PureVolume

The History of Orgy
Orgy was formed in late 1997 with group members Jay Gordon, Ryan Shuck, Amir Derakh, Paige Haley, and Bobby Hewitt. The five guys knew each other from Southern California and playing in different bands. Jay and Paige had known eachother for twelve years as well.

"Ryan and I conceptualized Orgy only about six months before we were signed," says Jay. "We started writing songs together as soon as we hooked up. It started off in a garage, with Josh our co-producer. We just started throwing some rough shit together."

Orgy became the first band to be signed to Korns Elementree subsidiary of Reprise Records. Soon enough, they were making plans to tour with Korn for Family Values.

Their debut album, Candyass was released in 1998 with their hit Blue Monday followed closely by Stitches.

"It's pretty much just all bullshit," laughs Jay. "We conjured up a bunch of lies and fairy tales. We recorded on a snow-capped mountain in Tahoe, in a huge cabin. It was along the lines of 'The Shining.' Cabin-fever set in after about fifteen minutes, right after the truck left back for Los Angeles."---"It's a raw record," says Ryan. "It's all five-in-the-morning, pissed-off, fighting-with-each-other, kill-each-other kinda stuff. There's an innovative, futuristic feel to the music. Yeah, it's pretty cool."

Following Candyass, Vapor Transmission was set to be released two years later on October 10th of 2000, and was immediately a big hit with great reviews all around.

"It's just me taking an artistic impression of what I've seen. I wanted people to see that there's a lot more than just the music happening on this record. You're listening to us literally hanging out, episodes of our last year. The lyrics are about real life, even though they're put in a science-fiction setting. Orgy lives in a make-believe science-fiction world I'm gonna have to admit that. I hope when people listen to the album they can come into that world a little bit. The songs are definitely based on a lot of real-life factions this time," says Jay. "It's about scenes from my life and other people's lives that I've witnessed or heard about. There's a lot more truth involved."

What Jay means by truth, is that a lot of the songs were written about certain people that they knew.

"Gerrold is a real-life character. He's a friend of ours from New Orleans." continues Jay, "Eva is our producer Josh Abraham's late mother. She passed and Josh didn't really get to talk to her. It was a really heavy thing in my life. We put our band together in Eva's garage. She was a great lady, and I wrote the song through Josh's eyes."

The album was done at a mansion in Tarzana that Orgy called the Clarinda House where they locked themselves up in it for three months.

"There was a gym separate from the house that we turned into the recording studio so it could be running 24 hours a day and people in the house wouldn't be disturbed." says Amir Derakh.

"Yeah," adds Hewitt, "we know... well, Jay knows a lot of weirdo people who would show up at four in the morning, out of their heads and have these ideas. And next thing we knew there was a song written about one of them."

The album also had a lot of meaning to their words, it was all what they were feeling at the time.

"Groups of people can get together and be quite vicious; it's not cool," says Gordon. "So there are a lot of references to how I feel about that. I'm not bitter about anything, though. I may not be happy with some people's actions, but I'd be just as ignorant to harbor hostility towards them."

Amir had a little bit of a different view on the lyrics, "I think that's from being in L.A. There are a lot of fucking idiots here," he says, laughing. "We have to deal with so much bullshit, whether it's girls or... there's always some kind of drama going on. And I think that's where a lot of that comes from. I think it's cool, because even though it's not specific, it's our way of getting back."

As for their band name, all you pervs out there might think it means something of a sexual content.

"Believe it or not, it's not a sexually-based name," says Jay. "It's a musical reference, y'know? We play a collage of sounds, you could say."---"We do have a sound that's really a mixture of a great many sounds," says Amir. "The good thing about the name is that it sticks in your head."