Cutting Jade will always have an extra special place in my world because the guitarist Shaun was a cousin of Jono our vocalist in The Uninvited so I got to spend a fully entertaining evening playing guitar and writing a song with Shaun and his brother. It was a fantastic experience writing with guys who are actually talented and know what they are doing.
Cutting Jade were a seriously good band and they are another example of talent born in the wrong place. The market for decent rock music had just never been big enough to support bands like this
Cutting Jade were signed to Gresham so there was obviously some support but just not enough to get them through to the local ”best rock band in SA” ceiling and onto the Seether level where international exposure becomes possible.
If you never heard Cutting Jade then you really should listen to there first two albums ‘So There We Were’ and ‘Between Two Lives’. The song writing is perfection, the hooks and the melody were all there along with crushing guitars. I don’t know what the idea behind the Between Two Lives concept was but I would suspect that it’s a great battle between playing the music you love and living the rock star life while you slave away studying and getting a degree so that you can earn a living in the corporate world. At some point you realise that one of these two lives isn’t going to happen and you have to choose. I can identify with that and it’s very fucking sad because Cutting Jade could have gone all the way.