Latest / WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio / Talk Line 09-11-2026: Local music spotlight - The Infestation

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Talk Line 09-11-2026: Local music spotlight - The Infestation · WIXN AM 1460 - Shaw Local Radio

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  Speaker 1: Herman Herm, it's a must to avoid here on FM 95.1
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  Speaker 1: at AM 1460 WIXN. It's 9.15 and you don't want
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  Speaker 1: to avoid your second dose of talk line this morning.
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  Speaker 1: It's my first musical monthly spotlight for local musicians here
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  Speaker 1: on the station. And these guys are no stranger to
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  Speaker 1: the local music scene. The Infestation joining us this morning.
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  Speaker 2: Fellas, how are you?
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  Speaker 3: Great. Pretty good, man.
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  Speaker 4: How you doing?
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  Speaker 2: Fantastic.
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  Speaker 1: As I was telling you off-air earlier, The first show
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  Speaker 1: I got to catch of you guys was a couple
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  Speaker 1: weeks ago at Madwater. It was a fantastic show, a
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  Speaker 1: great way to cap off my night. I loved the energy.
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  Speaker 1: But you know what? I don't want to put the
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  Speaker 1: words and the names on your music. How would you
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  Speaker 1: guys describe your sound?
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  Speaker 5: Well, we try to definitely go for that early 2000s,
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  Speaker 5: the new metal, kind of metalcore, heavier sound. We try
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  Speaker 5: to capture a little bit of nostalgia, but maybe on
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  Speaker 5: the on the heavier side, you know, some Bullet for
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  Speaker 5: My Valentine, Kill Switch Engage, but we also hit that
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  Speaker 5: Three Days Grace, some System of a Down, you know,
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  Speaker 5: we try to capture, like, if you picked up an
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  Speaker 5: iPod from 2004, you're going to have a lot of that.
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  Speaker 2: I think I still got one in a drawer somewhere.
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  Speaker 5: But that's the overall vibe we try to catch, you know,
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  Speaker 5: and if you don't know a song, we want it
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  Speaker 5: to at least be a good song.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: It means you come in, you're bobbing your head no
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  Speaker 4: matter what. You got to, You got a pulse, you
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  Speaker 4: should be able.
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  Speaker 5: To get on with what we're playing, even if you
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  Speaker 5: don't like it, you know.
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  Speaker 2: No, absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: And there wasn't a song I didn't recognize that you
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  Speaker 1: guys had. And, I mean, again, you're no stranger to
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  Speaker 1: the local music scene. I mean, whether it was the Madwather,
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  Speaker 1: you played in Bear Showtown USA in Linden, the Kool
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  Speaker 1: and Rock Falls. And, I mean, that's just to name
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  Speaker 1: a few. Of the many places that folks have seen
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  Speaker 1: you play. But I always like to ask people, whether
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  Speaker 1: it's their job or whether it's their passion in performing,
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  Speaker 1: like what got you into it, man? Like, you know,
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  Speaker 1: every human being likes music to some degree, right? But
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  Speaker 1: what was that thing that made you say you wanted
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  Speaker 1: to pick up an instrument and make this a thing?
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  Speaker 5: Well, for me personally, I grew up around a lot
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  Speaker 5: of bar bands growing up. My dad played in Knuckle
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  Speaker 5: Deep and Damnation back in the day, as well as Matt,
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  Speaker 5: our guitar player's dad. He played bass in a lot
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  Speaker 5: of those acts as well. Our bass player, JT, grew
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  Speaker 5: up around that stuff too. And Dave, I know he's
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  Speaker 5: been in music for a long time.
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  Speaker 6: I started early. My mom, wonderful singer. So I always
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  Speaker 6: grew up listening to her sing. So that brought a
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  Speaker 6: lot of passion and rhythm to me growing up. And
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  Speaker 6: I always had pots and pans and stuff I'd pull
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  Speaker 6: out of the kitchen sink and stuff like that and
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  Speaker 6: started beating on it. And that's just, I just started
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  Speaker 6: playing drums from then on. And I grew up and
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  Speaker 6: heard my first Metallica album. And I just fell in
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  Speaker 6: love after that. I was like, I wanted to be
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  Speaker 6: Lars Ulrich from then on. You know, I started falling,
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  Speaker 6: falling in love with the newer, newer age metal and,
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  Speaker 6: listening to Lamb of God, and I was like, wow,
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  Speaker 6: what are these guys doing on the drums?
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  Speaker 3: And I was like, I love this even more.
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  Speaker 6: So that's just kind of where my passion started and
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  Speaker 6: just went on from there. Started playing locally with local bands.
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  Speaker 4: His St. Anger snare is on.
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  Speaker 3: Flip that switch and it's on.
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  Speaker 2: No, I absolutely love that, man.
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  Speaker 1: There's just that moment that gets you in there, and
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  Speaker 1: then once you've sunk in, So my best friend, he's
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  Speaker 1: lived in California for some time now, and we still
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  Speaker 1: keep in touch. But I remember when he was first
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  Speaker 1: learning to pick up the guitar. And boys being boys,
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  Speaker 1: we gave him a bit of a hard time, but
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  Speaker 1: we also encouraged him. But through that time where, and
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  Speaker 1: you had to give it to the man, no matter
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  Speaker 1: how terrible he was, he didn't care if there were
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  Speaker 1: 20 of you around and were watching TV. And it's like, Nick,
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  Speaker 1: put the guitar away, man. You don't like it, don't listen.
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  Speaker 1: I'm like, you came to my house! But now, man,
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  Speaker 1: he just, hey, whether, I mean, from flamenco style to
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  Speaker 1: just whatever floats his boat, the man whips it out
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  Speaker 1: and now you can't argue with the determination and the
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  Speaker 1: beauty of it. And that's what I love with musicians
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  Speaker 1: is you guys just, you go full bore in. You
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  Speaker 1: lose yourself to the music and art is created you
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  Speaker 1: know art takes many forms from the visual to the
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  Speaker 1: audio and uh i just love it and i love
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  Speaker 1: hearing the passion that comes out of people you know
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  Speaker 1: i want to hear a little more for you man
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  Speaker 1: bass players are known for being silent and sexy and
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  Speaker 1: i get that you're trying to put the vibe out
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  Speaker 1: for everyone oh man but what is it you like
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  Speaker 1: most about performing.
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  Speaker 2: Oh well i'm at um Nothing.
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  Speaker 1: You just bored and figured I'd tag along?
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  Speaker 7: Actually, so when I was young, the influence as a
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  Speaker 7: young boy was more my older brother. He was a
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  Speaker 7: bass player in a band, a little punk band with
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  Speaker 7: his best friends in high school and stuff. Well, he
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  Speaker 7: ended up giving up playing and gave me his first bass.
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  Speaker 7: this guy ended up breaking it.
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  Speaker 4: You helped me.
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  Speaker 2: No, I didn't. It's always your best friends that break
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  Speaker 2: your instruments.
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  Speaker 3: Was there alcohol involved?
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  Speaker 4: No, we were like ten.
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  Speaker 2: Just rebels.
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  Speaker 7: I didn't play a guitar until about ten years ago
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  Speaker 7: when this band was formed. Zach actually threw a bass
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  Speaker 7: in my lap when I moved back from Minneapolis.
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  Speaker 3: And That's what we've been doing since.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, the rest is history, as they say.
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  Speaker 4: Rocking out, man.
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  Speaker 2: No.
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  Speaker 4: I call him Slap Daddy.
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  Speaker 6: Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Zach calls him Slap Daddy.
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  Speaker 4: They mean Zach.
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  Speaker 1: I imagine at this stage in the game, you probably
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  Speaker 1: aren't even keeping track of how many performances you've done,
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  Speaker 1: but do you have any that's really been memorable, stuck
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  Speaker 1: out to you, whether it was just the feeling of
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  Speaker 1: it and the vibe that you had in that moment
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  Speaker 1: that just really locked in for you or a moment
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  Speaker 1: in the crowd like Do you guys have any special
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  Speaker 1: memories of any performance that just really stick out?
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  Speaker 3: Who else saw.
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  Speaker 2: Gross 2023, I believe.
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  Speaker 3: For sure.
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  Speaker 4: I was just after that.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Just after that.
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  Speaker 8: Which, that was what I was going to bring up
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  Speaker 8: was my first show with these guys was in, what, October? September,
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  Speaker 8: October of 2023.
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  Speaker 7: Yeah.
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  Speaker 8: We played on a semi-trailer out behind Inkstorm Tattoo. And
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  Speaker 8: I played a couple, like, real small shows with a
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  Speaker 8: band with my cousins before, but that was my first, like,
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  Speaker 8: playing an actual show, and I was like, yeah, I'm
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  Speaker 8: going to keep going with that.
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  Speaker 5: That show was really cool because we could either take
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  Speaker 5: cash payment or a tattoo, so I got myself tattooed
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  Speaker 5: as a wax scene in a microphone.
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  Speaker 3: Hey, I still never got my tattoo, so.
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  Speaker 6: I know.
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  Speaker 3: What was it, Inkstorm?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, you wrote some ink, brother.
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  Speaker 1: Not surprising that memories like that getting made at who else?
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  Speaker 5: Yeah, the cool thing about that show was there was
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  Speaker 5: a band that fell out.
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  Speaker 4: They couldn't do it. So we got the phone call
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  Speaker 4: that morning.
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  Speaker 3: Like, hey.
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  Speaker 4: You guys want to play the hog roast, you know,
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  Speaker 4: at Who Else Land today?
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  Speaker 2: Like, yeah. Tell my boss I'm sick and not to
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  Speaker 2: come down.
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  Speaker 4: I'm still waking up like, what?
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, yeah.
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  Speaker 6: He called me like 17 times. My girlfriend ended up
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  Speaker 6: answering the phone. She's like, hey, Zach's called you like
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  Speaker 6: 17 times. It's like, it's 7 in the morning.
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  Speaker 3: I'm sleeping.
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  Speaker 4: And that was one of our best shows we ever did.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: That was a cool show. One of those shows where
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  Speaker 4: I'm like, Don't be afraid to come up to the front.
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  Speaker 4: And everybody came up.
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  Speaker 6: Wow.
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  Speaker 4: Amazing when that works.
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  Speaker 2: Right. They listen.
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  Speaker 1: No, that's awesome, man. Those are really just the cool
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  Speaker 1: moments that stick out with you. And even as you
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  Speaker 1: progress through your journey, I bet that's going to be
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  Speaker 1: one when somebody else asks you again. It'll stand for
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  Speaker 1: big stadiums to small. It's stuff like that that really
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  Speaker 1: just sticks with you.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 5: Like you brought up earlier about the art comes in
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  Speaker 5: many forms and stuff. It's, it's a performance, you know,
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  Speaker 5: there's the, there's the art part where you go into
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  Speaker 5: learning the form of the songs and stuff. But then
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  Speaker 5: when you step out on the stage, you can either
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  Speaker 5: be a Chuck E. Cheese robot reciting everything, or you
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  Speaker 5: can put a little bit into it and perform a
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  Speaker 5: little bit.
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  Speaker 4: And that's, I really love the performance side of it,
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  Speaker 4: you know?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah.
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  Speaker 5: I can take anything from standup to a play to
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  Speaker 5: a live music performance.
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  Speaker 4: And there's something to it, you know what I mean?
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  Speaker 4: It's fun. You feel the vibe while you're there. You
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  Speaker 4: can't describe it.
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  Speaker 6: You know?
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  Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to guess, maybe for the exception of you,
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  Speaker 1: because you look like you might be a couple years younger,
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  Speaker 1: but I could be wrong, but first music you honed,
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  Speaker 1: I'm guessing, was on a CD.
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  Speaker 2: Are we all in that, or...?.
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  Speaker 3: Oh yeah, for sure.
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  Speaker 4: Kind of, kind of, kind of.
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  Speaker 2: A lot of tapes. Okay, okay. No, I mean, I'm 43, man.
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  Speaker 2: Definitely had tapes before I had CDs.
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  Speaker 4: Recording the radio on the tapes.
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  Speaker 2: I certainly didn't have folders of burnt CDs anywhere. No,
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  Speaker 2: none of us did. You're crying.
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  Speaker 1: Purge myself on air here. Oh yeah, that was a
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  Speaker 1: good Saturday. Getting about 20 songs after maybe 15 hours
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  Speaker 1: of just sitting there.
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  Speaker 3: Then your whole computer crashes.
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  Speaker 5: Running your computer through Skid Row real quick.
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  Speaker 1: So I want to do a lightning round then. Whether
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  Speaker 1: it's tape, CD, whatever. If you can remember the first
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  Speaker 1: one you bought with your own money.
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  Speaker 2: Ooh, I do.
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  Speaker 4: That was the Death Clock Death Album.
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  Speaker 2: That was the first one I ever bought. Death Clock, nice.
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  Speaker 5: My dad was in a bar band, you know what
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  Speaker 5: I mean? So all I had to do was really, oh,
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  Speaker 5: I like this band, and he'd get me a CD.
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  Speaker 1: Okay.
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  Speaker 4: So the first one I bought with my own money
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  Speaker 4: was Death Clock Death Album.
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  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think, because I got two.
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  Speaker 1: You can throw them both if you don't know which
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  Speaker 1: one's first.
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  Speaker 2: That's fine.
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  Speaker 6: When I was younger, my first one was a Toby
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  Speaker 6: Keith album.
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  Speaker 3: And I bought that.
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  Speaker 6: When I got older and into rock, I bought Mastodon.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
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  Speaker 6: That's my first album that I ever bought with my
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  Speaker 6: own money that I worked for.
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  Speaker 3: So.
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  Speaker 7: Mine was Good Charlotte, Young and the Hopeless.
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  Speaker 2: I'm like, I think, yeah, that's the album.
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  Speaker 4: I mean, you want to go back to your, yeah.
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  Speaker 8: Master of Puppets.
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  Speaker 3: Oh.
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  Speaker 2: That's, Excellent.
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  Speaker 8: My dad showed me that when I was 10.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah.
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  Speaker 4: And I was like, you can do that with a guitar?
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  Speaker 8: I played bass a little bit as a kid because
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  Speaker 8: my dad did. I was like, okay, yeah.
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  Speaker 1: I'll see if you guys recognize this one. Mine, cassette,
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  Speaker 1: green jello.
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  Speaker 4: Oh, yeah, Green Joe.
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  Speaker 2: Little Pig, Little Pig, Let Me In. With my chinny
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  Speaker 2: chin chin! Yeah, boys, sing it! Oh, God, I loved that.
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  Speaker 4: My dad or other guitar players have been wanting to
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  Speaker 4: play that one. We should.
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  Speaker 3: That'd be awesome.
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  Speaker 2: That would be fantastic.
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  Speaker 1: If you guys plan to do it, you better mention
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  Speaker 1: it in the social posts so I know not to
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  Speaker 1: miss that one.
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  Speaker 3: Oh, yeah. We'll bring it up.
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  Speaker 4: We'll let you know if we learn that one. That
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  Speaker 4: would be a good one.
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  Speaker 2: That would be so cool. Love it.
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  Speaker 1: While we got a few minutes, guys, I want to know,
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  Speaker 1: upcoming shows, let us know where you're going to be.
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  Speaker 4: So we got a couple in the works.
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  Speaker 5: You know, there's five of us in the band, so
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  Speaker 5: it's hard to get things pinned down all the time.
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  Speaker 5: But one we do got pinned down right now is
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  Speaker 5: Blackout Wednesday at the Cooler in Rock Falls. We're going
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  Speaker 5: to be playing with All Born, so that'll be a
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  Speaker 5: cool show. You don't want to miss that one. We've
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  Speaker 5: done that one a couple times. It's a lot of fun.
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  Speaker 5: That cooler's kind of a small place, but you fill
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  Speaker 5: it up and it gets that rock vibe going like,
• 11:22
  Speaker 5: you know, not too many places can match that. So
• 11:24
  Speaker 5: be sure to pop down to the cooler that day
• 11:27
  Speaker 5: and let us know if you heard us on the radio,
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: you know, like us on Facebook and all that good stuff.
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
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  Speaker 1: And speaking of Facebook and any other social media, I'm
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: sure that's a good way to, I know I am
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: able to see your upcoming shows. Why don't you tell
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: everybody where they can find you?
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: So if you go to Facebook, just type in The Infestation,
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: you got to put the the in there or else
• 11:47
  Speaker 5: it doesn't pop up for some reason.
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  Speaker 1: Yep.
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  Speaker 5: You'll see a green picture of a rat stuck in
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  Speaker 5: a manhole, and that's us. So that's pretty much our
• 11:54
  Speaker 5: only social at this point.
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  Speaker 2: Hey, sometimes that's all you need. Keep it simple. Keep
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: it sweet. Keep it concise.
• 12:00
  Speaker 5: If you happen to catch one of our flyers in
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  Speaker 5: a bar, I have a habit of putting our QR code.
• 12:05
  Speaker 4: On the bottom of the flyer. So just give it
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  Speaker 4: a scan, and it'll take you right to our Facebook page.
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  Speaker 2: There you go. Follow them on Facebook.
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  Speaker 1: Fellas, thank you so much for coming in, making my
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  Speaker 1: first musical spotlight.
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  Speaker 2: One to remember.
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  Speaker 1: It's going to be a hard time to find somebody
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  Speaker 1: joining in on me with a green jello chorus later,
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  Speaker 1: so the bar's been set. The Infestation, catch them at
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: their upcoming shows. Follow them on social. Enjoy the music.
• 12:28
  Speaker 2: Fellas, thank you so much.
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  Speaker 3: Thank you for having us. We appreciate you being here.
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: It was a lot of fun.