1985 brought 6th grade and my first visit to New York. It also brought a strange, seemingly alien visitor to the school I was attending at the time, New Garden Friends School (NGFS). This odd humanoid infiltrated under the guise of checking out the school as  someone considering enrolling. It seemed to me, however, that our tiny private school was merely an adequate place for him to remain incognito while formulating his plans for world domination. This alien had chosen the highly unlikely disguise of an Irish/African/Czechoslovakian  human. Irish Afro-Czechs had once roamed pre-historic Europe in vast herds, but were though long extinct. I made it clear that I could see through his guise and immediately engaged him a solitary duel of cosmic powers. I managed to convince him that our planet would be no pushover to his conquest by turning him into a pop sickle. He got better. His view of humanity now changed, he introduced himself as "Josh" and we declared a truce.   Remaining wary of one another, we kept tabs on each others activities by becoming seeming friends. Occasionally our truce would break down, resulting in further battles. However, I could often subdue him with my "Coat of Blades". Eventually we decided to work together on world conquest. Throughout 7th and 8th grade, elaborate models were assembled in various basement to explore various scenarios for possible tactical approaches. Although our models based on mass deployment of robot disaster forces and lone assaults by elite bipedal mechanized warriors that spewed flames looked promising, we decided a more subversive route was in order. Winning the hearts and minds of the masses through the entertainment industry seemed like a logical method to employ. So, after some early experimentation as a comedy duo, we decided our best bet was to form a band. Thus was the birth of "Soundbox". In order to better facilitate world domination, we invented a long and storied history for our non-existent band. Then, all we still needed were songs. We accumulated an impressive catalog of real songs for our fake band, including "Stupid Woman", "Used to be My Heaven", "You're My Girlie" and an early version of "The Girl I Love is Dead". This is the state that the dawning of high school found us in. NGFS opted to no longer have high school while we were in 8th grade, leaving us to attend public high school. Due to our distant residences, we attended two different high schools.  Our plans of domination were momentarily thwarted by this inconvenience. At least until I got my driver's license. When I first arrived at high school, I knew almost no one. However, during 9th grade gym class, I discovered what appeared to be even more aliens that had infiltrated my high school, posing as "nerds". These aliens called themselves "Reuben", "Mike" and "Allen". Over time, I befriended one of them, the one called Mike. I decided that the plan Josh and I had hatched about starting a band  in order to conquer the world was a sound one, and began making similar plans with Mike. Before too long, "Nemesis" was born. We decided that calling the band "Nemesis" may reveal a little too much about our intentions, so it was scrapped. Meanwhile, we began to piece together what would become our band. We added a keyboard player who was a girl I knew from my church youth group who bugged me until I agreed to grant her an audition. She impressed us greatly at the audition, so we had our third member. Later, the best drummer in our class defected from the band he was in to join our efforts. The band, now called "Great Awakening", had been conceived. Among the earliest songs added to the set-list for Great Awakening were "Soundbox" standards "The Girl I Love is Dead" and "You're My Girlie". By the time our senior year rolled around, while not having conquered the world as of yet, Great Awakening had done a decent job conquering Southeast Guilford High School, and some of the surrounding areas. During my senior year, I found myself being conscripted into the drama club, and also being promoted from Drama I to Drama IV, thus finding myself, with Mike, in regular contact with the other suspected aliens, Reuben and Allen. This group of nerd outcasts had already amassed as much history together as Josh and I had, and I had long ago determined that they were "like us" and that I must introduce all these freaks to Josh. We were quickly able to absorb them in to our original plans of conquest. By the time graduation came about, it had been determined that Great Awakening would be a mere cover, a front, for our actual plans. A new project would be born, utilizing  "Soundbox" songs that hadn't already been incorporated into the Great Awakening set-list,  along with others that were yet to be written. Around this time, Mike and Reuben formulated the first non-Soundbox songs that would be utilized for the new project, penning "It Was the Dog" and "What I Stole", among others. This project would finally gel during a week-long intensive planning and implementation session that was cleverly disguised as a "Senior Beach Trip", just after graduation. The project would become known as "Bob Spelled Backwards".