TO HELP FIND a new name for his band—formerly known as Warsaw—guitarist and vocalist Michael Hale decided to get little spiritual. “I took some peyote and went to the desert and came back with the new name: The Abstracts. Not like a workout machine for your abs, but like a painting with different interpretations,” Hale says.
Bassist Mark Sharp was just glad to have a name they all liked.
“It takes us five minutes to talk about a song, but it’s taken us five weeks to come up with a band name,” Sharp says.
The Abstracts is culmination of two years of playing backyard barbecues and parties, where, incidentally, Hale and Sharp met their future drummer.
“Hale and I went to a party and we see this mean-looking greaser guy behind a kit,” Sharp says. “We pointed him out and he glared at us. Hale looks at him and says, ‘That’s our drummer, right there.’ Hale then grabs an acoustic guitar and starts jamming out with him. The chemistry was immediately there.”
That mean-looking greaser was Frank “Franky Boy” DeSantiago. They met, talked, drank and decided to start jamming for fun. “In the beginning, it was just for us and our friends, kind of a ‘in the closet’ band. We’d only play when we got drunk at barbecues,” Hale says.
In true garage band fashion, they recorded a couple songs on a boombox and let some friends listen to it. Sharp says they liked what they heard.
“So we thought; maybe we’re on to something here. The more we played, the more each song didn’t sound like the last. We sat there and scratched our heads and wondered, ‘Is anyone going to get this?’ But we realized that didn’t really matter. We wanted to play songs we would to love to play and our friends hanging out with us would want to hear,” Sharp says.The creative process for the Abstracts revolves around the fact the three members are from different backgrounds and bring something different to the table. Franky Boy was a paid DJ at one point.
“I like all kinds of music, but I hate Morrissey. But this guy [Sharp] loves him.”
The band members are all veteran musicians who have all lived in downtown San Jose for more than a decade.
The mutual respect and a love for many different types of music are pushing the trio to become part of what they believe is a burgeoning music scene. “I think San Jose has come back around to a really good live music sect,” Sharp says. “We’re just part of a family. We want to build something we know San Jose’s capable of. Living in the shadows of San Francisco for I don’t even know how many years at this point, I think it’s time San Jose came up and built something that’s worthwhile. I think we’re on the right track to do that.”Hale also sees a bigger picture.
“I think it’s starting to move and grow,” Hale says. “You can see bands are actually making an effort to sound different instead of the same. The main thing is support and treating each other like family. Because of that, I think San Jose is going to rise. I would like to see all the bands collectively get together and represent this gutter. It’s not going to take one band, it’s going to take an army and we can do that.”
Hale compares the Abstracts to a tribe of Native Americans, passing a pipe.
“You sit down at a campfire and you don’t say a word,” Hale says. “You don’t even look at each other and you pass this pipe around. That’s how it is musically for us. We’re watching it create itself.”
