Memorial Monday

Hi all,

This is the first in a series of posts that I'm going to call "Memorial Monday." Let me begin by explaining what exactly I plan to do here. 

The South Bend scene has seen lots of bands. Bands with great staying power, bands that played a few nearly empty shows and fizzled into nothing, bands that everyone thought would soar like eagles to new heights of national recognition, dragging South Bend in their sharply clenched talons and dropping it directly into the center of the map, and bands that, though they weren't from here, made major contributions to the local scene. 

These posts will be memorials to bands that have come and gone, bands that gained or, more often, nearly gained national attention, and South Bend bands that have been around long enough that most of us have forgotten what they sounded like the first time we saw them play. Think of this as the throwback Thursday of South Bend music. I'd also like to invite you to create your own Memorial Monday posts. Tell everyone about your favorite South Bend artists and include video or audio clips so that we can hear them, too.

I'm going to start in the emo scene of the mid 2000s, right where most 20 something members of the South Bend music scene would start when memorializing local musicians, and I'm going to talk about The Honour Recital.

While I never had an opportunity to see these guys play live, the early years of my life as a South Bend musician were shaped by their legacy. Any time I thought I had played to an impressively large crowd, someone a few years older than me would chime in, "you should have seen what it was like in 2006 when The Honour Recital was playing." These dudes were in a class of South Bend bands that would become legendary in the years that followed.

Their catchy melodies and heavy guitar riffs put their early releases on level ground with Take This to Your Grave in the eyes of young South Bend music fans, and if any show in 2009 was ever as full of nervous energy as an Honour Recital show used to be, the bands that played could basically say with confidence that they had made it.

A reunion show in the summer of 2011 proved the powerful draw of this South Bend great. Five years after the band had reached the height of its popularity and original members had gone their separate ways, The Honour Recital came to roost in South Bend to pack a dingy church basement one last time.

While The Honour Recital might be foreign to many young South Bend music fans, many older members of the scene remember them well, and will probably never stop using them as a standard for the measurement of local talent.


Submit your own Memorial Monday post to saumbaugh@gmail.com. Submitted posts are subject to editing.