BandNation

Orange County, California has produced some amazing bands in the last few years; bands like No Doubt, The Offspring, and Rage Against The Machine. Buzzbox is the newest member to list of great OC bands. Rainer Fraenkel formed Buzzbox in his Mission Viejo, CA living room in 1997. He recorded several 8-track tapes worth of catchy pop songs with some of his friends but never planned to form a band. Many months later, Rainer bumped into fellow musician Jim Viviano at a local bar and the two decided to get together and listen to his tapes. Jim immediately dug what he heard and laid down some vocal tracks on those early living room tapes. They placed an ad in the recycler want ads for a bass player and Jason Roberts responded. Jason was exactly what Rainer and Jim were looking for in a bass player.

Now they needed to fill the missing link, a drummer. The band chose Stoner Peterson who had just finished a tour with Dave Wakeling of The English Beat. Stoner stayed with Buzzbox long enough to record a demo tape at Time Bomb Studios with Warren Fitzgerald of The Vandals engineering. This demo tape would later turn out to be the key to their success. Buzzbox continued playing shows throughout Los Angeles and Orange County over the next 2 years. Once again, a drummer was needed and the recycler want ads paid off a second time. Weston Hodges a local studio drummer came aboard. Buzzbox practiced at a local rehearsal studio and eventually the owners asked for their demo tape. A couple of months later Buzzbox was approached by Songload Records, an Orange County independent record company. They went on to sign the band to a two album record deal in November of 1999. Buzzbox released their first full length CD “King of Pop” in November 2000. The rest of this story has yet to be written for Buzzbox.