PauntyWASTE

PauntyWASTE is a 2-piece no wave band started in 2000 by David Richter and then-roommate, Jeremiah Haug, while living in Ithaca, NY. This was David's first attempt at writing guitar-based pop music and was an indirect response to the previous year spent living within walking distance of MTV's TRL. PW's first album was recorded over a few days in September of 2000, with plans to re-record the scratch vocals later. But after a couple weeks of listening to the recordings David realized the scratch vocals illustrated everything he had planned on saying: production-line pop should be considered an insult delivered by a whiney, no-talent hack. So, the scratch vocals stayed, and PW's gimmick was defined.

That winter they sent out copies of PW's debut to a variety of labels, which was instantly and unanimously rejected. Undaunted, they decided to concentrate on getting live gigs instead - inexplicably getting booked at a small bar the following spring after dropping off a fake press kit consisting of a photocopied picture of N'Sync with cut-outs of instruments glued to it, a CD-R of dogs barking over Britney Spears songs and some Werther's Originals. They opened the show with 3 minutes of feedback loops, and then, only about a minute into the first song, forTuna, the PAs were cut, the lights turned back on and their gear was powered down - and were then physically taken off stage after attempting to play acoustically.

This truncated 4-minute performance was enough to create a small buzz around the two nearby campuses; several house party gigs followed, with vocal duties taken on by random party-goers. By June of 2001, after what seemed like a promising start, the calls stopped as quickly as they started. School was out, and everyone went home. This was the first time David and Jeremiah had experienced Ithaca's summer purge, which was made more surreal by the sudden spike and decline in PW's popularity. As such, they waited out the summer working their day jobs while each concentrating on different projects. This, followed by the events of September 11th, caused PauntyWASTE to fade from everyone's memory - including its members' - and though not technically disbanded, the band was put on indefinite hiatus in the summer of 2002 when David moved back to Brooklyn.