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BOVINE IGNITION SYSTEMS: THE WEBPAGE
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Bovine Ignition Systems was and is a high school band founded in 1985 by
Jason Scott and
Jeremy Stone.
Created in the way that many high school bands were, Jason and Jeremy
found they had similar goals to make music and started doing some really
weird things. After a while, they got good enough at it to record their work,
and kept it at two people, only occasionally adding outside musicians as
guest spots. The golden times of Bovine Ignition Systems (Or BIS as those
in the know call it) was from 1985 to 1989, when we produced a couple
albums of music, a music video, and performed our only live concert.
Since those heady days of youth we have both gone on to careers in computers:
Jeremy at Microsoft, and Jason at Psygnosis and various ISPs and Hosting
Companies. We both continue to make music, although not together (we took
the first opportunity to move the furthest possible distance from each
other for some reason). This webpage has been put together to let our tiny
collection of fans have access to every single BIS artifact and musical
shred we can kick up from our archives. You can even see our other works
as well.
One advantage of being a primarily studio-based band is that pretty much all
our creative output is down in one form of another. If it's not here, it
probably doesn't exist, or you're hiding it from us. Anyway, on with the show.
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BOVINE IGNITION SYSTEMS IMAGES AND PHOTOS
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For your perusal, some visual flotsam from the ages.
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Bovine Ignition Systems Portrait, by Jason, 1989. Drawn as part
of the Power Without Purpose Pak, this either captures us well
(if you ask Jason) or horribly (if you ask Jeremy). Obviously
this thing caused greeat consternation within the band, and if
we had had the money to put the band on hold and take Carribean
trips to sort our thoughts out, we'd have done it. But
we didn't, so we didn't. Meanwhile the picture is kind of
nice to look at, assuming you don't know what we look
like.
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This little experiment in computerized rotoscoping came together
much better than it should. It's also the only document here with both
our full names. This uses the Logo photo we had for the source, although
that's probably obvious.
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For our one-time concert, we went far enough to make a few custom backstage
passes, so that the non-existent stagehands could stop people from
violating our special space and get back to the grotty lounge where we
kept our change of clothes. There were maybe 4 of these printed, and
then lovingly put into little cardboard-backed folders with staples
so they could catch on your shirt. Not our finest brainwave but still
nice to look at, now.
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How a BIS song is created; artwork/layout by Jason. One thing that jumps
out obviously is that the document implies that only Jason has come
up with the ideas; that's so entirely wrong. Jeremy should have
sucker-punched Jason and left him teary-eyed in a heap on Cross Ridge
Road for that. But, Jeremy's a charitable person. Also, he co-wrote
Microsoft Combat Simulator and likely learned to control his anger
at some point.
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This is BOB ODDO. Bob Oddo was a substitute teacher at Horace
Greeley High School. We dragged Bob, kicking and screaming, into a
position as the Official Band Mascot. Bob hated this. The only thing
Bob hated more was when we got a confederate to fool him into thinking
she was with the school yearbook and she snapped this picture. We then
turned this graven image into a t-shirt. Bob really hated that. Bob hated
the songs we wrote about him, but not as much
because he very rarely got to hear them. Bob would probably explode if he
knew we put his picture on the Internet. Also, download
Bob's head and use it as convenient graphics
for whatever you see fit.
Actually, to our great surprise, Bob mailed us at one point and had both
found his head on the Internet and was delighted/nonagressive about finding
there. He mostly lamented how he didn't have as much hair anymore,
and that he had been doing exchange work with other countries. Good
for Bob! And now that Jaremy and Jason have grown old and slow, Bob
can laugh a hearty chuckle, especially if one of us ends up becoming
unwitting mascots for some other band.... and then the
cycle will be complete.
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OUR MUSIC VIDEO: "FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO BOVINES"
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Jeremy and Jason actually shot a Music Video for a song created for that purpose,
a parody called "Fight For Your Right to Bovines". The video was about 6 minutes
long and cost $50 to make. What a bargain! A page with screenshots, information,
and the actual video available for download is here.
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THANK YOU FOR NOT SETTING ME ON FIRE
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Thank You For Not Setting Me On Fire was our first album, filled with a bizzare
and uneven set of tunes. But not bad for two fifteen year olds with a casio
keyboard and too much sugar and caffeine.
Power Without Purpose was our second, much better album where we properly used
the four track and the Korg M-1 Keyboard and all the other fun doohickies we had
in the BIS Studio. Jeremy's guitar playing was coming along and Jason could
hit the occasional notes. Our writing style was also in full swing, with
some nice satirical and comedy pieces stuck in there. Power without purpose
also got a much greater distribution after it was converted to CD in the
mid 90's. Power Without Purpose was, altogether, our best project.
Jason came to visit Jeremy in Seattle for a week and took time while Jeremy
was at work to put together some song frameworks to do with him. This yielded
four songs, whcih were meant to be embryonic demos for final versions, but
which have intead stood on their own. These became known as "The Cool House
Session", named after the house Jeremy was living in.
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THE BIS INSTRUMENTAL COLLECTION
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Most of the BIS songs were created on a Korg M-1 keyboard with special floppy
drive attachment to save the songs. Both Jason and Jeremy did work with this
keyboard, although obviously it was a bit awkward for Jason to be over at
Jeremy's house for hours working on it. When the time came for the BIS concert,
a lot of one-time music was created to "fill in the gaps", and none of it was
intended to end up in an album or other format.
Luckily, Jason came over one day and recorded pretty much every major song
from the BIS collection (and some minor ones) and so there are now MP3s of
both songs from the albums and from the concert.
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THE BOVINE REMAINDER RACK
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Here are various songs that date throughout the BIS Period but don't really have
any "official" status. Most are not of great quality and are in fact somewhat
embarassing to have up, but it's about being complete with the history, not
doing post-modern editing of our high school years. For die-hard fans only.
The song known as "Cathy" is important enough to warrant its own page.
While esconsed at Risley House during his college years, Jeremy had access
to an eight-track recording studio. While further BIS work was done as what
became "The Bovine Polka", Jeremy took this opportunity to do work
as another band, called "Technical Difficulties" where he brought in the
vocal abilities of one Sophie Dymans and created what Jason calls "80's
style Bryan Adams Rock" and what Jeremy called "Hey, Shut Up, Jason". The
result was a four-song demo tape called "Tactics". The full cassette insert
can be seen by clicking on the image, and the four songs can be heard below
(MP3, 192khz). Some of the songs had existed in one form or another during
the BIS heyday, although they hadn't reached this level of maturity.
Jason, still lacking ability to really play any instrument or to sing, but still
brimming with musical hoo-hah, focused his attention almost entirely on computer
music, such as techno, dance and variations thereof. Lacking Jeremy's musical
influence, his own style dominated, but you can decide if that's a good or bad
thing. There is a separate web page
available with all of Jason's major musical output, including backstory information
and the occasional apology.
All songs on this page are (c) Bovine Ignition Systems/ZoE Gardening
Services for all purposes of copyright.
