coming home to experimental punk
Tokyo band goes wild at Winters Tavern
The Wameki at Winters Tavern Pacifica CA Sept 6 2024
I’ve been traveling. I’m working on a couple of stories about that. This story is about coming home.
Traveling makes me nervous. By traveling, I mean the logistics of moving my body from point A to point B. The greater the distance or the more the number of time critical “appointments” along the way the worse it gets.
I wasn’t always this way. Add it to the list of insults that ageing brings on. When I was young I jumped out of airplanes for fun (over 300 times). Now just getting to the airport can turn me into a jittery psychopath. It’s not the flying that I’m worried about. I love flying. It’s that I know something is going to go wrong before I can get to my seat on the plane. Even then, the airlines today seem to have plenty of reasons NOT to taxi to the end of the runway and take off. Just get this plane in the air please! Then I can relax … until I pull out the aircraft safety card in the seat-pocket in front of me and see that we’re on a 737-Max. Better tighten up that seatbelt.
These days I prefer slow travel. Last year, rather than fly, I took the train home from LA and it took forever. It was fantastic. Great views and plenty of room to move around.
This year, my wife and I decided to drive on a lengthy trip and take our dog with us, rather than fly to a holiday in the sun without our loving hound. Our only plan was to see a part of the country we had never seen before. We could leave and return whenever we felt like it. We could stop whenever we wanted. All the hurry-up-and-wait of air travel is removed on a trip like this. That’s not to say it’s stress free.
Sometime during day one of the trip, after a couple of minor mishaps on the road, it entered my mind that we were always only 10 seconds away from a disaster. Our dog is getting older. Was he going to have an “accident” in the car? Would he or any of us get injured on one of our frequent stops? We all seem to be very accident prone now. More insults.
What weighed most heavily on my new found paranoia was our mode of travel itself. Cars today, like planes, are heavily dependent on software to function properly. All software has bugs. I spent decades making a living by tracking down those bugs and fixing them. Thankfully the car isn’t going to fall out of the sky like the ill-fated 737-Max. But OUR car, the one we opted to take on this trip, had developed a bug that would cause the “check engine” light to come on at random intervals. A couple of repair shops tried to fix this to no avail. The “dealer” tried to fix it but could find no problem. Off we went with this bug gnawing at the back of my brain.
Long story short, the trip went great; we had no problems and I eventually forgot about the bug. Along the way I started taking notice of the artwork in our motel rooms. Here’s a collage of some of that:
We got back from this trip just long enough to prepare ourselves for the next one. Prepare is an understatement because this time I would have to make mental preparations for dealing with the dreaded airport. This involves planning plenty of extra time so we can wait for however long we’re going to be waiting for everything we need to do at the dreaded airport before we get on the plane.
Fear and loathing aside, along with all the insults there are plenty of positive things about ageing. One is that I don’t mind the waiting. (I no longer mind driving the speed limit either.) Time moves along faster as you age. If it’s true that time flies when you’re having fun, I must be having a great time by now. It helps if I have these two things … a book and headphones. Reading and listening to music I can do happily for hours while in waiting mode.
The rather long flight to the east coast, made seemingly longer by being squeezed into a center seat, went by quickly in my happy state of suspended animation provided by book and music.
The flight home went by even quicker as I was able to enjoy a window seat. And I do mean enjoy. This is what I love about flying. Staring out the window. Witnessing the undeniable truth that the chair I’m sitting in is somehow defying gravity. Experiencing flying, especially in large aircraft, is one of those things that no matter how much I learn about how it works, it still blows my mind that it works at all.
All this traveling took me out of my home “routine” for over a month. Live music is a big part of my routine, and I only saw one show while I was gone. I know I missed some great shows at my local tavern, so what was on tap now? Well, this:
The Wameki: Tokyo, Japan Experimental Punk Rock
Rip Room: SF Art Punk
Fog Lamp: Oakland synth-punk
This show listing checked off 3 boxes on my must-see-this-show list.
Experimental
Art
Tokyo (or anyplace far away)
These labels of course are no guarantee of a good show. Quite the opposite in fact. Items #1 and #2 mean the bands are taking a risk to do something different. I give high marks for risk taking regardless if I think the outcome is any good. Afterall, I’m only going as far as my local tavern. This reduces the risk to nearly zero on my part. Too painful? It’s a short drive home.
Item #3 applies to any touring band. Touring great distances with a band and gear and little to no support from an investor (i.e. a label) makes my whining about traveling exactly that … whining. I have musician friends my age who still do this kind of touring. Standing O to all of you.
California is a big state. There are many places for bands to play, but they are spread out over great distances compared to touring on the east coast, or even in Europe. Touring a band is a lot of work, but touring the west coast of North America is epic. Any band that flies over an ocean and lands at my local tavern to play for me … well, I’m there.
And so it was last Friday. I was jonesing for a show and these bands more than fit the bill. Once the first band, Fog Lamp, worked out some frustrations with the PA, they eventually found their groove. From there on, the pacing of the show was nearly perfect. Each band ratcheted up the energy level as though accepting a challenge.
Rip Room was an incredibly tight trio. They’ve apparently played Winters Tavern before but this was my first time seeing them. Earlier this year they toured Japan, so it was that connection that had them helping out The Wameki on this tour. Big thanks to Rip Room for making this show happen.
By the end of the Rip Room set the place was really buzzing. It didn’t take The Wameki long to set up. If you were paying attention, the first thing you noticed is their minimal instrumentation. They are a bass, drum, vocal trio. The drummer had only two drums, bass and snare, along with a high-hat. The bass player had only 2 strings on his bass. I’m pretty sure that’s by design, but I didn’t ask him. The vocalist occasionally whipped out a tiny harmonica. I guess that explains why they (jokingly?) label their music as “Tokyo Blues” on their Bandcamp site. I would call it hard-driving-loosely-composed improvisation. Yeah, let’s just go with Tokyo Blues.
Since I hadn’t been to a show in awhile, I really didn’t want to shoot any video. I just wanted to enjoy the show. But by the end of the set by The Wameki, I couldn’t help myself. The energy level was off the hook. Everybody in the place was about to explode. I had to try and capture it. That’s what you see in the video up top.
Welcome home.
Here are Bandcamp links for all 3 bands:
It's good to travel. It's also good to come back home. Being away from home reminds you of all the good things we enjoy daily but forget to appreciate. Including nutty live music.