June 2006: IfIHadAHiFi are on stage doing what they do - burying catchy melodies underneath a wall of cacophonous noise and unlistenable discordance - when an onstage argument ends with bassist MrAlarm launching his axe into drummer DrAwkward's face, breaking two of his front teeth. Blood everywhere. MrAlarm storms off stage. Set over.

15 minutes later, MrAlarm and DrAwkward are laughing, hugging, and having drinks.

An audience member approaches. "Weren't you guys just about to tear each other's heads off?"

"Yup."

"And now you're acting like nothing happened?"

"That's right."

As one of the audience members more familiar with the band's usual antics was overheard saying that night, "Just another day in the life of IfIHadAHiFi."

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Put Brainiac, Orson Welles, Pere Ubu, Prince, Mick "Cactus Jack" Foley, and Nikola Tesla into a wrestling ring for a tables, ladders, and chairs battle royale. Who'd win? Well, Mick Foley, because he actually has the training. But the real answer is "the listening public," because the gigantic universe-defending robot that would rise from the sum of these parts like the vehicle-based Voltron would be IfIHadAHiFi, a wall of noise hiding instantly infectious hooks, dance beats, and broken bones.

Things never come easy for an antagonistic lot trying to write pop songs about weird science, roadside Wisconsin, and true crime. But since 2000, HiFi have slowly built a loyal core following via two full-length CDs, a split LP (with their pals, the lamented and departed Modern Machines), five national tours, gobs of college radio play and positive press - including a spot in Alternative Press' "100 Bands You Need to Hear in 2005" - as well as an always captivating and combustible live show. If IfIHadAHiFi were a recently-canceled Joss Whedon TV series, the letter-writing campaign to bring them back on the air would be fervent, long-sustaining, and probably a bit vulgar and abusive. But that's the HiFi all over - too annoying and stubborn to go away.

2008 brings the release of a third full-length, Fame By Proxy, that ups the pop-noise ante as far as it's ever been upped in the band's 8-year history. Recorded by Shane Olivo in Milwaukee, mixed by John Congleton (The Paper Chase) in Texas, and mastered at Silver Sonya in DC, the disc brings still more hooks, still more obtusely nerdy subject material (black holes? The Paulding Light? Really guys? You couldn't write songs about girls and feelings like a marketable band would?), and more tinnitus. More touring is in the works, too, and it's sure to bring more chaos, more cacophony, and more nights like the good times in June 2006. Just another year in the life of IfIHadAHiFi.

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