Bass guitar, electric guitar, voices and drums comprise a Rock Band. Sometimes other stuff gets thrown in there too, or subtracted, but thatís usually the essence of it.

ìRockî is still occasionally open for definition, as it should be.

Janet Morgan, J. Robbins, and Darren Zentek comprise Channels.

It's been a little over 20 years since these three were teenagers, and (despite growing up in different parts of the world) all trying gamely to comprehend the omnipresent threat of nuclear extinction via Mutually Assured Destruction as the Cold War shlepped on. Music was always good for mediating the tension then, opening the mind a little, helping to form those connections that made you feel less alone in your certainty that the world was completely insane. What would we all have done without punk rock (and its many bastard relations)? Itís tough enough just being a teenager without the End of the World in the frame. Anyway, a while later on things did seem to get better, everyone grew up to a greater or lesser extent, focus shifted, music and community held their allure, but the End of the World, reduced once more to a thought-provoking abstraction, sort of lost the limelight.

Shame things couldnít just stay that way.

Still, itís always been healthier to get things off your chest than to keep them bottled up.

Just as itís useful to cultivate a sense of whimsy when whistling past a graveyard, itís useful to cultivate a taste for the absurd when multiple Ends of the World seem equally likely and imminent.

When you are waiting, itís good to keep busy.

Channels the band formed late in 2003 (a mutual love of Siouxsie and the Banshees, Jesus Lizard, and early XTC often cited as a motivating factor) and released a 6-song EP entitled ìOpenî on DeSoto Records in Fall of 2004. The members of this band played previously in other bands: Kerosene 454, Oswego (Zentek), Shonben (Morgan), Burning Airlines, Jawbox (Robbins). In the 21st Century spirit of apocalypse as a regularly scheduled (and branded) event, Channels have made a 12-song CD entitled ìWaiting For The Next End of the World.î Most (not all, but a substantial portion) of the record was played live in the studio and recorded by the band themselves. Guitarist Robbins mixed it, Alan Douches mastered it, Peter Quinn did the album art, and it is available through Dischord Records.