The Wijambu Story (Short Version)
Innocuous Beginnings
The Wijambu story begins with Art Meneses. In 1979 Art and I were both Theta Delts at UCLA. Every spring, the Greeks put on a charity carnival called Mardi Gras to benefit UniCamp, and ΘΔΧ sponsored a vaudeville show booth named Minsky’s. Art came to me and proposed the two of us do a Blues Brothers routine for the show. Thus, the seed was germinated.
Toward the end of high school, I had seen the Ramones in San Francisco. Inspired, I purchased a cheap electric with veg-o-matic switches for each pickup. Using Radio Shack adaptors, I rigged up a way to play it through one of the inputs on my stereo. This contraption came with me to college. As I fumbled around out of tune, I gained instruction from other players, primarily Mike Meadows and Bill Chambers. Slowly, painfully, I gained proficiency, and Art listened to this progress from afar.
I also received musical instruction indirectly. Coming from a small town, my musical exposure was understandably limited. Obviously, since this was prior to the information explosion, I was at the mercy of the radio. Even though this was before the narrowing of radio format, there was not the same variety of music available to hear in rural northern California as Los Angeles. I came equipped with some basics: Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, and the Who, but with a lot of awful baggage as well: Nugent, Boston, Foreigner, and Kiss. A whole new world of inspiration opened up to me as I discovered X, Oingo Boingo, Talking Heads, and The Clash, as well as Jimi Hendrix (beyond 16 Greatest Hits), David Bowie (beyond Ziggy Stardust), Johnny Winter, and Robert Fripp.
Eventually, I progressed enough to feel confident in spending some money on a real guitar. Meadows and I found a Gibson L5S in a Hollywood pawnshop for $350.
Dance Music/First Gig
Art assumed the Elwood role in our Blues Brothers project, and I was Joliet Jake. We picked “Hey, Bartender” as our song and practiced our respective parts. Art choreographed our dance routine. In spite of a single rehearsal with the live band, Sam Follis gave us the okay to perform. We absolutely killed. The show couldn’t continue until we did an encore. We didn’t have anything prepared, so Art told the band to play slow blues in A, and I sang the lyrics to “The Sky Is Crying.”
From this successful engagement, we were offered a slot at a carnival at San Bernardino High School where Art’s younger brother Geoff was a senior. Our fee was one case of beer. We learned some valuable lessons from that show. We assumed we would be performing in the theater. It was outdoors and on a blacktop. The case of beer turned out to be Pabst. And it was warm. (Always check the fine print, even if there isn’t any print!)
Bigger and Better
Art Meneses is the most naturally musical person I’ve ever met. Hanging out with him opened up a second flood of unheard music – most notably the world of Frank Zappa. Although we would continue to perform at Minsky’s and those performances would become increasingly elaborate, Minsky’s was a once-a-year endeavor, and that wasn’t enough for us. We began creating our own music.
I bought a Sunn Alpha 112R solid state amp from West LA Music and a DeArmond Weeper (a cheap wah-wah). I also traded in my Gibson L5S for an SG. I lusted for an SG. It seemed everyone I admired played one at some point in their career, and that point was usually what I considered their high water mark – Clapton in Cream, Townshend on Live at Leeds, Santana, James Gurley and Sam Andrews in Big Brother, and of course Zappa. I forked over $100 and the L5S to West LA and got a brown ’71 SG Deluxe with a Bigsby. (I still love that SG, but God I wish I’d hung on to that L5S!) Soon I added a Small Stone phase-shifter to my sound.
Together, Art and I wrote our first two songs: “Video Blues” and “Piece of Cat.” (Neither of us can remember which came first.) I could play a fifth and do the Chuck Berry rock’n’roll riff, and that was “Video.” The music for “Cat” came from my attempt to play “Problem Child” by AC/DC. When Geoff arrived at UCLA, he borrowed their older brother Armand’s Strat and Yamaha G-100, and noodled around on them. Since it was strung left-handed, Geoffrey played it upside down and thumped out a Bo Diddley beat. “(Last Time I Saw You, You Were) Barkin’ at the Ants” was born. Soon, “(I Don’t Wanna Be) Another Creature” followed, and we were on our way to a set list.
My guitar skills were still rudimentary at best, so there was no way I could handle playing and lead vocal duties. Art stepped up to fill that role. His taste in vocal stylings leaned toward the quirky side of the spectrum – David Byrne, Danny Elfman – and that fit our music quite well. Geoff assumed the bass, although Art played bass when Geoff played sax. Armand wanted his Stratocaster back, so we were forced to find a substitute. We ended up with a no-name ¾ sized guitar, strung with four heavy strings, and played through a Fender Champ. (The guitar was eventually known as “Mona” due to its noisy protestations at being used as a bass-substitute.)
About this time we started hearing drums coming out of another room at the House. It was Matt Tucker, and he’d been listening to this wild cacophony coming from our room. Matt was playing with musicians who were rooted in a more specific and traditional style of playing. We were all over the musical map, but we had something they lacked: intention. We “meant” every note. He also heard a freedom and joy in our music that was missing from his formalized friends. Soon, he was jamming along with us from down the hall. Eventually, tentative overtures were made. Although he continued to play with other bands for a short while, we had found our drummer.
What Kind of Name Is Wijambu?
One characteristic all bands share is they all have names, so a name seemed like a must. We felt strongly that the band’s name should reflect our sound, but we could not agree how to describe that sound. How would you describe the following?
We all had ideas, but they all sucked. I considered us a punk band, so I gravitated toward names like “Bad Acid” and “Fuck You.” Art liked “Central Nervous System” (CNS). We literally put names into a hat, and as we sat at the bar in the Clubhouse, we were in the process of pulling them out. Since they didn’t sound any better coming out of a hat, our minds were wandering. Someone noticed a town in Korea called “Wijambu” mentioned on the TV playing behind the bar. (A rerun of MASH was on.) With no consideration whatsoever toward marketing, we thought its vague and foreign nature fit us perfectly, although it would take a few years to standardize the spelling.
Do It Yourself Chutzpah
At the ΘΔΧ weekly meeting, I made a motion that we have a party and that Wijambu play. Geoff seconded it. We explained that all it would cost would be around $100 to rent a PA and beer. The motion carried.
It was an unusual affair. From this perspective, I’m amazed by our chutzpah. We had absolutely no self-consciousness about playing our goofy music in front of people at excruciating volume. (You could rent quite a PA system for $100 back then.) (We used Armand’s Yamaha for Mona and the Champ as a monitor for Matt of my guitar using the line out from my amp into the Champ’s input. It did not catch on fire.) We didn’t even know enough songs all the way through to cover the multiple sets needed to play a party. We solved that issue in a couple of creative ways. First, we played some of our originals more than once. We just played them at different tempos and acted like they were different songs. We also combined songs we didn’t know all the way through into medleys. We actually played an instrumental medley of “Sweet Jane,” “Louie, Louie,” and “Wild Thing.”
With the set list settled, we focused on showmanship. Art’s and Geoff’s cousin Michael did theatrical make-up. Art had him give him a skinhead with an enormous horn erupting from his forehead. (It looked like an interesting dildo.) Geoffrey played it a little more low-key with two small horns on each side of his head. (Think Angus Young on the cover of Highway to Hell.) Curiously, Matt and I declined the make-up and just made a costume change between sets. For stage lights we hung a couple of strings of Christmas lights.
It was a hell of a show. Everyone stood far away on the opposite side of the room, but they watched and seemed to enjoy it. (Perhaps “enjoy” isn’t the correct verb. They did stick around for both sets. Free beer helped.) We couldn’t understand why people weren’t dancing.
The More, the Merrier
In the crowd that night was the eldest Meneses brother, Armand. For reasons that remain unclear, he decided this was something he needed to be part of and began sitting in on guitar with Wijambu. Musically, Armand came from a blues/Grateful Dead perspective, so he fit right in.
He actually did. An experienced musician, Armand (like the rest of us) was a good listener. Each of us took our simple songs and found a unique niche to exploit. Before Armand, Wijambu sounded something like a jet taking off. With Armand, we sounded more like the deck of an aircraft carrier. (By this time we’d given up trying to define our “sound.” When people asked what kind of music we played, our standard response was “Loud.” Matt described Armand’s and my roles as “lead regular guitar” and “lead noise guitar” respectively.)
We played a second party at the House – evidence that we couldn’t have been that bad the first time. No make-up this time, but we did use props.
Missed It by That Much
ΘΔΧ was awarded an All-U (an officially sanctioned, open university party). An All-U was quite lucrative; it meant literally a couple of thousand people paying a couple of bucks each for beer and music. A number of bands were signed to perform, including the Plimsouls as headliners. Wijambu convinced the House that we should get to perform as well.
We were assigned the slot after the Plimsouls. This was mop-up time. We would mostly be playing for people either too drunk to walk or on their way out the door after the headliners. We didn’t care; we were just excited to play.
The bands set up on the roof of the Wing (a single story of rooms next to the pool). As the Plimsouls’ roadies were making their final check of their gear, we hauled our equipment up to the staging area. For reasons never made clear to us, the Plimsouls’ manager went to the House president and told him the band refused to play if we were allowed to play after them. (This was bizarre – in clubs it was standard to have a mop-up band to take the stragglers to closing after the headliners finished.) Facing a probable riot, we were told we wouldn’t be allowed to play.
I’m still pissed about this, thirty years on. I actually liked the Plimsouls, or at least “Zero Hour” and “A Million Miles Away.” I swore that night that if I ever came face to face with Peter Case I’d take him out, one way or another. (I still will.) What did they care? It meant nothing to them, but it could have been a hell of a resume builder for us. Fuckers.
Salad Days?
The end of college meant two things. First, it meant the loss of our rehearsal space. This problem was rectified by Hully Gully in Silver Lake. We spent so much time at that rehearsal studio that we should have been made part owners. (Hully Gully literally closed its doors when we stopped using it in 1993.) Sometimes if Bill had had a particularly rough night, he would just give us the keys, and we’d open the place ourselves. Being regulars had all sorts of benefits besides trust: we got plenty of extra time if a room wasn’t booked after us, we got first choice of rooms, and we got to use any rental equipment left in a room (bass amps, speaker cabs, etc.) for free.
End of college also meant Thom Johnson came back to southern California from school in San Jose. Thom, Geoff’s high school bud, sat in with us during vacations, but it only made sense to add full-time keyboards now that he was home for good. (I won’t even try for a metaphor for the change to the band’s sound.)
During this time, we played some club gigs in West LA. Highlights of these include:
Eventually, adulthood began adding pressures. Art moved to the Inland Empire and had more difficulty reconciling band time and attorney time. Geoffrey bought a house in Moreno Valley. Matt moved to Palmdale. Distance and work even caused Matt to miss some party gigs. (Jim Kelly, multi-instrumentalist, filled his shoes admirably, but it wasn’t the same.)
Not with a Bang . . .
It seemed Armand and I alone still wanted to give things a full-on go. (“Want” isn’t the best word. It wasn’t a matter of desire so much as a matter of circumstance.) (Let me pause for a moment to acknowledge that at various times I experienced a unique relationship with each Meneses brother. I don’t know if they conspired to take turns or it just worked out that way, but each in turn was close as a brother to me.) Respecting Wijambu, we decided to form a new project. Armand named it “Dutch Uncle,” and we both wrote a set of new songs for it. After rehearsing the songs together, we looked to add a rhythm section.
We took out an ad in the LA Weekly and fielded some calls. Most respondents felt we were too old (both of us past thirty). Still, we rented studio space and organized auditions for drummers. Only one guy showed up, and he wasn’t close to adequate. We just kind of gave up after that.
Within a couple of years, we all had kids, and I moved to northern Nevada.
Do Not Go Gentle . . .
Moving seemed to sound the death knell for Wijambu. Isolated, I made some recordings on four-track tape using a borrowed drum machine and cheesy rhythm patches from cheap Casio keyboards. I made some efforts to get into new bands, but all of them spontaneously aborted. It just wasn’t music as I knew it. It wasn’t creation; it wasn’t collaborative. It was all cover songs, and I was expected to try to play the original versions note-for-note. I was ordered to use a certain type of guitar pick and told to only use one guitar effect at a time. It was suggested I play bass when the other guitar player felt threatened. It sucked donkey dicks.
Once a year (or twice if lucky) Wijambu would make the time to get together. It was such a rarity that we’d only concentrate on the old material and not expand our palate. On one of these occasions, I explained the sobering math. “Odds are,” I said, “that one of us will be dead or incapacitated sometime over the next fifteen years. Even if we manage to commit to twice a year, that means we’ll only play together thirty more times, ever.”
Faced with this stark equation, Wijambu has found a way to play twice a year since. (We are working on making it thrice.) Matt has set up microphones and pushed record to document these moments. (Nonetheless, his recordings have become increasingly sophisticated as he’s become more digital.) It has been regular enough that we’ve recently decided to put some of the older material into retirement and focus only on the new. (In 2010 we hope to do final, definitive recordings.) We even came close to booking a few of gigs in spite of no rehearsal. (The first place literally burned down. Then someone really wanted us to play a wedding rehearsal dinner, but we explained we’d blow the windows out of the restaurant. Finally, a party gig was cancelled at the last minute.)
We may never play for anyone but ourselves again. It doesn’t matter; we had a good arc: garage to parties to clubs to parties to garage. It doesn’t matter because we always really cared most about playing music we enjoyed hearing; fuck everybody else. (Isn’t that rock and roll?) One thing we agree upon: Wijambu is something unique and magical in our lives, and we refuse to let it fade into oblivion.
Innocuous Beginnings
The Wijambu story begins with Art Meneses. In 1979 Art and I were both Theta Delts at UCLA. Every spring, the Greeks put on a charity carnival called Mardi Gras to benefit UniCamp, and ΘΔΧ sponsored a vaudeville show booth named Minsky’s. Art came to me and proposed the two of us do a Blues Brothers routine for the show. Thus, the seed was germinated.
Toward the end of high school, I had seen the Ramones in San Francisco. Inspired, I purchased a cheap electric with veg-o-matic switches for each pickup. Using Radio Shack adaptors, I rigged up a way to play it through one of the inputs on my stereo. This contraption came with me to college. As I fumbled around out of tune, I gained instruction from other players, primarily Mike Meadows and Bill Chambers. Slowly, painfully, I gained proficiency, and Art listened to this progress from afar.
I also received musical instruction indirectly. Coming from a small town, my musical exposure was understandably limited. Obviously, since this was prior to the information explosion, I was at the mercy of the radio. Even though this was before the narrowing of radio format, there was not the same variety of music available to hear in rural northern California as Los Angeles. I came equipped with some basics: Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, and the Who, but with a lot of awful baggage as well: Nugent, Boston, Foreigner, and Kiss. A whole new world of inspiration opened up to me as I discovered X, Oingo Boingo, Talking Heads, and The Clash, as well as Jimi Hendrix (beyond 16 Greatest Hits), David Bowie (beyond Ziggy Stardust), Johnny Winter, and Robert Fripp.
Eventually, I progressed enough to feel confident in spending some money on a real guitar. Meadows and I found a Gibson L5S in a Hollywood pawnshop for $350.
Dance Music/First Gig
Art assumed the Elwood role in our Blues Brothers project, and I was Joliet Jake. We picked “Hey, Bartender” as our song and practiced our respective parts. Art choreographed our dance routine. In spite of a single rehearsal with the live band, Sam Follis gave us the okay to perform. We absolutely killed. The show couldn’t continue until we did an encore. We didn’t have anything prepared, so Art told the band to play slow blues in A, and I sang the lyrics to “The Sky Is Crying.”
From this successful engagement, we were offered a slot at a carnival at San Bernardino High School where Art’s younger brother Geoff was a senior. Our fee was one case of beer. We learned some valuable lessons from that show. We assumed we would be performing in the theater. It was outdoors and on a blacktop. The case of beer turned out to be Pabst. And it was warm. (Always check the fine print, even if there isn’t any print!)
Bigger and Better
Art Meneses is the most naturally musical person I’ve ever met. Hanging out with him opened up a second flood of unheard music – most notably the world of Frank Zappa. Although we would continue to perform at Minsky’s and those performances would become increasingly elaborate, Minsky’s was a once-a-year endeavor, and that wasn’t enough for us. We began creating our own music.
I bought a Sunn Alpha 112R solid state amp from West LA Music and a DeArmond Weeper (a cheap wah-wah). I also traded in my Gibson L5S for an SG. I lusted for an SG. It seemed everyone I admired played one at some point in their career, and that point was usually what I considered their high water mark – Clapton in Cream, Townshend on Live at Leeds, Santana, James Gurley and Sam Andrews in Big Brother, and of course Zappa. I forked over $100 and the L5S to West LA and got a brown ’71 SG Deluxe with a Bigsby. (I still love that SG, but God I wish I’d hung on to that L5S!) Soon I added a Small Stone phase-shifter to my sound.
Together, Art and I wrote our first two songs: “Video Blues” and “Piece of Cat.” (Neither of us can remember which came first.) I could play a fifth and do the Chuck Berry rock’n’roll riff, and that was “Video.” The music for “Cat” came from my attempt to play “Problem Child” by AC/DC. When Geoff arrived at UCLA, he borrowed their older brother Armand’s Strat and Yamaha G-100, and noodled around on them. Since it was strung left-handed, Geoffrey played it upside down and thumped out a Bo Diddley beat. “(Last Time I Saw You, You Were) Barkin’ at the Ants” was born. Soon, “(I Don’t Wanna Be) Another Creature” followed, and we were on our way to a set list.
My guitar skills were still rudimentary at best, so there was no way I could handle playing and lead vocal duties. Art stepped up to fill that role. His taste in vocal stylings leaned toward the quirky side of the spectrum – David Byrne, Danny Elfman – and that fit our music quite well. Geoff assumed the bass, although Art played bass when Geoff played sax. Armand wanted his Stratocaster back, so we were forced to find a substitute. We ended up with a no-name ¾ sized guitar, strung with four heavy strings, and played through a Fender Champ. (The guitar was eventually known as “Mona” due to its noisy protestations at being used as a bass-substitute.)
About this time we started hearing drums coming out of another room at the House. It was Matt Tucker, and he’d been listening to this wild cacophony coming from our room. Matt was playing with musicians who were rooted in a more specific and traditional style of playing. We were all over the musical map, but we had something they lacked: intention. We “meant” every note. He also heard a freedom and joy in our music that was missing from his formalized friends. Soon, he was jamming along with us from down the hall. Eventually, tentative overtures were made. Although he continued to play with other bands for a short while, we had found our drummer.
What Kind of Name Is Wijambu?
One characteristic all bands share is they all have names, so a name seemed like a must. We felt strongly that the band’s name should reflect our sound, but we could not agree how to describe that sound. How would you describe the following?
- Guitar player and primary songwriter – no formal musical training and absolutely no understanding of music theory (in fact, developed his own music theory based upon the equality of all notes); plays only first position open chords and power chords at ear-splitting volume and considers swirling feedback to be a good guitar solo
- Bass player – actually a jazz saxophonist, but playing a miniature guitar through a practice amp cranked to maximum so often it occasionally catches on fire
- Singer – fond of grunts and yelps and believes a harmonica fits into every kind of song
- Drummer – believes he is playing lead melody on the drums (like Keith Moon).
We all had ideas, but they all sucked. I considered us a punk band, so I gravitated toward names like “Bad Acid” and “Fuck You.” Art liked “Central Nervous System” (CNS). We literally put names into a hat, and as we sat at the bar in the Clubhouse, we were in the process of pulling them out. Since they didn’t sound any better coming out of a hat, our minds were wandering. Someone noticed a town in Korea called “Wijambu” mentioned on the TV playing behind the bar. (A rerun of MASH was on.) With no consideration whatsoever toward marketing, we thought its vague and foreign nature fit us perfectly, although it would take a few years to standardize the spelling.
Do It Yourself Chutzpah
At the ΘΔΧ weekly meeting, I made a motion that we have a party and that Wijambu play. Geoff seconded it. We explained that all it would cost would be around $100 to rent a PA and beer. The motion carried.
It was an unusual affair. From this perspective, I’m amazed by our chutzpah. We had absolutely no self-consciousness about playing our goofy music in front of people at excruciating volume. (You could rent quite a PA system for $100 back then.) (We used Armand’s Yamaha for Mona and the Champ as a monitor for Matt of my guitar using the line out from my amp into the Champ’s input. It did not catch on fire.) We didn’t even know enough songs all the way through to cover the multiple sets needed to play a party. We solved that issue in a couple of creative ways. First, we played some of our originals more than once. We just played them at different tempos and acted like they were different songs. We also combined songs we didn’t know all the way through into medleys. We actually played an instrumental medley of “Sweet Jane,” “Louie, Louie,” and “Wild Thing.”
With the set list settled, we focused on showmanship. Art’s and Geoff’s cousin Michael did theatrical make-up. Art had him give him a skinhead with an enormous horn erupting from his forehead. (It looked like an interesting dildo.) Geoffrey played it a little more low-key with two small horns on each side of his head. (Think Angus Young on the cover of Highway to Hell.) Curiously, Matt and I declined the make-up and just made a costume change between sets. For stage lights we hung a couple of strings of Christmas lights.
It was a hell of a show. Everyone stood far away on the opposite side of the room, but they watched and seemed to enjoy it. (Perhaps “enjoy” isn’t the correct verb. They did stick around for both sets. Free beer helped.) We couldn’t understand why people weren’t dancing.
The More, the Merrier
In the crowd that night was the eldest Meneses brother, Armand. For reasons that remain unclear, he decided this was something he needed to be part of and began sitting in on guitar with Wijambu. Musically, Armand came from a blues/Grateful Dead perspective, so he fit right in.
He actually did. An experienced musician, Armand (like the rest of us) was a good listener. Each of us took our simple songs and found a unique niche to exploit. Before Armand, Wijambu sounded something like a jet taking off. With Armand, we sounded more like the deck of an aircraft carrier. (By this time we’d given up trying to define our “sound.” When people asked what kind of music we played, our standard response was “Loud.” Matt described Armand’s and my roles as “lead regular guitar” and “lead noise guitar” respectively.)
We played a second party at the House – evidence that we couldn’t have been that bad the first time. No make-up this time, but we did use props.
Missed It by That Much
ΘΔΧ was awarded an All-U (an officially sanctioned, open university party). An All-U was quite lucrative; it meant literally a couple of thousand people paying a couple of bucks each for beer and music. A number of bands were signed to perform, including the Plimsouls as headliners. Wijambu convinced the House that we should get to perform as well.
We were assigned the slot after the Plimsouls. This was mop-up time. We would mostly be playing for people either too drunk to walk or on their way out the door after the headliners. We didn’t care; we were just excited to play.
The bands set up on the roof of the Wing (a single story of rooms next to the pool). As the Plimsouls’ roadies were making their final check of their gear, we hauled our equipment up to the staging area. For reasons never made clear to us, the Plimsouls’ manager went to the House president and told him the band refused to play if we were allowed to play after them. (This was bizarre – in clubs it was standard to have a mop-up band to take the stragglers to closing after the headliners finished.) Facing a probable riot, we were told we wouldn’t be allowed to play.
I’m still pissed about this, thirty years on. I actually liked the Plimsouls, or at least “Zero Hour” and “A Million Miles Away.” I swore that night that if I ever came face to face with Peter Case I’d take him out, one way or another. (I still will.) What did they care? It meant nothing to them, but it could have been a hell of a resume builder for us. Fuckers.
Salad Days?
The end of college meant two things. First, it meant the loss of our rehearsal space. This problem was rectified by Hully Gully in Silver Lake. We spent so much time at that rehearsal studio that we should have been made part owners. (Hully Gully literally closed its doors when we stopped using it in 1993.) Sometimes if Bill had had a particularly rough night, he would just give us the keys, and we’d open the place ourselves. Being regulars had all sorts of benefits besides trust: we got plenty of extra time if a room wasn’t booked after us, we got first choice of rooms, and we got to use any rental equipment left in a room (bass amps, speaker cabs, etc.) for free.
End of college also meant Thom Johnson came back to southern California from school in San Jose. Thom, Geoff’s high school bud, sat in with us during vacations, but it only made sense to add full-time keyboards now that he was home for good. (I won’t even try for a metaphor for the change to the band’s sound.)
During this time, we played some club gigs in West LA. Highlights of these include:
- The other band on the bill telling us “Wijambu – we thought you were a funk band!”
- Being called back onstage for an encore (“Creature”), and having another band run backstage with us cheering afterward.
- Having enough of a crowd turn out that we were actually paid part of the door (almost $2 each!).
- Having the P.A. cut by the house for playing a cover song.
Eventually, adulthood began adding pressures. Art moved to the Inland Empire and had more difficulty reconciling band time and attorney time. Geoffrey bought a house in Moreno Valley. Matt moved to Palmdale. Distance and work even caused Matt to miss some party gigs. (Jim Kelly, multi-instrumentalist, filled his shoes admirably, but it wasn’t the same.)
Not with a Bang . . .
It seemed Armand and I alone still wanted to give things a full-on go. (“Want” isn’t the best word. It wasn’t a matter of desire so much as a matter of circumstance.) (Let me pause for a moment to acknowledge that at various times I experienced a unique relationship with each Meneses brother. I don’t know if they conspired to take turns or it just worked out that way, but each in turn was close as a brother to me.) Respecting Wijambu, we decided to form a new project. Armand named it “Dutch Uncle,” and we both wrote a set of new songs for it. After rehearsing the songs together, we looked to add a rhythm section.
We took out an ad in the LA Weekly and fielded some calls. Most respondents felt we were too old (both of us past thirty). Still, we rented studio space and organized auditions for drummers. Only one guy showed up, and he wasn’t close to adequate. We just kind of gave up after that.
Within a couple of years, we all had kids, and I moved to northern Nevada.
Do Not Go Gentle . . .
Moving seemed to sound the death knell for Wijambu. Isolated, I made some recordings on four-track tape using a borrowed drum machine and cheesy rhythm patches from cheap Casio keyboards. I made some efforts to get into new bands, but all of them spontaneously aborted. It just wasn’t music as I knew it. It wasn’t creation; it wasn’t collaborative. It was all cover songs, and I was expected to try to play the original versions note-for-note. I was ordered to use a certain type of guitar pick and told to only use one guitar effect at a time. It was suggested I play bass when the other guitar player felt threatened. It sucked donkey dicks.
Once a year (or twice if lucky) Wijambu would make the time to get together. It was such a rarity that we’d only concentrate on the old material and not expand our palate. On one of these occasions, I explained the sobering math. “Odds are,” I said, “that one of us will be dead or incapacitated sometime over the next fifteen years. Even if we manage to commit to twice a year, that means we’ll only play together thirty more times, ever.”
Faced with this stark equation, Wijambu has found a way to play twice a year since. (We are working on making it thrice.) Matt has set up microphones and pushed record to document these moments. (Nonetheless, his recordings have become increasingly sophisticated as he’s become more digital.) It has been regular enough that we’ve recently decided to put some of the older material into retirement and focus only on the new. (In 2010 we hope to do final, definitive recordings.) We even came close to booking a few of gigs in spite of no rehearsal. (The first place literally burned down. Then someone really wanted us to play a wedding rehearsal dinner, but we explained we’d blow the windows out of the restaurant. Finally, a party gig was cancelled at the last minute.)
We may never play for anyone but ourselves again. It doesn’t matter; we had a good arc: garage to parties to clubs to parties to garage. It doesn’t matter because we always really cared most about playing music we enjoyed hearing; fuck everybody else. (Isn’t that rock and roll?) One thing we agree upon: Wijambu is something unique and magical in our lives, and we refuse to let it fade into oblivion.