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There's a scene in the movie "High Fidelity" where John Cusack's character, a record store owner, puts on the song "Dry The Rain" by The Beta Band and says, "I will now sell four copies of 'The Three EPs' by The Beta Band." Immediately customers start unconsciously nodding their heads to the song. Several come up to the counter and ask about the record.
If I could pick any one song to have a "High Fidelity" moment like this with, I'd pick "Tired of Being Sorry" by Ringside. The song starts off with a Spanish guitar riff and takes off with a hot bass line. The gritty and soulful voice of singer Scott Thomas is icing on the cake. In fact, I'd pick any song at random off of Ringside's self-titled debut and bet money that I would sell a slew of CDs.
"Tired of Being Sorry," Ringside's first single, has been garnering radio and club play and both MTV and VH1 have featured the duo in recent weeks. They also just scored an opening slot on the Weezer tour. Make no mistake, these boys, Scott Thomas and Balthazar Getty, two childhood friends from California, are headed for big things.
With "Tired of Being Sorry" in rotation in clubs and Ellen DeGeneres declaring Ringside her new favorite band on her TV show, not to mention the band's strikingly good looks, Ringside's gay following is growing. This doesn't bother Thomas in the least.
"I would prefer a strong gay following to a weak gay following," he said. "I'm happy to hear anybody responding to our music and if that's happening that's terrific."
In fact, Thomas said, the bands who are known for "gay followings" are the ones he most loves to see live. "I love those shows, I love that atmosphere," he said.
"I want our shows to be a party. I want our shows to have a great spirit of just howling at the moon," Thomas said. "There's nothing better than playing to a room where everyone's jumping around and dancing and screaming out loud."
If Balthazar Getty's name or face seems familiar, you've probably seen him in one of the many movies he's acted in, including "Lord of the Flies," his 1990 film debut.
If Thomas looks familiar, well, you may have seen him on the news. If you lived in Northern Calif. during the 80s, he may have burned down your house.
Thomas calls the place he and his friends used to spend time as kids a "suburban hell." "It was a whole hillside full of new luxury homes and we would go up there and ride our BMX bikes and play with firecrackers and we accidentally started a fire that accidentally burned down the neighborhood," he said.
There was also a little incident involving a near-riot at his high school. Again, Thomas didn't mean any real harm. "I was sitting at a football game on the home team side of the bleachers rooting for the other team and somebody tackled me and I went rolling down the bleachers," he said. "I was pulled every which way and the dean of the students was there and I had a confrontation with him."
The incident got him expelled. "In the end they felt it would be best if I was removed from the school. At the time I remember it really bumming me out," he said. "It's not a good feeling when you're asked to go away."
The expulsion would prove strangely fortuitous, however. Thomas ended up moving to Los Angeles to live with a cousin and attend school. It was here he went from playing a Sears catalog guitar alone in his room to playing in bands at parties.
It wasn't long before Thomas met Getty. The two bonded instantly, according to the bio Thomas penned for the band, while hanging out with Timothy Leary, "smoking weed and listening to the Bulgarian Women's Choir." Both shared a passion for making music.
The two soon moved into the same building in Hollywood, Getty living upstairs from Thomas. "He would make up these great beats on an SP-1200 while I strummed out songs on an acoustic downstairs," wrote Thomas. Though each dug what the other was doing musically, they didn't think to connect the dots.
Getty continued acting and Thomas made a living doing odd jobs, including a stint as a clothing designer. "I made clothes for successful rock bands like No Doubt, who wore my stuff when they picked up a Grammy," he wrote, "which wasn't easy for me. I would rather have worn their stuff while picking up my own Grammy."
Getty and Thomas eventually started making music together for fun, totally unaware that what they were working on would become Ringside's debut. "Eventually, our stuff wound up in the hands of some labels," wrote Thomas. "We signed to Flawless/Geffen about 24 hours before I was to be evicted from my happy home."
Whether it's the bluesy Rolling Stones feel of "Cold On Me" or the U2-style vocals "Strangerman," Ringside's debut mines classic influences, adds modern electronic elements, and spins gold.

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