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But Guarrine got a lucky break when he escorted a college girlfriend, a big Blur fan, to Detroit to see the Britpop icons in 1995, and she persuaded him to slip guitarist Graham Coxon a mix tape. (A roadie pal of hers introduced them to the musician.) Guarrine began corresponding with Coxon; eventually he passed along a tape of his band, and Coxon was impressed. Assembly Line People Program went on to open five shows on Blur’s 1997 U.S. tour, and Coxon invited the band to London to make a record for his Transcopic label. That album, Subdivision of Being, was released in England and Japan, but Coxon had no U.S. distribution. After a tour supporting an album most people couldn’t find here, the band threw in the towel.
Guarrine was soon back at it with a four-piece, the Hex, featuring future Watchers bassist Chris Kralik; they made an EP called No Car for Troubleman and dissolved after about a year. Guarrine and Kralik started to brainstorm about what direction to go from there, and Guarrine brought up an idea he’d had before forming the Hex. “I thought it would be really cool to take the dissonance of Assembly Line but change it so people could move to it more, make it funky,” Guarrine says. In the fall of 2000 he met guitarist Ethan D’Ercole, a Chapel Hill native who’d cut his teeth in ska bands and could help Guarrine construct the sound he was after.
The band celebrates the release of To the Rooftops with a performance Friday night, May 2, at Metro. Party of Helicopters (see Spot Check), the Eternals, and the Apes also perform.
