PRESS RELEASE -- MONDAY, MARCH 20, 2000

JELLOHAT & FRIENDS SELL OUT HOTEL UTAH on ST. PATRICK'S DAY UPCOMING LOCAL AND REGIONAL SHOWS

BLIND WATCHMAKERS Debut Performance Electrifies Audience

San Francisco, CA - Friday, March 17 St. Patrick's Day Pop Extravaganza at the Hotel Utah (San Francisco, CA)...featuring some of the Bay Area's premiere independent music acts, packed the Hotel Utah to capacity. The mood was upbeat, the Guinness flowed, and the bands performed a mix of acoustic and electric sets to a standing room only crowd...the sold-out show that introduced San Francisco to BLIND WATCHMAKERS.

Based on the incredible audience response, BLIND WATCHMAKERS have already booked a second Bay Area appearance. Lead singer/songwriter Erik Rader currently resides in Seattle splitting his time between Berkeley rehearsals and working at Seattle's premiere performance space On the Boards. Although Rader admits that the situation is not ideal (the rest of the band lives in Berkeley and San Francisco), it is his strongest musical collaboration since leaving THE UPTONES. And therein lies a very special little slice of Berkeley music history about BLIND WATCHMAKERS: the lead singer is the Berkeley high school graduate who put local sensations, THE UPTONES, on the map in the mid-80's.

According to RANCID bassist Matt Freeman, "There was a...band here [in Berkeley] in the early '80s, THE UPTONES, which were a fucking great band. You still find their influence on our records." Indeed, RANCID recorded a cover version of THE UPTONES' song "Get Outta My Way" for which Rader penned the lyrics...Their hit single, "K.U.S.A.," from the 1985 e.p. of the same name on 415 Records, went into heavy rotation on local college and commercial radio stations, but it was THE UPTONES high energy live shows that ultimately earned them such a fanatical following in the Bay Area and beyond--not to mention a photo in Rolling Stone proclaiming THE UPTONES a "band to watch out for."

It was obvious to audience members at the Hotel Utah that Rader had not lost his powerful stage presence. Intense, edgy, and at times raw, BLIND WATCHMAKERS' vocalist confidently took the stage and delivered five power pop angst-inflected anthems. The intimate stage could barely contain Rader's potent lyrics and high energy performance leaving little doubt that this was the same vocalist whose band had once opened for R.E.M., ASWAD, UB40, GENERAL PUBLIC and BILLY IDOL at the Oakland Coliseum.

"I have no great burning desire to do anything except play music like we did on Friday night. I would love to be doing that forever and to be doing that with complete freedom," Rader said in a recent phone interview from Seattle. "There is a unity of shared purpose that is impossible to manufacture," he says of the fledgling band he has assembled. "It is based on mutual respect and the total support and belief and faith that all of the other guys have shown for my songs. I had tried to start bands between the East Bay, Colorado and the East Coast for 14 years, and to get people interested in working with my peculiar vision of songwriting and performing. It is like any other kind of relationship: it is not something that you can create. You can't make it happen. It fell into place at the right time and the right place, so a lot of the music you are hearing is material that has been germinating for at least 10 years."