Panopticon started in mid 1999 following the sudden demise of Kaboom! a few months earlier. Armed with a barrage of unused songs, and a hunger to play music, Jared recruited local enigma Johnny B, a militant black skinhead and poet, and music and recording enthusiast John O'Neal along with his ex-Kaboom! bandmate Dan to form Panoticon. The band spent their first few months without a name, plugging away regularly in a practice studio finding a large influence in dub reggae, the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, and, of all things, the sound poems of dada poets, while trying to maintain to a close relationship to the beloved sounds of punk rock. The band was toying with the postulate that the jarring forms of free jazz shared a certain kindred spirit with the thrash of Corrosion of Conformity, Die Kreuzen, or the Bad Brains.
After settling on the name Panopticon, Bentham's 18th Century model of surveillance, for the daunting and imposing connotations the band also found as recurring themes in Johnny B's haunting lyrics, the band recorded self produced demos in their practice space to prepare for
going into the studio. The band landed at Harry Bagg's Saxon Sound Studios up in the woods of Northern New Jersey for sessions that would yield their 7" single and a minimally circulated, self-released demo. Mikey, formerly of the band Purpose, filled in on bass while John O'Neal disappeared. Finally, long time friend of the band Andy Miner provided bass duties and for a short time, the future promised to be productive. Ultimately the confrontational and violent current the band nurtured proved to be the the band's own worst enemy and the band self-destructed amongst a stupor-worthy haze of infighting before completing any recordings of songs the band was working on at the end. Panopticon only played a handful of shows during their brief existence, most of them at parties, so if you caught them at some point, consider yourself part of a privileged few.
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