Asian at Home

Underground in an Asian pop band...

There is a strange and secret world of being in a band. In the old days we had an idea to go out to Sycamore Rocks at the end of the world with a generator because our drummer’s father had a construction company with plenty of generators and we were driving along Stoddard Wells Road and we were packed into an awful car and so unhappy that for all our practicing at the warehouse, which was the construction storage room, a metal building, there was nothing exciting at all.

Saturday afternoon, packed into a crappy car along Stoddard Wells Road nearing where Corwin Road passes by Catholic Hill and Bell Mountain suddenly it dawned on us, why don’t we take the generator out to Sycamore Rocks, which at that time was like going to Mongolia. But it was a natural stage out there due to it being enormous and hardly imaginably enormous sandstone rocks making a natural horizontal stage and all around them the same formation making, vertically, almost a Roman amphitheatre.

For this one I didn’t want to lower myself to the beer drinking crowd, so I was sure to put in my order for a bag of California Coolers, which were the first in the world of premium drinks to come. As with all manner of this world, the pioneer was defeated by the imposter. But I had my California Coolers and the sun began to play around as we agonized over a single generator and all those electric guitars and microphones.

Suddenly it was all plugged in where it needed to be plugged in. My California Coolers were spread out near my Fender Quad amplifier, which was the best guitar amplifier imaginable because it held four ten-inch speakers which punched forward the high-end of the register which is what you needed for what we had on the menu, California punk rock but also with my strange own compositions.

Suddenly a few telephone calls (strangely before the time of cell phones) produced dozens of young people our age, all equally eager for something to do and I suspect all also happy to be at the Sycamore Rocks, with a sneaking view toward Lucerne Valley and the outer high desert, full of Indian wars and silver and madness.

I once wrote a song about the ghosts of the Indians who were killed in the pass to Lucerne Valley.

The other bands showed up once we had a natural stage and the electricity. These days this would be impossible, as it was outside the normal scheme of things. But in those days we had some freedom. We could find a natural Roman amphitheatre in the middle of the desert and invite our friends for an impromptu concert and no cop would ever think of shutting us down. It was a tiny window of freedom.

I saw someone there from old times, after we finished on the sandstone stage in Monumental Valley as in a John Ford film, the sun setting and a world in darkness anticipated. She who I once knew, back then full of improbable stories most likely a cover for mean reality. An old agony but for me a memory of an innocent kiss near the temporary buildings in the days of high school. Wine and wine cellar, as David once metaphored.

But later I said something to her in John Ford’s Monumental Valley and she knew I was lying and she did not wait a second to tell me so. I cannot claim to be the gentleman. It may have seemed I was in love with her at one time, but it was an absurd chimera.

Beautiful raven. Jacaranda.

But none of this is what I intended to write about. It’s just an antecedent to my main point.

After all of this in the Monumental Valley, with generators and lost loves, came Berkeley and growing up. When I became a man I left childish things behind.

Somehow after I had conquered a cancer scare and mental disorders of all imaginable sort, I came into an all-Asian band perhaps it was due to a notice on a tree or something else vertical. I called them or whatever was done in those days. OMG they were all Chinese computer science majors who wanted a kick-ass lead guitar player to propulse them into coolness and the Berkeley musical scene. There was no way I could even remotely satisfy their need for a guitar God.

They wanted to play Eagles songs. They wanted to play Boston and AC/DC and they erroneously had an idea that I could help them, even though I was the last person to shred guitar solos in front of an Asian computer science band. They had their desired set, but my songs included several Charles Manson covers.

Nothing would work.

Then they said “nothing to worry about.”

Then someone said “cancer.”

Then I disappeared.

Oh crap you can’t say it these days, but the people who saved me in UC Berkeley days were Asian computer nerds and their pop band. We did not go on tour or have a single live set.

AC/DC. Over and out.