the stage for The Dismemberment Plan’s success – even if “Their songs were kind of like miniature explosions,” said classmates back then weren’t sure what to make of the music. Stoneman, who booked most of the band’s UMW shows “Mary Washington, in 1993, was still pretty conservative, through the school’s student-run entertainment committee, and our music was kind of outrageous. We did not sound Giant Productions. He, Caddell, and Axelson worked for Giant like anything else on campus at that point,” said bassist in college, gaining valuable insight into the music industry. Eric Axelson ’94, who describes The Plan’s style as “like The group’s stage-show gusto was a complement to the Talking Heads but on a lot of coffee.” its eclectic underground sound, described on The Plan’s Axelson, now 39, had been website as “indie rock” and “postat college just days when he met punk funk.” Their signature style Jason Caddell ’93 on the steps of melded an array of musical genres Westmoreland Hall. In addition to with complicated arrangements, a love for the guitar, the two shared angular song construction, and similar tastes in music, and they unusual time signatures. soon formed a punk-rock band with “It could be a bit much for an ironically collegiate name, the some people at first listen,” said Board of Visitors. lead guitarist Caddell. “When you “We toured major locations like combine those elements, you tend Virginia Hall,” Caddell, also 39, said to take people’s heads off from time of the short-lived group. to time.” But the two stumbled across While The Plan was building something far more enduring when its musical steam, Charnoff and they teamed up with Axelson’s high friends Brian Hollingsworth, who school friends – frontman Travis transferred before graduation, and Morrison, who was at the College Jason Chipman ’95 were toying of William and Mary, and drummer with the idea of starting a record Steve Cummings, who went to VCU label. Mike Charnoff ’95, Jason Chipman ’95, and Brian Hollingsworth formed Alcove Records – to create The Dismemberment Plan. “We’d written a bunch of songs, specifically to put out The Dismemberment Formed on New Year’s Day, 1993, Plan’s first record. The red and white vinyl and Mike and his friends offered to the band got its name from a line in they requested accidentally turned out pink, put out the record,” said Axelson, who but decades later, the record’s quirky color the movie Groundhog Day, when Bill has made it a hot commodity. plays bass and keyboard. “In the same Murray’s character runs into an old way we were learning to be a band, friend who’d sold him insurance “with the optional death and they were learning to be a label.” dismemberment plan.” There was talk early on of changing Charnoff named the venture Alcove Records because he the macabre moniker to something shorter, catchier, and a worked out of a closet-like alcove in the home where he lived little less gory, but in the end “it just stuck,” Morrison told on Fredericksburg’s Fall Hill Avenue. The guys produced the worldwide concert publication Pollstar. the 33-rpm records – the ones that mistakenly turned out Morrison wrote the songs, and the group often practiced pink – with only about $1,500. in the Fredericksburg basement of Lisa Biever ’96. They “To call it a shoestring operation is giving it too much hit the local music scene hard, hauling their high-energy credit,” said Charnoff, who is now an attorney and member shows to Mary Washington’s Underground, Eagle’s Nest, and of the UMW Alumni Board. Great Hall; to off-campus parties and downtown venues like Despite humble beginnings, The Plan started digging Sammy T’s; and even to Washington, D.C., hot spots like its nails deep into the halls of music history. A reluctance the Black Cat and the 9:30 Club. to tour led original drummer Cummings to quit, and his
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