Hard rockin' outfit DUMMY was spawned in the sweltering 'killer' summer of '95, in John's dank un-airconditioned 2nd floor apartment. He and Mark traded riffs (and insults) and after a few sweaty hours of fumbling over the fretboards they realized what they had was... pretty OK. A few more sessions at John's deemed it necessary to move to Mark's wonderfully climate-controlled digs. With the addition of some canned drums, courtesy of the fine people at Alesis, the first dummy songs began to take shape.

Finding a drummer with actual life signs however, proved to be more difficult. The inability to find a good skins man was blamed partially on Mark and John's laziness, but more accurately on the fact that drummers are insane. Enter Scott Kinsey whose already over-burdened schedule was further intruded on by DUMMY practices and occasional drink-a-thons at Blue Bird Lounge. Nevertheless, practices moved along nicely until it was decided they should capture the magic for the rest of the world to hear.

The resulting five song EP entitled Underwhelm was recorded in July of '96 and unleashed on an unknowing public, who haven't been the same since. Also appearing on two of the tracks is PEGBOY's heavy hitting drummer Joe Haggerty (although some say he was coerced).

Dummy began playing club dates in Chicago at venues such as Double Door and Lounge AX. They opened for PEGBOY in November '96 as well as other area bands.