silver chair

       Silverchair is an Australian alternative rock band. The band formed as Innocent Criminals in Merewether, Newcastle, New South Wales,Australia, in 1992, with their current lineup of vocalist and guitarist Daniel Johns, bass guitarist Chris Joannou, and drummer Ben Gillies. Silverchair has been highly successful in the Australian recording industry, receiving the industry's flagship awards, the ARIA Awards, a record 21 times. The band has also received six APRA Awards.

   They got their big break in mid-1994 when they won a national demo competition conducted by SBS TV show “Nomad” and Triple J. The band was soon signed by Murmur, and were successful on the Australian and international rock stages. In 2003, following the release of Diorama, the band announced a hiatus, during which time members recorded with side projects The Dissociatives, The Mess Hall, and Tambalane. Silverchair were reunited at the 2005 Wave Aid concerts, and went on to release Young Modern and play the Across the Great Divide tour with Powderfinger.

   Silverchair's sound has evolved throughout their career, differing sounds on specific albums steadily growing more ambitious over the years, from grunge on their debut to their more recent orchestral prog-infused chamber-pop. The songwriting and singing of Daniel Johns has been noted as improving steadily while the band has developed an increased element of complexity in later works. Silverchair have sold in excess of six million records to date.

 Formation and early releases (1992–1996)

   In 1992, teenage singer/guitarist Daniel Johns and his school friend, drummer Ben Gillies, started playing music together at their primary school. When they moved on to Newcastle High School, schoolmate Chris Joannou joined the pair on bass. They formed the band "Innocent Criminals" with second guitarist Tobin Finnane who soon left. They played numerous shows around the Hunter Valley region in their early teens, as well as successfully participating in YouthRock in 1994, a competition for school-based bands. Early in the year Innocent Criminals recorded demos of "Acid Rain", "Cicada", "Pure Massacre" and "Tomorrow" at Platinum Sound Studios.

   The band's mainstream breakthrough came when they won a national competition in April called "Pick Me", conducted by the SBS TV show Nomad and alternative radio station Triple J) with a demo of their original song "Tomorrow". As part of the prize, Triple J recorded the song and ABC filmed a video, aired on 16 June. Innocent Criminals were then given the opportunity to change their name before the release of "Tomorrow" as a single. They were in fact forced to change their name due to trademark issues as the name "Innocent Criminals" was the name of an American Band. This was the primary reason for the change.

   In an AT&T Blue Room interview in 2007 Silverchair discussed the actual origin of their band's name. They took the name from the C.S. Lewis book titled, "The Silver Chair". They admitted in the interview that they came up with what they thought was a good story, but realize now that it would have been much easier to just say it was from a book.

   When the band changed its name from Innocent Criminals they had originally intended to be called 'Slitherchair'. After being mispronounced at a gig as Silverchair they decided to adopt that name.

   Following a bidding war between rival labels, Silverchair signed a three-album recording contract with Sony Music subsidiary Murmur Records; Sony A&R manager John Watson, who was jointly responsible for signing the group, subsequently left the label to become the group's manager. Their Triple J recording was released in August 1994 and the single spent six weeks at #1 on the ARIA Singles Chart. In 1995, a re-recorded version of "Tomorrow" (and a new video) was made for the US market, becoming the most played song on US modern rock radio that year.

   Silverchair’s debut album, Frogstomp, was recorded in just nine days, and released in 1995. At the time of recording, the band members were only 15 years old, and still attending high school.Frogstomp's lyrical concepts were fiction-based, drawing inspiration from television, hometown tragedies, and perceptions of the pain of friends. The album was well received; Allmusic and Rolling Stonerated it in four and four-and-a-half stars respectively, praising the intensity of the album, especially "Tomorrow". A #1 hit in Australia and New Zealand, Frogstomp went on to hit the Billboard 200Top 10, making Silverchair the first Australian band to do so since INXS. The album sold more than 2.5 million copies worldwide. As Frogstomp and "Tomorrow" continued to gain popularity through that year, the group toured with Red Hot Chili Peppers and played on the roof of Radio City Music Hall, while also continuing with their education in Newcastle that year.

  In a January 1996 murder case, the defendant counsel for Brian Bassett, 16, and Nicholaus McDonald, 18, claimed that the pair listening to "Israel's Son", from Frogstomp, caused the murder of Bassett's parents to take place. The band issued a statement that they did not condone or intend any such acts of violence, and the defense case was rejected.