I'd have to dig into some boxes to confirm this...but I'm pretty sure 2007 marks 10 years of the Cells' existence.

Right about this time, I was probably pounding out the first Cells songs with Brede Hovland on bass and the band's very first drummer, Kevin Hoetger.

What a difference 10 years makes. Back then, the legendary Lounge Ax in Chicago was still open. Crazy things could still happen in the grungy, totally rock confines of now-defunct Thurstons. We didn't like that place so much then, but condos stand where it was now...and it was very raw, very dirty, very rock. Probably my coolest moment there was Nash Kato from Urge Overkill introducing me to the legendary Cynthia Plaster Caster. Another night I nearly talked my way in to being a substitute guitarist on a Triple Fast Action tour. I used to go in there on Monday nights and try out my new Cells songs with Christian & Justin Webb of the Webb Bros., who had a regular Monday night gig/open stage there.

I was living in a completely raw, filthy factory floor that my roommate, a videographer/sculptor, had filled with tons of found industrial junk. The place looked like a set off of Blade Runner or the Matrix. The band practiced in another factory room across the street. Both places were totally cheap. Both places are now million-dollar condos or chic loft office spaces.

Back then, the demos we were handing out were on cassettes. CD duplicators were hard to come by for broke rocker kids like us ...if they even existed in consumer form at all. I still didn't have a cell phone, and Brede had to show me how to set up a Yahoo e-mail account for the Cells, because I'd never done it before.

The Cells were born in the mid-nineties alt-rock boom that turned its sights on Chicago after the Seattle hype started to die down. A lot of my friends and peers landed big record label breaks, and largely through no fault of their own, lost them just about as fast or a few years later. We were having a great time coming up with songs, gigging, recording and hoping to catch a ride on the wave. And it looked like a couple times, the Cells almost got a big break of their own.

Just about all the friends I made in those initital Cells years still play music. A lot of the band names have changed, and band lineups broken-up and re-assembled with different players. Big rock dreams now have to share head-space with the realities of not being 24 anymore.

So why am I still in "The Cells," 10 years and numerous band lineups later? It's tough to say. The folks in the ad agencies that I do writing work for might say that it's my music's "brand identity." It could just simply be that the Cells is the coolest band name I've ever come up with, and I just can't get rid of it.

I think I'm also sentimental. Through 10 years, a dozen different apartments, a few amazing girlfriends, scads of temp/short-term jobs and ups and downs in my own health, the one constant thing I've had has been the Cells, the dream of the Cells, the feeling of the Cells. That feeling of strapping on my guitar, plugging it into my Marshall amp, hearing the drums pound and the bass whomp, and screaming out songs that are fun to sing along to, sometimes in the face of not-so-fun circumstances. That amazing feeling you get when you find out somebody likes your song.

I've been a Cell so long I don't know how not to be one, regardless of the other musical side-paths I may explore. I'm Cory Hance, and I play in the Cells with Mark Doyle and Johnny Furman. Happy tenth to them and everybody else who's ever played with me in the Cells, including: Pat, Randy, Brede, Rick, Skid, Josh, Doug, Bob, Andy, & Kevin.