Zinfandel – 1986
Zinfandel was my first “band”, and I use that term loosely. It was basically me and my future brother-in-law Matt just jamming metal tunes we made up. I don’t even think we had any complete songs. My kit was a Pearl Export series and we joined it together with an old kit Matt had so I could have two bass drums. Because back in the day if you didn’t have two bass drums, you just weren’t a real drummer.
No Name – 1987
After I moved out of Matt and my house, I got an apartment in a crappy complex right next to a bunch of cranksters. My brother was the manager so I got it cheap. $250 a month for a two bedroom and I could play my drums anytime I wanted. Sweet!
So I kicked around with a band at this time that for the life of me I cannot remember the name of. The singer was a tweaky guy that would pull on his hair like that character Kristen Wiig does on SNL. You know, the gal that is a compulsive liar?
Our guitar player was a mexican dude named Robert and he was a fantastic player. Did the best Ronnie James Dio impersonation I’ve ever seen. Cool guy, but he was probably in his mid to late 20′s, much older than the rest of us. This is the band that first introduced me to spandex pants and yes, we all wore them proudly.
Serpentine – 1989
Serpentine was my first “real” band. By real I mean we actually wrote complete, original songs. By this time I was already really good on double bass and I was fast as heck. Peter Nunez played guitar and Dave Brandow was on bass. We never had a singer so we just wrote these 10 minute long instrumentals that were crazy fast and complex. I really loved this band and improved a ton in the short time we jammed just because of the complexity of the music and the time we put in. It was kind of crazy because for as technical as we were, we all had been playing only a few years.
At one point we were looking for a singer and only tried out one guy. He was an older dude that came in and looked like a tow truck driver. He only knew AC/DC songs and really didn’t fit our style, so that didn’t work out.
We played one big rager at Dave and Pete’s house and that was really our only gig. It was fun though and I still have video.
The band didn’t last long though. Pete’s family moved to Colorado and so the band broke up. I never knew what happened to Pete but I hooked up with Dave in 2010 on Facebook and we had a few beers together. Some day I’ll get him to come down and jam with me. Probably one of the best bass players I’ve ever played with.
St. Holland – 1990
St. Holland was a hair metal cover band and the first band I joined after moving to Fresno. I had met a guitarist named Jim “Machine Gun” Kelly who in turn introduced me to a guy named Gary Jo. Gary was putting together a cover band and needed some players. The band formed and we gigged for about 3 months, playing 4 nights a week at a popular Fresno club called Knock Three Times. At the time this was the coolest club in Fresno. It had three rooms and a different band in each room. I learned a lot about learning songs quickly and stage showmanship from this band.
Unfortunately in the late 80′s it was all about being “Hollywood” and so even though we had a perfectly good band and a great following, Gary broke it up to start a band called Mr. Rude (which still gigs occasionally to this day).
