CKY

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CKY (Camp Kill Yourself) is a rock band consisting of Deron Miller (vocals, guitar), Chad I. Ginsburg (guitar, producer), Jess Margera (drums), and Matt Deis (bass).

They share their name with a series of skate and prank videos CKY created by Bam Margera, who is the brother of the band's drummer, Jess Margera. CKY's music has been featured in all four CKY videos and various other Bam projects including Jackass, Jackass: The Movie, Viva La Bam, Haggard, Bam's Unholy Union, Viva la Bands and the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3 video game. Their songs have also featured in the video games "Burnout: Revenge", Backyard Wrestling: Don't Try This At Home and the soundtrack to Resident Evil: Apocalypse.

n 1994, West Chester, PA, friends Deron Miller and Jess Margera formed a band under the name Foreign Objects. In 1995 they released a 5-track EP on Distant Recordings called The Undiscovered Numbers & Colors.

In 1996, they decided to start another band, oiL, with a friend they had met through their jobs at UPS, Ryan Bruni. The band recorded a number of demos, many of which featured tracks that would eventually become CKY songs. After a short while, Deron and Jess were ready to record Volume 1, largely without Bruni. It was at this point that Deron and Jess met Chad I Ginsburg, who was working as a producer. The first material he had heard was the "Disengage The Simulator" demo, and he immediately wanted to be part of the band, having left previous band Rudy + Blitz shortly before meeting Deron and Jess.

The band had continued to use the name "oiL", but shortly after officially enlisting Chad as their guitarist and producer, they had all agreed on a name change. Deron changed the band's name to Camp Kill Yourself and decided to head in a new musical direction. In 1998, Jess's brother Bam Margera, a pro skateboarder, was featured on the Toy Machine film "Jump Off A Building" in a skit called "Bam's Park Footy". The CKY / Foreign Objects song "Genesis 12a" was featured in the skit, while in the credits there was contact info on how to get more CKY recordings.

When Bam Margera, fast growing in popularity, released a full-length video of similar antics through Landspeed Wheels called "Landspeed: cKy" in March 1999, he used CKY's music exclusively as the soundtrack. The band's first albums "Camp Kill Yourself: Volumes 1 and 2" were released on Teil Martin International to coincide with the videos.

The band embarked on the 1999 Warped Tour and played on the Volcom stage. During this tour, Ryan Bruni, the live bassist, left the band before a CKY performance, leading Ginsburg to play bass until Vern Zaborowski was recruited for the 2000 Warped Tour. Later on the tour CKY were kicked off after a protest in St. Louis over the prices the tour's vendors were charging.


They were signed to the Volcom Entertainment record label. Volcom was unhappy with the album cover for Volume 1, which featured infamous politician Budd Dwyer shooting himself, so they instead used a photo from the 1999 Warped Tour. Volume 1 was released again in December. In 2001, CKY signed to major label Island Records, where they re-released a remastered and enhanced version of Volume 1. In September 2002, after being delayed by Island Records, the follow up album, Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild (IDR) was released. To support the album, the band embarked on a number of tours, including a tour with Guns N' Roses and a one-off show opening for Metallica.

In 2003, CKY released the DVD Infiltrate. Destroy.Rebuild.: The Video Album, which contained music videos for each of the tracks on the Infiltrate•Destroy•Rebuild album plus "Disengage the Simulator" and "96 Quite Bitter Beings" from Volume 1. All of the videos were directed by Bam Margera. In July 2004, the live bassist, Vern Zaborowski, and CKY parted ways due to personal and performance reasons. This did not affect the recording process because Deron and Chad had both played bass on all of the studio recordings. CKY then enlisted the services of a new bass player, Matt Deis, formerly of All That Remains. "An Answer Can Be Found" was released June 28, 2005 and debuted at #35 on the Billboard 200.

The band are extremely involved with their fanbase, dubbed the "CKY Alliance". Over 9,500 questions have been answered since 2001. The Alliance's logo, an Å, is even featured on the cover of An Ånswer Can Be Found, as a tribute to the Alliance. On April 15, 2006, CKY announced that they were dropped from their label, Island Records.

On June 20, they performed in Millvale, Pennsylvania. The show was their longest show to date, playing almost thirty songs over nearly 3 hours. During the show, and later confirmed on their website, Deron said that the show was being recorded and taped for a live album which will be their next project after their 4th studio album, coming out in late 2007.

Just 4 days later on June 24, CKY played a show in Burlington, Vermont. This show was cut short when Deron Miller had a meltdown onstage and walked off. On June 28, he posted a statement on the CKY Alliance website citing drug and alcohol problems. CKY have toured North America extensively, as well as most of Europe and Australia.

from Wikipedia licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License.