JOB
It’s hard to believe this ended over 20 years ago. Here is the story of one of my favorite musical projects.
The whole damn thing started back in the summer of 1993, when three very young and hopeful Bay Area transplants met via the classifieds in BAM Magazine and joined forces in order to make the Bay Area safe again for smart-ass art-funk with a shuffle feel. Those three people were me on 5-string bass and vocals, Jai Young and keyboards and samples, and Adam on drums.
The honeymoon period was amazing. We rehearsed often at Adam's tiny space on 43rd/Telegraph in Oakland. But after two months and clear warning signs of future artistic differences the trio fell apart, leaving behind one big 10-minute prog/funk epic and about 97 fractions of songs which have since never been heard again (unless you want me to dig out the cassettes).
Well, the band didn't break up as much as split into two halves. Sharing a common, guiltless love of the bands Kansas, Jethro Tull, and other easy targets in the history of modern music, Jai Young and I continued to hang out and quack endlessly about this and that. Eventually we got swept up into the whole Rocker Studios scene in San Francisco, which led to us both joining the band Flywheel. Many gigs with Flywheel at the Nightbreak and Paradise ensued, including one where Peter Tork from the Monkees was in the audience, and he got up and danced wildly when we played "(She's a Real) Go-Go Dancer."
Meanwhile, in the East Bay, Adam and I continued jamming as a duo until we became one sick-ass rhythm section. We were both moon children born about a week apart, and therefore could read each other's minds. And these telepathic powers scared away most guitarists who answered our ad searching for a six-string wizard. These auditions went on forever and caused much pain and stress. Each guitarist failed greatly in one capacity or another. Maybe all capacities.
Finally one guitarist, Mark, piqued my interest. He had zero pretension and zero wankerish tendencies. As well, he was already wrapped up in a musical world completely removed from the typical Bay Area "rock" scene. Adam couldn't hang with the overtly experimental nature of Mark's creativity, but I already owned all the Henry Cow albums and quickly groked Mark's vibe.
My musical relationship with Adam slowly burned out, which was sad. We were so tightly bonded musically, and played in various low-pressure contexts just to continue working together (including backing Stevie Blacke when he lived in the Bay Area), but all attempts to do our own thing as a creative duo were met with frustrating failure, and that killed the mojo. I guess that's what happens when two moon children are in charge!
Meanwhile I followed Mark to some Splatter Trio shows and in turn found myself, like everybody in the Bay Area in the 90's, more and more interested in straight-up improvisational music. During this exciting journey, Mark and I tried meeting other like minded nutjobs in the classifieds.
Time passed, and while falling into a meditative state during the act of washing a sink full of my housemate's soiled dishes, I mused about my job at the Space Science Lab on UC Berkeley Campus. And then I thought how Jai Young, Mark, and I were the only three musicians I knew in the Bay Area with non-musical, full-time jobs.
"Wait a minute!" I thought, nearly dropping and shattering a sudsy glass. "Maybe I should introduce Mark to Jai Young... and the three of us could form a totally fucked-out experimental band... and that band would be called JOB..." Hosanna! What would this JOB band sound like? I had no idea...
Phone calls were made, and I quickly got Jai Young and Mark together for the first time at a poorly attended yet incredibly powerful Glenn Spearman Double Trio show at Kimball's East. Blown away by the performance, the three decided whatever JOB is, it will definitely contain lots of arhythmic improvisation.
The question did remain: Who is playing what? Actually, the real question was: Who is playing drums? Between the three of us we already had guitar, bass, keyboards, and violin covered, but were missing the percussion element. This got temporarily resolved as all three traded off using Jai Young's housemate Derrick's drum kit. Eventually, though, I took over as the main drummer since I dropped $700 on a used set of shells.
So the first two years of JOB were quite formative. Many "songs" got written, sometimes recorded, and eventually discarded because they didn't jibe with the band's vision which changed from day to day. Just as well, since this allowed time for me to scrape together a few drum chops, Jai Young to learn how to use his recording equipment, and Mark to convince Jai Young and I to stop writing silly songs.
These classic tunes included "A Short Biography," "Protecto," "Cigarettes," "Happy Little Girl, Hopping, Skipping," "Let's Have a Party," "32-Bar Blues," "Plotz," "Hut Bay," "Sisyphus," "Bus Wreck," "Because You're an Idiot," and "Hi-Yo." Some songs from this era got painstakingly recorded, while others were barely rehearsed. Maybe one day you'll actually get to hear some of them. Probably not, though. Well, I did record "Bus Wreck" by myself for a solo record. Yeah, it's childish, but I adored Mark's guitar riff and had to get it out there somehow.
Meanwhile we finally started getting our pinky toes into various doors of the Bay Area music scene and joined other projects on the side. I find it always pays to be a musical slut. Mark formed another improvisationally based quartet with John, Oran, and Eli. This band went through a series of confusing names, eventually settling on Sparklecock. God bless them.
Sparklecock scored a regular Sunday afternoon gig at the Chameleon, a tiny dive bar nestled snugly in the classy Mission district of San Francisco. They usually played to a small audience containing patient friends, significant others, and homeless drunks. That wasn't the most exciting crowd, but at least they got to perform in front of people, which JOB had yet to do.
That is, until the one Sunday during the hot summer of 1995, all the non-Mark members of Sparklecock fell ill, and so Mark tried to get JOB to fill in last minute. Jai Young couldn't do it, having previous obligations to engineer a demo tape recording session for some South Bay punk band. But I gladly hauled my kit to the Chameleon, and as "Hemi-JOB" we flooded the tiny venue with the noises that had previous been entirely hidden within our rehearsal studio.
Following this triumphant pseudo-debut, Sparklecock was more than happy to let JOB continue to fill in on various Sundays, and in many cases, both bands performed together at the same time. It was an exciting time for our little scene. But the party didn't last long, as Sparklecock disbanded under friendly terms, and the Chameleon was getting tired of us loud-ass improv fuckers scaring away their few potential Sunday afternoon patrons.
JOB continued into 1996 playing shows here and there, placing our small flag on the crowded map of the Bay Area improv scene. We released two cassettes during the year, "K." and "Let's Talk About God," containing nice mixes of live and studio recordings. Actually, "released" may not be the correct word, as "released" implies there was a demand for such tapes. In reality most of them were given away to friends and family, and sold only to a handful of polite strangers.
But the quality of the concerts reached higher levels this year, no thanks to a very silly and short-lived "costume phase." Well, you have to spice up the live shows somehow! At one Stork Club show we asked Erik from Mumble & Peg to jump up on stage and restrain Jai Young with a pool cue - there's a long story behind that.
The defining performance of 1996 (and since, for that matter) happened during a party at Ilan's house. Ilan, friend of Jai Young and long-time true fan of JOB, graciously allowed the band to perform at his abode. JOB showed up with no songs or prior plans for this show, and ended up playing our best one ever. Amidst one of the quieter moments towards the end I overheard a drug-addled party-goer whisper, "That was good."
Sadly this didn't get recorded, unlike the crappy Beanbender's set we played a few weeks before which got entirely captured on DAT for no good reason. However, the spirit of the party at Ilan's never died. The remaining shows of 1996 all came very close to attaining the same level of intensity of emotion. Or maybe all those mind-numbing lights at the old Stork Club in Oakland made it seem that way.
JOB always prided itself on its volume of equipment, and during 1996 some key instruments were added to the mix. I bought a Nord Lead synthesizer which was the perfect "analog" counterpart to Jai Young's new E-Mu E4K sampler. Mark, not one to be left out, commandeered Jai Young's old Emax II sampler and made great use of it. Eventually Jai Young was armed with keyboards, bass, and guitar. Mark had his doubleneck guitar/bass, sampler, and a zillion pedals/toys. I had drums, crates full of percussion, guitar, keyboard, a microphone, and a bunch of effects. Oh to be young and willing to bring so much gear to a gig!
We moved out of Rocker studios and into a much bigger/quieter space in our friend Shannon's pad a few blocks north. This allowed us to really go deeper into recording territory. In 1997 I somewhat ironically quit my boring job at the Space Lab, which availed me all kinds of time to assemble what became JOB's first full-length album, "Party at Ilan's" (obviously titled in honor of the aforementioned show). Once that was complete I got hired back at the lab again, but in a more interesting position with an actual career path.
I felt more and more spiritually connected about what we were doing in general, as we shed the silliness and got pretty dark and philosophical about it. An average rehearsal was setting up all the gear, then launching into 60 minutes of total improv. We'd listen back to what we just produced, and have a long, deep discussion about pros and cons. One day we decided to take this to the next level, and jam for 8 hours straight. We made a rule that we could take breaks but at least one of us had to be making noise during this span. Good thing, too, because after a couple hours we were already spent and we'd take turns disappearing to go outside to get some fresh air and blessed silence and maybe a drink from the store on the corner. By the fourth hour none of us had to heart to let the others down, so we plugged away until we stumbled over the finish line. We discovered no new plane of musical existence during that marathon, but at least we can say we did it. We recorded some of that session, and I don't think I've ever listened to it.
During that era we had a party at the house which resulted in a jam session that turned into more of an impromptu show: JOB plus Trey on guitar, and Eli (from Species Being, not Sparklecock) also on guitar. That rocked. Trey also sat in with the band during a show which I couldn't attend because I had a conflicting tour with Mumble & Peg at the time. Instead, I recorded a DAT full of improv drums which Mark, Jai Young, and Trey performed over. So in a way I didn't miss out.
Jai Young got a new place a few blocks north of Shannon's so we moved once again. And there we could really sink in and work on some material with his 24-channel deck and dual ADATs. For the next couple of years we continued to play shows on the improv circuit, but found ourselves continually snubbed by the Mills/improv crowd because we weren't jazz enough. We played on some rock bills, but felt like we were too weird for those audiences. So normal gigs were hard to come by. We were embraced by the noise community, which led to us playing a couple fun shows at the Experimental Music Research Laboratory in Sacramento. Material from this period could be found on the cassette "Interloper" (titled in honor of an SF Bay Express article about the avant music scene which called us "interlopers.").
The last couple of years included some fun gigs, a lot of college radio live-in-the-studio appearances, and a whole bunch of recording great sounding material in Jai Young's studio. We got an article about us in Electronic Musician magazine, and performed on a cable access show, "Live in the Studio." Things seemed positive, but this kind of music continued to prove a hard fuckin' sell. And then, life being life, Mark announced he was moving to Boston. Sad, but maybe we ran our course. We used the remaining time with Mark in town to play one final gig in SF, and finish recording our second full-length album, "North." It's a wonderful record we pretty much forgot to ever finish mixing and release. Oops!