Davis Days
By Sean O'Brien
I came to Davis in the fall of 1977 at the height of the Alan Bakke protest over racial prejudice being the culprit as to his lack of entry into the UCD Medical School. Well he had won his little case and gotten into the school with a frothy media blather, but was not a happy camper. My very first day on the campus I saw him; a short, squat sour looking fellow, traverse a line of surly picketers screaming in his face. So much for Davis being a bit of a sleepy backwater! I moved into the Tercero Dorm (bldg. C) and was paired up with a very nice guy named James Nakashima as my roommate. James had a friend named Jim Veit, whose friend Ed played me "God Save The Queen" by the Sex Pistols. He laughed as it played, calling it a 'joke' record,but I knew it wasn't a joke. That record really affected me. I began listening to KDVS and hearing a lot of strange, new and wonderful music. I began going to the UCD Coffeehouse and seeing amazing shows like:
Elvis Costello - on his first American tour stopping the show to eject a drunken heckler, and then BURNING through the rest of the set with NO encore. I have bootleg of the previous night's show in Berkeley from that tour that is nowhere near as good as the show I saw.
Devo – paying $2.50 for an over-sold show where I could only stand in the aisle. Mark Mothersbaugh flooped onto the ground and grabbed my leg while performing. Fantastically fun!
Iggy Pop – the badass sass boy himself ooggling women in the audience, asking strange questions like "Does red or white wine come out of those?" while pointing to a woman's busom. Glen Matlock from the Sex Pistols, Brian James from The Damned, and Ivan Kral from the Patti Smith Group were in band. I later saw Matlock with the Sex Pistols in 1996, having missed the Winterland show in 1978 because I couldn't get a ride from Davis.
The Ramones – watching through the glass of the Coffeehouse because I couldn't get a ticket and the volume causing the glass to vibrate wildly.
XTC – Peter Fraser interviewing the band and Andy Partridge referring to his microphone as a gray penis. Later taping the show off the Radio. Still have that cassette somewhere I think.
Going to a record signing of the B-52's at the record shop on G Street. I have an autographed 45 of their first single signed by the band (R.I.P. Ricky Wilson, who signed the disc "Love Ricky"). The band later kicked ass over the Talking Heads at a show at Freeborn Hall.
Gang of Four, Joe Jackson, The Suspects, The Specials and several others I could probably remember by looking through the Cal Aggie newspaper archive.
My band before I got to Davis was Blair's Diving Mules, and had played together in my hometown of San Jose for a number of years. The other members were not Davis students however, and getting together to play was difficult. I switched majors after a couple of quarters when I realized I could never pull the GPA necessary to be considered for veterinary school, and began hanging out in the drama department and performing in many plays there. I was able to convince the band up to record some live demos at KDVS in April 1979. Already a DJ by then, I had twisted Steve Wynn's arm into letting me start with a Sunday morning 3:30-6:30 A.M. time slot. I had gotten to know the other Suspects because they had played a party at the house I shared with James Nakashima and Jim Veit my second and third years there. The cops had shut down the party and I then had cemented my unrequited crush on Kendra Smith. I also remember them jamming at a very late night drunken party at the station, where the band was literally playing on top of Steve's desk. I remember Kendra playing bass that night too. A harbinger of things to come.
I was really impressed with the Suspects. There were no other bands in town playing that kind of music at the time and their fearlessness encouraged me to get a band of my own. I was really impressed with Russ Tolman's guitar playing. He sounded a lot like Johnny Thunders, whom I was a big fan of already (I played a lot of New York Dolls records on my show). Once the Suspects broke up, I convinced Russ to play a show with a band I put together called The List. The band consisted of Rick Steele from BDM and Eli Simon on drums, whom I had met at the drama department. We played one show live at the Wyatt Theater and Rick threw wads of rubber gloves at the crowd during our BDM original song, "Rubber Glove Love". The audience went berserk! They loved it! The List also recorded a demo at KDVS. That band morphed into The Meantime. Russ encouraged me to write more and more songs. It was a pressure filled situation, but the discipline really helped me develop my ideas. We began to play gigs at the China Wagon, Galactica 2000, and someplace on the K Street mall (where I turned 21 and had my first legal drink, while being serenaded by Tito Larriva of The Plugz, whom we were opening for) in Sacramento. We also frequently played the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco (thanks mainly to the support of Dirk Dirksen R.I.P.) and the occasional show in Berkeley. I had a great time both playing with my own band and being part of the community that went out to see shows as well. We networked without the aid of the Internet as to what the good bands were and which records to buy/play on the radio shows.
Russ and I went through a lot of rhythm sections, mostly because students move in and out of Davis so rapidly. We eventually met Rick Gates, whose father is David Gates of the 70's soft-rock big selling group Bread. As a birthday gift to his son, he gave us a free day in his studio in LA, where we cut two songs. One was the old Suspects' number, 'Two for One", that Russ had written, and the other tune was mine, called "Some Say Yes". Russ financed our first single and we slapped two more tunes onto the b-side that we had recorded at KDVS with Steve Wynn at the controls.
More and more bands were formed. I had a creative writing class with Scott Miller, who had his excellent band Alternate Learning. KDVS played their demo of "Dark Days" a lot. Good tune. Scott also wrote some very cool science fiction stories for the class. Guy Kyser I knew a bit through KDVS. I later became a big fan of his band Thin White Rope. They recorded Sackful of Silver with Tom Mallon of American Music Club, whom I later recorded with as well, with my later band Denim TV.
Russ urged us to change the name of the band to True West so we did. We opened for bands like Gang of Four, Human Sexual Response, The Plugz, and The Blasters. I remember playing the Firehouse and jumping around the stage in vinyl pants and shoes! The kind of power pop we played comes in and out of fashion, and someone dubbed us "The Osmonds of punk rock", which seemed like a slag at the time, but now seems kind of cool. At least I thought so when years later I saw the Osmond brothers (sans Donnie, Marie or Jimmy) performing their great tune "Crazy Horses" at the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. But as graduation came, I found my interest was wandering. The band was not enough to keep me in Davis, and I wanted to move down to the Bay Area and try my hand at acting in the theater community down there. I stayed in Davis for about eight months after I graduated and had trouble finding a job. I played my last show with TW in January 1982, opening for The Blasters at the UCD Coffeehouse. An ironic way to end my time there I think. I got an acting gig in a play in Berkeley and moved down there, living initially in a YMCA, then a frat house. I was very happy for TW when their EP came out later that year with "Lucifer Sam" on it and did so well. No regrets. I was surprised by the material however. It was a very different direction than the stuff I was writing at the time. I think the songs Russ wrote for them are beautiful and when I saw them recently open for the Violent Femmes at the Fillmore in San Francisco, I thought so again. I followed the career of the Dream Syndicate too, as they put out records and toured. I saw them open for REM in Santa Barbara in 1983 or 84 during Karl Precoda's last days with the group, where he seemed to be playing in a frenzy of his own.
I have stayed in touch with Russ and Steve over the years and recently had Russ and Rick Steele with me to record tracks for my last CD, Seed of Mayhem. I also played an acoustic show at KDVS recently that was a lot of fun. I plan to release the Meantime/True West recordings I have next year on a compilation called The Drug of Memory.