Mest Profile Essay
Com-101-024 February 24, 2013 The smell of molding laundry always filled the air at my cousin Rachel’s old Blue Island house. As we walked down the dark, narrow, creaking stairs, we all knew weren’t allowed down there but we somehow always stumbled down into the basement where my much older cousin Joey’s room and hang out was. He was rarely home when my sister Haley and I slept over, so all three of us would rummage through his things.
We were always told not to even come close to touching his band equipment but we never really listened to that. We later found out about a man named Tony Lovato, my cousin’s semi-good friend with whom he jammed out with every once in a while. Many know of this man as the lead singer to the band Mest, a pop-punk band that was founded in 1995. Even though he had a good position in the music field he didn’t quite have that same outcome with his past.
This musician seemed to have had a rather offensive taste of peers when he was younger. When Lovato was 13 he was involved in a white supremacist band called Confederate Storm, here is where he started his music career as a drummer. Although he didn’t join the band because he was racist, he definitely grew into the crowd. Before Tony Lovato moved to Blue Island he lived in a predominately black neighborhood, where he had an African American girlfriend.
He had stated that the other band members originally became skin heads because it was the fashion statement at the time, after a while the sub-culture’s racism influenced their music and lifestyles. After a few years of being in that type of group he decided that it wasn’t right and it wasn’t for him. Apparently the movie American History X strongly inspired these discriminatory individuals because as soon as he left the group he was jumped for befriending those of different races.
