Seer
1993-1998
Charles Tillman III - vox/geetar
Jeremiah Stelline - bass
Corey Baechel - drums
These photos were taken at our rehearsal space in the basement of the former Mr. Pizza King pizzeria in downtown Schenectady, New York, in 1994. The room was previously used by a local doom metal band “Internal Crisis”—you can see their “IC” band logo graffiti’d everywhere. When they moved into the bigger space down the hall, we took over this one.
Whatever happened to Internal Crisis? Haha. They were cool.
Seer was a loud, thrashy, alternative/experimental/noise rock project I started in late 1993 in the “Electric City,” Schenectady, New York, just outside the state capital of Albany. I was 18. Early in 1994, Jeremiah Stelline, this 17-year-old roughneck from Boston who I had recently met, joined on bass. I wrote all the music, lyrics, sang, screamed, and played a cranked-up, riff-heavy lead and rhythm guitar.
Like most kids who grew up in the ’80s, we were already into all kinds of music, and Hip-Hop was life for us at the time. Then the “Alt-Rock Revolution” of the early ’90s came along and swept us up. Next thing you knew, we were making our own rock-and-roll noise.
Jer was into stuff like Melvins, Jane’s Addiction and Porno for Pyros, Mr. Bungle, Slayer, RAtM, Pumpkins, Metallica, Anthrax — the new Korn record. Nirvana was massive, of course.
Sonic Youth and Helmet were the groups that initially inspired me to get more into experimental rock bands and eventually start one of my own. Ronald Jones, then guitar wizard of the band Flaming Lips, was the guitarist/musician I looked up to most.
The Capital District region of New York State has the best college radio stations too: WRPI, WRUC, WCDB. I’d listen to them all the time.
Alt-rock, no-wave, hip-hop, punk rock, everything all at once. Noise pedals, electric guitars, watching and recording MTV’s 120 Minutes onto VHS tape every Sunday night. Going to shows and festivals whenever I could hustle up enough money for tickets, if not charm or get my way in somehow.
One week I’m trashing about in a crowd as Boredoms tear up the stage; the next, I’m standing in the rain, tripping on LSD, watching Gil Scott-Heron perform at Woodstock ’94. On a random weekend, I might be at club QE2 in Albany, New York, watching local metal heroes Stigmata or some unknown local act play, then end up at a house party deep in the hood, smoking blunts, writing rhymes and freestylin’ with an old friend who just got back from serving time on Rikers Island. This was my world as the band was beginning.
📼: The only known footage of Seer in 1995. Taken from a VHS recording of us hanging out in our rehearsal space. The clip starts with Jeremiah messing around on Corey’s drum set as Corey and I banter about him letting his friends listen to an early Seer demo tape. Later, you can see me walking around with a 40 oz of Old English (ha!) before we jam on a song I was calling “Dark Force.”
Jer and I would hit up all the music and record shops in Albany and Schenectady and post “Drummer Wanted” ads. I loved when we’d go on excursions to dig through the flea markets and thrift stores, looking for cheap, junky gear, beat-up guitars—anything we could use.
We’d also go to parties and shows and get into all types of mischief in the dance clubs in New York City — even got deep into the East Coast rave scene for a bit, but we were always dedicated to the band.
Years spent moving amps, loading gear for rehearsals and jams, stringing up and tuning guitars, showing Jeremiah the latest slash-and-burn riffs I’d come up with.
As the band carried on, we’d throw parties and play for friends in our rehearsal space in downtown Schenectady.
We also played a house party at a drummer’s place in Troy, New York, around 1996. We’d only met and jammed with him once before - that ended up being the only “show” we ever played.
The Albany, New York, rock music scene was all about Heavy Metal and “Albany Hardcore” — and there we were, making this total freakout noise rock next door in the much smaller city of Schenectady—not exactly the hippest place on Earth.
Drummers came and went over the years—Danny, Dave, Greg, Corey, Craig, Mike (house party), and other cats. Most weren’t listening to the same styles of music we were — one guy who answered one of our ads was an older Grateful Deadhead who just wanted to jam (Craig). Nice dude. Noise rock drummers in Schenectady, New York, were impossible to find then, and when we did find anything close, it was never enough.
One time this kid from Scotia, New York, answered one of our ads and showed up with a swastika drawn on his drum kit—I guess he thought that was really punk. Jer and I handled it though—it’s quite the story.
But Corey Baechel was great. He was our friend, an awesome guy, and the unofficial/official drummer in Seer’s story. He played with us number of times throughout 1995 and 1996 and appears on some of the old boombox recordings I still have, but he had already been dedicated to school before I started the band, and was never a full-time member.
All in all, after years of failing to find a solid drummer, Seer became a wish.
📸: Seer Bassist Jeremiah Stelline at a drum set wearing a homemade band tee, c. 1995.
📸: Corey Baechel playing the bongos at our rehearsal space in Jeremiah’s apartment, c. 1996. Corey played in Seer sporadically between 1995-1996. (Photos by: Charles Tillman III)
By 1998, I ended the idea of the band, quit my job as a youth counselor at the Boys and Girls Club of New York, and on a whim hopped a Greyhound bus from Albany to Los Angeles with a few hundred bucks, my acoustic guitar, a backpack of clothes, and notebooks full of poetry. Days later, I was at the downtown L.A. Greyhound station. No plan, no friends, nowhere to go — let’s see what happens.
Somehow I landed in Santa Monica and then San Francisco, where I quickly ended up broke and homeless, living on the streets for a while before getting a job at a little market called Tom’s Groceries — earning enough to pay for a bed in a dorm room in a cheap hostel downtown.
From there, I found my way to open mic poetry nights and started reading poetry and soon was getting offered featured spoken word gigs around the city. I made friends with these brilliant young artists - even appeared on an independent spoken word compilation album called “Word Debris,” in 1999. Spent the next two years in San Francisco writing poetry, doing performance art, and making and distributing zines. It was exactly what I needed in the aftermath of Seer, but I was still heartbroken.
Flyers: Featured poet at Sacred Grounds Coffeehouse, June 1999. New College of California featured poets: Thomas D’Angelo, Toby Venable, and me - October 1999.
It isn’t lost on me that as a young Black kid from the streets, what I was doing—trying to form an alternative rock band—was unusual for its time. There have always been black folks in punk and alternative rock bands, but you didn’t see boys like me playing electric guitars, forming and LEADING loud alt-rock bands in the grunge-era anywhere in 1993. From the very beginning, there was tension coming at me from all angles, to say the least.
At the same time, I would sit in my bedroom, obsessively writing odd, broken little anti-folk melodies and making weird experimental drum machine and lo-fi boombox recordings. Just in my own world.
Traces of the band have survived. Photos, some incredible audio recordings, demos, jam sessions, etc. from that era too.
Jeremiah had a stash of Seer memorabilia that was trashed after being completely destroyed in a basement flood at his home about 20 years ago.
Unfortunately, there is no known surviving video of the band but for the very brief glimpse of us messing around in our rehearsal space in 1995 shared here.
Seer existed.
A huge thank you to my friends who’ve encouraged me to begin sharing this story.
Much love,
Seer 1993-1998.
✊🏽
📸: Me, c. 1994. Note the Boss and other distortion pedals at my feet and the Sonic Youth patch on my guitar. Photo by Jeremiah Stelline.
