Nicolai’s band swelled to an enormous size. He decided to call it Random Arts Festival. The name was indeed apropos. There were times when I would get off stage and people did not know that I’d been playing. The line up consisted of Nicolai on guitar and vocals, me on guitar and vocals!, David Grey on guitar and vocals!!, Chris McGrath on Vocals!!!, Ian Jacobus a rapper(?), Hector Becera on drums, Adrian Lopez on percussion, (oh yeah and I almost forgot) the man whose name was (I kid you not) Timba Leather on bass. Best rock name ever.

Nicolai used so much fuzz that notes rarely appeared. Dave played bend after bend and tons of rigadiga (you know....rigadiga-rigadiga-rigadiga-rigadiga). Kind of a seventies spaz guitar, no phrasing cocktail. It’s too bad too because he’s a breathtaking acoustic player. The rhythm section sounded like a subway train rumbling into a station. Hector could be so musical one moment and the next the train would fly off the rails. Timba played bass with a pick, basically strumming the notes. The weirdest one was Chris who had such a contorted, strangled sound and stage presence that people thought he was the lead singer. Ian was a good rapper. He wrote some deft intros to some songs. But he was lost at sea.

When you’re in a band of that size it is imperative that everyone leave tons of space. This is a lesson we never learned. We all played tons of notes. It was extremely chaotic. Additionally, we were too 70s to be 90s. We were too hippy to be punk. We were too everything to be anything and we had a rapper. The biggest problem, though, was that it was too much work for me. Nicolai would bring in skeletons of songs and I had to fix them and teach the band.

Still this band had some things other bands I’ve been in did not have. We played tons of gigs. We didn’t care who did not show up. We were hell bent. We played every small and mid sized club in NYC and we played twenty-six times in two and a half months in Colorado (the misadventures of which I’ll describe later). Good clubs out there as well. We were a family and we made friends and changed peoples lives. We had our great moments as a band as well. We played so much that there grew a comfort level on stage that I have not had in other situations.

Nicolai, despite his criminal tendencies wrote some great music. The other guys, despite theirs, were good friends.

It's Not Mine
- posted by danvt @ 5:05 PM