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| Kevin Ridel, looking back believes the band "sucked", striving more for technical prowess and focusing less on songwriting craft. | | Kevin Ridel, looking back believes the band "sucked", striving more for technical prowess and focusing less on songwriting craft. |
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| ===Gaining Popularity===
| | Your asenwr was just what I needed. It's made my day! |
| During Cuomo and Fisher's junior year, Avant Garde released a demo tape consisting of "[[Tongue of Fire]]", "[[I Must Be Dreaming]]" and "[[Black Rose]]." The tape was called "[[The Blue Demo]]", the name evolved from the light blue label stickers on the cassette tapes.
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| On [[December 12]], [[December 13|13]] and [[December 18|18]] of [[1987]], Avant Garde recorded six new songs at Trod Nossel studios in Wallingford, Connecticut. It costed the band $288.37. This, their first professional demo, known as [[The Purple Demo]] for it's purple label, featured "[[You Were Just Using Me]]", "[[Renaissance]]", "[[Standing in the Paris Rain]]", "Father Time", "[[Never Forget]]", and "[[Free Fall]]". It is unknown how many copies remain to this day, but approximately fifty were pressed at the time. In a matter of weeks, the demo was getting heavy rotation on WHUS 91.7, U of C's campus radio station. It appeared in the #11 slot (above [[Jane's Addiction]]'s debut). Avant Garde would go on to headline shows throughout [[1988]]. In early 1988, the band convinced [[Michael Stanton]], whom Cuomo met at Berkley the summer previous, to leave his parent's farm in Texas and come to Connecticut to play with Avant Garde. Fisher said of the event, "Here's a 17 year old kid from Texas who moves to Connecticut to hang out with some other 17 year old kids just to play in a rock band...it's bizarre!"
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| Avant Garde was extremely impressed with Michael's devotion to move to Connecticut. After his arrival, the band re-entered the studio in July of 1988 to record a third demo they called ''[[Somethin' Different!]]''. The new demo had the song "Renaissance" (redone), "[[Judge and Jury]]", "[[Bite the Bullet]]", "[[21st Century Shogun]]", "You Were Just Using Me", and "Never Forget". For the most part, the songs were collaborations between Cuomo and Ridel exclusively. Although, Stanton did contribute to some parts of "21st Century Shogun" and some lyrics to "Judge and Jury". Despite all the rehearsals, only one show was booked for the band in the winter of 1988. On the day of the show, the club was no longer open (it had gone out of business). At least, that's Stanton's account. According to Fisher, a snow storm blew in that day and closed the club (despite the storm not hitting the club until later). After this, the band decided to move to L.A.
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| [[Image:Zoom.jpg|right|300px|thumb|Zoom promo picture]]
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| ===Avant Garde in Los Angeles=== | | ===Avant Garde in Los Angeles=== |
