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JOE TROHMAN’S HISTORY IN THE HARDCORE SCENE

Joe was the founder of Fall Out Boy, but before the founding of the band he did a lot more in the hardcore scene besides being in hardcore bands. In this video, we talk about how he created his own Zine in high school and helped take pictures for a band called Evolution!

Big thank you to Jeremy for giving us more details about Evolution, major help with us figuring out what Evolution was as a band and Joe’s connection with the band.

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THE EARLIEST RECORDED MUSIC BY PATRICK STUMP - He… raps?

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You read that right. After a year-long search, FOBAT has finally found the holy grail: the 5-song EP from Patrick Stump’s first-ever band, Public Display of Infection, a high school metalcore band. It’s as legendary as it sounds.

Patrick was only 14 here. Although the tape has its obvious flaws, there’s definitely talent that shines through from all of the people in the band- but Patrick especially. We’re so happy to have found this, because it really paints the full picture of Patrick’s growth in mastering this art form, from PDI to Patterson to early Fall Out Boy, to now.

Shout-out to everyone involved in this arduous hunt, big involvements and small: Joe, Brian S., Beldo, Sean O’Keefe!!, Dave Hofer, the other PDI members, Jamie, everyone active in our Discord server in general, that guy who asked about PDI on Twitter a decade ago, and of course, Patrick himself.

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PETE WENTZ'S LOST MTV SHOW PILOT

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Pete has always been a jack of all trades, even in his little hardcore bands in the 90s, and continuing into his stardom. Us at the FOB Archive are consistently impressed by just how much *stuff* this guy has done- most intriguingly, when he dips his toes into acting. Watch this video to learn all about Punk Is Dad, Pete's attempt at a sitcom for MTV that is currently mostly lost. What do you think? Would this have been a killer show, or a major flop?

Fun fact for those who have read this all: This isn't Pete's only stint in TV show making. He also tried to make a show called "Permanent Vacation" that has virtually no information available on it. He also pitched a kids cartoon about protecting the environment called "Bronze Blue" with Mark Hoppus of Blink-182. Pete would have voiced a fish rockstar, but the show never made it past the pitch bible, which is viewable online.

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Nick Scimeca's Photojournals

Fans may be familiar with some of these pictures, but did you know they come from old photojournals made by Nick Scimeca? Nick is a close friend of Pete’s who designed a ton of classic FOB, Decaydance, and Clandestine merch.

He designed the iconic bartskull logo for Clandestine Industries and created the short-lived but influential scene social platform “Friends or Enemies”.

The captions listed on each photo are from Nick’s journal. If you’d like to view the entire photojournals for yourself, you can view them on the Wayback Machine at this URL: http://www.nicholasscimeca.com/photo.htm

More photos past the cut!

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FUCK CITY: Record label, clothing line, borderline frat house

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Everything you need to know about FUCK CITY, Andy Hurley’s group of hardcore friends and their various music projects. For how influential FC was in the Fall Out Boy fandom over a decade ago, it seems to be mostly forgotten by the average fan, even though Andy and his buddies are all still good friends. We wanted to educate fans on some of the FC lore we’ve unearthed with some research.

Unfortunately, a lot of FC-related media is lost as of now, such as their website’s messageboards and multiple vlogs. We’re constantly working on efforts to find these lost gems and more FOB-related lost media. Once again, a big thanks to @tossmyambitions (Twitter) for voicing this post!

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Recently, we managed to attract Andy’s attention on his livestream with @beyondthetats after he mentioned having been in hardcore bands in high school. We’ve done some extensive research on the beginnings of Andy’s participation in the scene, and are here to share it all with you! Thank you to our amazing mod @tossmyambitions (Twitter), who both voiced this reel and provided a lot of useful background knowledge about other hardcore bands in the Chicago and Milwaukee scenes!

Part 2 about Fuck City coming in a few days!

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THE SONG THAT GOT PATRICK STUMP INTO FALL OUT BOY:

Fall Out Boy fans interested in the band’s early history may know that Patrick was “auditioned” for the band by Joe and Pete because Patrick had sent Joe some MP3 files of solo songs he had worked on. For a long time, what exactly these songs were was a complete mystery to fans. With the research that we and our FOBAT Discord server members have conducted, we now are extremely close to finding the audio for one of these songs. Watch to learn about the history of the song itself and the search surrounding it.

Shoutout to @glassslipping for getting Patrick to talk about this! Although he doesn’t mention the song by name in the clip, we know it’s been on his mind to begin with ;) Also a special shoutout to our server member Jamie for providing some of the earliest info in this search.

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xFIRSTBORNx - The untold story

Pete Wentz has been a bit more open about his time in the Chicago hardcore scene as of late, giving a great interview in the Antimatter Zine with Texas is the Reason frontman Norman Brannon. However, he mostly speaks about his inspirations and general presence in the scene. What about the bands that came before Arma Angelus? These bands were very poorly documented, so FOBAT decided to begin researching them.

We hope you all enjoy the new format for posts. We’re trying out new things in hopes that it catches onto the algorithm a bit more. Tell us us what you like and don’t like. And yes, Joey speaking here- I know I need a microphone… I’ll get around to it!

For more information on xFirstbornx + Arma Angelus and the full interview with Tim Miller, please visit our website: www.fobarchive.com !

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EXTINCTION SAVED CHICAGO HXC

Fronted by Jim Grimes, Extinction was integral in bringing local hardcore shows back to Chicago in the 90s. What’s fascinating is that Pete Wentz was able to be a part of this important band. On YouTube, Pete can be seen eagerly watching Extinction at the Krishna Temple in January of ‘97, and by the end of that year, he’s performing with the band. Pete was rumored to be seen in the audience of the Extinction reunion show in ‘05 where (Hey)Chris took his place playing bass on stage. Pete has credits for recording bass on the band’s only album, Hypocrisy Breeds Traitors. 

Here are two photos of Pete and Adam Bishop (who were also in Arma Angelus at the time) playing Extinction’s last show on July 29th, 2000 at Arlington Heights KOC. These photos were sent to us by Chris Ternes who hosted HXC fests at his school, Knox College, featuring bands like Arma Angelus and Thursday. Thank you Chris!

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HAPPY HOLIDAYS FROM FOBAT!

FOBAT is wishing you a happy holiday season today! We don't do pines here- we do Patterson trees. When it comes to Fall Out Boy and hardcore lost media, what do you hope to see one day "wrapped underneath the tree"? Let us know in the comments!

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PATTERSON: Patrick's band before Fall Out Boy...

Patterson was a short-lived punk band that featured Patrick Stump on drums for a period of time in 2000 to 2001. Other members were Peter Tsoukas and Eric Siegel on guitar, Ben Murphy on bass, and Ben Reyes on drums before Patrick. All four boys had vocals on their first official release, “Red and Orange and Everything In Between”. They played shows with other Glenview bands such as Chauncey, Demonic Approach, and FGYOQ.

After Ben Reyes parted ways and Patrick joined the band, they recorded two other demos that were never released. One was an unfinished version of their planned next record, “Well Kept Lawns,” and the other was a full untitled album that featured tracks from the previous demo. Patrick has background vocals on the track “Nightfall”. 

These demos were archived by Dave Hofer of the DuPage County Hardcore archive and Ben Murphy. Thanks Ben and Dave! (Ben and Dave were already in contact when we happened to find the title track, “Well Kept Lawns” on Patterson’s old MP3.com page, which is how we got involved. Keep your eyes out for a post on the mysteries of MP3.com soon!)

Fun fact, Patrick actually wore the Patterson shirt that became the demo cover as recently as 2023 on Fall Out Boy’s socials! Yes, the shirt was made first, and the album had no cover, therefore Ben and Dave used it as the cover art. (Credit to @tttygjoey on Twitter for noticing this!) Check out the two archived versions of the Patterson websites- which Patrick is confirmed to have created mostly himself without the rest of the band -below.

(All of these photos will be published on our website as soon as possible. We have a lot of work to do on our website- consider joining the Discord to help out!)

PATTERSON WEBSITE 1 (post-split)

PATTERSON WEBSITE 2 (pre-split)

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23 years ago today is when Fall Out Boy got their name. We all know the story from The Oral History of TTTYG that FOB’s second show where they famously got their name was at a “Southern Illinois university” while opening for The Killing Tree. For the longest time, it was unknown where this mysterious college was. We finally found our answer: Western Illinois University. Not only did we find the college where they played, but the date of the show- November 30th, 2001. We know this because of a guestbook submission from Patrick’s old band website, Patterson.

After finding this, we went through multiple websites. We eventually landed on an old record label that Arma Angelus was on before Eulogy Records, Happy Couples Never Last Records. On the page about Arma, there are shows listed. One of those shows said they were playing the Western with a few other bands.

Pete even mentions on Arma’s LiveJournal on 11/29/01 that “fallout boy” is playing at the Western the next day. We then thought about looking up the other bands that were on the line-up. After searching through a few sites, we found the website for the band Backup. Backup had past shows listed on their site that were thankfully saved by the Wayback Machine. We found the same show listed on their site (with a slight lineup change) and confirmed that the Western is Western Illinois University.

After looking through the school’s archives including student newspapers, we found an issue from November 2001. We found out there was a column called “The Edge”. This column was all about local music and was published every Friday. It had listings for shows that were up and coming. AND THAT’S HOW WE FOUND THIS:

This was super exciting to see, but it left us with more questions than answers…

FOB is listed as Falloutboy and not the alternate name they had before, which was Short Story; Unhappy Ending, even though Patrick claims they would be playing the show under that name. In the same paper, at the bottom of page 7, they describe the bands that would be playing that upcoming night, and they are referred to Short Story; Unhappy Ending.

In the exact same newspaper, the band is referred to with two different names, and the newspaper never acknowledges this. We also found a review of the show from December 7th, 2001. 

This makes it even more confusing! What could “previous name” possibly mean? We know that the first show at DePaul was played under Forget Me Not according to Mani Mostofi in Where Are Your Boys Tonight? by Chris Payne.

Here’s some facts that we know:

Fall Out Boy was a name proposed by Ben Rose

It was one of many names being considered in those first few shows

Someone in the crowd shouted “Fuck that, no, you’re Fall Out Boy” in response to Pete saying a “very long band name” according to Patrick, which we can reasonably assume is Short Story. 

Tim McIlrath, who was the frontman for The Killing Tree, thanked FOB as Fall Out Boy after they played, which solidified that as their name

Also to note, Andy Hurley was at this show. He played with Project Rocket. Here is a photo of him that was shown in that same review.

We leave this with more questions (but also with answers). We figured out what the Western was and proof of the show happening. BUT the names are still a mystery. Was the listing published after the show? Why were they referred to Short Story; Unhappy Ending on one page then Falloutboy on the next one? Did the person in the crowd shout that because he saw the paper the morning of? Or was it someone who worked on the paper who shouted it?

Final thing to note: recalling the Patterson guestbook post from Patrick, we also theorize that Dressed to Thrill is another one of the rotating names. At first, we assumed that Dressed To Thrill was another pre-established band that Patrick was incorrectly assumed to be joining, but the phrasing leaves it open to either possibility. Plus, we couldn’t actually find anything about a band from the time called Dressed to Thrill.

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PARDON?? WE DON'T EVEN KNOW WHAT THIS IS....

is this…. a clip from punk is dad ?? pete’s tv show ??

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More footage of Pete with a blue bowl cut at the 1995 Despair show! This is from a different angle of the same show at the Fireside Bowl, uploaded by TwentyFiveAfter on YouTube. It definitely confirms that it is Pete. Enjoy the footage!

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There’s even a clip of Pete where you can see his blue bowl-cut he’s talked about a total of twice before, which leads us to believe that this second clip we show above, a 1995 Despair show at Fireside Bowl, is him as well. Check that full video out by the original uploader, Blougaville, linked below.

Did you know that Pete Wentz was involved with the Invisible Children organization at one point in time? This ended after KONY 2012, if that wasn’t obvious… But regardless, that’s not what we are intending to archive here anyways. We were able to dig up an old promo video Pete did for Invisible Children, advertising a protest in the organization’s name. This video has clips of Pete as a teenager, playing soccer (and playing his first guitar!) that have never been archived anywhere else. For sensitivity’s sake, we have cut out the more upsetting portions of the video, but if you are interested in viewing the whole thing, it will be featured on our Google Drive (accessed through our Discord) and eventually our website.

While we are unable to ascertain or promote/discourage the effectiveness of the still-existing Invisible Children charity given past controversies, we do want to encourage you to donate to PCRF in the spirit of FOB’s charity work.

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Did you know that Pete Wentz was involved with the Invisible Children organization at one point in time? This ended after KONY 2012, if that wasn’t obvious… But regardless, that’s not what we are intending to archive here anyways. We were able to dig up an old promo video Pete did for Invisible Children, advertising a protest in the organization’s name. This video has clips of Pete as a teenager, playing soccer (and playing his first guitar!) that have never been archived anywhere else. For sensitivity’s sake, we have cut out the more upsetting portions of the video, but if you are interested in viewing the whole thing, it will be featured on our Google Drive (accessed through our Discord) and eventually our website.

While we are unable to ascertain or promote/discourage the effectiveness of the still-existing Invisible Children charity given past controversies, we do want to encourage you to donate to PCRF in the spirit of FOB’s charity work.

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If you missed it on Monday, check out our interview with Sean O’Keefe, the producer of Take This To Your Grave! Did you know he was originally supposed to produce From Under The Cork Tree? Learn more listening the full video.