Cheer-Accident

Chicago's Cheer Accident comes to the Westside Bowl with Rev. Gill and the Fishermen! While still in high school, pianist Thymme Jones was browsing the racks at a Hallmark store when he noticed a category of greeting cards labeled "CHEER-ACCIDENT." Since then, six lineups have passed through Jones' band CHEER-ACCIDENT, and it has endured the loss of one of it's members. The group, which plays pop songs with off-kilter chord progressions, has released eight albums and a handful of singles for labels such as Complacency, Pravda, and Skin Graft. It was during the first few moments of 1981 at a New Year's party when Jones, vocalist Jim Drummond, and drummer Mike Greenlees decided to form a band. Jones couldn't get his Hallmark memory out of his mind and called the band CHEER-ACCIDENT. Various contributing musicians helped the band with the recording of their first album, "Life Isn't Like That". After the album came out in 1986, Greenlees and Drummond left to pursue other full-time interests. The next lineup of CHEER-ACCIDENT consisted of bassist Chris Block and guitarist Jeff Libersher, whom Jones had met in the mid-'80s while attending Northern Illinois University. They recorded their first nationally distributed release, "Sever Roots, Tree Dies", with Phil Bonnet at Solid Sound Studios in Hoffman Estates, IL, from April through July of 1988. They released the album on their own label, Complacency, that same year. Other material from the session went on a cassette LP on Complacency called "Vasectomy". Following the releases, the band reentered the studio with Steve Albini to record the EP "Dumb Ask". The English label Neat Records was so impressed by the album that the imprint offered the band a two-record deal in 1990. The first album of their contract was shown to the band after pressing, and according to Jones, it was over-compressed, edited in an obscene fashion, and loaded with misspellings. The band was angered and the contract was over. They continued to release