Picciotto, Canty, and Fellows had previously played together in the short-lived hardcore band Insurrection. The trio was joined by guitarist Eddie Janney—formerly of
the Faith,
Skewbald, and the Untouchables—and began writing music together in December 1983. The band finished several songs during this early period, like "All There Is", "End on End", and "By Design". The group made a
demo recording at
Inner Ear Studios in April 1984, but Fellows moved to California. "We thought he was leaving forever", Picciotto recalled. "And then we just kept practicing without him, hoping he'd come back. Lo and behold, three months later, he returned." Though rooted in the loud-and-fast style of
hardcore punk, Rites of Spring is to be among the first bands who played music in the emotional hardcore genre, or what is now commonly and retrospectively called
emo-core, a precursor of
screamo.
Jenny Toomey notes that, "Rites of Spring existed well before the term did and they hated it." The band is named after the symphonic ballet
The Rite of Spring by
Igor Stravinsky. "We were reading about Stravinsky and
the first [performance] where everybody beat each other on the head", Picciotto explained. "Whenever you fuck with someone musically and they take their music really serious, they're gonna fuck with you back." The Rites of Spring personnel reunited for a quasi-reincarnation called
Happy Go Licky, releasing an LP/CD of various live concert recordings though never producing any studio work. The music was much more experimental than Rites of Spring, heavily improvised and featuring tape loop effects. == Musical style and legacy ==