Outside the Box: My Dry Cell Collection

I'm sure most of you, like myself, have plenty of interests other than hockey and hockey cards. Anyway, after reading some of the "Outside the Box" posts over at My Hockey Card Obsession, I thought I would take a crack at this and bring something completely different to the table today, so know that before reading further.

You may have noticed that I added a "Song of the Day" box to the bottom of the sidebar. I did that because music is probably my next biggest interest after hockey. I like all kinds of music, but I'm particularly into modern rock, that being late 90's through today. If I had to chose a favorite band from this time period, it would have to be a now defunct group out of California, known as Dry Cell. Not surprisingly, there is a tie-in with hockey.

I first heard them on the Red Wings 2002 Stanley Cup championship DVD where they have two songs featured, one in the opening montage and a music video tacked onto the end of the video. Soon after seeing the DVD, I looked up who they were and they immediately became my favorite band. It was hard to find a song of theirs that I didn't like. This was all the way back in the summer of 2002.

They were supposed to be release their debut album "Disconnected" late that summer through Warner Bros, the company responsible for the Red Wings DVD. Long story short, due to a dispute between the band and the label, the album was scrapped and never released until many years later as a digital download on iTunes.

Backing up a little bit now, the band broke up around 2004 only to reunite again in 2007. At that time there was talk of another new album and they did in fact record several new songs. But, after all the talk of new music and new albums, nothing ever materialized and as of today the band is officially done. I don't know much about what the rest of the band is doing at this point, but if anyone is into watching "X Factor" then you might be surprised that the band's lead singer Jeff Gutt was featured on the show this past season (his rendition of "Hallelujah" can be seen here). Its a real shame he didn't get to take his talents more mainstream with Dry Cell. They had all kinds of potential as a group, but no one will ever know how far they could've gotten.

Ten years later, although completely non-existent now, this band is still by far my favorite. That being said, I have always been on the lookout for any kind of Dry Cell memorabilia. While my collection of stuff isn't very big, it still means a lot to me to have at least something commemorating my favorite band. Now it's time for a little show and tell. 

As with any band, there are always CD's to collect. That being said, at the moment I have four different albums. That may not seem like much, but considering none of these were never "officially" released on a mass scale, it's a nice little collection.

First I have a very generic looking 3-track sample CD:

Then there is this 3-track promo CD:

Then there is this single for the track "Body Crumbles":

Lastly there is the advance version of the "Disconnected" album:

I have a few other cool pieces of memorabilia too. The first one is this 8x10 black and white press photo that I picked up for a few dollars on eBay.

Then there is this cool 12" x 12" poster of the "Disconnected" album cover. Some people think it's creepy, but I love the picture they used for this one.

The last piece is my favorite so far. It's a test print of a Dry Cell poster from back in the day. The coolest part is that its uncut from the original print. You can see it has a title block in the lower right hand corner with some information about the design. I was lucky enough to stumble upon this on a music poster site a while back and got it for under $10. Needless to say, I've never seen another one of these and I'm glad to have it in my possession.

So there you have it, a break from the usual here. Hopefully it wasn't to boring of a read. I'm sure everyone else in the hockey card blogosphere has interests other than hockey, and I think it's fun to share things like this once in a while, don't you?

Do you have a side collection for your favorite singer or band? Also, have any of you ever heard of the band Dry Cell? If not and you're into modern hard rock, I encourage you to check them out, even if they are no more.