Eyes Lips Eyes Final Show -- Part 4

One story that I forgot to mention a couple of posts back was how the band came up with the name Elizabethan Report.  If any of you know Tony, he has a knack of mishearing or misunderstanding people during conversations.  One such conversation had mentioned lesbians at Borders (the store).  Tony naturally asked them if they had just said Elizabethan Report.  They said no and were confused how he had even come up with that based on what they had said.  So there you have it....selective hearing can create bands.

Now to start again from where I left off.  One correction to the previous post, they didn't actually change their name to Eyes Lips Eyes until after they had moved to LA and had been there for a while.  they transitioned from Elizabethan Report to the shorter ER for a while until the actual change to Eyes Lips Eyes.

They first lived in a house in Eagle Rock that they rented for the summer.  They spent their time establishing themselves and writing.  I stayed their for a couple of nights and then went with them on a mini tour.  The first stop was Taft, CA., which is near Bakersfield.  It was a for a funeral ironically.  It was held in the upstairs of a bar.  It was a one of the more weird shows I've ever been to.  I think the band didn't really know if they should enjoy themselves or be more serious.  They had a show two days later in Bakersfield.  They had one friend that lived there that we stayed at that introduced them around to other friends and soon they had a little group of fans even though they had never seen them play.  That is one that I found awesome about the band.  They made friends very quickly and were very likable.  The fans that came a lot of time were not only fans but became good friends with the band.  The Bakersfield show wasn't well attended but those that came were friends that they had met the day before and are lifelong fans.

After the few short months in Eagle Rock they moved to an old factory converted to three big studio apartments on the east side of LA near Chinatown.  It was squeezed between a cement factory and a UPS loading dock.  It was the perfect spot for a band.....with the exception of nearly no privacy.  From there they met the band Kid Theodore (now known as Toy Bombs) who were from SLC.  Both bands had known each other a little while in Utah but neither of them knew that they moved to LA.  They joined forces and toured the country with each other, forming very close bonds in the process.  One particular tour in the fall of 2010 I believe they played in a lot of empty venues, everyone in the tour van was sick or would get sick.  They ended up in a New London, CT.  The tour had been awful up to this point.  They had been barely making any money the whole tour.  This venue was no different, no one was there except for the other band named The Beauvilles.  So the bands just put on shows for each other basically and let out the frustrations of a bad tour.  The Beauvilles loved them as well as their manager.  A friendship that would create a chain reaction of friendships down the road  This was the turning point in their success.

Right before that they had started their conquest to release one song, one music video for the song and one B side each month for twelve months and slowly release the album Blue Red one spoonful at a time.  The first video for the single "Pretty" was a success as it was nominated to be in the SXSW film festival the following year.  The constant amount of music, videos caught a lot of attention and would lead to even better things.

--To Be Continued--