Speak My Peace

That Mic

In 1998, a DJ friend of ours heard we were working on a new album, called "Sellouts & Devils". He had an engineer friend with a recording studio in his house that was interested in recording a hip hop/rap group. This was a well-known award-winning sound engineer who we were honored and excited to work with.  
After a month of solid work in the studio, we had recorded, mixed, mastered, and finished the album and were waiting to receive the final copy of the CD master. All of a sudden, we got a call from the engineer cursing us out and accusing us of breaking into his house and stealing his whole studio and computer system! He said we were done in St. Louis and that he was "black balling" us from every studio and venue in town. He tried it, but we all know how well that worked out. We were upset, because we spent all of our time and hard earned money to record the album. But to find out that the project is now gone and we were being accused of stealing our own album was mind blowing! 
Although, there was one thing that didn't quite add up that really bothered us. There was a huge german shepard that used to go crazy and tried to bite members of the crew whenever we'd show up for a session. It became such a disruption that the dog had to be kept in another room while we worked on the project. Naturally, one of our first questions was how could we get pass an attack dog that appeared to be very vicious towards us every time we were there? So many questions, yet no answers.  
At this point, we had to move forward without a complete album. Our producer, Mr. Orange, who had a rough version of the songs, put together the "Sellouts & Devils" EP Sampler. We went to every Office Max and Office Depot and bought out every CD making kit then bought a 10 CD burning tower and pressed up the EP at the band house. We sold the CD at every rave and house party we went to for the next 6 months, selling over 800 CDs.  
About 6 months later, our DJ friend who introduced us to the sound engineer said they finally got to the bottom of the break-in. The thief ended up being the sound engineer's roommate and that's why the dog didn't attack the intruder. The roommate had a drug problem and pawned off all of the equipment, including the computer with our music on it. Please believe we were hella pissed, being accused of stealing our own music and betraying the trust of our DJ friend who hooked us up with the engineer in the first place. Not only did that affect us personally, but the threat that our reputation would be ruined around town for something that we did not do really bothered us and could have potentially ruined us professionally. Never did we receive an apology. Privately or publicly.  
But now, check this out. A couple years later, that same sound engineer got in a bad accident and guess who they called to perform at the benefit show? Unfortunately, we were unavailable.  
So 20 years passed and a buddy of ours who refurbishes donated computers hit us up saying that he found a computer at a pawn shop with a whole bunch of our music on it. He said he knew it was us, because the file said, "Midwest Avengers Sellouts & Devils".  We couldn't believe it! So, BC aka John Harrington, drove over there to check it out and to his surprise, it was the stolen computer tower bay with the whole album mixed and mastered on it. 
This is the hip hop/rap version of Midwest Avengers, that consisted of Brown Clown, Psychedelic Lumberjack, Intellect Emcee, Mr. Orange, Recharge, and So'n'So with a couple songs featuring Tarzan Medina, Lil Mayo, and Jim Honey of Ring True. At that point in our musical journey, we were listening to a lot of different kinds of music and experimenting with a lot of different types of sounds, trying to come up with a futuristic style of music. This is what we came up with.

R-Type

Midwest Avengers

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