KooKooNauts inspire punk history in The Davenport Article - By N.L. Belardes
It recently came to my attention from this really cool kid, Bryan Gunter H. that I am not giving enough attention to some of the younger bands here in Bakersfield like his band, Bryan and the KooKooNauts and that Psychobilly band, The NightCrawlers. I don't totally agree with that. But I give such comments my respect because I am about to publish an article here written by some kid I don't know named Johnny Davenport. I'll refer to it here on out as 'The Davenport Article'. For all I know, Johnny Davenport might not exist. He might be Bryan himself. But I shall give the benefit of the doubt: Bryan claims Johnny is a friend from school, so I believe him.
Either way, ‘The Davenport Article’ is an engaging piece of punk rock history that includes nostalgia and a great inside look at a Bakersfield hardcore punk band. Sounds like Johnny used old Jeremy Cravens as one of his sources. Now, me and Jeremy go way back to the days before he played punk rock in Four More Feet. Heck, I wrote Bryan from the KooKooNauts that I once prayed for Jeremy's pet rat back in the 1980s. How's that for brotherly love?
Now I know punk history here in Bakersfield is more than what this next article claims. The Davenport Article is a partially history at best. To truly grasp punk history in Bakersfield you have to dig into the heads of bands like The Filthies or Primer Grey. You have to research and data mine at a much deeper level and talk to bands about what used to happen on the very streets themselves, like the old hero from high school days of the Filthies, a cool kid, a major influence gunned down mysteriously in the dark streets near Oleander. He was a kid on punk streets, in the Bakersfield shadows who could play punk and who influenced young punks with his ability to play great music and rebel with that age-old anarchy slogan painted on a denim coat... and you have to go back to the 1970s and 1980s. The article mentions them, but gives full credit to Bam Bams in 1990 as the nexus of punkdom.
There were punks, I saw them, befriended them around 1978/1979 when I was part of the first busload to help desegregate Emerson Junior High. The old James Green and Greg Seaton punks... I knew them hanging out on South Chester Avenue. And that was just one group of them... Makes me wonder, who the punk bands were in the 1970s and 1980s in Bakersfield? Did they exist? I believe they did. Whose garages were they playing in? Did they perform live in Bakersfield? Did they have to tour to get their music heard?
I believe the history of punk rock in Bakersfield can be broken down into these categories. So if you have information for any of them, please, send an email to nl@nlbelardes.com:
1970s:
1980s:
1990s:
2000s:
The venues:
The bands:
Important people:
Life on the streets:
Now read ‘The Davenport Article’. It heavily promotes the KooKooNauts. But so what? It’s already part of punk history…
KOO KOO FOR THE KOOKOONAUTS
By Johnny Davenport
Every once in a while you find a band that you connect with and really are taken by their style, songs, singing or musicianship. In my case I got lucky, it was a local punk/ska band, and to me they had all the above in abundant amounts and they played somewhere in town, or neighboring towns almost every weekend. I have been following the band for quite some time now. I took pleasure in researching them, and on several occasions interviewing them. Now I take pride in sharing my favorite band with you, and band that took its name from a space theme board game, "The KooKooNauts".
To understand who and what the KooKooNauts are, you have to understand Bakersfield punk and punk history. Using back issues of Blackboard Magazine I have come up with a fairly accurate background and lead-in to the Kookoonaut story.
Punk comes to Bakersfield a little late, but no worse for the wait. Bands existed through the `70s and `80s. Then, according to punk historian Jeremy Cravens, "In 1990 a club called Bam Bam's opened in Bakersfield. Bam Bam's promoted, and put on punk shows every weekend. In this Gulf War Era, Bakersfield punk thrived." Craven's Bakersfield Scene reports that "Bakersfield had it's own style of hardcore (punk)," and his list of the better bands of the early 90s were as follows: Big Jed, Primer Gray, Hossbrutten, Chaotic Evil, Midget Toss, Active Ingredients, and Six Feet Under. According to Billy S. The first wave of Bakersfield punk, from roughly the same time as the Ramones, Germs, Misfits, Dead Kennedys, etc., produced local bands like Teen Suicide, The Lizards, The Contaminators, The Gags and more. After that first wave ended, the bands became too numerous to mention. There was the original Primer Grey, with the infamous Bodie Chavis, Steve Crooks, Todd Short and Dave Butler, and the song that was on everyone's lips at the time, "Hey You! What You Lookin' At?" There were the Feelers, Big Jed, Fatal Vision, and lots more.
When I discovered hardcore punk in 2002, the punk scene in Bakersfield revolved, for the most part, around the underground cavern that is the basement theater of Jerry's Pizza on Chester in downtown Bakersfield. Jerry's is reminiscent of the 1963 Cavern Club in Britain where the Beatles began their career. The atmosphere is amazing: three black wooden staircases lead you into a punk underworld; this blackened, brick-walled underground cavern comes alive as darkness falls outside. The bright white stage lights break the underground darkness with silhouettes of majestic mohawks and liberty-spiked punks who cast thunder from the stage as the mosh pit raves like a fevered tribal war dance. From above creeps the smell of Jerry's famous pizza, breaking the historic musk below. Above the cavern is the actual pizzeria. In the bar-like register with its glass circular pizza warmer, a slice is a mere buck fifty. There are a couple of wooden booth tables for your dining pleasure, two roof-mounted televisions and a really frightening clown gumball machine. Occasionally the oxygen bar man is there, doing his flavored air thing.
Jerry came to Downtown Bakersfield in 1992 with old country traditions for pizza baked on a stone hearth. The best part, though, is the thunderous outpouring of sound from the bands below in the cavern. This is the ultimate in dining atmosphere for the punk and early rock music connoisseur. If you want to relive those early 1960s days at the Cavern Club, come to a punk show some night at Jerry's. The most active current (JUNE 2002) punk bands in Bakersfield included these: Active Ingredients, The Pin Ups, Crimson Stained Nails, Missing in Action (later renamed Urban Regression and then KooKooNauts), The Condemned, The Allied and Commotion.
Of the original 90s bands, only Active Ingredients still plays on a regular basis. They have a new drummer and several CDs out on a local label and are reportedly in the middle of recording a new full-length CD at Bakersfield's own Pig Studios. The Condemned played frequently at Jerry's Pizza and occasionally at the Porterville Veterans' Park Festivals; they write most of their own songs. Missing in Action often opens (plays warm-up) for many out-of-town bands at Jerry's, (They also play Studio 45 and the Porterville Veterans' park festivals). The Condemned and Missing in Action are the more hardcore bands of the Bakersfield punk community. They are high-powered and in your face. The mosh pits get smoke'n with these youngsters. After I got over being scared of them, I really enjoyed their driving melodies and aggressively charged, screaming lyrics.
The next period in Bakersfield punk was a bit darker, punk was pushed out of the music scene by a music called "new metal". Such music was, or of, the old fat guys that aren't that good, so they shave their heads, grow a goatee and tune their guitar to "Drop D". Guys that aren't real hot guitar slingers even sound good. Open turnings are strange that way. Take the early blues slide players; the were good on standard turnings. But when Robert Johnson came back from the cross roads with the open "Spanish" tuning he changed the world. Several punk-like bands made it OK during this period, and several sprung up. The notable ones being Active Ingredients, Crimson Stained Nails, Bury the Hatchet and of coarse, the KooKooNauts.
Many people were still koo koo for the KooKooNauts, a band that had now evolved into something new, different and amazingly good, sort of a Rancid meets Richie Vallins. The lead Guitar and vocalist had developed a master of both crafts that was both unique and tasteful. He still kept a bit of that rough punk edge from the early years, and they are still in high school with years to mature.
The KooKooNauts went through several transformation during this period. The original members met in drum line and included a bass player named Kurt. Kurt basically coached through the learning process to a mastery of the instrument by the guitar player and front man Bryan Gunter H. Kurt now slaps the four string like a pro.
Bryan is a self-taught musician. In elementary school he taught himself how to read music and within only a few weeks tried out and made the school band where his instructor (Jr. high / elementary) Mr. Bar was amazed at the speed of his mastery of woodwinds.
A few short weeks later he tried out and made the cut for the prestigious Kern County Honor Band and to top things off, made first chair over students much his senior in both age and experience. Later Bryan switched to the bass and ended up playing at the massive Centennial Gardens at a halftime show for the Blitz football team. It was no stretch for him to jump from the bass to the guitar and from there it was just a lot of hard work and playing shows by the dozen.
James H., Bryan's older brother by two years also came from drum line and moved over to the set and his speed and technique filled the bands rhythm section with thunder. The three boys had been in a band called Urban Regression that had also played often in the local Bakersfield venues.
That band broke up as the elder brother James went to drum with the local Psychobilly sensation "The Night Crawlers". Later, a Halloween festival at CSUB needed more bands so some of the Urban Regression formed the KooKooNauts to play the show. The band did so well that they stayed together. Several of the Night Crawlers filtered in and out of the KooKooNauts. The two bands often played shows together on the same bill. This was a mutual beneficial relationship, often yielding fairly large crowds at shows at local venues such as Jerry's, the Gate-Boiler Room , and Down Town Records and so on.
One of the shows went nuts when the large crowd was accosted by a mad man in a guerrilla suit with light flashing red lights as eye balls. The crowd went wild and a fight started on the floor between some street punks as the KooKooNauts played on. When the fight was broken up by a bouncer the apeman mounted the Night Crawler's stand-up bass and started humping it feverishly. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen in my life and I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself.
It was this time period when both bands recorded their first demo Cds with a school friend, John T. John was in a band called Amigo Diaz (sp?) with the old Drummer from the Condemned. Amigo Diaz also played on the same billing with the KooKooNauts and Night Crawlers from time to time. The KooKooNauts sold over 300 of the demo CDs for a buck each with the first two weeks of its creation.
Later they began giving the two song CD demo away free and as many as a thousand have been burned and distributed locally. The songs were "Inevitable", a song warning of ‘judgment day’ on those whom destroy nature. “Inevitable” was a local hit for a time around the high school and at shows where dozens of folks would often come up and sing along. At one point even the Night Crawlers covered the tune. My favorite part is the lead-in: "humans are the parasite, earth is our host, wide spread panic from coast to coast." Amazing Chuck Berry-type guitar riffs rounds out this great tune.
Another song of that demo is "Take Me to Serious,” a passionate punk love song that was quite the favorite among high school kids struck with the love bug.
One day there was a falling out and the bands no longer functioned together and the three bands went their separate ways. It was never clear to me what had separated the bands but it was a bit tragic. At this time the KooKooNauts added a keyboard player named John and they played shows with him for a while and the sound was very interesting. They drew a lot of positive attention to the band. One day however John's mother made him quit the Kookoonuats. It was speculated he quit because of bad grades but who knows. This happened with an earlier drummer as well.
After the keyboard player departed the band signed up at Bakersfield Sound Studios for another demo cd and I have not heard the status on this project just yet. Last night at the Corner Stone Church, the stained glass was rattling. Hardcore Bands from near and far were laying down the laws with the thunder of Gibson and Fender guitars, and earth-shaking drum flurries and rumbling bass lines. Man this stuff was awesome! Crimson Stained Nails, Active Ingredients, The KooKooNauts and several other bands were rockin' the hollowed ground. The KooKooNauts played a new set, dropping the usual burning rendition of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" for the Misfits "Last Caress" and dropping "Inevitable" for a new Celtic sounding number about medieval knights.
The other parts of the set were unchanged and they played one of my favorites "The March" and you will have to pick up their new CD to hear that for yourselves. As the night wore on it was brought up by the KooKooNauts that some one or some group has been pulling down their posters and shredding them on their front lawn and throwing raw eggs all over their car and house. If you think this sucks you are correct, but what was worse is that Active Ingredients was sited and fined $147.00 for posting their flyers. They speculated that Jerry's or Nate may have reported them and filed a complaint.
They we called hypocrite for doing so as they post more posters than any one and post them with permanent postal tape. The KooKooNauts speculated that it may have been some of their old friends from the bands they used to play shows with but don't know for sure. I look forward to attending many KooKooNauts shows in the future and hey, hope to see you there!
Either way, ‘The Davenport Article’ is an engaging piece of punk rock history that includes nostalgia and a great inside look at a Bakersfield hardcore punk band. Sounds like Johnny used old Jeremy Cravens as one of his sources. Now, me and Jeremy go way back to the days before he played punk rock in Four More Feet. Heck, I wrote Bryan from the KooKooNauts that I once prayed for Jeremy's pet rat back in the 1980s. How's that for brotherly love?
Now I know punk history here in Bakersfield is more than what this next article claims. The Davenport Article is a partially history at best. To truly grasp punk history in Bakersfield you have to dig into the heads of bands like The Filthies or Primer Grey. You have to research and data mine at a much deeper level and talk to bands about what used to happen on the very streets themselves, like the old hero from high school days of the Filthies, a cool kid, a major influence gunned down mysteriously in the dark streets near Oleander. He was a kid on punk streets, in the Bakersfield shadows who could play punk and who influenced young punks with his ability to play great music and rebel with that age-old anarchy slogan painted on a denim coat... and you have to go back to the 1970s and 1980s. The article mentions them, but gives full credit to Bam Bams in 1990 as the nexus of punkdom.
There were punks, I saw them, befriended them around 1978/1979 when I was part of the first busload to help desegregate Emerson Junior High. The old James Green and Greg Seaton punks... I knew them hanging out on South Chester Avenue. And that was just one group of them... Makes me wonder, who the punk bands were in the 1970s and 1980s in Bakersfield? Did they exist? I believe they did. Whose garages were they playing in? Did they perform live in Bakersfield? Did they have to tour to get their music heard?
I believe the history of punk rock in Bakersfield can be broken down into these categories. So if you have information for any of them, please, send an email to nl@nlbelardes.com:
1970s:
1980s:
1990s:
2000s:
The venues:
The bands:
Important people:
Life on the streets:
Now read ‘The Davenport Article’. It heavily promotes the KooKooNauts. But so what? It’s already part of punk history…
KOO KOO FOR THE KOOKOONAUTS
By Johnny Davenport
Every once in a while you find a band that you connect with and really are taken by their style, songs, singing or musicianship. In my case I got lucky, it was a local punk/ska band, and to me they had all the above in abundant amounts and they played somewhere in town, or neighboring towns almost every weekend. I have been following the band for quite some time now. I took pleasure in researching them, and on several occasions interviewing them. Now I take pride in sharing my favorite band with you, and band that took its name from a space theme board game, "The KooKooNauts".
To understand who and what the KooKooNauts are, you have to understand Bakersfield punk and punk history. Using back issues of Blackboard Magazine I have come up with a fairly accurate background and lead-in to the Kookoonaut story.
Punk comes to Bakersfield a little late, but no worse for the wait. Bands existed through the `70s and `80s. Then, according to punk historian Jeremy Cravens, "In 1990 a club called Bam Bam's opened in Bakersfield. Bam Bam's promoted, and put on punk shows every weekend. In this Gulf War Era, Bakersfield punk thrived." Craven's Bakersfield Scene reports that "Bakersfield had it's own style of hardcore (punk)," and his list of the better bands of the early 90s were as follows: Big Jed, Primer Gray, Hossbrutten, Chaotic Evil, Midget Toss, Active Ingredients, and Six Feet Under. According to Billy S. The first wave of Bakersfield punk, from roughly the same time as the Ramones, Germs, Misfits, Dead Kennedys, etc., produced local bands like Teen Suicide, The Lizards, The Contaminators, The Gags and more. After that first wave ended, the bands became too numerous to mention. There was the original Primer Grey, with the infamous Bodie Chavis, Steve Crooks, Todd Short and Dave Butler, and the song that was on everyone's lips at the time, "Hey You! What You Lookin' At?" There were the Feelers, Big Jed, Fatal Vision, and lots more.
When I discovered hardcore punk in 2002, the punk scene in Bakersfield revolved, for the most part, around the underground cavern that is the basement theater of Jerry's Pizza on Chester in downtown Bakersfield. Jerry's is reminiscent of the 1963 Cavern Club in Britain where the Beatles began their career. The atmosphere is amazing: three black wooden staircases lead you into a punk underworld; this blackened, brick-walled underground cavern comes alive as darkness falls outside. The bright white stage lights break the underground darkness with silhouettes of majestic mohawks and liberty-spiked punks who cast thunder from the stage as the mosh pit raves like a fevered tribal war dance. From above creeps the smell of Jerry's famous pizza, breaking the historic musk below. Above the cavern is the actual pizzeria. In the bar-like register with its glass circular pizza warmer, a slice is a mere buck fifty. There are a couple of wooden booth tables for your dining pleasure, two roof-mounted televisions and a really frightening clown gumball machine. Occasionally the oxygen bar man is there, doing his flavored air thing.
Jerry came to Downtown Bakersfield in 1992 with old country traditions for pizza baked on a stone hearth. The best part, though, is the thunderous outpouring of sound from the bands below in the cavern. This is the ultimate in dining atmosphere for the punk and early rock music connoisseur. If you want to relive those early 1960s days at the Cavern Club, come to a punk show some night at Jerry's. The most active current (JUNE 2002) punk bands in Bakersfield included these: Active Ingredients, The Pin Ups, Crimson Stained Nails, Missing in Action (later renamed Urban Regression and then KooKooNauts), The Condemned, The Allied and Commotion.
Of the original 90s bands, only Active Ingredients still plays on a regular basis. They have a new drummer and several CDs out on a local label and are reportedly in the middle of recording a new full-length CD at Bakersfield's own Pig Studios. The Condemned played frequently at Jerry's Pizza and occasionally at the Porterville Veterans' Park Festivals; they write most of their own songs. Missing in Action often opens (plays warm-up) for many out-of-town bands at Jerry's, (They also play Studio 45 and the Porterville Veterans' park festivals). The Condemned and Missing in Action are the more hardcore bands of the Bakersfield punk community. They are high-powered and in your face. The mosh pits get smoke'n with these youngsters. After I got over being scared of them, I really enjoyed their driving melodies and aggressively charged, screaming lyrics.
The next period in Bakersfield punk was a bit darker, punk was pushed out of the music scene by a music called "new metal". Such music was, or of, the old fat guys that aren't that good, so they shave their heads, grow a goatee and tune their guitar to "Drop D". Guys that aren't real hot guitar slingers even sound good. Open turnings are strange that way. Take the early blues slide players; the were good on standard turnings. But when Robert Johnson came back from the cross roads with the open "Spanish" tuning he changed the world. Several punk-like bands made it OK during this period, and several sprung up. The notable ones being Active Ingredients, Crimson Stained Nails, Bury the Hatchet and of coarse, the KooKooNauts.
Many people were still koo koo for the KooKooNauts, a band that had now evolved into something new, different and amazingly good, sort of a Rancid meets Richie Vallins. The lead Guitar and vocalist had developed a master of both crafts that was both unique and tasteful. He still kept a bit of that rough punk edge from the early years, and they are still in high school with years to mature.
The KooKooNauts went through several transformation during this period. The original members met in drum line and included a bass player named Kurt. Kurt basically coached through the learning process to a mastery of the instrument by the guitar player and front man Bryan Gunter H. Kurt now slaps the four string like a pro.
Bryan is a self-taught musician. In elementary school he taught himself how to read music and within only a few weeks tried out and made the school band where his instructor (Jr. high / elementary) Mr. Bar was amazed at the speed of his mastery of woodwinds.
A few short weeks later he tried out and made the cut for the prestigious Kern County Honor Band and to top things off, made first chair over students much his senior in both age and experience. Later Bryan switched to the bass and ended up playing at the massive Centennial Gardens at a halftime show for the Blitz football team. It was no stretch for him to jump from the bass to the guitar and from there it was just a lot of hard work and playing shows by the dozen.
James H., Bryan's older brother by two years also came from drum line and moved over to the set and his speed and technique filled the bands rhythm section with thunder. The three boys had been in a band called Urban Regression that had also played often in the local Bakersfield venues.
That band broke up as the elder brother James went to drum with the local Psychobilly sensation "The Night Crawlers". Later, a Halloween festival at CSUB needed more bands so some of the Urban Regression formed the KooKooNauts to play the show. The band did so well that they stayed together. Several of the Night Crawlers filtered in and out of the KooKooNauts. The two bands often played shows together on the same bill. This was a mutual beneficial relationship, often yielding fairly large crowds at shows at local venues such as Jerry's, the Gate-Boiler Room , and Down Town Records and so on.
One of the shows went nuts when the large crowd was accosted by a mad man in a guerrilla suit with light flashing red lights as eye balls. The crowd went wild and a fight started on the floor between some street punks as the KooKooNauts played on. When the fight was broken up by a bouncer the apeman mounted the Night Crawler's stand-up bass and started humping it feverishly. It was one of the funniest things I had ever seen in my life and I laughed so hard I nearly wet myself.
It was this time period when both bands recorded their first demo Cds with a school friend, John T. John was in a band called Amigo Diaz (sp?) with the old Drummer from the Condemned. Amigo Diaz also played on the same billing with the KooKooNauts and Night Crawlers from time to time. The KooKooNauts sold over 300 of the demo CDs for a buck each with the first two weeks of its creation.
Later they began giving the two song CD demo away free and as many as a thousand have been burned and distributed locally. The songs were "Inevitable", a song warning of ‘judgment day’ on those whom destroy nature. “Inevitable” was a local hit for a time around the high school and at shows where dozens of folks would often come up and sing along. At one point even the Night Crawlers covered the tune. My favorite part is the lead-in: "humans are the parasite, earth is our host, wide spread panic from coast to coast." Amazing Chuck Berry-type guitar riffs rounds out this great tune.
Another song of that demo is "Take Me to Serious,” a passionate punk love song that was quite the favorite among high school kids struck with the love bug.
One day there was a falling out and the bands no longer functioned together and the three bands went their separate ways. It was never clear to me what had separated the bands but it was a bit tragic. At this time the KooKooNauts added a keyboard player named John and they played shows with him for a while and the sound was very interesting. They drew a lot of positive attention to the band. One day however John's mother made him quit the Kookoonuats. It was speculated he quit because of bad grades but who knows. This happened with an earlier drummer as well.
After the keyboard player departed the band signed up at Bakersfield Sound Studios for another demo cd and I have not heard the status on this project just yet. Last night at the Corner Stone Church, the stained glass was rattling. Hardcore Bands from near and far were laying down the laws with the thunder of Gibson and Fender guitars, and earth-shaking drum flurries and rumbling bass lines. Man this stuff was awesome! Crimson Stained Nails, Active Ingredients, The KooKooNauts and several other bands were rockin' the hollowed ground. The KooKooNauts played a new set, dropping the usual burning rendition of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation" for the Misfits "Last Caress" and dropping "Inevitable" for a new Celtic sounding number about medieval knights.
The other parts of the set were unchanged and they played one of my favorites "The March" and you will have to pick up their new CD to hear that for yourselves. As the night wore on it was brought up by the KooKooNauts that some one or some group has been pulling down their posters and shredding them on their front lawn and throwing raw eggs all over their car and house. If you think this sucks you are correct, but what was worse is that Active Ingredients was sited and fined $147.00 for posting their flyers. They speculated that Jerry's or Nate may have reported them and filed a complaint.
They we called hypocrite for doing so as they post more posters than any one and post them with permanent postal tape. The KooKooNauts speculated that it may have been some of their old friends from the bands they used to play shows with but don't know for sure. I look forward to attending many KooKooNauts shows in the future and hey, hope to see you there!
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Saturday, May 21, 2005.
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