Rock Band Debut of The Spillovers

January 3, 2013 · 6 min read

On Dec 12, 2012, our rock band of Sloan Class of 2013, The Spillovers, debuted with a four-song set list at the end-of-quarter Dinner & Dance party for the Sloan class. After 14 days of intense rehearsals during the nerve-breaking final-exam weeks, we had a blast and shredded the night away.

Confession of a Stanford Sloan Fellow Series EP36

On Dec 12, 2012, our rock band of Sloan Class of 2013, The Spillovers, debuted with a four-song set list at the end-of-quarter Dinner & Dance party for the Sloan class. After 14 days of intense rehearsals during the nerve-breaking final-exam weeks, we had a blast and shredded the night away.

One of our drummers John is a local here. Right at the beginning of our academic year, he proposed on our Facebook Group page that we should form a rock band. Not surprisingly, no much response was received at that time as Sloans were all busy figuring out where to get lockers and mattress, that sort of thing, pretty low on the whole Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. It took one flash mob (of Gangnam Style) and one NCAA half-time performance (Gangnam Style, again) for the Sloan Class of 2013 to proudly announce its arrival in the Hall of Fame and demonstrate to Graduate School of Business and Stanford University that there is no mountain that cannot be conquered by this class of unprecedented enormous talent. So when Tracee, our co-social chair for the Autumn Quarter, commissioned for a band performance at this Sloans-Gone-Wild Dinner & Dance party, this monumental task naturally fell upon the shoulders of a few choice individuals who got bored with final exams (maybe just academic study in general, especially Accounting) and have developed a habit of making history for Sloans, for GSB, and for Stanford.

The band was taking shape quickly. I knew Yuki and Jun both played guitar and could sing very well, from our crazy karaoke parties in Music Tunnel in Sunny Vale; I knew Ryan and I were in the same school of rock through Facebook chat even before we met in Stanford; I knew Colin always had the aspiration to be a rock singer at the house party of California Ave; Cherie and I shared the same passion for rock music festival; I knew Tracee would be game for anything; everybody saw how good a drummer Alex was on our Deepavali party and I knew Su could play keyboard by.... whatever.. I just did.

Getting a venue to practice and all the music instruments/amps usually would be a huge challenge to any new band. Luckily we had John The Resourceful, who graciously offered his big house nearby the campus for our jam sessions; and we had Ryan The Passion, who went on a buying spree for a guitar (Paul Reed Smith no less!) , a bass, and three amplifiers. I managed to borrow two microphones from a local friend. Tracee helped us set up the on-site logistics for the party night and we were all set to go.

Between Nov 29 and Dec 12, we had five jam sessions. It was a ton of fun, sometimes because John's adorable in-house girls rock band warmed the stage for us, sometimes because we were all in awe by Colin's quintessential power rocker pose, or sometimes because Yuki's impromptu guita riff brought us back to the good old days of Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin, before JB of the kind took over the world. John always served us good pizza, beer and wine. LSD would be the only missing piece to make this a perfect party to get high.

Most of our band members have played in some sort of rock band before, like twenty years ago in high school. Some of us did that in secrecy without the knowledge of our wives - which became a moment of great revelation during the debut performance that would forever live as one of the urban legends of this class. When I lived in Beijing between 2008

2012, I hanged out with a group of friends who were all phenomenal singers. Often we jammed at some bars/clubs with the in-house band when they finished their set for the night and the crowd has left. We always had a dream of forming a band of our own, but quickly we realized there would be too many vocals and the band would be missing players for guitar, bass, drum, trumpet, or keyboard. Basically, as far as forming a band went, we were all useless. Who would have thought, I would live my dream in Stanford, in a bona fide rock band? It felt good.

The band name The Spillovers came from our depleted brains when preparing for the final exam of Global Strategies - it's one of those strategy lingoes that no one except Professor John Roberts really understands what it actually means. Loosely, it's about synergy that spills over from one to another. We had a lot of fun jamming together at John's house and positive energy was flowing in the air - so the name naturally stuck with us.

The night of our debut finally arrived. The Dinner & Dance party was a black-tie event, which constrained to some extend how outlandish we could dress the part for the band performance. We didn't go as far as wearing latex rocker pants (we had that), but we pulled the best effort we could under the circumstance. Colin and I changed into tight T-shirt and wore a bandana; John and Alex wore a pirate wig; Yuki played up Brit-Pop flare; Jun got his party outfit on; Tracee got the Dylan hat on; Cherie and Su looked gorgeous and sexy. The best-dressed honor went to none other than Ryan, who put up ultra-heavy make-up and became utterly unrecognizable in true spirit of KISS' Gene Simmons.

...and the rest, is history.