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| Back in the 80's I spent countless hours jamming along to the radio with bands like Van Halen, Whitesnake, Roth, etc... I figured it was time to showcase my guitar abilities by playing live, and what better place than your high school talent shows. I had seen other members of my family take the stage with either lip sync shows or live hip hop shows, even breakdancing in those days, lol, but I would dare take the stage playing a rock n roll bit. And what better song to perform?? than Eddie's Eruption. Hmm, how can I pull this off? So I found a local drummer and convinced him to get on stage with me. He did his drum solo which led into me playing eruption, adding my touch of style to it and it went down well. For any musician the act went well, but your typical audience was lost somewhere in the frenzie of notes, and snare hits. OK, OK, I thought, next year is my Senior year so we gotta pull something special, Van Halen anyone?? Bet you couldn't guess who my favorite band was then. In my senior year I recruited more members to form a band we called "Snafu" I invited my previous drummer, a bass player, and singer. The singer was the problem though....he declined the invitation so I had to search for another singer. I think he declined because he found out we wanted him to sing "Panama" hehe. So my drummer suggested we get this girl at our school to sing a song, so we all got together to jam one night. She wanted to sing "Black Velvet" by Alana Myles (?spelling?). Such a simple song, but once we got into the pre-chorus things fell apart, but with some pointers to my bass player and the song moved on. Our band rehearsals soon moved to lunch time at school and our singer only made one practice so we just continued to jam, mostly doing some Ozzy, AC/DC, VH covers. After talking turkey we decided to do Panama as an instrumental, and another original song I wrote which earned the name "F.U.B.A.R." and if we got an encore we would do the Black Velvet song. We also found out we had more competition that year with another band called the "Sour Cherries" It was all in good fun for everyone. On the day of the show, we opened up with our classic drum solo leading into Panama. Things seemed to be vibing well until the second chorus when the train de-railed. So what's a guitar player to do??? I pulled off some solo taps and harmonics and handed the ball to my drummer to show-out, when he was finished we treaded into F.U.B.A.R. which ended our set. We got massive applause, with shouts of an encore when the curtain closed. We basked in our short moment of glory and with a display of cockiness, started to play Black Velvet waiting for the curtain to open back up. But, the teacher in charge shut us down so our 15 minutes of fame was cut short. In the end it all paid off cause we took the first place spot in the show, making us the best band in our school. I will try to get some screen shots to post from the talent show, provided the old video tape is forgiving enough. Stay tuned........ |
| The Performances |
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| The Bands Snafu 1989-90 Harmonic Motion 1990-93 One Nite Stand 1993 OME 2000-present |
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| Christopher Thompson was born in 1972 in Dardanelle, AR where he still lives and accompanied by a wife and a son. Chris is a graduate of Dardanelle High School Class of '90 and attended 3 years of college at the University of Arkansas. During High School Chris was a member of the band where he learned the ins and outs of music. In school he performed at talent shows and formed the band "Snafu" in 1989. Later in the year 1990 Chris teamed up with his college roommate, Jorge Schwarz, to form Harmonic Motion. HM wrote and recorded several instrumental guitar songs that were never released to the public, although you can hear a remake of "Mood Light" on Chris' debut CD "Version 1.0" which is on sale in local music stores. Later in 1993 HM teamed up with three other fellow college buddies to form the band "One Nite Stand." ONS was able to put together a trio of original songs along with cover songs to perform around campus. After Chris left college he moved back to Dardanelle and spent time exploring different career opportunities and hobbies which led up to the formation of OME in the year 2000. After the grunge era was introduced and time passed, Chris developed ideas of forming a band, but found himself back at his roots of instrumental rock guitar. Knowing that the focus of todays music was more pop and alternativebased, instrumental guitar was where Chris found the most satisfying type of music. The year 2000 was the beginning of an experimental recording project which later became Chris' debut CD "Version 1.0" |
| OME is Christopher Thompson |