian Daniels to join and play bass for us. He was a child of the state getting tossed back and forth from one foster family to the next so he was almost always in a different place when it came to practice.

Max and I recorded a cassette demo (that's been lost for a very long time) and we gave a copy to Brian. He loved it and was at practice the following week. Finally in 2003 after a few months of playing we put together our first 10 songs. They weren't really that good. They were the first songs I had ever written so I didn't really know how to do anything other than emulate the people I grew up with like The Ramones, Crass, The Subhumans and Nirvana.

We had our friend Mike Buzzard come down and record us at practice. He literally ran out of free space at the end of Toxic Sunshine, the song, and we were all happy enough with the way it turned out. I had to leave to go to the coal region so Max, Brian and Mike Buzzard did all of the mixing and touching up of things. The following weekend Max and I sat on his bedroom floor coloring all of the CD's by hand and writing out the back covers and printing out the front.

Granted, this demo isn't that good, but it was the beginning of something that became a huge part of my life. I'll always hold Max and Brian very dear to my hearts. Not only because we were in the band together, but because we literally spent almost every waking moment together. We were fucking brothers.

I guess it all went downhill when Max's mom decided she didn't like Max being in a band that was apparently vulgar with a crusty punk rocker like me and we had a huge argument one day before Max got to practice. His dad got in it and I was yelling and screaming.. The whole thing escalated quickly. The cops came and confiscated all of the band equipment and Toxic was done from that moment until 2005 when it got rebooted with new members.

These songs definitely didn't break the mold or anything, but they are the first songs I had ever written so I'm always going to cherish this demo, the songs, the memories and the moments with my old best friends.