Bad Connxion Transitions into Adulthood
Back in 2003 in Crestwood, NY, Joe Dunker, Colin Albanese, Ryan McCombe, and Matt Borsellino were in seventh grade at Annunciation Elementary, the local Catholic School that almost every kid in Crestwood attended. They were under the same totalitarian, Roman Catholic regime that all of us were under and were starting to test the boundaries of what was accepted.
2003 was the second half of our seventh grade year, a time when we were all in transition. We had to start thinking about what high school we might want to go to, parents were starting to plan how to best prepare us for the upcoming high school placement exams, sports were becoming more and more important, and friendships were being tried.
It was in that atmosphere that Bad Connxion started to take root. Almost overnight there was an interest in music, and not exactly Top 40. We’re talking about the beginnings of the pop punk heyday, a time when guys with eyeliner and lip piercings were gracing the covers of Tiger Beat Magazine more than clean cut bubblegum acts.
“It had a lot to do with the fact that you’re so young and impressionable ,” Joe Dunker recently told me . We were sitting in Barnes & Noble Cafe on Central Avenue, the same cafe we had all probably gone to on more than one Friday night, lacking anything else to do. “that, once you saw it on MTV, like I saw Sum 41's ‘Fat Lip’…seeing it…that was exactly what I wanted to do.”
They can even remember where they saw it. “In Matt’s [Borsellino] basement,” Colin recalled.
Both were a little worse for wear being that it was the day afternoon Halloween and I had dragged them out into the cold for this but, the moment we started talking about old music, the bands that excited us, they perked up.
“ ‘I don’t want to be a casualty of society,’ that was like ringing a bell,” Joe said, snapping his finger. That one Sum 41 line probably resounded with a lot of us, living in such a small town with high expectations on everyone. There was nothing grandiose or sophisitcated about any of that music but it was exactly what seventh and eighth graders needed.
They started picking up instruments. Matt Borsellino had already been taking guitar lessons and, according to Colin, was the catalyst. “He was the one who was like ‘guys, check this out.’”
“He sparked everything,” Joe added. “Once you had a visual you wanted to do it.”
They started playing in basements, primarly drummer Ryan McCombe’s.
A whole group of teens just playing around with guitars and basses, some adding vocals here or there. The band formed organically out of that, whittling away extra members until it was just Ryan McCombe on drums, Matt Borsellino on lead guitar, Joe Dunker on rhythm guitar and vocals, and Colin Albanese on vocals and bass.
They played out a few times- some local high schools, Don Hills in NYC, my sweet sixteen party- but, like every kid of that generation, Warped Tour- Kevin Lyman’s annual punk rock festival that launched the careers of such heavyweights as My Chemical Romance, Avenged Sevenfold, and New Found Glory- was the main goal.
“All we wanted to do was go to Warped Tour or to be in Warped Tour,” Colin said.
It was the main goal for most pop punk bands at the time. Warped Tour was seen as the promised land, this whole world dedicated to music that we loved attended by people who dressed and acted like us all there for the same thing- music. And, coming from a town with no music scene to speak of, Warped Tour was an annual jaunt into Wonderland.
Bad Connxion modeled itself on bands like Story of the Year who created a whole subculture with its fans, showing them documentaries about the making of albums and tour life. Bad Connxion wanted to be that and I can still remember Colin, Ryan or even myself at times taping everything they did.
“I still have those tapes somewhere in my house,” Colin says.
“Always trying to be that one thing,” Joe said, “really helped us and then we all went different directions.”
But, like most bands that spring up in middle and high school, Bad Connxion faded out. Without any real venues to play- we had maybe one teen center- and with college looming on the horizon, each member went his separate way.
Joe and Colin pretty much continued playing together. Both went to the same college for a brief stint and, in that period, picked music right back up. They had already built a studio in Matt’s basement, a highlight of their Bad Connxion years, and it was easy to fall into the rhythm again. When everyone came home from college, the pieces came back together and the idea to reform was sparked.
“We were at Stephen’s Green one night, hanging out in the back,” Joe told me, referencing the local bar that almost every one in Crestwood finds their way to, “and I was just like, ‘Yeah, guys, let’s just try. We haven’t played in a while,’ and then we wrote a song that practice and were like, okay, guess this is a thing again.”
At first, they weren’t going to do anything with it. They were just going to play music for the love of it but then they started writing songs and began to realize that they wanted to perform and create again.
They have played out, a few parties, a couple of bars. There was a show in Jersey that they particularly remember because of the crowd reaction.
“The first second we all kicked in, this lady started dancing, and I wrote that song, “Dance,” to make people dance. That’s my goal, to connect with people.”
Gone are the grandiose dreams of Warped Tour and international, multi-million dollar success. Now, it’s a more pure desire to just play and connect with people, to just get their music out there and to enjoy playing.
They’ve gotten older. Their influences have gone from Sum 41, Story of the Year, and the Ataris to John Mayer and John Butler. Their dreams for music and music’s role in their lives has changed.
They see music now as a lifelong passion, something they always want to do, something that will always be involved in their lives but might not be their careers.
Colin wants to go into acting. He’s thinking of heading west, either to California or Austin, TX, and Joe, who is currently in finance, wants to get a degree is music producing and maybe open up his own production studio. Either way, they want music in their lives and that brief stint when they weren’t performing was still filled with music, with playing in basements and honing their sound.
“We want to do this forever,” Joe said. “As long as we can.”
Back then, back in 2004 in Ryan’s basement, that idea seemed inevitable because what was forever to a bunch of 14 year-old high school freshmen? Forever was the next year. But now, forever seems more attainable because the dreams have gotten smaller. There’s no more need to record their every movement so fans in the future can watch their rise to fame on computer screen; there’s no more dreams of touring on Warped Tour alongside bands like Mest and Good Charlotte. There’s only this want to play music and, if college that stop them from doing so, I’m pretty sure they can keep going.
Want a little taste of what we all listened to back in 2003–2005? Check out the playlist below:
