Above: Bugger The Toast performs its eighth show at The Hole to a near capacity audience of 48.

Local band gets its shitty music out to the world via Internet

"It's great, people from all over the world are downloading the MP3s off our website," said Bugger The Toast's vocalist/bassist Brent Collins, who founded the substandard band with hack guitarist Craig McNeil and primitive drummer Sergi Howard in April. "We've gotten hits from all over, people checking out the band. Like this month some guys in England and Australia downloaded tunes. It's really cool to be reaching those people with our music."

Stylistically described by Collins as "a cross between Cave In and early Nine Inch Nails," Bugger The Toast hopes that international accessibility to the band's stale music via the band's website will generate the kind of widespread popularity that's so far eluded the band, mostly because of the band's humdrum appearance, displeasureable songwriting and technically weak live shows.

"I don't understand the Orlando scene, it's like nobody likes good music," said Collins, referring to the fact that local audiences have not enthusiastically flocked to any of the band's nine paltry performances, eight of which have occurred on Monday nights at The Hole, an underground Orlando coffee shop that seats around 60 people. "It's like nobody around here, 'gets us.'"

"That's why we put our MP3s on the site; internationally, we think a whole lot more people will get into it," Collins explained. "Especially in Europe, where bands like ours are appreciated for their music instead of their hype."

Initially recorded on a Fostex X-26 four-track recorder in the basement of Collins' mother's home, three original Bugger The Toast songs have been transferred to MP3 format and made available for download: "Steak in the Mail," "Supercon: The Rebirth" and the band's favorite, "The Orange Song."

Distinguished by flawed performances, redundant instrumental bridges, irritating vocals, parochial lyrics and rhythmical disasters, these shoddy recordings have been downloaded in at least two countries all over the world, excluding the United States.

"Since we put the MP3s up, the response has been tremendous," Collins boasted.

Indeed, music lovers from all corners of the world have been logging on to www.buggerthetoast.com and downloading the band's predictable, mundane musical catastrophes. During August, when the MP3 downloads were added to the already existing website, the site's hit count increased significantly from 107 to nearly 400.

"That's 400 unique users, by the way," Collins clarified. "It's not like [members of the band] keep clicking on the refresh button to drive up the count."

This recent surge in interest in Bugger The Toast's music has filled the band's members with confidence in their shitty work.

"'The Orange Song' has got to be our most provocative work so far," Collins naively boasted about the idiotically titled two-minute, 14-second unrelenting flood of undeterminable noise which Collins says "exposes listeners to what it might be like to actually be an orange." "The lyrics, you can't really hear them too well on the MP3, but they're really deep and stuff. I had a cold when we recorded that; the vocals didn't sound so hot so we mixed[the vocals] a little low on that tune."

"But trust me, it rocks," Collins added.

Though slightly unhappy with both the stilted performances and low quality of recording of the MP3s, Collins said the band is very excited about the waves they are making worldwide via the Internet.

"We've gotten e-mails from people in other countries saying they dig our stuff and that they are making CDs of the songs and passing them out to friends," Collins said, believing firmly in everything he reads in e-mails sent from complete strangers. "We don't mind that we aren't making money off those copies, we just want to get our music out to people. We're hoping the Internet will help us establish our fan base and generate label interest."

Bugger The Toast will perform Monday night at The Hole, located at 960 Bridge St. in downtown Orlando. Cover $7.

November 2001