Scarab / One True Thing

This week will be Danny Lopez appreciation week.  Danny was the drummer for several LI bands, most recently my band Steady As She Goes.  He's moved to Wisconsin for work and I'm celebrating his contributions to the scene and music with a few posts on his former bands.

Scarab was formed by Danny and Milan Milevoy in 1994.  They brought in a then 16 year old, untested singer named Melanie Wills.  The band had a post-punk, indie meets melodic rock sound at the time.  They played with punk and hardcore bands of the time, notably Greensleep and Sleepasaurus, the former of which they would go on to release a split 7" called "A Fine Proposal" on Motherbox Records which contained the songs "The New One" and "Mother".

The band eventually recruited Lee Greenman on bass to replace their original bass player, who would play on a demo featuring songs such as Dearest, Bloom and Yeast.  The last song would also be featured on the Motherbox comp "Diversified Chaos".  Lee would be replaced with Antonio Garcia (aka Antonio Longo). 

They would crossover from the hardcore scene to gather more mainstream interest in 1997 and 1998 by winning Best Local Band in the LI Voice paper and wound up bouncing around with deals from E.S.P management and Gotham entertainment.  Their sound had evolved from their noisier beginnings and was becoming more commercial.  They recorded an album with Gotham, but it never got released due to the label wanting them to sign with them to release a 2nd album with them as well.  

Danny would leave the band in late 1999 and go on to form the band Redshift, and then later join Dearly Departed, play with The Eternity Code and join Steady As She Goes.

Scarab would change their name to One True Thing and eventually released a full length entitled "Finally" in 2002 which included some of the songs from when Danny was in the band.  Singer Melanie Wills is best remembered for her singing contribution on "Short Stories with Tragic Endings" and "Autumn's Monologue" from From Autumn to Ashes. The band went through several lineup changes and included Ray Greene of Farenheit 451 on drums for their full length. Antonio would leave Scarab before the name change to sing for Taking Back Sunday, then join The Prizefighter before coming back to play bass again and then leave again when Mike Pilato from FATA joined them.  I'm not sure when the band finally decided to fold it in.

I don't have much to download here to be honest.  I had the tape of the demo which contained "Dearest", "Bloom" and "Yeast" (and possibly "Struggle" as well) given to me by Lee many years ago.  I probably threw the tape out.  I'll be perfectly candid and say that Melanie was never particularly nice to me and certainly colored my judgment on this band and still does to this day.  I'd say more, but Mom always said if you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all.  My wife had the CD demo of One True Thing that preceeded "Finally" and I can say with certainty I chucked that out and didn't bother converting it to MP3.  So you guys are on your own here.  If anyone has it, let me know and I'll post it up.

What I can offer is 3 tracks of Scarab - one culled from a live at the Pickle Patch comp which is untitled, a cover of "25 Green" from a Descendants tribute and "Bookmark" from Compilation Shmompliation.  I've also included the One True Thing album "Finally" as a download as well.  The versions of Dearest and Bloom are different than the originals done with Dan, but for completeness I'm including this if you were into the band at either stage of their existence.

The Motherbox split with Greensleep looks to still be available though from Merch direct here: http://www.merchdirect.com/MotherboxRecords/GreensleepScarab?artist=1131

SCARAB - Comp Tracks:
http://www.mediafire.com/?6m86w8lv2ie0vbq
(Link Fixed with additional song)

ONE TRUE THING - Finally:
http://www.mediafire.com/?tgmdbmum8llo688

Here is Scarab's website from what looks to be 1997:

http://www.hardcorewebsite.net/scarab.htm