A Bakersfield Novelist Descends into the Caverns of Rock and Roll - by N.L. Belardes
I open the DVD case. It’s the same black-and-white case I got at Starbucks on a bright Bakersfield midday; a seemingly unlikely drop-off point for a group of punk rockers to give a DVD to an old man sucking down a mint mocha Frappuccino. I plop the DVD into my computer, open Windows Media Player and begin to watch the KooKooNauts video, “Music, Not Drugs.” I’ve seen parts of it before. It’s a tour of the KooKooNauts playing at various venues around Bakersfield: Jerry’s Pizza, the Gate, CSU Bakersfield, Beach Park... But it’s the beginning I want to see again.
I take a closer look at the video. I lean toward the monitor, frequently hit pause, fast forward and rewind so I can get a better look at the details. It starts off with a black screen—the lens is apparently covered with some cloth. The words ‘Koo Koo Nauts’ appear. Music starts and we see some black-haired punk drinking from a can. Is it an energy drink? Looks like it is. Keys dangle from his right hip; he’s got tattoos on his arms that I glimpse as he passes by the camera. Nearby, one of the KooKooNauts, before he joined the band, I think, is eating a greasy slice from the Pizza-a-go-go. I know it’s the Pizza joint because not only did the camera show the logo above the counter, I can see a booth and the staircase entrance into the black descent to the Pizza-a-go-go cavern.
Now the view is outside of the parlor along Chester Avenue. There are punks outside with spiked Mohawks that rise like great spires from their heads. One punker wears a jacket with a glowing red skull on the back. I wonder who has the baseball cap on; he talks to the camera eye but we can’t hear him…
Now we’re back inside and we descend down a set of old wooden stairs. We only see them for a brief second—dirty wooden planks as rickety as the boards of a weathered and broken pier; but it’s enough to see we’ve dared descend into a haven for punks as the intro had showed us, with images of punks in near howlish form; here would be a dark descent into a subculture of not just punk, but into a dismal hollow of a pizza venue where Bakersfield musicians have been performing for years, willingly, suffocatingly. The camera eye has entered into a black room with bare, dirt-covered walls that are never scrubbed. On stage are the KooKooNauts, some of the nicest kids you could ever meet, yet who are charged with a punk-driven energy you’d expect from a band just like them.
I remember them at Starbucks, a bunch of Bakersfield kids who jumped out of an old truck. Just like you could meet anywhere in town—although they don’t put off the rich kid vibe—something Stockdale High School yuppy cliques might frown on because they’re down to Earth, down in the trenches with the punkers, deep in the subculture where they create, sing, energize, in hardcore cyberpunk song frenzy.
They had been writing to me that they had a following. I was skeptical. But then I’ve seen the DVD. There are crowds watching them, albeit, some are crowds endemic to various venues and areas… but there are crowds. The KooKooNauts do have friends. Though I wonder if they will show up to Montgomery World Plaza on July 28th.
I lean further toward the monitor. The KooKooNauts are on stage. In a moment of punk rock prophecy, Brian, their lead singer reaches out to the audience and says, “Come on up. We’re not gonna hurt you.”
The crowd chants “KooKoo KooKoo KooKoo!” in response.
Suddenly we’re not in Jerry’s Pizza anymore, but the Boiler Room over near 23rd Street and O. How do I know this? I just recognize it. The stage is just as dark, but you can see the difference. Here, there is lighting and black curtains along the stage. A picture on the south wall is a dead giveaway, as is the chandelier on the southwest corner and a pillar near the stage. Punkers with leather jackets, chains, and wild cyberfreak hairdos are drawn to the KooKooNauts’ show, and as the music plays I glimpse a kid in an ape suit without the head; he’s still nearly a frightening sight. And then it happens; a fight suddenly breaks out. I was wrong when I reported before. This is not Jerry’s Pizza. But there’s a connection. Sources inform me that something is amiss in this video tied to a murder in or near Jerry’s Pizza. Which leads me to my actual story as I wonder if I am entering murderous depths as I make a decision to descend into the rock and roll cavern…
I arrived at Jerry’s Pizza with camera in hand. There was no telling what I was going to see. Would punkers jump me from the cavernous depths for writing against the old promoter and meatball sandwiches? Surely punkers would be around. What about the KooKooNauts? Would they be lurking nearby? I didn’t know, but felt it was time to take the risk, not that I was afraid the KooKooNauts would do me harm. But there is a self-loathing subculture tangent to them. They swing chains and fists and aren’t afraid to be hauled off to jail for it.
I entered the pizza joint and saw no sign of Jerry or punkers. I half expected him to see me and throw me out right away. Outside, Alex from Gigantic sat at the door in the stifling heat and took money. He charged me five bucks. Steep for someone who takes pictures of shows and does write-ups for free. Then, Alex is just a businessman looking to make a little cash. And I wasn’t here to see Alex as much as I was here to see a possibly once murderous lair. I wanted to see firsthand where this ghost of the downtown dark subconscious might dwell… down in the sleeping black dragon’s lair of Bakersfield downtown music.
A picture just after entering. My heart was racing...
I had attended a meeting of artists recently who were concerned with Nate Berg style intimidation. Called the Tumbleweed Collective they seemed to be interested in somehow policing Jerry’s Pizza. I felt a little out of place at that meeting as I had my own agenda on art, novels, blogs, podcasts and such. I agreed, however, on keeping the integrity of a wholesome venue for local kids. But that’s another story in how to police such. And how do you define such policing? And what can kids really do to enforce integrity? What is important is that artists are wanting to be some kind of music promotion police… but that’s not me this night or any night. I’m just a novelist in a mad descent into Bakersfield rock and roll hell…
I went down the rickety stairs into the heart of the Jerry’s Pizza cavern. I could hear Liars and Thieves playing from down below. Instantly the temperature rose several degrees. And it wasn’t because of the music. It was from the stifling heat. As for the band, their sound was muffled in such a dank sauna-like room as if the very creepy shadows wrapped ghostly arms around each note.
The burning humidity from human sweat and the porous walls was almost unbearable. I could see the musicians struggling to cope with music and heat… Yes, this was a Bakersfield heatwave, and yes I had entered an underground room with no ventilation. The room itself was black, cavernous to the point of being only an underground cave; with not much to explore other than one room with a door, a brick-lined corridor, two old staircases, and cobweb-covered lighting that glowed eerily as if I was on some Hollywood Amityville house set, or underground secret spy station beneath a bombed out city.
I felt like I was in a movie, in an underground ghetto during World War Two, where all you might have is light blinking, and a resistance movement waiting to pounce on the Evil Empire. I half-expected to see Uzi-carrying punks creep from the cockroach shadows with blue and orange hair to recruit me to their fashionable rebellion.
I wandered further and looked up. I saw holes in the ceiling. The collapse of the building above in an earthquake? Would be certain doom for those peering from blackened shadows. I stumbled further into the darkness. I saw a trash can overflowing, and eventually an exit sign.
I wanted to get out. This was a claustrophobic musty room. I clambered up the stairs into the hot night, to see people sweating, lurking, escaping, wandering, gathering, excited for the pizza joint moment, and overheated to the point of almost denying their love for such a music-filled cavernous hell.
I had been hearing about this big night over at Jerry’s Pizza, A.K.A., the Pizza-a-go-go’s first Gigantic promoted night over at Jerry’s Pizza. There had been a handshake, an agreement for Gigantic to help promote shows along with Zill DeVille. I don’t know the details, but what I can say is that after Jerry’s Pizza show promoter Nate Berg had allegedly intimidated Gigantic into vacating the downtown Bakersfield music scene, I find it plain odd, and yet not a completely crazy business strategy on Jerry’s part. Now with Nate Berg gone, Jerry’s Pizza and Gigantic have made amends so that a portion of the Indie Music scene would leave the Montgomery World Plaza to return to downtown Bakersfield. So Gigantic hopes.
Why?
Doesn’t matter. The fact is there is a love-hate relationship with this pizza parlor turned rock and roll farm cavernous hangout. I had refused to enter Jerry’s Pizza for months, citing a dismal set of experiences regarding food, venue and integrity issues regarding bands having to pay to perform at what is really a not-so-attractive venue. Club Fred and Starline in Fresno, the Gate in Bakersfield, Studio 99, Rileys, The Red Rooster, and Montgomery World Plaza are all attractive, clean venues. Yet, bands and kids are seemingly endlessly attracted to the cavernous depths of the downtown pizza parlor. Not me, I would rather attend a venue where you don’t have to descend into a hellish nightmare to watch a band perform on a blackened stage along a brick corridor above a broken-cement floor with lighting as dim as any horror movie theatre. But I had told Alex of Gigantic that I would try to make it out.
A drummer recently told me, “I don’t like playing at Jerry’s. When you start wailing away on the drums sometimes cockroaches start pouring from the walls. I try to scoot up in my seat because I’m terrified of them.” Is that what I was heading into?
I asked Sal and Nick/Tyler from Liars and Thieves, “Are you guys happy with your performance and the turnout? And, what brought you back to Jerry’s Pizza?”
Sal had a wet towel over his head as he stood outside of the pizza parlor. “It’s so damn hot down there. I can barely breathe let alone scream my lyrics.” Sweat endlessly poured from both he and Nick/Tyler. And even though he complained about the heat, he still had a few words of downtown strategy to let out, “It’s the central location. It’s where the people are all out and mingle in the scene. They show up here.”
Why? I had just come from my ten-minute incursion into the cavern below the pizza joint. All I can figure is it’s about the people and the money. The promoters get money; the bands hope to get people; the kids can all eat pizza upstairs and sit in booths and mingle along Chester Avenue right in the Wall Street Alley where nearby Alley Cat, Azul’s, Rileys, Fishlips, Kosmos, and Downtown Records, which are practically within earshot.
As I wrote in a previous blog, if bands don’t get Jerry’s to clean up, then it’s just the bands’ fault. I didn’t like what Nate Berg was doing by allegedly intimidating people; I also admit I don’t like pay-to-play schemes. Doesn’t mean pay-to-play schemes are wrong, because the simple fact is that bands keep doing it. A business will make money however it can, with minimal upkeep. That’s just how capitalism works. I just wish it were a cleaner place, like it was in the mid-1990s: bright, alive, clean, inviting.
Bakersfield music history has done something strange to that place. But then, people are all drawn to scary movies with a raw terrifying energy; kind of like a roller coaster—you don’t know how you’re going to feel after that first hill.
Doesn’t mean I have to go back and sweat and feel like I’m standing on hosed down vomit and the ghosts of dead punkers to watch a show in Bakersfield. Kudos to Jerry for getting bands, kids, and promoters to come to his pizza joint. Kudos to Gigantic for making more money. Alex, he’s just a good business man after all.
I take a closer look at the video. I lean toward the monitor, frequently hit pause, fast forward and rewind so I can get a better look at the details. It starts off with a black screen—the lens is apparently covered with some cloth. The words ‘Koo Koo Nauts’ appear. Music starts and we see some black-haired punk drinking from a can. Is it an energy drink? Looks like it is. Keys dangle from his right hip; he’s got tattoos on his arms that I glimpse as he passes by the camera. Nearby, one of the KooKooNauts, before he joined the band, I think, is eating a greasy slice from the Pizza-a-go-go. I know it’s the Pizza joint because not only did the camera show the logo above the counter, I can see a booth and the staircase entrance into the black descent to the Pizza-a-go-go cavern.
Now the view is outside of the parlor along Chester Avenue. There are punks outside with spiked Mohawks that rise like great spires from their heads. One punker wears a jacket with a glowing red skull on the back. I wonder who has the baseball cap on; he talks to the camera eye but we can’t hear him…
Now we’re back inside and we descend down a set of old wooden stairs. We only see them for a brief second—dirty wooden planks as rickety as the boards of a weathered and broken pier; but it’s enough to see we’ve dared descend into a haven for punks as the intro had showed us, with images of punks in near howlish form; here would be a dark descent into a subculture of not just punk, but into a dismal hollow of a pizza venue where Bakersfield musicians have been performing for years, willingly, suffocatingly. The camera eye has entered into a black room with bare, dirt-covered walls that are never scrubbed. On stage are the KooKooNauts, some of the nicest kids you could ever meet, yet who are charged with a punk-driven energy you’d expect from a band just like them.
I remember them at Starbucks, a bunch of Bakersfield kids who jumped out of an old truck. Just like you could meet anywhere in town—although they don’t put off the rich kid vibe—something Stockdale High School yuppy cliques might frown on because they’re down to Earth, down in the trenches with the punkers, deep in the subculture where they create, sing, energize, in hardcore cyberpunk song frenzy.
They had been writing to me that they had a following. I was skeptical. But then I’ve seen the DVD. There are crowds watching them, albeit, some are crowds endemic to various venues and areas… but there are crowds. The KooKooNauts do have friends. Though I wonder if they will show up to Montgomery World Plaza on July 28th.
I lean further toward the monitor. The KooKooNauts are on stage. In a moment of punk rock prophecy, Brian, their lead singer reaches out to the audience and says, “Come on up. We’re not gonna hurt you.”
The crowd chants “KooKoo KooKoo KooKoo!” in response.
Suddenly we’re not in Jerry’s Pizza anymore, but the Boiler Room over near 23rd Street and O. How do I know this? I just recognize it. The stage is just as dark, but you can see the difference. Here, there is lighting and black curtains along the stage. A picture on the south wall is a dead giveaway, as is the chandelier on the southwest corner and a pillar near the stage. Punkers with leather jackets, chains, and wild cyberfreak hairdos are drawn to the KooKooNauts’ show, and as the music plays I glimpse a kid in an ape suit without the head; he’s still nearly a frightening sight. And then it happens; a fight suddenly breaks out. I was wrong when I reported before. This is not Jerry’s Pizza. But there’s a connection. Sources inform me that something is amiss in this video tied to a murder in or near Jerry’s Pizza. Which leads me to my actual story as I wonder if I am entering murderous depths as I make a decision to descend into the rock and roll cavern…
I arrived at Jerry’s Pizza with camera in hand. There was no telling what I was going to see. Would punkers jump me from the cavernous depths for writing against the old promoter and meatball sandwiches? Surely punkers would be around. What about the KooKooNauts? Would they be lurking nearby? I didn’t know, but felt it was time to take the risk, not that I was afraid the KooKooNauts would do me harm. But there is a self-loathing subculture tangent to them. They swing chains and fists and aren’t afraid to be hauled off to jail for it.
I entered the pizza joint and saw no sign of Jerry or punkers. I half expected him to see me and throw me out right away. Outside, Alex from Gigantic sat at the door in the stifling heat and took money. He charged me five bucks. Steep for someone who takes pictures of shows and does write-ups for free. Then, Alex is just a businessman looking to make a little cash. And I wasn’t here to see Alex as much as I was here to see a possibly once murderous lair. I wanted to see firsthand where this ghost of the downtown dark subconscious might dwell… down in the sleeping black dragon’s lair of Bakersfield downtown music.
A picture just after entering. My heart was racing...
I had attended a meeting of artists recently who were concerned with Nate Berg style intimidation. Called the Tumbleweed Collective they seemed to be interested in somehow policing Jerry’s Pizza. I felt a little out of place at that meeting as I had my own agenda on art, novels, blogs, podcasts and such. I agreed, however, on keeping the integrity of a wholesome venue for local kids. But that’s another story in how to police such. And how do you define such policing? And what can kids really do to enforce integrity? What is important is that artists are wanting to be some kind of music promotion police… but that’s not me this night or any night. I’m just a novelist in a mad descent into Bakersfield rock and roll hell…
I went down the rickety stairs into the heart of the Jerry’s Pizza cavern. I could hear Liars and Thieves playing from down below. Instantly the temperature rose several degrees. And it wasn’t because of the music. It was from the stifling heat. As for the band, their sound was muffled in such a dank sauna-like room as if the very creepy shadows wrapped ghostly arms around each note.
The burning humidity from human sweat and the porous walls was almost unbearable. I could see the musicians struggling to cope with music and heat… Yes, this was a Bakersfield heatwave, and yes I had entered an underground room with no ventilation. The room itself was black, cavernous to the point of being only an underground cave; with not much to explore other than one room with a door, a brick-lined corridor, two old staircases, and cobweb-covered lighting that glowed eerily as if I was on some Hollywood Amityville house set, or underground secret spy station beneath a bombed out city.
I felt like I was in a movie, in an underground ghetto during World War Two, where all you might have is light blinking, and a resistance movement waiting to pounce on the Evil Empire. I half-expected to see Uzi-carrying punks creep from the cockroach shadows with blue and orange hair to recruit me to their fashionable rebellion.
I wandered further and looked up. I saw holes in the ceiling. The collapse of the building above in an earthquake? Would be certain doom for those peering from blackened shadows. I stumbled further into the darkness. I saw a trash can overflowing, and eventually an exit sign.
I wanted to get out. This was a claustrophobic musty room. I clambered up the stairs into the hot night, to see people sweating, lurking, escaping, wandering, gathering, excited for the pizza joint moment, and overheated to the point of almost denying their love for such a music-filled cavernous hell.
I had been hearing about this big night over at Jerry’s Pizza, A.K.A., the Pizza-a-go-go’s first Gigantic promoted night over at Jerry’s Pizza. There had been a handshake, an agreement for Gigantic to help promote shows along with Zill DeVille. I don’t know the details, but what I can say is that after Jerry’s Pizza show promoter Nate Berg had allegedly intimidated Gigantic into vacating the downtown Bakersfield music scene, I find it plain odd, and yet not a completely crazy business strategy on Jerry’s part. Now with Nate Berg gone, Jerry’s Pizza and Gigantic have made amends so that a portion of the Indie Music scene would leave the Montgomery World Plaza to return to downtown Bakersfield. So Gigantic hopes.
Why?
Doesn’t matter. The fact is there is a love-hate relationship with this pizza parlor turned rock and roll farm cavernous hangout. I had refused to enter Jerry’s Pizza for months, citing a dismal set of experiences regarding food, venue and integrity issues regarding bands having to pay to perform at what is really a not-so-attractive venue. Club Fred and Starline in Fresno, the Gate in Bakersfield, Studio 99, Rileys, The Red Rooster, and Montgomery World Plaza are all attractive, clean venues. Yet, bands and kids are seemingly endlessly attracted to the cavernous depths of the downtown pizza parlor. Not me, I would rather attend a venue where you don’t have to descend into a hellish nightmare to watch a band perform on a blackened stage along a brick corridor above a broken-cement floor with lighting as dim as any horror movie theatre. But I had told Alex of Gigantic that I would try to make it out.
A drummer recently told me, “I don’t like playing at Jerry’s. When you start wailing away on the drums sometimes cockroaches start pouring from the walls. I try to scoot up in my seat because I’m terrified of them.” Is that what I was heading into?
I asked Sal and Nick/Tyler from Liars and Thieves, “Are you guys happy with your performance and the turnout? And, what brought you back to Jerry’s Pizza?”
Sal had a wet towel over his head as he stood outside of the pizza parlor. “It’s so damn hot down there. I can barely breathe let alone scream my lyrics.” Sweat endlessly poured from both he and Nick/Tyler. And even though he complained about the heat, he still had a few words of downtown strategy to let out, “It’s the central location. It’s where the people are all out and mingle in the scene. They show up here.”
Why? I had just come from my ten-minute incursion into the cavern below the pizza joint. All I can figure is it’s about the people and the money. The promoters get money; the bands hope to get people; the kids can all eat pizza upstairs and sit in booths and mingle along Chester Avenue right in the Wall Street Alley where nearby Alley Cat, Azul’s, Rileys, Fishlips, Kosmos, and Downtown Records, which are practically within earshot.
As I wrote in a previous blog, if bands don’t get Jerry’s to clean up, then it’s just the bands’ fault. I didn’t like what Nate Berg was doing by allegedly intimidating people; I also admit I don’t like pay-to-play schemes. Doesn’t mean pay-to-play schemes are wrong, because the simple fact is that bands keep doing it. A business will make money however it can, with minimal upkeep. That’s just how capitalism works. I just wish it were a cleaner place, like it was in the mid-1990s: bright, alive, clean, inviting.
Bakersfield music history has done something strange to that place. But then, people are all drawn to scary movies with a raw terrifying energy; kind of like a roller coaster—you don’t know how you’re going to feel after that first hill.
Doesn’t mean I have to go back and sweat and feel like I’m standing on hosed down vomit and the ghosts of dead punkers to watch a show in Bakersfield. Kudos to Jerry for getting bands, kids, and promoters to come to his pizza joint. Kudos to Gigantic for making more money. Alex, he’s just a good business man after all.
This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on
Tuesday, July 26, 2005.
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