Project Spotlight #10: What is Muffin Loaf?

What is Muffin Loaf? It was a snack in the vending machine where Jason works.

It is also the name of the band that played one show where Jason works.

The year was 2003. As a training exercise Jason's department was to design and set up a small performance area that included a sound system, video cameras, and a lighting rig to simulate a show site. They decided that if they were going through all the trouble of setting such an elaborate show they may as well make use of it. So a few of them got together and created a band.

The players were (from left to right in the picture above) Ken on guitar, Harry on drums, Brad on vocals, and Jason on bass guitar. They were looking for a name for themselves and someone noticed a "muffin loaf" in the vending machine. The name had been found!

They had one rehearsal in Harry's basement on Saturday, March 15, 2003. It was video taped and recorded on cassette and digital recorder. From the digital recording Harry made a bootleg practice CD called Tasty Jam in the Cellar. Jason pulled some of the songs from the camcorder and created another bootleg CD called Sounds from Underground. The play lists on both CD's were slightly different.

The night of the show was Tuesday, March 18, 2003. They had co-workers stick around after work to listen. It was recorded to 3/4" video tape and SVHS. The tapes had a bad audio mix, so the planned "live album" was never made from those tapes. Almost all of the songs they played were covers, but they did have a couple of originals thrown in.

In 2004 Jason produced a Muffin Loaf video using pictures from the rehearsal and show and set it to the band's rehearsal version of "Crazy Train."

Update - In 2009, Jason produced the second Muffin Loaf video using the band's rehearsal version of "Rock and Roll" set to a time-lapse recording of them building the set. Click here to watch the video at YouTube.

Muffin Loaf has not played together since. There are plans to have a reunion jam some day. Maybe another bootleg will come out of it...

Next week: Who are the Traveling Deengelburys?