Garage band makes good
Dave VerLee and Robb Leu weren't looking for their 15 minutes of fame -- they just wanted to do something cool at their school's talent show.
But this one-night-only engagement at Libertyville High School in 2006 quickly blossomed into thousands of viewers on YouTube, a cult following among video game fans and a once-in-a-lifetime performance at Microsoft's E3 Media and Business Summit in Santa Monica, Calif.
"I guess we're just a garage band that got weirdly lucky," said Hanah Stuart, the band's electric violinist and a sophomore violin performance major at the Juilliard School in New York City. "It's been a lot of fun for all of us. It took us all away from our reality in a sense."
In the spring of 2006, the band -- known as Corporeal -- wanted to do something memorable to cap off their last year of high school.
VerLee arranged a rocking rendition of the theme song from the popular Halo video game series, and the band brought down the house at the talent show.
Fortunately for Corporeal, an audience member filmed their performance and the clip gained immediate popularity when it was posted on YouTube and Digg.com.
"The whole 'Halo Nation' probably had a lot to do with that," said Leu, a sophomore mechanical engineering major at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Indiana. "The people in the culture were the people who spread it around, and they did an excellent job."
VerLee founded Corporeal during his freshman year, but the bandunderwentseveral personnel changes over the years. The current lineup features VerLee on electric guitar, Leu on bass guitar, Stuart on electric violin, Marty Gierczyk on keyboard and saxophone, and Dave Bedell on drums.
For the talent show performance, Libertyville High School classmates Corey Richardson, Pat Fischel and Artie Snow provided some unconventional percussion with PVC pipes, and their presence in the YouTube video sparked a case of online mistaken identity.
"A lot of people thought that we were actually the Blue Man Group because the three drummers had blue paint and swim caps on their heads," Stuart said. "We were enjoying it and we just thought the comments we were getting were hilarious."
But Halo fans weren't the only ones watching Corporeal's video. During the summer of 2007, VerLee received a letter from the Microsoft Corporation, asking if the band would be willing to sign a non-disclosure agreement and perform at an upcoming event. After they signed, Microsoft revealed that Corporeal's performance would open the annual E3 business convention -- a sacred honor in the video gaming community.
Stuart was at a music festival in Colorado when the news broke, so the band reconvened in California without the luxury of a pre-trip rehearsal. But no amount of rehearsing could prepare them for the enormity of taking the stage at the convention, Leu said.
"I'm used to a classical audience," said Stuart, Corporeal's most experienced performer. "They clap once before the piece, you come out and play the piece, and they clap afterward. I'm not used to hooting and hollering."
Hundreds of video cameras streaming live video feeds around the world only added to the surreal atmosphere, she said.
In addition to further raising Corporeal's stock in the eyes of gamers, the E3 performance also served as a spark for their creativity.
"Beginning in the summer of 2007, we knew we wanted to start recording an album," said VerLee, a sophomore electrical engineering major at the University of Illinois. "When we got that call to go to E3, we knew that was our kick in the pants to get working on the CD, so that was when we finished it."
Leu describes Corporeal's music as "progressive rock" and said the exposure from E3 has helped their first album to sell steadily from the band's MySpace page.
The biggest issue facing the band today is how to capitalize on their momentum when the continued success of the band has taken a backseat to getting a college education.
"We were essentially just a garage band until all of this came about and now all five of us are at five different schools with five different majors," Stuart said.
Against these odds, Corporeal is still planning a winter concert for December and will be rehearsing heavily over the Thanksgiving holiday, as they do during every break from school.
"It is tough, because we don't get to practice together as much as we should," Leu said. "But we'll be putting out another YouTube video to hype some interest right before the concert. There will always be more Corporeal on the Internet. It's such a great venue."
To find everything Corporeal on the Web
Web site: www.corporealmusic.net
MySpace page: www.myspace.com/corporealmusic
To buy the band's CD: cdbaby.com/cd/corporeal
YouTube video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=VLt5ME_2_M
Band's YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/profile?user=corporeal