House Party Era
The first official NEOTOLEDO gig was a house party with (L to R) Stecki on keyboards, Holtwick on vocals and guitar, Bernadette on drums, and Smalls on bass. Shortly after this first gig, Bernadette left the group, and may have been abducted by evil robots.
The Classic Era
After months of auditions, NEOTOLEDO hired Bobby Prom (second from right) to replace Bernadette on drums. During this era, most of the band’s best-known tracks were written and perfected, such as Holding My Bionic Hand, View from the Moon, and Mission to the Unknown.
The Modern Era
After a long day of recording, Bobby left his drum set at the studio and never came back. Some thought that the band would never play again, but the surprise addition of Chuck Vadun (at left) brought them back to the stage and studio.
Story
The history of NEOTOLEDO goes back to 2005, when Scott "Smalls" Smalley and Khryztof were roommates. Prior to actually writing any songs, the concept for an experimental space rock group featuring "songs about robots" was kicked around. They remained a visual and musical duo for a number of years, creating album art and posters for future performances.
Heavily influenced by bands such as They Might Be Giants, Weezer, Soul Coughing, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, and later Flight of the Conchords, the boys strived to create music where "not all the songs sounded the same". This experimentation typically made it hard for them to find gigs.
Eventually, they added keyboardist, Jeff "Stecki" Garstecki to the group. Stecki's virtuosity and creativity lead to a lot of songs becoming fleshed out from their initial drafts. After rotating through drummers, multi-instrumentalist, Bobby Prom was present during the bulk of the finalizations of this set. Unfortunately, time conflicts lead to him being replaced by Chuck Vadun, who would go on to be one of NEOTOLEDO's longest active members.
