With the recent outbreak of pipe bombs sent to the Clintons, President Obama, CNN and others, I am reminded of my front row seat for the changing of America after 9/11.
I started recording under the name Time Bomb Symphony in 1997.
The name had been coined by, of all people, the six-year old son of one of my bandmates at the time who, in response to hearing us rehearse in the family basement, began calling our noise a "time bomb symphony".
Upon hearing the name, the entire band enjoyed a good laugh and decided to turn down our amps a bit, but when it came time to release my latest CD, I chose to use that name instead of my own in hopes of conveying a band dynamic. Plus, at the end of the day, "Time Bomb Symphony" just looks better on a t-shirt than "Darren Robbins".
By late 2001, the nation was still gripped in the drama of 9/11, but there was a feeling of unity and patriotism across the country as George W. Bush cranked up his war machine and prepared to attack a country that had had no direct involvement in the attack.
At the time, I was now living in L.A. and havd begun the process of shipping boxes of my second Time Bomb Symphony CD (Rules Get Broken) to distributors and online retailers.
One day not long after sending out a fuckload of CD cartons - same as the manufacturer had sent to me just days earlier - I received a visit from the L.A. office of the FBI, who informed me that they had been contacted by a regional United States Post Office sorting facility about the boxes I had shipped.
It seems that a postal sorter had seen the printing on each carton, which read "TIME BOMB SYM CR001", and immediately alerted authorities. The printing had been stamped on each box by the duplication plant and sent to me with no issue, but now that I was trying to distribute the albums, here I was talking with federal agents.
As they peppered me with a series of mundane questions, I pictured my boxes of CD's sitting on some FBI ammunition range being cautiously approached by some bomb-sniffing robot, but even after assuring agents that no bombs were contained in said cartons, I was never able to retrieve the CD's.
Long story short, I never recorded under the name Time Bomb Symphony again.