Album Notes

Walk into a 34 Satellite rehearsal and the band is mid-song, packed onto a practice stage with gold cardboard stars and naked, paint-splattered dolls hanging from the ceiling.

The band follows Marc Benning's guitar as it takes a turn through "Riverside", one of the songs on their up-coming CD Radar.

From the roaring pop chorus to the cowbell breakdown to the monster, multi-leveled harmonic outro, it's like hearing rock and roll for the first time.

Mike Santoro, the bass player, looks back at Mark Boquist on drums, and over to Marc Smith, on rhythm guitar, and they grin as the song comes to its crushing end. Wiping sweat from his forehead, Benning turns down his guitar, looks at the band, and with a word he sums up the surprise and power and mystery of a great rock song: "Whoa".

Benning has been crafting Radar for a year and a half. In that time he found the bandmates that share his vision.

Starting at Hideaway Studios in Colorado (with Walter Salas Humara producing this session), on to Memphis, Manhattan and Austin, the CD's shape and flow has been giving life by 34 Satellite's strengths: big hooks, lush pop ballads, literate lyrics and slow-burn guitars.

The band came together in July of 1999, when Benning came to New York in need of a rhythm section to back him for a series of live dates on the East Coast.

After this handful of shows, it was apparent that Benning, Santoro, Smith and Boquist were more inclined to collaboration, rather than the standard singer-songwriter-backed-by-hired-guns.

Although they are spread from Colorado to New York to Raleigh, 34 Satellite is a band in fact and in spirit. Radar is how these guys work.

Mark Boquist, who started playing drums at age eleven, bounced from Minneapolis to Kansas City to Seattle, before settling in New York. He played with Big Back Forty before joining Mark Lanegan's touring band (with ex-members of Dinosaur Jr. and Soundgarden).

Marc Smith grew up in coastal Virginia, bought his first guitar at eighteen, and played his first show two months after that purchase. He moved to Raleigh, NC, eight years ago, where he's been playing occasional lead and rhythm guitar with such notables as the Backsliders, Hazeldine, and the Patty Hurst Shifter.

Mike Santoro's father played jazz guitar and introduced him to the bass at an early age. After immersing himself in the desert punk scene in Las Vegas, he moved to the East Coast, where he's played and toured with such bands as Whiskeytown, Amy Rigby and True Wheel (with ex-members of the Feelies).

Marc Benning spent much of his young adult life moving from Boston to San Francisco (where he plunged into the hardcore scene) to Los Angeles (where he worked in soundtracks). He finally settled in the mountains of Colorado, where he rebuilt a recording studio and began writing and recording at an astonishing pace.

Musically, Radar is a record of power and dynamics.

Lyrically, Radar is raw and real.

Released on Hideaway Records, Radar is a collection of songs that perfectly captures the joy of being in a band with guys who understand the meaning of rock and roll as savior.