Love Apple started out back in 1997 while Jason Sposa was in high school in Richmond, VA. Then he was writing, playing, and recording with a fellow by the name of Chris Freeman. My knowledge of these years is very limited as I wasn’t there. However, I do know that these years were essential to the success of the band when Jason reformed it in 2000 while attending USC in Columbia, SC.

Jason came to the University of South Carolina in 1998 in hopes to find a band. After the first two and half years of playing in local bars and headlining shows with a drum machine, under the name "Love Apple", he found two musicians willing to play music. The Love Apple line-up then became Scott Cooke on drums, George Cooper on bass and Jason on guitar and vocals. Things fell apart, and he went home to VA one more summer to write and created the mp3.com site. Upon his return to USC, Jason recruited me on bass. After a few times going over some synth and reverb heavy recordings in various dorm rooms, Jason once again called upon Scott and George (this time on guitar) to finish out the line-up of Love Apple.

The band heard about a show that Carolina Productions was putting on entitled The Battle of the Cover Bands. A common thread among us was certainly our love of Weezer, so we quickly pulled “Jamie” and “The Sweater Song” out of our asses and managed to win the battle on Oct. 31, 2000. With that as our debut, we now needed more than two Weezer covers, so we worked on the songs Jason had recorded with Chris back in Richmond. Simple, sweet, and catchy as they were and still are we managed to quickly move onto the scene.

It seemed that there was a show about every weekend there for a while, and a break would be found in preparations for our debut full-length. We started recording the album during the late fall/early winter of 2001. We took a break and came back to it in January to master and wrap up all the other business that goes with releasing an album. The CD release party was in Columbia at The New Brookland Tavern. This was a show that I am sure all of us will remember for a long time to come. Our fans really surprised us with an unbeatable turn-out. The place was packed and we sold over 40 percent of our inventory on that one night.

With the success of the CD release party, it was only certain that the pressure was on all of us. It was hard to deal with playing shows to 20 people after having played to a sold out crowd. It didn’t stop us though. We played on for a while after that without any major problems, and were excited to play with some really great acts including a few personal heroes.

Early in 2003 Garrett Suggs(The Beatholes) joined the group on drums in place of Scott. Musically Love Apple was heading in a new direction. Lyrics grew more complex and in some cases abstract and a few new time signatures were thrown into the mix as well. We talked of plans for a sophomore recording, but there were underlying tensions and desire to move on in our personal lives. We all knew that a break-up was inevitable. We plugged in for the last time on October 9, 2003 and gave it our best for our fans, ourselves, and each other. The show went quite well with no glitches other than some broken strings and bad cables, and that was it for Love Apple.

written by Jebb Graff

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