An email from ex-Skinnee Andy Action explaining the J's rise to rock fame: A few friends and I formed the band in college (Columbia Univ./New School in NYC) on kind of a whim - there was a Columbia event planned with abuilt-in audience and we capitalized on the moment. Soon we had gigs on our own and the various band members that couldn't prioritize the band either quit or got fired. We got any money we could get together to make a 4-song demo, and with the help of friends we recorded it. We played around NYC every week or so for a few years and tried to get the band into any situation we could. We befriended other bands, club owners, promoters, radio dj's, and really worked on promotion: posters, flyers, mailing list, etc., and nurtured the small, but evergrowing fan-base slowly and one fan at a time. All this work and a little luck (such as a fluke acceptance to Dick Clark's Battle of the Bands '93 on ABC tv!) helped us to get a booking agent - a company that booked all our live shows for us. They had more clout to get us into more clubs and enabled us to travel to different cities to play. We got a loan from a fan and bought a vehicle. At that point, each band member faced a difficult decision: quit your job/school/girlfriend/life or quit the band. Many quit the band. Well, we played the small club curcuit for years, attracting management, changing booking agencies, changing management, nurturing the fan-base and generally working our asses off. All the while we were making demos, releasing our own cd's, selling t-shirts, and shopping the band to record labels - and getting rejected! We have binders full of rejection letters... Deep into our sixth year, we finally got approached by Capricorn (we had sold nearly 20,000 cd's on our own and it became harder and harder to ignore us) and we signed with them. We switched booking agents again, switched lawyers, signed a publishing deal (separate topic) and virtually nothing changed. Well, we got to make a record on a reasonable budget with some really great producers and made a video (Riot Nrrrd - which flopped) and our record was in stores. We still couldn't really get on any great tours and radio virtually ignored us. Recently, we've changed management again - 311's elusive Yonnie came aboard and things started changing - starting with renewed enthusiasm from the record label and going on tour with Everlast and Sugar Ray... So there's the skeleton of our career: 8 years, 14 ex-band members, over 1100 shows, 4 demos, 3 managers, 3 booking agents, 2 lawyers, 2 self-released cd ep's, 1 record label, 1 publishing company and a partridge in a peartree... the MOST important things throughout have been: keeping together through the hard times (poverty and suffering are a big part of the equation), amassing resources (contacts, industry connections, and ANYONE who will help you) and nurturing the fans. There is no band without the fans... <====