"He Keeps Asking for a New Brain"

"He keeps asking for a new brain," says Joaquin Torres, guitar player for San Diego band Frogsbreath. Torres speaks of his band's bass player, Brian McClure, who is in the University of Utah's medical center with brain damage.

On the band's May 17 MySpace blog entry, Joaquin wrote: "We were coming back from a music conference in Utah and we got in a serious car accident on the freeway. Our SUV rolled about five complete times and Brian was thrown from the vehicle. Two days ago the doctors told us that Brian had fractured his skull and there was no activity in his brain. They said he was brain-dead and he was surviving on life-support. His family was faced with the decision on whether or not to pull the plug....

"I guess the doctors found out that the pressure was actually getting worse with the drugs so they gave him less drugs.... That night, Brian was with his girlfriend and squeezed her hand, which to me was a sign of him having brain activity.... He was with his mother and she told him that if he could hear her for him to give her a thumbs up sign. And Brian actually made the sign."

"They're giving him drugs they give people with Alzheimer's," says Torres. "His short-term memory is bad. He doesn't remember conversations we had the day before. He can't walk yet, but he pushes himself around in a wheelchair."

Will the band go on if Brian doesn't recover?

"We're not playing now and not planning to go on without him," says Torres.

A benefit show to help with McClure's medical bills will be held at Soma on July 14.