A significant portion of my life has been shaped and influenced by varying degrees of depression, contorting much of my interaction with the world into a funhouse mirror of distorted perception. In the winter of 2000, I was living at a punk house at 217 S. Phoenix in Tulsa, Oklahoma (now an empty lot), and struggling with my heckish take on reality even more than usual.
Earlier that summer, despite momentarily living in my car, I’d managed to go out on my first tour, but upon returning to Tulsa the band I was in fell apart. I worked full time as a baker, which meant early to bed, early to rise, and subsequently I was isolated from all my night owl roomies, some of who would still be up playing the first Grand Theft Auto game in the living room when I’d be leaving for work. By December I had started to drift into resentfulness. I was out of patience with some of the various people that would come over to see bands play in our basement, then drink 40s in the front yard long after the bands were done and I had asked them to take it elsewhere so I could sleep. I was burnt out on all the people around me that were slipping into a drug addiction that I didn’t really understand, but that had crept in like a menacing, impermeable fog. At some point I realized that my housemates thought I was a bit of a jerk, and I could no longer tell if that was on them or me. I felt very alone, and didn’t find meaning in what I was doing anymore.
On New Year’s Eve morning I left Tulsa with the intention of being done with the place for good, heading West to visit friends of mine in Prescott, Arizona, of all places. This was poorly planned, to say the least, and while I did get a part time job as a dishwasher the second day I was there, after a month I was out of money and had to return.
Fortunately, in deciding to break away from my hometown, I realized I could still, at that point in my life, go out and live somewhere else, meet new people, and do different things. I saw that it wasn’t necessary to struggle to tread water in an environment that I felt was only pulling me down. My feelings of powerlessness receded and I saw my environment differently for the first time in awhile.
By February, I wanted to get out and see live music again. I felt a peaceful detachment from all the darkness that seemed to pervade the music scene (as I knew it) in Tulsa. I had decided that I wanted to relocate to San Diego after spending 4 days there while on my Arizona visit. Though I wouldn’t actually get around to moving away from Tulsa until the second half of 2003, I felt as though I had suddenly become just a temporary tourist there- a visitor passing through. The pulsing, black hole vibes induced by the heroin use and heavy drinking that had perpetuated in my absence weren’t going to lay a finger on me.
The first time upon returning that I decided to poke my head out and go see some bands play wasn’t at the Phoenix House where I had been living, or even the somewhat more “proper” venue, The Eclipse, but rather an even more dilapidated residence just around the corner from it at 620 South Quincy.
Matt Norman, Chris Schluneger, and John Tinsley were staying there, and Jesse Markus had set up the show. There were lots of smiling faces (and a few unusually guant ones), but the main memory I have of being there was total excitement to see some buddies of mine from Fort Smith play together in a newly formed group called BG.
I went with my friend Carmen, and we picked up my 14 year-old brother, Daniel, and his friend, Brenton, and my dad’s video camera on the way. We got there too late to see the first band, a local metal-influenced group clad all in black called Enlow, but were all set to see The Handshake Murders and BG. I’d seen HSM play at the Phoenix House basement before with Jayson Holmes just singing, but for this show and all the rest of the times I saw them he had also taken on guitar duties. After dedicating their first song “to Rastaaaa…” they set about bulldozing through a set consisting of material that would be tightened up and presented as “Bury the Effigy” the following year.
Following HSM’s proggy assault, BG quickly set up and rather drastically escalated the evenings BPMs. The creative core of the band consisted of guitarist Evan Garner and drummer Jason Garvey, and to my delight their sound was substantially informed by their respective former bands, Burned Up Bled Dry and Rash of Beatings. Oscillating between Black Sabbath-influenced rock riffs and straight up grindcore, BG blasted the audience with a facility that made the spastic hardcore they delivered look almost easy, while sonically feeling like being strapped to a rocket taking off.
I was happy to be there, feeling like I was taking off along side them.
Fairly Loud Noises 