Thursday, March 13, 1997
MUSIC:
Band with meager beginnings at Dykstra Hall talent show helped
shape early scene of genreBy Tom Komaromi
Daily Bruin Contributor
Imagine attending UCLA in 1978 and forming a joke punk rock band
in Dykstra Hall with your buddies. This was probably common, but
imagine eventually sharing bills with the Descendents, Circle Jerks
and the Meat Puppets, among others, and becoming one of the most
influential underground bands of the early California punk
scene.
This is the reality for the Urinals, three Bruin alumni who
formed a band during their freshman and junior years at UCLA. The
Urinals helped shape the punk scene of the late ’70s and early
’80s, but they have gone on to establish careers in law and
computer science; two of them now work on the UCLA campus.
While the Sex Pistols reunion last year signified a band trying
to cash in on the resurgence of punk rock, the Urinals have
returned with a more modest approach. With the recent release of
their new compilation album, "Negative Capability: Check It Out!"
on Amphetamine Reptile Records, drummer Kevin Barrett quips, "We’ve
done the time, let us do the crime."
The Urinals’ time began at a talent show in the Dykstra Hall
dining cafeteria. Armed with a toy drum set, a toy organ, two
guitars and a singer, the five-piece version of the Urinals
disgusted the jazz band which followed them, while gaining
admiration and approval from the crowd.
"We didn’t play instruments at all," recalls John Talley-Jones,
the vocalist and bass guitarist, who earned his degree in Film and
Television and currently works in data management at Ackerman. "The
whole thing was more of an experiment. It wasn’t supposed to be
musical, and it wasn’t."
Their next gig was a Halloween party held in Dykstra’s fourth
floor lounge. A friend of theirs who was at the party volunteered
to record them at a poolhouse on a Dokoder four-track reel-to-reel
machine. The Urinals sold records on their own label, Happy Squid,
and curbed utility expenses by using the "free" electrical outlets
on campus for rehearsal.
"Back when we lived in the dormitories we couldn’t find a place
to practice. So we would go to any of the parking structures on
campus that were empty and plug right in. Lot 8 was the really huge
one. We would go down to the bottom level on Sunday mornings at 10
or 11 a.m. and we used to drive the frats crazy," Talley-Jones
recounts.
In fact, one of the legendary stories (and there are many) the
Urinals have to tell recalls the time they "borrowed" an empty
studio on the eighth floor of Dickson Art Center.
There was a loud knock on the door. "I open the door and here’s
this guy in sandals and a whole tennis outfit," Barrett says. "He
goes ‘What are you guys doing?’ and I say ‘We’re playing.’ And he
goes, ‘You’re just blasting out Brentwood! You’re just blasting out
all over Brentwood!’ I was excited, and I went ‘Really!’"
It turns out the man in the tennis outfit complaining about the
noise was Chancellor Charles Young. He told them to turn down and
close the windows and they could keep playing.
"We had a successful negotiation with the chancellor," remarks
Talley-Jones.
"The next week, of course, Dickson was totally locked up," adds
Urinals guitarist Kjehl Johansen, a former philosophy student who
is now an attorney for the Los Angeles Department of Water &
Power.
The final show the Urinals performed at UCLA was a concert in
Ackerman Grand Ballroom with the Go-Go’s and X.
"We played our set and people were just like staring at us, they
weren’t even booing or clapping. We were so discouraged, we left
after our set. We didn’t stay to watch the Go-Go’s or X," recounts
Talley-Jones.
It turns out that after the Urinals had left the building
someone saw an individual urinate in the grand piano on stage
during X’s set. Naturally, the Urinals were blamed for the evil
deed.
"Someone said it was one of the Urinals, and so we got banned
from UCLA," says Talley-Jones.
After being banned from UCLA, the Urinals took their show on the
road and played various shows on the L.A. club circuit, the "beach
scene" and even Texas. Their fan base increased, and they were
frequently asked to support The Last and Black Flag. At Blackie’s,
the Urinals were on the bill the night Black Flag was arrested for
disturbing the peace.
"We had just finished our set. So we figure it was our noise
that had caused them to get arrested because we had already played
and they had barely started," states Talley-Jones.
Heard now, a decade and a half after this trio’s last show, the
31 tracks on "Negative Capability" include a delicious diversity of
tunes ranging from the one riff/one vocal line blast of "I’m A Bug"
to the crudely refined avant-garage art punk of "Black Hole." One
listen to the album indicates their early experimentation was
harder, nastier, more jaded and significantly less commercial than
any of the punk coming out of London or New York at the time. In
fact, you can’t help thinking that the Minutemen and Sonic Youth
somehow got a hold of their EPs.
What do the Urinals, well-seasoned veterans of the scene, think
about current mainstream punk rock, as opposed to the old school
punk that paved the way for much of today’s popular music with very
little credit or recognition?
"Punk rock then was a variety of different styles. There was a
whole lot of stuff going on. It hadn’t been made generic yet,"
claims Talley-Jones.
"The stuff that’s really popular now (Green Day, Offspring),
they’ve taken one strain out of that miasma and they’ve made it
their own. We were pursuing more of an experimental thing and
that’s why we don’t sound like what punk rock sounds like now. It
was a broader sort of perspective at that point."
The Urinals’ Record Release Party is Wednesday March 19 at
Spaceland. For more info call (213) 413-4442.
"We had a successful negotiation with the chancellor."
John Talley-Jones
Vocalist
Someone saw an individual urinate in the grand piano on stage
during X’s set. Naturally, the Urinals were blamed …