The message board on Aaron Sacks and Mikael Ohlsson's door reads "Days without Reslife warning: One." After being recently written up by a Resident Assistant, the roommates learned the hard way that drumming is not allowed after 7 p.m.
These occupants of the "black light room" in Hill Hall are a portion of the band YGS. "The acronym doesn't stand for anything," band member Henry Myint said. "Well, yes it does; but it's a secret."
And Ohlsson assured that YGS was "not the syphilis band," referring to posters advertising a band with identical initials called "You've Got Syphilis."
In addition to sophomores Myint, Sacks, and Ohlsson, the members of YGS include sophomore Aaron Weinstein and first-year graduate student Bill Zuck. The group is easygoing, joking with one another as they prepare to post flyers for their Wednesday night performance at Brown and Brew.
Myint, who sings lead vocals and plays acoustic guitar, is a mechanical and biomedical engineer from Hong Kong. Sacks, the group's keyboardist, is a civil engineer from Maine. Weinstein hails from Texas, plays bass, and will most likely major in English with a Communications and Media Studies minor. Ohlsson plays guitar and is studying International Relations, while Zuck, the group's drummer, is a student in the music department's composition program.
The group formed last year when the four members were living together on the first floor of Carmichael. They all played instruments and would perform covers together in the Carmichael lounge on Saturday nights. Over the summer Myint wrote several songs and Ohlsson wrote music for guitar. At the beginning of the fall semester they started playing their original pieces together.
"We really didn't become a band until we got our first gig," Weinstein said.
That debute came in Oxfam Cafe on Feb. 15th. The band described it as a positive experience, lauding Oxfam's setup and staff. They also had the support of their friends, some of whom made "We Love YGS" T-shirts.
YGS recently recorded submissions for the Jumbo Audio Project at Keynote Studios. Though the process of recording two songs took six hours, the band members say it was gratifying.
"I felt like we were a real band," Myint said.
It took a few moments of thought for the band to pinpoint words that describe its music. "It's like, mellow rock," Myint said. Weinstein went further: "It's three-chord depressing rock," he said. "But it's nice three-chord depressing rock."
Myint said that the group is trying to move beyond that genre. The group's favorite cover is the Pixies' "Where is My Mind," followed closely by the Bumblebee Tuna jingle.
The band does not have terribly lofty goals, though Ohlsson jokingly expressed a desire to avoid the fate of many undergraduate bands. "Not breaking up," he said. Sacks said the group hopes to play some off-campus gigs.
For now, their main focus is getting into the Battle of the Bands this spring. Other, less serious suggestions include Myint's idea of developing a drug addiction to increase the band's popularity and Weinstein's plan to start a rumor that Ohlsson is a hermaphrodite. "Two months later we'd make t-shirts that say 'I believe in Mike'," Weinstein said, to a previously nonchalant Ohlsson's alarm.
Outside of the band, its members lead rather different Tufts live. Weinstein is a member of the Tufts Symphony Orchestra. He also recently had a piece published in Outbreath
