Bakersfield Bukowski with the Get Up Get Down - By N.L. Belardes

Who are the Get Up Get Down? Keep reading...

All roads lead to somewhere, right? Sometimes through dark streets—the Mirkwood of Bakersfield—the tangle of urban decadence that screams at you from shadows of fog, or where the creeping corners of lots hide metal trash bins and yellow-eyed transients. It was near such dark holes that Bakersfield band Broken Record Gospel had shattered. There were allegations of drugs. There was a conflict of interest in how to approach music. Colin Cooke and Ben Gomez tried to bring the band back together. But then it all fell apart again. The Gospel fell on deaf ears. A broken record is what it is after all—and the gospel was the failure of a fresh new Bakersfield sound in rock that wasted away into bar band obscurity.

My path took me back to the fury of Indie sounds and echoing funk-Edge strums in Colin Cooke’s new band, the Get Up Get Down. The journey began weeks before. He told me about band practices and an upcoming show at Jerry’s Pizza that he later said was kind of weird. It was their first show, “The kids didn’t really clap. But they didn’t go away either.” Colin also said the band played at the Velvet Rose in Santa Barbara. “We had about 75 people. That’s pretty good for an opening act. They were into it.”

Two weeks before their show at Riley’s Tavern I had just thought about the Get Up Get Down. I wondered if their music would capture the counterculture movement of Indie rock out of the land of Korn. While such thoughts were on my mind I decided I wanted to see the darker side of Bakersfield. I wanted to see the streets where bands fall apart. I wanted to stumble through the dives, write about the very demon shadows that could haunt a dying bar band like Broken Record Gospel. I wanted to see how darkness could spawn the new life of the Get Up Get Down. You know the shadows that lurk right beneath the angelic neon Budweiser signs inside of bar windows? I was going to see the ravenous streets of Bakersfield, the hot asphalt of our city—remember The Lonely? And I wanted to see Bakersfield for the shiny penny that it isn’t.


Three Chord Whore's Darcie Blake: pregnant, sexy and rocking your world


The rest of the band tears up the stage at the BMOA

I started on a dark night at the Bakersfield Museum of Art. It was an alternative night where Bakersfield people of a diverse alternative lifestyle congregated among the museum garden. I heard Three Chord Whore were performing, and an old friend from New York was on hand. He and I talked about his appearances on VH1, about his tailoring for Beyonce’s mother, and his stand-up comedy routine. We watched Darcie of Three Chord Whore look like a radiant goddess with a guitar. She was hot, preggers and sexy, and is the token whore in the band. Matildakay was in love as well. The night was dark, short, and I saw into a Bakersfield counterculture that I hadn’t seen very often. There seemed some distrust in the crowd—me with a camera—and many of the folks not wanting their photos taken…


Jade performed after TCW, with a lot of belly dancers

A few days later I stumbled onto a public outcry from a local rocker who was going to hit the scene. I think it was a Saturday. I don’t even remember. I just said, “Can I tag along?” It was all through MySpace.com. It was Mystic. She’d been in a recent band that exploded worse than Broken Record Gospel. She seemed the epitome of Get Up Get Down, or maybe in her case, Get Down Get Up. She had to pick herself back up. She had been down; she was out to find solace in the very bars where she lurked—in the community of darkness that isn’t evil, but does breed Bakersfield sounds, whether metal, Indie rock, punk, country, etc...





We stepped into the dive scene and I followed with a camera eye. I met Scotty, the new guitarist for American Standard. He swore Earache Records was still courting them. He poured me a drink down at the Buckhorn Saloon. I went there a few times with hockey friends after late night games at Rollerama on 34th Street. It was a short-lived hockey phenomenon for me at least. Scotty talked about his old days with death metal band OTEP. He talked about Ozzfest, and about how he performed on stages with bands like Slipknot and how death metal guys are purposely misinterpreted as mean and evil when “we’re all really just a bunch of geeks.”

He flipped off the camera.


Scotty from American Standard (Is he still in OTEP?)

We left the bar and wandered into the Silver Fox. I used to call it the Smoke Hole, but heard the smoking had dwindled. There were smokers in the bar. I think they read my old shit, because they snuffed their cigs when I entered. I didn’t know I was the BPD. I searched my wallet for a badge. Nothing. I had a drink instead. I looked around the room. Martinis were painted on walls like a hallucinogen dreamscape.



Mystic talked to the bar owners. She talked to me about her old band, Mystic Red. They crashed and burned. Band members booked it over to the band Hayesfield. They’re still rockin’. I tried to pry for more information but she had it out to talk to the bartenders. They talked about tits, music, life… bar talk…

We left.


Inside the Silver Fox...


Great food, even after midnight. Just go to Buck Owens Boulevard.

We passed the Crystal Palace, considered a burger at the trucker dive, Zingo’s, then took our gettyap to Trouts Bar in Oildale—the working class suburb of Bakersfield. Outside, a derelict sat on a bench and eyed us. I snapped a photo of the classic fish bar sign. I imagined it falling on the transient, his head smashed by a giant neon fish—his eyes with giant x-marks. He didn’t say anything as we passed.





Inside, we hunkered in a corner. I drank a beer while cowboy hats seemed to float around the room on shadowy clouds of people. A man in overalls sang songs as if serenading a prison. He wasn't Howard Owens, but his voice was that dark. We were eyed as outsiders. Mystic was dressed in black. Her fair skin was aglow and her eyes in sad conversation with the very dark heart of the bar. It was her first time in the Honky Tonk. I consoled her that Red Simpson was not a ghost. He actually performed old trucker songs in the bar now and then. I heard he might be sick. What the hell did I know?




In the Trout's men's stall... cryptic message for a drummer Buckaroo?

There was a sense of small talk throughout the night, and a sense of human interaction that escapes from the working class world of Oildale. These were strange moments of literature and song. The darkness emanated a sort of melancholy heart for creativity there in Trouts.

Colin Cooke and his bandmates are products of such communal gatherings in a counterculture vista of multi-genres of music and people. I realized days after I left Trouts my perception of Bakersfield counterculture was a creation point: the dives. Get up get down from the dives… then go back to them… and create in an atmosphere that fosters basic human curiosity for life, music, sex...

Maybe I was learning something.


Bobbi and Jesse, two scenesters anxiously await the GUGD

A few weeks later I hung out with Jesse Rivera and Matildakay at Riley’s Tavern in downtown Bakersfield. The Hero and the Victor from Santa Barbara had just performed. Later would come the Rolling Blackouts from LA. I had arrived to see the Get Up Get Down. It was their third performance as a budding Indie Bakersfield band. “Are they going to have Colin’s patented sounds,” Jesse said. He had been around to see Broken Record Gospel. We both loved the unique Indie The Edge-like uniqueness of Colin’s riffs. No, he didn’t sound like The Edge. He was unique like The Edge.


The infamous Colin Cooke of the Get Up Get Down





Jesse and I both watched Broken Record Gospel crumble. Now he was ready, like me, for the Get Up Get Down. We were ready to see if Colin was still weaving sounds like a Mozart—a guitar slung around his shoulder like a concerto—and he in his wiry body, bent into a distant sound of echoes and raging guitar shrieks… would he? I needed two Wyders pear ciders.



The music started up… it was Colin at the helm. Bakersfield sounds have multiple faces in the genres that are produced out of such a dark city. And yes, Indie rock out of Bakersfield wears the face of Colin Cooke. I snapped photos, I was nearly brought to tears. Broken Record Gospel had been deliciously replaced with a darker, sleeker sound. The singing was clearer too. Colin had grown up a bit. His growth was evident in his confidence—not arrogance, but confidence in the darkness of a bar, that like others I had trampled recently, was the very place to create and express. This bar was a canvas. The dirty wood floor a very part of his guitar—and he the new music-painting Impressionist. He painted a sound that included other bandmates in the Get Up Get Down. No, he was not alone, but his guitar work is strangely beautiful—the way a jetliner built from so much metal can sail gracefully 30,000 feet in the sky. Colin’s guitar work sung from the metal in his hands into a melodic atmosphere that could really fly… and Jesse, Matildakay and I were there…

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Wednesday, September 13, 2006. You can leave your response.