Artist description Hooks, rawk, melody, 50 cent rhymes, an occasional leap.

Music Style A little bit country, a little bit indierock and a whole lotta Loverboy.

Musical Influences All Your Base Are Belong To Us, Brannin, Casbah, Dirt Bombs, e-mail, the force, girl scout cookies, Hoth, Inigo Montoya, Journey video games, KG, Loverboy, Mighty 690, Neverending Story 2, Old 97's, Paradise City, quiet, Reading Festival, Shandree, This Is Spinal Tap, Under Pressure, volume, White Stripes, X, yeehaw, Zombies.

Similar Artists Wilco, Guided By Voices, Replacements, Elvis Costello, Pixies, Posies, Pavement, Big Star, Weezer, and, of course, USA For Africa

Artist History The Rookie Card tale started when, after 10 years of noodling and one-off bands, Adam Gimbel decided to get slightly more serious about rock stardom. After a few solo acoustic shows to get warmed up, John Andrews (ex-Contra Guerra) answered an ad for guitarist that Gimbel had placed in a local weekly. The two hit it off and found a rhythm section in local basher Eric Casas on drums and Tim Peacock on bass. Casas left after a couple of shows and was replaced by Nasrallah "Animal" Helewa. With Andrews and Gimbel switching off on lead vocals, the band played a handful of shows with alt-rock legends galore, performed on local radio stations, charted high on mp3.com charts, were scheduled to be on a UK compilation and seemed well on their way to...something. With Andrews' status as a San Diego area resident in question, the band's 3/4 original member lineup refrained from recording and played their last show in August 2001. Peacock had already left to concentrate on his own band, Like Swimming (and later joined Waterline Drift), while Andrews moved to the LA area and continues to shape young minds to this day. Gimbel spent the next few months doing solo gigs, trying to sing classic British blues songs with a North County band and doing a show with side project Cover Me Badd. Helewa played a lot of video games. Jason Hee joined the band full-time followed by Gabe Acock several months later. Look for the four song demo, regular shows and an appearance on UK zine/compilation Comes With A Smile.

Group Members Adam Gimbel - guitar, blahlala; Jason Hee - low notes, oo-oo-wah; Nasrallah Helewa - crash boom bang; Gabe Acock - smoking, lead guitar

Instruments guitarz, bass, drums, la la la la, whatever's lying around

Albums Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, Slanted and Enchanted, Upstairs At Eric's, Live at the Apollo, Greatest Hits (Vol. 2), (self titled), New England's Newest Hit Makers, Music Inspired By The Titanic

Press Reviews "With a full big sound, plenty of hooks and what they refer to as their 50-cent rhymes, Rookie Card possesses all the basic ingredients needed for a great band. Definitely worth keeping an eye on." (AOL's Digital City). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . "Hey Adam, f@ck you. Stop listening ... and send us your shitty album, so we can throw it away." (Jack Black of Tenacious D)

Location San Diego, CA - USA

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