I met Bryan of the KooKooNauts at Starbucks at the corner of Chester and California one Saturday just before he and the rest of the band headed off to watch
Star Wars Episode III with their family. It was a good meeting. They gave me a CD that I took home and found a song that I wanted played on Danny Spanks’ Sunday night local hour on KRAB radio. The song wasn’t just punk, it was a fun rural rock punk song titled
“Searching” that we aired on the show during an interview with me and Jesse Rivera of Illpressed.
Bryan pictured on left...Up until that time, the KooKooNauts were part of what was hailed as a locally dying punk scene with few hardcore punk bands. Only, the KooKooNauts, they attracted crowds. Bryan had also given me a self-titled DVD with the words “Music Not Drugs” spelled across the case.
Put it on and you can see that kids attended their shows. Put it on and you can also see an angry punk fight watched by the band, bystanders and a kid in a gorilla suit. In and of itself, this videotaped fight isn’t a big fight or a big deal. It doesn’t last long and is broken up rather quickly and appears to be between two angry punk friends who pulverize each other’s faces and then hug and laugh about it.
Kurt, Bryan and James of the KooKooNautsWhat this fight does capture on tape is a metaphor for part of the local punk scene. It symbolizes that there is an angry punk subculture in Bakersfield, one out to get other punks, skinheads, and perhaps, people in general; it lashes out, not to fight fairly, but to kill and destroy. Is it the anthem of such punks to strike hard at society? To kill, fight, destroy, butcher, rob, demean; all in the guise of angry punks in leather and Mohawks with chains and padlocks?
Active Ingrediants recently talked about being a punk without having to be such angry leather-wearing haters of society. Makes me wonder if that is the root of some kind of schism, one behind clean kids who play punk, and the other behind dirty kids who use punk as their tool to destroy people and culture in their outlet to fight against society.
Bryan isn’t dead, thank God. But I do know some of the severity of his injuries. A head injury isn’t an easy injury to overcome. Your brain is encased in a hard shell. Trauma to one side of the head generally results in trauma to the opposite side because the brain gets smashed from initial impact and then gets smashed with equal fury as the brain hits the opposite side of the skull from where the injury takes place. In this case, the downward motion created by the impact on top of Bryan’s head caused Bryan’s right eye socket to blow out into his nasal cavity. The injury suffered affects bone, eye, ligaments, brain matter, including the surrounding meninges, blood flow; it causes clotting, fuzzy consciousness in an angry disorienting fog; seizures can result in a potential lifelong struggle to over come basic functions such as: motor skills, auditory skills, and cognitive reasoning. The injury is extremely painful. Do you like headaches? Sufferers of meningitis might understand how such headaches feel…
Bryan, Kurt and James showed up that day at Starbucks, excited that someone in Bakersfield would listen to their music and maybe help connect them to an audience on a level that would get them listened to, get them shows, get them the attention they deserved. These kids would play anywhere: on college campuses, in parks, in the Pizza-a-go-go (if they weren’t stiffed), the Boiler Room, and more. But during the dead era of Bakersfield punk, they couldn’t get shows. After we played “Searching” on KRAB radio from their e.p.
Lonely Nights, the KooKooNauts entered a new heyday for their music. They got some airplay, they got some more notoriety, and respect from many folks except for maybe, the angry punks who may be the ones who possibly wanted Bryan dead.
I’ve only been around the current music scene for ten months. But a lot has happened. I don’t truly know why the angry punks attacked Bryan. I don’t even know if Bryan will tell me. Already there are 1-2 deaths attributed this year from this dark subculture group of angry punks to which the KooKooNauts clean style of musicianship likely rebelled against, and now an attempted murder. Bryan had written to me earlier this year he was afraid someone was going to try and kill him. He had asked me not to mention anything on nlbelardes.com. I didn’t, but would that have changed anything? We’re in a Bakersfield era where police don’t show up to every crime because they are overloaded with what we can only think are more severe crimes: murders, rapes, carjackings, stabbings, shootings, etc. So-called lesser crimes are left on a long list of low priorities: windows are left smashed for days; Damaged cars as well; kids are assaulted outside of football games; and here, a teenage boy is practically left for dead, except for hopefully the services of other emergency crews arriving in timely fashion.
I never saw the KooKooNauts perform live. Now I wish I had made the time as the uncertainty of them ever playing again hangs over the shadow of the Bakersfield punk scene.
*footnote: "Searching" is the KooKooNauts most played song on myspace.
