JON SIGMA GIVES YOU THE
INSIDE ABOUT THE BAND
The story goes back to February 2003.
Myself and Jeff met in a butt rock metal band called Xenoglossia. It was really weird and
strange cause I did not know Jeff at all before that. A friend of a friend told me to call
him up cause he is a good singer. So I decided to give it a shot and give him a call. At
first when I spoke to Jeff on the phone he was really hesitant to come down to our
practice and sing for us. He finally decided to give it a shot. And when he showed up to
our practice pad, he came in with liberty spikes and all punk’ed up. My first
impression was like "Okay… Hot Topic is in the house". So then he sang a
couple Metallica songs for us. And then my drummer and guitarist liked him and wanted him
to be in the band. But I did not want him in the band at all because we had a show like 3
days away and I knew he was going to suck for that show. But the vote was 2-1 so I lost
and Jeff became our singer.
One day I woke up and said to myself, I
should start writing music, which actually makes sense to everyone who listens to it. By
this I mean touchy lyrics. I wanted everyone who listens to it to understand it and
hopefully touch them. I wanted to touch their hearts and their minds. I wanted to send a
message out to all listeners. Whether they support it or not. At this time my friend/class
mate Corinne was dating the singer for "Anti-Flag" Justin Sane. She told me to
check them out. The only song I have heard of Anti-Flag before that was Die for Your
Government. So I went to the store and purchased Underground Network by Anti-Flag. This
album changed my life. I listened to it over and over again for like a month. Every song
touched me. I tried to bring it up to my band XG but none of the members in the band was
into any kind of politics except for Jeff.
At this time Jeff was planning to start a
side project with his best friend for many years Keith. They both sang, they both played
guitar and drums, so all they needed was a bassist. One day when me and Jeff were eating
at In and Out, Jeff brought it up and told me about his plans on starting a band and he
asked me to play bass for this band. I told him that I was really interested. I also told
him about my idea about writing lyrics with a message in it to spread to all listeners.
Not necessary a peace punk band but more like whatever crisis experienced in our life.
Jeff agreed with me and told me that he was actually thinking the same way. I was really
exited about it, the only thing weird was I dint really know Keith. Jeff had introduced me
to him before at a couple of our XG shows and practices.
We finally got together for practice in
August of 2003. Jeff and Keith had already written a couple songs and they played it for
me. I liked it a lot. We got together and practiced right after XG practices, It was
really easy to get together because they were only 3 of us. Unlike in XG we had 5 members
and due to work/school schedules, very rarely all 5 of us got together. It was mostly 3-4
members a practice. Due to this problem the members XG had a bad relationship in the band
with each other. The problem never recovered. We all fought all the time (mostly about
stupid things). Finally one day me and Jeff decided that XG was not really going anywhere,
we were just kinda wasting our time and we were having a lot of fun in this new band. So
we decided to quit XG. It was hard on me because all members of XG were good friends of
mine from high school. We all took it really hard. We argued about it and finally after we
quit the band XG broke up. The remaining members of Xenoglossia played in several other
bands like Heart A'Fire and Poetic Anxiety. We are stilll very good friends to Chris
Clement a.k.a Gunther who is now a part of The Sigma Rebel Crew family.
We had a show booked on October 11th.
So we needed a name for our band. Keith came up with a name Uphill Battle. We all decided
to go with it. But after a couple days we found out that there was already a band with
that name. Then we came up with many other names like Roan, Lies…lies…lies
reason, etc. One early morning at 3am myself and Jeff were talking on the phone about some
band matters. Jeff was just looking at the dictionary and saw the word "Sigma"
which meant The Six'ed Greek Numeral. We just liked the word and how it sounded. Later on
we decided to add a meaning to it, we came up with our band objectives. What are we
planning on doing? What are we going to sing about? What are we planning on preaching. We
finally came up with 6 main points. 1.Respect for self and others 2.Raising a voice
against sexism, greed, corruption, murder, cruelty, racism and abuse 3.Equal Rights to
every living creature 4.Working together across gender lines against sexism and toward
equality 5.Unity Within the human race 6.Senseless acts of Violence Cause more harm than
good. Also we are all big GI JOE fans so the name could come about from there too.
If I dint mention earlier before Sigma
started I started me own label called Shadows Cast Records. I did this because I thought
it would be cool if I could help some upcoming new bands not just by releasing albums but
also in promoting/booking shows for local and touring bands.
One day we sat together and decided we need
to record a full-length album. Since at this time we already had like 14 songs. We had
already recorded some of our songs earlier when the band just started in September. So
finally in December we went in to the studio and recorded a total of 12 songs for our full
length Cd. We called it Stars And Fights. We released it on Shadows Cast Records on
February 21st 2004.
Sigma is definately one of the best things
I've done in my life. I hang out and tour and work with my best friends Jeff and Keith,
who are both the best musicians i've known. We have now played so many many many shows
both locally and nationally. And we always have such great support from all the kids
and the punks. We love you guys. We have had a few fights and disagreements along the line
but we get over it right away. A special thanks to everyone who paid attention to us and
listen to what we have to say. Supporting us in spreading a positive message in our songs.
Also want to thanks all those who inspired us and that’s the main reason we are
around. It’s been and always will be awesome!!!
Much Love and Respect
XOXOXO Take Care– JON SIGMA (a.k.a Jon Cast a.k.a Jon Kabir)
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