Defunct Local Band Profile Series: The Diego Experience

It's now time for this month's Defunct Local Band Profiles at the SMS! Of course, this monthly feature series looks at one or two defunct/functionally inactive hard rock/metal bands from the Twin Saults, so we can profile them, their run, and their material for current readers, and as usual, the bands are chosen through random selection. This month, I had originally planned to profile 2 bands (the second being defunct Sault Michigan band Deprecor), but the first band we randomly chose actually had more to talk about & feature than I projected, so I've opted to postpone Deprecor to next month (similarly to the D.O.T.H. postponement from April), but it is coming! With that said, read on below for this month's now-single band profile!
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The Diego Experience

Genre: Hard/Classic Rock

Hometown: Sault Ste. Marie/Echo Bay/Desbarats, Ontario

Members: (Members not in their last full lineup in italics)

Mike "Diego" Brown, lead vocals
Keegan Gjos, backup vocals
A.J. Biron (Vendetta), lead guitar/drums
Brent Hurley, rhythm guitar/bass
Ben Eppert (Column Ruins), bass/guitar
Tyler Hurley, drums/bass
Ben Kemp-Reynolds (The Lust Boys, The Glass Statues), bass

Audio/Video: While teased original material from the early 2010s doesn't exist online (that I know of), a sampling of 5 live concert videos from CASS Cafe sets at Central Algoma Secondary School from 2008-2010 can be seen at guitarist A.J. Biron's YouTube channel! They include covers of Bon Jovi's "It's My Life", Three Doors Down's "Kryptonite", Def Leppard's "Photograph", Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Simple Man", and Blue Oyster Cult's "(Don't Fear) The Reaper", while a now-deleted cover of a Boston song was previously posted on ex-bassist Ben Kemp-Reynolds' YouTube channel. Check out their Def Leppard cover below, and see more at the above links!



Info/Analysis: The Diego Experience were a Central Algoma hard rock sextet that CASS students may remember from CASS Cafe sets from 2008 through 2010. Their run was mainly documented online via their Facebook group, with band members (who often switched instruments for some songs) debating song choices for their live sets there, generally leading to a hard/classic rock cover sound that was well received among fellow students. Starting in the summer of 2010 (possibly in conjunction with members' graduations), the band began aiming to expand beyond CASS events, including a 2011 name change to Durera (French for "shall last") and early plans for a debut CD, but activity died down as a whole during this time, and the band went inactive circa the summer of 2012. While The Diego Experience didn't come across as the most refined band ever, they always seemed like they were having fun, and that's what counts! I wish there was online material of theirs from the Durera era, and the vocals could be more diverse on the whole, but there's nuggets of promise (especially on guitar), and hopefully everyone stays active in music!
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I hope you guys liked this month's Defunct Local Band Profiles! As promised, our profile of Sault Michigan metal project Deprecor (featuring future members of Analog Deficiency) will indeed be next month, but as I'm certain they don't have enough surviving media & info, I've added a second Sault Ontario band in a similar situation to fill it out, that being Quite Frankly, the short lived 2009 hard rock cover band featuring No Arrow, Faithless Sin, and D.O.T.H. alumni! Watch out for these on or around December 10th, and stay tuned for more news shortly! Thanks everyone!