Syke 96
by Tim Wenger
In what has become almost a stereotype in the punk and pop-punk world over the last twenty years, Denver rockers Jay Rock, Josh Rock, and Ryan Teater got that dreaded email demanding that they change the name of their band. Synergy, as it turns out was trademarked by synthesizer music pioneer Larry Fast from New Jersey. The guys were understandably caught off guard. “Literally, we were all in denial, like, this is not happening,” says Josh Rock. “But he was actually really cool about it.”
“He actually said that he saw some of our videos online and liked us,” says Ryan Teater. “He’s actually a pretty famous guy, it’s cool that he knows us and our new name.”
“It’s for the better though,” says Jay Rock. “When you type in ‘Synergy’ on Google, there’s like 37,000,000 things that come up. When you type in Syke 96, we are the first thing.”
The new name came out spontaneously. “We were all saying random things, and Josh was like ‘How about Syke 96?” says Jay. “We were like ‘Nah, I don’t like that.’”
“The reason we picked ‘syke’ was because it’s a cool sounding word, and it’s kind of the story of our life,” says Jay. “Hey, you want to be Synergy, but then five years down the road, ‘psyche!’ you can’t be that. ‘96’ is Ryan’s and my birth year, so it kind of represents the youth of the band.”
Category: The Rock