Smile

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Bio

Smile 2 A veteran of semi-seminal OC hardcore bands Inside Out and HEADFIRST, Rosas formed Smile in 1992 with Headfirst bassist and fellow Woodbridge High student Aaron Sonnenberg. The two placed an ad for a drummer in the Recycler, which led them to the prosaic Barstow home of Scott Reeder. “He was completely different from Aaron and me,” Rosas remembers. “He was this Barstow rocker guy. Long hair, checkered pants, ripped Pink Floyd tank top and a bandana on his head. He was the best drummer I’d ever played with in my life.” The threesome released a seven-inch (“Resin”), and then in 1995 released a sludgy bombastic yawp of grunge called Maquee on the San Diego-based Headhunter label. Rosas’ particular lyrical yens—insouciant or wry fatalism, revenge fantasies, bizarre suburban Gothicism—made early appearances here. On Maquee’s very self-conscious “Rock Anthem for the Retarded Teenage Hipster Population,” Rosas sings: “Before we start, I’d like to say that we’re all done/Remember what we started for, remember it was fun/Now we try so hard to look like we don’t try/The only things that we become are all the unimportant things we buy/ . . . The only thing we learn from our mistakes is that we make a lot of mistakes.” Smile smelled like teen spirit back then. – MySpace