Special Thanks to all of our BELIEVERS!

We couldn't do this without YOU.

<<<<--NEW MUSIC UP NOW!-->>>>>

If you enjoy "The Ashes of September", you can still head on over to our myspace page at www.myspace.com/skitzocalypso where it is currently available for FREE DOWNLOAD!!!

Enjoy and BELIEVE!!!

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The Skitzo Calypso mini-biography:

The story so far...

Rising from the ashes of creativity, drive, experience, success and resistance, Skitzo Calypso continues to evolve as the mid-Atlantic independent rock n’ roll band that refuses to give up or compromise its vision, for the sake of quick album sales, instant success, popularity or social acceptance.

In the commercially-sustained candy-coated rock n’ roll landscape of the 21st Century, dominated by college pop/rock and cookie-cutter Picassos, it is important for talented musicians to take the risk and stand up for a higher standard of artistry, in an effort to quash the bumble-gum music plaguing the pop airwaves [over the past decade].

Despite their unique approach and exclusive sound, Skitzo Calypso has been received and accepted genre-wide, which is a true representation and victory of their intention.

Skitzo Calypso is here to stay.

The band has shared touring slots with: The Brides of Destruction (featuring: Nikki Sixx of Motley Crue & Tracii Guns of Guns n’ Roses), Amen, The Living Things, Slaughter, Bile, Nocturne, Gotham Road (featuring: Michael Graves of The Misfits), Seven Mary Three, Skid Row, L.A. Guns, Jimmie’s Chicken Shack, Powerman 5000, Tribal Tongue, The Sex Slaves, Local H, 12 Stones, Tony Hawk's Thrash n' Jam at M&T Bank Stadium and more!

The band started as Brad Cox’s solo project in 1996. After recording the 5th studio album, and releasing a 13 song collection of these efforts, including two previously unreleased tracks, the band was assembled.

The band's new album, “Between the Lines & Beyond the Static,” is now available (www.cdbaby.com/skitzo6)!

Currently the band is working on a new studio release, tentatively untitled!

This album could belong to YOU.

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A lot of people have been asking me where and when Skitzo Calypso started, why we never signed to a label and so on.

Skitzo Calypso started in 1996. I ran off to Los Angeles, California [Hollywood to be exact] and nested in Westwood Village/Veteran Ave. [when I was 18].

After working at Tower Records on Sunset Blvd. for a couple of months, I attempted to unionize the store with a couple colleagues. Needless to say, I was fired and began spiraling into an alcoholic drug invested nightmare. I had the big wannabe cockstar mentality, but I didn't have the money, family, friends or connections to back it up. I was literally on the streets of Los Angeles waiting for a miracle [to happen].

From a distance, it's those surreal moments [when you're walkin' down Santa Monica Blvd. at 4 am, 3000 miles from home, tokin' a drag, looking for a place to sleep at 18-years-young] that sound really romantic, but the shine rubs off the shoes pretty quickly when you're living it. The glamour may only be in the fact that you get to say, "Hey, I did that." But, who cares? It would seem to me, only you are experiencing a demented level of humility, candy-coated in self-indulgence.

I, like a lot of other people, thought that running off to Los Angeles, California would bring me closer to my dream of rewriting rock n' roll history. It didn't. The real illusionists live there.

Los Angeles is seemingly where they herd all of people who [the obligatory] they are interested in, the people who are already charting/famous, or an empty place for the lost and broken souls of America. That's not to generalize, Los Angeles, but [as of now] Atlantis doesn't exist, nor does Shangri-La.

In my song, "The Vamypres of Hollywood," I wanted to capture the striking similarities that exist, not just among the desperate people in Hollywood [from personal experience], but any group of people who knowingly or unknowingly get herded into a scene [myself included].

Escape, for the moment, we're driftin' with the broken and the hopeless, we're runnin' from ourselves, and the ghosts and the vampires on the streets of our hell, Hollywood… - The Vampyres of Hollywood/Skitzo Calypso.

What is this inherent need to fit in and why are we so willing to give our lives for it? Don't be fooled, everyone is trying to fit in, somewhere, with someone, for some reason!

First and foremost, the level of competition in Cali is much higher because everyone thinks they're someone.

While I was out there, I learned a lot about the world and how clickish, fake, materialistic and cultish our society really is – like it or not. I wrote a punk album called, "Join the Cult," which was a tribute to the likes of organized illusion. This was the 1st Skitzo Calypso record (essentially, the 1st demo]. It was a solo record, but to save time and money, I recorded it on an 8-track and had a studio drummer (Tyler Ingersoll of Omnisoul) and his friend (Wayne Silver of Seer) come in and lay tape. I called the project Skitzo Calypso, which, to me, means psychotic paradise. It seemed fitting for the ideologies, poverty, depression, reality and A-list psychosis that is Hollywood.

I already knew before I started this venture that getting signed and commericialized by a major label was a shot in the dark and not everything I thought it would be, so I kept everything really personal and decided to do a lot of experimenting; I wanted to find me. At the end of the day I realized that I'm nothing more than a culmination of my choices up to this point. The ego itself was an illusion; my true self was nothing more than my awareness and choice to perform music. From there, it got really easy. I could experiment, dabble, create and explore without feeling like I was alienating an unknown or unacknowledged me that may be living deep beneath the cobblestone streets of my soul or worse, in other peoples' mind.

Although [these days] we choose to perform mainly rock/metal music, the creative process is very punk rock at heart. By punk rock I don't mean 3 chords and inane lyrics, which punk is sadly and stereotypically associated with, but instead, a real doing it our way mentality.

My financial means of recording these efforts was scarce, but I still invested all of my time and money into creating Skitzo Calypso. I recorded and released 6 demo records before the band was officially formed.

The second demo album [Premeditated Acts of Stupidity] was extremely experimental and full of first takes on an 8-track reel-to-reel. I didn't have the money for multiple takes (as a solo artist), but overall, I'm still happy with what was captured – it's raw and arguably a live album, by today's standards. The album has jazz elements, funk elements, industrial elements, and so on.

The third record changed drastically because my studio drummer was off at school and I didn't want to stop my musical growth. I bought a drum machine and recorded a kinder-industrial record called Electrophoria/P.L.A.A.G.E.S. based on the 7 deadly sins. Various songs correlated with various sins and there was a little code book included.

From the time I left for Los Angeles, I drank heavily and over time my demo albums were progressively getting more shotty, disorganized and defunct. My vocal chords were finished cooperating; Skitzo Calypso began taking on a very monotone gothy feel, which remained for, "Stignation," "Spiderfinger," and "13." "Stignation" was a concept record based-on the movie Stigmata married with armageddon. I was caught-up in a really dark, self-deprecating, and narcissistic world, fueled by substances, depression and hangers-on.

With the release of the 4th demo album, "Stignation," I assembled a band. After various line-up changes, I found the right guys and Skitzo Calypso became a band. We played countless shows and did a few of those gratuitous mini-tours that all the locals like to say they did.

Overtime, as I started to dry out [a bit], everything became clear and my voice returned. We [as a band] weren't just aware of how backwards, happily intoxicated on illusion, catty and uncreative the music scene can be, but we knew we had to grow, if we were ever going to live up to our full potential as a group.

With Cherry Teresa on the keyboards, we released "The Shattering." The band started to develop a more definitive sound. We played an enormous amount of shows over the course of two years and realized that there was nothing that a label could offer us, in the current state of rock music, that we couldn't do for ourselves. Unless a major label offered us an amazing deal, the freedom to be creative and a solid plan of promotion, we were going to stick to our guns.

The follow-up record, "Between the Lines & Beyond the Static" was an enormous growth, for the band. We defined our collective voice and knew it was time to start assembling the be-all/end-all version of Skitzo Calypso.

With the aid of Patrick Jenkins [bass guitar] and Christopher O'Rourke [lead guitar] we have found a formula and a future for this project that is truly exciting. Gary Holmes, Bryan Holmes and myself have been performing together, since the beginning, but we really feel a completeness with this line-up; the chemistry, connection and friendship is virtually unbreakable.

The greatest part is the music remains pure and the evolution of an original sound, only possible, due to years and years of experimentation, has unfolded. The new guys understand the vision of Skitzo Calypso.

We look forward to another great year with you [the fans]; we have a lot of great things to tell you about – in time! Stay tuned for new music.