Moral Panic Packs Show With Energy By Lauchlin Fields[4/16/05] Don't panic if you see back flips at Riverfest's Center Stage Saturday. It's all part of the high-energy show four musicians known as Moral Panic.The energy and emotion the band want to convey can't always be explained, but it comes through loud and clear in their show, they said."Sometimes you can't express it with words You've got to bust out a back flip," said lead vocalist and rhythm guitarist Scott Stiffler. "When the beat comes down, so do my feet."The back flips that Illinois native Stiffler, a gymnast for 10 years, performs at the beginning of shows are a preface to the whole band's high energy.
Stiffler, 28, moved to Mississippi from California. He is backed by 21-year-old twins Kevin and Brian Hindman of Port Gibson and Meredith Spencer, 23, a Vicksburg native who lives in Posrt Gibson. Kevin Hindman pumps out perfected bass lines, while Brian wails guitar solos that flow to Spencer's often fast paced beat on the drums- the backbone to a sound the band said is as oringinal as it comes."We have a lot influences-we really don't sound like any thing else," Kevin Hindman said.
The California groove that is matched with Southern rock and a twinge of blues influences shines through the high voltage sound the band has molded in the five months the group has been together. And, it grabs listerners from ages 15 to 40, Spencer said. The Hindman brothers and Spencer had thier start four years earlier, but couldn't get the sound and recognition they wanted.
After attempting to master cover songs for three weeks, the three played their first gig in 2002 when they opened for long-time friend Melvin McFatter's band at Port Gibson's Heritage Festival.
Spencer and the Hindman twins, known then as Artificial Intelligence, were a guitar trio- with no singer, bassist or drummer. When they started getting serious about the music a year later, they decided to start from scratch. Spencer traded in his guitar for a drum set and Kevin Hindman bought a bass.
They continued to play Heritage Fest each year- gradually changing instruments and adding members. But, they said they didn't get much recognition from organizers or the audience. Last year's perfromance was a breaking point for Spencer, he said. "We had a singer, and we were mediocre at best. I almost quit, but Kevin said he wasn't going to let me quit," he said.
The band stuck with it, going through a series of singers and covers, they said. The "magic" began when Kevin Hindman's girlfriend saw Stiffler playing his guitar in the lobby of a girls' dorm at Raymond's HInds Community College campus, where he and the twins attend school. She told him her boyfriend's band needed a singer.
Stiffler, who performed solo for 10 years in California, met with the band at a cabin owned by McFatter in Port Gibson where the three had been practicing for years."After he left, I was like, 'Something ...
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