Music
The best kept secret in music
Press
GRAND RAPIDS -- Darwin rocks. So says Love Fossil, a Grand Rapids grunge-rock trio rooted in science -- or, as the bandmates proudly proclaim -- truth. "There's a huge debate going on in this country between where the world came from and whether or not we're going to be using fundamental religions to drive our country and our personal thoughts," drummer Weston Eaton said. "Or, are we going to count on scientific research and the scientific method and actuality of things?" Fossil's simple power ballads are intended to inspire discussion about and enthusiasm for science, one of the band's many interests and a good topic for inspiration "It is really freeing to have a topic," Eaton said. "We've all been in bands where we've tried to pour our hearts into it, and we tried to say everything we had to say about everything in one band. ... And we just wanted to free ourselves and kind of almost have a gimmick or shtick to focus on." Ultimately, their music almost takes a back seat to the singular message. "We're concerned with the fact that science has become mediocritized in K-12 education," said vocalist and guitarist Ben Hunter, area musicians' popular go-to guy for mixing and mastering. "We want to make science cool again. And rock 'n' roll is the best way to do that." Fossil helps make science rock onstage. Besides lyrics addressing cavemen, stem-cell research and the debate between evolution and creationism, the band's set design, artwork and costumes center on all things science. "We just want to be theatrical," Hunter said. Cole, in charge of the group's visuals, takes images from Web sites or old science and evangelical films and splices everything together. The resulting progression of juxtaposed images is projected onto the band and stage during shows. "(Cole) will put on his lab coat and funny goggles. Usually, he'll walk out on stage with a little wand and say stuff like, 'Exhibit A,' and then the band will start rocking," Eaton said. And "rocking" includes performing rehearsed pieces but usually creating spontaneous, new lyrics and music at live gigs. Eaton describes its "progression rock," rather than "riff rock," as "this, like, '70s, David Bowie, glam melody, big, drawn out, epic-sounding songs. But, since we're a three-piece and we've all played rock, it ends up sounding really grungy." Fossil, which came together in November 2005, hopes to be fully funded one day through science organizations and rock clubs in order to help fund area classrooms with science materials as well as perform in classrooms. For example, they will help out a Grand Valley State University audio production class this fall at River City Studios, acting as a recording band. - The Grand Rapids Press
Love Fossil's debut release is full of noise and sludge, gloriously ballsy bass guitar and the John Bonham-esque drumming thunder of Wes Eaton. Vocals hint at David Bowie and Cream, while the guitars fuzz and buzz through beefy dinosaur-sized riffs and progressions. This album shits bigger than you. Love Fossil is three men on instruments and "The Scientist" on projection equipment and lighting. Scientists, Save Us! would perhaps best be enjoyed on psychedelic drugs and sex hormones. This enhanced CD allows the user to play the role of The Scientist and mix video to a dance remix of the opening track "The Day the World Died". Check out lovefossil.com for access to band and event information. - Ryan Cunningham - Recoil Magazine
LOVE FOSSIL TAKES ROCK BACK TO THE STONE AGE - AND THEY EVEN KNOW THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MESOLOTHIC AND NEOLITHIC.
BY CURT WOZNIAK
Nothing’s more antiestablishment than rock ‘n’ roll - except, of course, the work of Copernicus, Darwin and Einstein.
“Those people were standing up for ideas, basically standing up for the scientific method: ‘I observed this, I tested this, and it proves this,’” observed Love Fossil drummer Weston Michael Eaton. “However, what ‘this’ proved went against everybody else’s thinking - so those people were really heroes to stand up in that way.”
The members of Love Fossil may be the scientific revolution’s biggest advocates on the West Michigan rock scene. They’re also the scientific revolution’s only advocates on the West Michigan music scene.
“We’re forcing ourselves to embrace these taboo hot topics that you don’t usually talk about or really think about,” Eaton explained. “The morality behind the stem cell debate; the morality of the debate between creationism and Darwinism. And we’re not picking sides here. We’re just making ourselves learn about it. And as we learn about it, it becomes the impetus of a new song.”
Have people really has enough of silly love songs?
Not quite. “I love that stuff,” Eaton confessed. They’re just not right for a project which turns the entire rock band paradigm on its ear.
“Obviously, we have a motive, and ‘rock band’ happens to be the medium that we use, while…other bands have ‘rock band’ - that’s what they’ve got - and then they fill in the blank with whatever’s on their mind.”
The marriage of 1970’s glam and 1990’s grunge works well musically for Love Fossil. The marriage of science and rock can be more turbulent. That’s why Benjamin Hunter, whose unique guitar tone and passionate vocals largely define Love Fossil’s sound, also strives for the right tone with his lyrical content.
“If you are addressing these topics in a confrontational manner, no one’s going to get anything from it,” he said. “If you attack somebody, or even seem to attack somebody, or disrespect somebody, then that listener is immediately allowed to disregard what you have to say.”
While Love Fossil’s serious purpose sets it apart, the band is not immune to the plights of less singularly focused local bands. Take a typical Love Fossil rehearsal…
It’s a frenetic scene in the basement of Hunter’s northeast side home as he cranks out a brand new song for Eaton.
Diamond Wayne Deschaine runs into the session late after a night shift at Founder’s Brewing Co., where he manages production. He wastes little time before strapping on his bass and adding some bottom end to flesh out Hunter’s idea.
A modicum of anxious uncertainty hangs in the room as the trio explores the new melodic progression. With a show coming up that weekend, the band’s short time together might be better spent polishing up the material they’ll perform at the gig. But by the end of the rehearsal, they agree to add the new song to the set list. In less than an hour, their lives outside the band pull them apart again.
“We have these 45-minute windows to practice, because none of us have time to be in a rock band,” said Eaton, by day a brewing instructor at Siciliano’s Market. “The whole idea is kind of ridiculous!”
Though a chunk of the set list goes unrehearsed, the sensory onslaught of Love Fossil’s live show comes off without a hitch that weekend.
For the weekend warriors of any city’s local music scene, balancing work, family and rock ‘n’ roll is always a challenge. But Hunter, Eaton and Deschaine - along with Love Fossil’s visual imagery director Kevin Cole - are not the typical weekend rockers. A sense of mission beyond that of any hobby band drives Love Fossil. After a few spins of their debut CD, “Scientists Save Us!” it becomes clear: In the song “Brontosaurus Stomp,” Hunter belts repeatedly, “I believe in Science! I believe in science!”
“By no means are we trying to say that we are scientists,” Hunter told Grand Rapids Magazine. “Everything that we do is strictly based in rhetoric and arguments and the art side of it.
“We fall in line with what Carl Sagan would have done - he was a kind of rock star for science - just trying to make people aware of it. We’re not taking sides or picking camps. We just want to expose it so there’s a dialogue about it.”
The reference to Sagan is telling. The late astronomer and astrobiologist also plays into Love Fossil’s live shows. Cole - who does not play an instrument on stage, but appears in character as “The Scientist” and controls video patches projected behind his band mates - has a knack for quoting Sagan between songs. GR
Love Fossil
CATEGORY: Theatrical grunge rock.
HISTORY: Formed in November 2005 as a side project. Members began taking the band more seriously after their first show together on Dec. 31, 2005. They released their first CD, “Scientists Save Us!,” in February 2007.
GEOGRAPHY: Based in Grand Rapi - Grand Rapids Magazine 4/2007
Love Fossil
"Scientists, Save Us!"
The music: Seven hard-charging rock tracks fulfilling Love Fossil's mission: a musical project that "addresses the important issues of climate change, science and open democracy." Ingeniously produced; a warning shot across the bow of humanity.
Get it: Vertigo Music, Scavenger Hunt, Schuler Books
John Sinkevics
The Grand Rapids Press, March 25th 2007
- Grand Rapids Press
Discography
3 Songs For Science
July 2006
Myspace Demo
Love Fossil's debut release "Scientists, Save Us!"
Track Listing for "Scientists, Save Us!":
1) The Day The World Died
2) Cyborg Mammal
3) Apple Tree
4) Faith and Reason
5) The Making of a Fundamentalist
6) Pangaea
7) Brontosaurus Stomp
Enhanced CD with Science Lab and "The Day the World Died" music video
Photos
Feeling a bit camera shy
Bio
Through their lyrics, songs and attitudes, Love Fossil sends a clear message to people who may be puzzled by politicized and radicalized religious messages or globalized oil industries attempting to bewilder us: we humans have been here a very long time, however, we may not be here much longer if we can not learn how to change. The negative planetary effects of both blind policy and co-opted belief have damaged our cultures and ecosytems: its time to wake up! Those bones werent laid in stone to trick us!
Much like how TVs Steven Colbert and John Stewart employ humor as a medium to discuss modern political topics, Love Fossil uses personified storytelling in the form of live Rock n Roll synchronized with video to present both historical and current political, as well as social and environmental topics for discussion.
Originating from the spontaneous song writing of Benjamin Hunter during open mike sets, where live audiences bore witness to love fossils (all of his off-the-cuff jams about Dinosaurs, Monkeys and all things Darwin), drummer Weston Eaton and Bass player Diamond Deschaine heard a call to arms.
Love Fossil began as a three piece rock band. Their compositions are hybrid sounds of 70s theatrical rock fused with the additude of early 90s grunge . The front man, Benjamin Hunter, sings like both Bowie and Cobain. This is how they started off, but they soon evolved...
A scientist joined the band, a man who only communicates through projection, video and light. A man who takes a bands message and literally shows it to the crowd. As you will see, while the musicians in Love Fossil spin amplified tales of the past and present, the Scientist draws and colors in their position with video images of fallen dinosaurs, combated underdogs and hopeless heroes. Screens are hung below, behind and above the band as they don white; hence becoming a moving, living screen themselves.
Love Fossils songs, lyrics, set designs, show concepts, artwork - everything about the band - aims to explore science, the history of the ongoing Scientific Revolution, and how people react to global challenges. Through their sonic and visual exploration of historical heroes, such as Galileo and Newton, and our personification of creatures of the past, like dinosaurs and cave men, Love Fossil seeks to bypass strictly confrontational messages and instead delight the imagination of the listener and viewer. They tell stories with their music. These epic tales depict past catastrophes, such as the shifting of planetary plates, devastating volcano blasts, and species ending asteroid impacts. The characters in the songs personify the pain and loss, but also the hope and compromise both creatures and peoples of the past had to make in order for their legacy and species to remain.
Love Fossil understands that the Evolution vs. Creationism debate has been framed as a bumper sticker war, contrived into a black or white issue. One either believes in God and Creationism or holds an atheistic perspective, believing our godless ancestors crawled from the sea. Love Fossil recognizes reality to be much more complex. As Galileo once said, I do not feel that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use. The scientific history of the world is inconsistent with a literal biblical account. Geology, Anthropology, Zoology and other major studies contradict the literal interpretation of the western creation story. Yet, at the same time, quantum physics and mechanics have shown a remarkable connection between all things living, non-living, atheistic, agnostic, and spiritual. Just as light is both a particle and a wave, the matter of fact reality of billions of years of Planet Earths history does not then trump one view in preference of the other, instead, it exposes the fault in the black or white view of the world interested parties would have them fight for.
Love Fossil instead fights for continued unfettered exploration of the human mind, body, and environment. They acknowledge both spiritual and scientific perspectives, but are primarily concerned only with ideas which, like a Brontosauruss earth shaking gait, tremble the ground under the faulty and dangerous systems which are now in charge of our planets fate. Through song, they expose the clay feet. Through video, they outline their defeat.
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