About

When some friends and I were thinking about starting a band in the early 90's, Turn Knob to Agitate was the name I proposed. Eventually we settled on Tralfaz instead, but Turn Knob to Agitate has stuck with me. The cereal dispensers in Lipscomb's cafeteria were emblazoned with that instruction. It recently occurred to me that a while back I had learned from the Ricky Gervais podcast that "nob" is slang for a phallus...which certainly puts a different twist on the phrase. What I've been thinking about more recently (and more what I was thinking when I first proposed the name) is the image of the volume knob of a stereo or amp being turned up to agitate...either to agitate in the "if it's too loud you're too old" sense or maybe in the sense that music tends to make people move around.

Anyway, for some reason I got the bug to put together this web site. It's intended to document and memorialize our musical activities way back then. A bit of nostalgia. Also a way to get back in touch and stay in touch with old friends. A place where we can upload images, recordings, comments, etc. from those old days. A place with discussion forums and blogs where we can talk about music or whatever...and maybe a catalyst to start collaborating on music again.

I'd encourage you to request an account and then login to post comments on any of this nostalgia...what's the background, what do remember about it, etc. (other than the obligatory "too bad those guys can't sing"). Hopefully some of you will want to be contributors, uploading images, recordings, whatever. If so, I'll enable the advanced permissions for your account and give you the instructions for how to do it. If you've got images, audio, or video but not in a form you can upload, send it to me and I'll do it for you.

Also, I hope this site will not forever remain limited to just these old, dead bands. If you or any of your pals have anything going on now that you'd like to share here...this is the place for you...and Turn Knob to Agitate.

Jonathan (2008)