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January 2001
By Jadyn Stevens
www.dig4u.com
After Blind Melon's lead singer, Shannon Hoon, died in 1995, the band was left to ponder its next steps. Now, more than five years post-mortem, a new and completely different band has formed in its place and is beginning to make major noise on the music scene.
Unified Theory-named for Einstein's Unified Field Theory-is a four-man band featuring former Blind Melon members Christopher Thorn and Brad Smith, Dave Krussen of Pearl Jam's Ten days and a frontman who's a newborn rock star on the music scene, Chris Shinn.
As Thorn and Smith began the search to begin again,
ads in newspapers and a string of bad try-outs for a new frontman led them
to the California music scene. Industry insider Leslie Lewis was helping
with their search and, on a hunch, turned them onto a demo for a little-known
band, Celia Green. Thorn and Smith were so impressed with Celia's lead
singer, 26-year-old Chris Shinn, that they all flew to Seattle to test
the chemistry. They clicked and the rest is Unified Theory.
And making the video for the album's first single,
"California," has been a blast. "We had a bunch of friends down and just
had a good time," says Shinn.
"You may not see it on MTV, though," adds Thorn. "There's not much room for real music between Korn and `N Sync."
And real music is what Unified Theory is all about. At a recent show, Shinn urged the crowd to come closer to the stage ... "Yeah, now we've got a real Rock `n' Roll concert," he said. The music was charged with spirit as Theory crashed their way through a 45-minute set. Since they were the opening act for Big Ass Truck-a house favorite-45 minutes was all the time they had. But the crowd demanded more.
After all, as Shinn puts it, "It's not how you play the music. It's why you play ... and that's contagious."
"The first time we played together, we knew something was there," Thorn says. "I wasn't like, `Hey, man, come join Blind Melon.' I actually almost joined his band."
And although there's a striking similarity in Hoon's and Shinn's vocal styles, the newest frontman insists that this is a brand new day. "From day one, we've been like, `okay, from here on out, we bring new material to the table.' "
So far, that formula seems to be working. Unified
Theory cut their self-titled debut album early last year. "It's very much
a studio album. We could do whatever we wanted," Shinn says. "If we felt
like playing all night, we could. No reps to bother with. We didn't get
signed until after the record was done ... we didn't even play any shows
until we had the album completed."