“Animation “was more of a time than a band. We did a few gigs, but the focus of the band was originals and free-form playing:.
The original line up was:
Steve Couch - Vocals and Guitar
Eddie Arce - Bass Vocals
Father Time – Drums
Johnny V - Lead Guitar
Bill Robinson Keyboards and Vocals
Guest:
Mike ( Bad Sax) Firtel - Guitar and Vocals
This band formed from the break-up of Boomerang. Johnny V and I had started playing some original music with Father Time and my old friend, Eddie Arce.
I had always regarded Eddie as one the finest most creative Bass players I had ever played with. I was excited to be back playing with him again, although I knew our commercial appeal would change a bit. Eddie always played on the outside and thus drove other members around him to push the same barriers.
After the four of us had been working on a few original recordings at Johnny V’s home recording studio, we got a call from my brother Mike. Mike had been our booking agent in Boomerang. One of our best gigs, Friday Night Live Concert Series, wanted us back for a return performance. The performance was only four weeks away and we had to learn enough material for 3 sets of music. We also had to do our best to match the performance from last year as Boomerang, a band that had played together for nearly 3 years and was very tight.
The pay and exposure was very good so we said, “what the heck,” and began practicing some covers as well as some originals. I called Bill Robinson to see if he was interested in doing the gig with us. Bill joined and we began rehearsing covers and originals. We did not have as solid three-part harmonies as we did before because Eddie or John was not as strong on vocals as Jim has been. However, we more than made up for it in pure energy and musicianship. Fortunately, we had a smaller gig a couple of weeks before Friday Night Live at the south Florida Bill-Fishing Tournament which helped us prepare. Although we had to play the gig under the name “Boomerang” because of contractual agreements with the City, it was really the first public performance of “Animation.” We pulled the gig off fairly well and had some very creative moments. The crowd was extremely supportive and it turned out to be one our most memorable evenings. Some video of that performance is on this page.
After that gig our focus went back to originals, although we did play a few more venues around town, we got caught up in originals. After a few months of rehearsal, Johnny V had to leave the group for personal reasons. We picked up Mike Firtel on lead guitar but never could quite get the energy back we had with john.
After John left, we played the burned out BAR circuit for a while although we did not care. We were concentrating on our originals and only reason we even went out and played was just to play our songs in front of people.
Unfortunately, the MASTER TAPE of the recordings we made in Johnny Vs home studio was mistakenly sold when John sold his recorder. All we have is one decent recording of “Caribbean dance” and a couple of VERY BAD Quality recordings of “Processor Suicide” and “Today.” Those recordings are attached to the bottom of this page.
We never could find a guitar player that wanted to concentrate on originals that could match the intensity of Johnny V, and the band eventually broke up. Not too long after that my cousin Jak moved down from California and we started a new group , “4 Heads,” but that is another story.
