Early History
The band was formed in 1986 under the name of A-180 by Mark Stuart, Barry Blair, Will McGinniss, David Stuart, and Phil Vaughan, who all attended Kentucky Christian University. The next year, the band temporarily disbanded when Mark went to Haiti for a semester. Upon Mark's return to Kentucky, the band reformed with Ron Gibson on drums. They became a popular local band, booked by the school nearly every weekend; traveling as far west as Texas, north to Chicago, south to Florida. The band did over 100 shows during this time and recorded two independent releases under the name A-180. The first was You Turn in 1989 and Reaper's Train in 1990. Reaper's Train featured the original version of the song "DC-10", also found on the first Audio Adrenaline release.
The band's big break would come in the form of Bob Herdman. Herdman approached A-180 with two songs he had written, one of them called "My God", and asked A-180 to record it. After "My God" was recorded at Landmark Recording Studio, Ohio, A-180 asked Herdman to join them as their songwriter. The demo tape was sent to radio stations and scaled the charts quickly. The song caught the attention of Toby McKeehan (from dc Talk), who brought it to the executives at ForeFront Records. The label decided to offer a record deal to A-180 but had them change their name to "Audio Adrenaline". The name Audio Adrenaline comes from an incident in which Bob Herdman had been listening to some loud and fast music; he was so enthralled by it that he apparently exclaimed "This is like... audio adrenaline!" while jumping wildly.
Late in 1991, David Stuart left the band to focus more on his family. Ron Gibson also left in December 1991 as he claimed Forefront Records was guiding the band into hip-hop and away from the band's rock roots, as evident in the band's first release.
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