calm before... the rising storm

Andrew Brier

In June of 1967, a group of six high school seniors at Phillips Academy Andover, (an all-boys Prep School), went into a tiny recording studio in Framingham Massachusetts and recorded an album called 'calm before...' that was to become a Vinyl collector's classic in the decades to follow. The Rising Storm has survived to become one of the 'Unknown Legends of Rock n Roll' and five decades later, they are still making music. The boys graduated, and went on with their lives and successful professional careers that had nothing to do with music. The 500 copies of the album, never meant for distribution, fell into obscurity, until 1982, when a German collector paid $2,000 for a rare copy. Music reviewers and rock historians re-discovered calm before... calling the album an 'icon of the 60's garage band sound with surprising original material'. The album was 'bootlegged' in Europe and suddenly the band was unwittingly thrust back into the spotlight. In this 30 minute documentary, filled with animations, re-creations, and interviews with experts, fans, and band members we piece together the story of the Rising Storm's unlikely rise to fame. We explain what caused the craze among Vinyl collectors and hear what the band has to say about the music they created fifty years ago, the times they lived in, their subsequent “fame” and their real lives. The movie was created over three years by the Brier family production team. It premiered in November at the Jukebox International Film Festival, winning Best Short Documentary. It played at the Santa Cruz International Film Festival and won Best Short Music Documentary and then moved on to London's Doc N Roll Film Festival. In February the movie was honored at Festival Sayulita, Mexico with the award for Best Music Documentary. We look forward to appearing in several East Coast festivals where the Rising Storm will play a live set to accompany the movie. The Washington Post dubbed the Rising Storm: "the most famous utterly obscure rock band in America"