0 Talk

Venus Euphoric

Brad Evans and Matt and Charles Humes started playing music together with Peter Evans as the Maxx RebO Band back in 1996. They covered a lot of Smashing Pumpkins songs, and often clashed regarding what the sound of the band should be, and in what direction it should be taken.

A couple of years later, Brad, Matt, and Charles formed Venus Euphoric. They continued playing a lot of cover songs, but slowly built up a catalog of their own tunes with Charles filling in the gap at the position of lead singer. The songs and performances were raw, uncouth, and unrefined. But as high school lads, they were full of angst and desire for hard rockin', so this can probably be excused. They recorded a bad demo called Lucid in early 1999, and played various high school gigs.

Ve spent years refining their sounds and talents, collectively and individually. Matt and Charles played drums and keyboards, respectively in the band Brodie while Brad was out of the country for a pair of years. Matt also created Surrounded by commaS and Charles began his own music called Vaalo.

Eventually Brad returned, and all the years of maturity the band had gained shone through when they finally released their first album, The Other Nine Planets Are Next in March of 2004. The album was recorded in Blue Boots Studio by the boys themselves, and while it was leaps and bounds better than Lucid, it wasn't quite perfect. Ve was extremely proud of it, however, and set it free like a viral plague upon the internet. This was before the days of sites like Myspace, and the going wasn't exactly smooth.

Further non-internet

progress for the band would have to wait, however, as Matt found himself called away to England for urgent business. Brad and Charles continued playing together and seperately, and Brad began writing songs under the name of Blue Desert Savant. During this time Brad and Kody Yardley lived together for a few months in a Heber City apartment, and created the project Andreas, with Brad sending lyrics via text messages while on pizza deliveries to Kody, who did all the musical writing. Charles and Brad were estranged for a time, working and living in different areas. At one point they thought they should make their own two-man band called Gnome Ore Music, but only ever had three songs. One of them -- Aliens Exist? -- went on to be a Ve song, and another -- Sal's Song -- became a Vaalo tune. Matt returned from England in 2006 to find the Collective Intelligence in full swing. Less than a month later, Ve played

their first big gig at a club in Salt Lake City called Liquid Joe's, where they were pleased to stand upon the same stage where they had watched bands like Gomez and Queens of the Stone Age play. This was the beginning of Ve's prime: many shows were played at various clubs in the Salt Lake area, and the boys were hard at work on a new album.

The new album was called The Problem With Re-Entry, and was officially finished in March of 2008.