The history of the name

It was either 1989, 1990, or the spring of 1991. I was in college at the University of California at Davis and I worked in the ASUCD Coffeehouse to pay the bills. I was like a prep/do all the cleaning kind of worker, and I was fond of my job because it allowed me to work whenever and I had about 400 co-workers, half of them very cute. But it was also a cliquey, who’s-the-coolest kind of place – and I was, by my own admission, barely cool. I had an abrasive, too smart for my own good kind of personality and the style and looks did not really fit with anyone. I wasn’t hip enough to be indie, nor was I punk enough to be underground, nor was I happy enough to be a hippie, nor was I athletic enough to be a jock, nor was I studious enough to be a brainiac, nor was I debonair enough to be a player, nor was I damaged enough to be an obvious artistic genius, nor was I rich, handsome, or friendly. In sum, I was a strange fish indeed. I had 9 piercings on my face. I played lacrosse. I excelled in the classes that I wanted to excel in. I wrote poems, stories, drank a lot, liked marijuana and LSD, and fell madly in love with every woman I could make eye contact with. I was forging an identity from as many different areas as I could. But I really admired the coolest of the cool – either the musicians who were into the “underground” indie/college radio scene, or their even hipper, art is life painter types. These wonderfully self-involved people could give a fuck what anybody thought of how they dressed or what they listened to or whom they were friends with. They just were.
Anyway, I don’t remember his name or when he gave it to me, but one of these artist types handed me a T-shirt one day: it was just a plain hanes with a silk screened/stenciled red circle near the belly button part of the shirt. It was one of 10, or 20. I don’t remember. It was an art piece. It was a final exam. It was an exercise in I don’t know what it is, but I’ll wear it. And I don’t remember which girlfriend (or if it was my wife whom I met in 1991) that started calling the red dot my “warm spot.” I know that Jayne did like to rub it when she said it to me. So that’s the story of the shirt. I don’t even know if I still have it somewhere. Maybe we gave it to goodwill. I do know that I wore until it start to have holes in it and that it had lost a lot of its whiteness. But the warm spot never faded.

The history of music and me

When I was young (from 5 to 10), my mother and I always played records. The Kingston Trio, The Star Wars Soundtrack, Grease, Saturday Night Fever, and some crazy half country/ half singer-song writer types like John Denver were always playing. I knew all the albums by heart. And my mom would always say that my dad had all the real good records like the Beatles and the Stones. So when I would see him and be with him, we were always listening to music too. But we listened to the radio because he lived 4 to 8 hours away. Somehow I knew all the words to every song that would play and it was almost like I knew which song was going to come on next. To this day I can still do this. But I never did find those good records my mom talked about later when I was a teenager. By the time I was aware of my father’s record collection it was full of the 70’s and 80’s easy listening stuff that my step mother had – though I ended loving Simon and Garfunkel and the Eagles records she had. Music was a constant.
When I was ten, I went to live with my father in San Francisco. I listened to the radio everyday – KFRC and I tried to play the flute in 5th grade. Why the flute? Because they didn’t offer piccolo – and I wanted to play that because it was small. At this time in my life, I was considered hyper-active, a problem child with learning disabilities, and I couldn’t read or write. But I had an active imagination. I never really liked the flute because I couldn’t read the sheet music fast enough and it made my lips feel funny. So at the concert at the end of the year, I pretended to play and was glad I didn’t embarrass anyone. (This is 1980)
That’s the last time I had a “professional” music influence, outside of the church choir I sang in as a senior in high school and the musicals I participated as a thespian. I was a baritone, though I longed to be a tenor and sing those nice off time harmony parts. As I became more and more comfortable singing with 30 other men 3 days a week for several months in 1997 and 98, I secretly sang whatever part I want – and I made it sound good. In fact, I made everyone else’s parts sound better.
But I was always a radio junkie. Every week I had the billboard top 100 taped to my wall. I listened to Casey Casem every Sunday for years. I remember thinking that the week that Jesse’s Girl and 8675309 were hits was the best that music would ever be. I remember saying out loud “It cant get better than this” – because I loved every song on the list. I started by tapes. Queen’s “The game” might have been one of the first. I bought or received the KTEL records as gifts. I loved Manhatten Transfer and Kim Carnes “Bette Davis Eyes.” I bought 33s at my moms – the Go-Go’s “Vacation” single and Joan Jett and the Blackhearts’ “I love RNROLL.” Again, I have no idea where these great things went. As I got older I wore out Thriller and Lionel Richie and Heart and Dire Straits and Devo and Chris Deburg. I was a pop junkie most of teenage years.
Some records at the end of my high school years really changed me. Tears for Fears’ “Songs from the Big Chair” was my favorite tape for almost a whole year. I wore it out. Madonna for some reason (maybe it was the bra) I couldn’t get enough of. I got the Bruce Springsteen boxset for Christmas and really liked it even more then “Born in the USA.” And then, as if I had been waiting for them my whole life, I turned on the radio one night to go to sleep (something I did for almost 20 years) – I put the headphones on and heard the best song I’ve ever heard – “With or Without You.” I had found the eureka of music. I thought that maybe just maybe I could music like that some day.
Then it was the summer of 1988 and I was waiting for college. Tracy Chapman, 10,000 Maniacs and XTC got me through. Some guy I worked with gave me a best of Led Zeppelin tape and it wasn’t that bad. I actually really liked it. At the end of August I heard Guns-N-Roses for the first time and hated it. 3 months later in the dorms, I would never stop playing that cd.
And it was in college in the fall of 88 and spring of 89 that my musical tastes expanded even more – I bought two cds that sealed my fate – Bob Mould’s “Workbook” and Jane’s Addiction’s “Nothing’s Shocking.” It took listening to each about ten times before I could understand a word of what was being sung. And the guitar! And the drums! And the bass lines . . . . wow. I was stunned. Music was never as dangerous and expansive and real or sexy as it was for me that spring. Within the year I would fall asleep to Prong, have sex to the Swans and take acid to Peter Gabriel’s “Passion.” And that was just the beginning.

The humble little beginnings of my love for the guitar

In the fall of 1988 I started college at UCD. I was a bit of a loner and never good at making friends. Luck did me a favor and introduced to this guy named Brian who lived with the pot head dealer/party dudes of the dorm. He was a shy, “classic rock”

Chronology

End of October, 1993 – the first incarnation of Bury the Bone begins in the “basement” of Frank Todd’s house. It was a short rectangular room – all cement with one wall being the staircase. Frank’s drum set took up half the room. I usually put my measly amp in the corner to get the help of any echo volume since Frank played so loud. Yohann set up his bass amp by Frank and I don’t how the fuck Casey heard himself sing with his piece of shit amp – maybe he didn’t need to. We got together 2 or 3 days a week for several hours and figured something out right away. We were loud, different, and had that “thing” – flow or symmetry or unspoken connection – call it what you want, but it was there EVERY time we played together. And we recorded everything with one or two shitty condenser mics – always looking for the optimum spot to pick up everyone perfectly.
January until June, 1994 – Bury the Bone continues like this as we went through various struggles of meaning and identity to discover who we were: jazz/metal/funk/noise jam band. We only played, recorded, listened, and did it again. Our songs were based on a poem I wrote (“Hang Over”), 2 borrowed drum beats from other bands we liked (“Helmet” and “Us Against Them”), a poppy, jangely thing (“Gone”), and a time-signature that Frank took from a Zappa song (“Fives”). Most of these warped and changed according to our moods and chemicals of the day. We played in front of people three times – 2 house parties and once outside in the cold and wind in front of 10 people.
The house parties were huge, drunken sets that blew people away. We literally shut up the other bands of the town after our first house gig. It was that loud, aggressive, impressive, and who-the-fuck-are-these-guys kind of thing.

1994 – Bury the Bone

more to come!