ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE CHILLIWACK PROGRESS, APRIL 29, 1981
By Steve Newton
(In the sixth of a series of stories on local bands The Progress presents a profile of The Postcards. Next: Midnight Smoke.)
The Postcards is a young rock and roll band made up of students from the Chilliwack and Sardis areas. Members of the group are Armen Stein on lead vocals, Jeff Eppler on guitar, Byron Csizmadia on guitar and vocals, Chris Cormier on bass, and Rickard Chadsey on drums and vocals.
The group has been together for almost a year, performing for the first time at the Chilliwack Senior High School variety show in May of 1980. Last summer The Postcards played at the opening of the Chilliwack Youth Centre, and last February, while playing to an audience of 900, won first prize at Sardis Secondary School’s talent night.
The band members are 18 years of age, except Cormier, who is 19, and all plan on attending university next year. “Music plays a big role in our lives”, says Eppler, but he points out that education always gets first priority. “School gets in the way of jamming”, he says, “but we plan on playing more once school is out.”
The band rehearses in Csizmadia’s barn and, though it does not own a sound system, the players manage to borrow and make do with what is available. The Postcards is the first band that any of its members have been in and, according to Eppler, it is somewhat of a fantasy come true.
“What’s more fun than playing in front of people?”, he asks. The band plays a lot of original material, most of it written by Csizmadia, though Eppler and Chadsey contribute as well. The group cites Jethro Tull and The Who as major influences and, according to Chadsey, classical music and Romantic and Victorian poetry also figure strongly in The Postcard’s musical creativity. Chadsey takes the approach that, considering the band’s limited experience, it is not so much what they play, as how they play it.
“If people see you’re having fun, they’ll have fun too”, he says. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad you are, you’ve got to have charisma”, says Eppler, who feels that “rock and roll has got to be fun.” Future plans for the band include playing some more high school dances, and recording a demo tape at Fairhaven Studios on the Western Washington University campus.