A couple of years ago – and by couple I actually mean about seven years ago now and that makes me feel old – my blog used to be called “My Quietdrive.”
It was a name with meanings on multiple levels, at least that’s what I liked to tell myself to make myself feel better. More pretentious.
It was a blog that was hosted on Blogspot, and I’m not sure if it’s still there, but I do have all the posts archived. I just don’t think I ever back published all of them. It was probably the longest lasting URL I kept up until that point, and on that original blog, I accumulated easily a thousand posts or so.
I mean, I started blogging, what, 2005? 2006? And I kept at it consistently. I blogged daily, religiously, if not more. I would blog in a word document file and back publish if I had to since I didn’t always have internet access back then.
There was “Eternally Wandering” for awhile, because I was an emo little shit. There were quite a few variations, mostly emo because I was a cringe-y little derp.
But “My Quietdrive” lasted the longest, arguably the most neutral URL and title I had there.
It came from the band Quietdrive, a band that I found out years later when I came to the US (St. Cloud) that they were based in Minneapolis.
But back then, all I knew was that I really enjoyed Quietdrive when I picked the new URL and title.
“Rise from the Ashes” felt like my theme song of sorts, since I was at the cusp of graduation but was looking to figure out my teenage angst-filled life, about to enter my college years.
“Maybe Misery” felt right – because maybe misery was what I needed to fill in the blanks here.
But more than that – and this is the part that I held on to more than the actual fervor of the band, because back then I felt it was juvenile to tie my own identity and growth to a band name – was the origin of the band’s name.
I had read, at that point, in Wikipedia that the band called themselves “Quietdrive” because they described it as the thing that drives them, the “quiet drive” within everyone of us that pushes us forward.
And 16/17-year-old me went “FUCK YEAH.”
So, I have always liked Quietdrive if not for their music, for the idea that they represent to me.
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Fast forward a few months, maybe, or perhaps even a year or so. I look back onto Quietdrive’s wikipedia page and I don’t see any talk about the origin of their name anymore.
It’s something that’s bugged me for many years. Every once in awhile I’d do a google search and try to find that interview about the origin of their name.
I think I started looking for it, every now and then, since 2009. Because in 2009 I mentioned “Quietdrive” as being significant to me, and even though I was referring to my blog the person I was talking to thought I was referring to the band.
He was my professor then, and knew the band members personally, and has had drinks with them. Which was really cool.
Today… I realized how stupid I was and how many number of years I’ve wasted searching for that interview.
Today I realized that Wikipedia keeps track of all their different edits and versions. And so I looked into their version history, and voila, they kept it since the dawn of the page. I jumped back to about 2006 or 2007, and I found the reference to the interview.
In an interview with Away-Team.com, Kevin stated that their sound was “Rock n roll mixed with some passion and emotion and a never-ending drive to succeed, I guess. That’s kind of what the name is all about, that quiet drive within us all.”
But hold on, that links brings you to Away-Team.com, but their archive only goes back as far as 2012. Shit!
Not really, because almighty Google came to my rescue. With a couple of search operators thrown into the mix, and the right keywords, I managed to pull up the original interview.
Thankfully, Away-Team kept their old website even though much of it was broken. They never wiped their database of posts.
Rest be assured I’ve saved a full copy of that page. But here’s the link.
And here’s the exact quote.
JEN- Can you describe your sound in five words or less?
KEVIN- Rock n roll mixed with some passion and emotion and a never-ending drive to succeed, I guess. That’s kind of what the name is all about, that quiet drive within us all.
He was probably just a guy throwing out fancy sounding ideas to an interviewer in hopes of seeming cool.
And he was also terrible at answering the goddamn question because that was NOT five words or less. I say this, of course, fondly.
But there you have it – the “quiet drive within us all.”
I feel like I’ve solved a little, personal, mystery that’s hounded me for a long time. I’m glad I didn’t give up though. I’m glad my “quietdrive” kept me at it.
Also – first public post since… forever.