San Jose, California isn’t really known for being much of a music town. Maybe you’ve heard of Count Five, Syndicate of Sound and the Chocolate Watchband, who all started here in the 1960’s. During the 70’s, the Doobie Brothers made it big, and in recent years, Smashmouth had some pretty good success. As I mentioned in a previous blog posting, there was some debate about the 1956 Fats Domino San Jose show being the location for one of the very first rock and roll riots in America. It may not have actually been the first rock riot, but it was one of the firsts, and it put San Jose on the map many years before the invention of Apple Computers, Google, eBay, Yahoo, etc, etc…
During the mid-80’s to late-90’s, there was a pretty vibrant music scene happening at a handful of San Jose nightclubs such as the Marsugi’s, Cactus Club, One Step Beyond, and the Laundry Works. There were a lot of great bands that never broke out in a manner befitting of their talents – Dot 3, The Diesel Queens, The Shockwaves, A Western Front, Ribzy, the Kingpins, the Calm, the Spit Muffins, the Guttersluts, Wombat Suicide, A Cruel Hoax, Half Church, Bombs for Whitey, the Spit Muffin, the ByProducts, The R.B. Firebirds, Grey Matter and a whole lot of others I’m probably leaving out.
One of the bands that really should have made it big was the Frontier Wives. As I’ve been sorting through my video archives, I found some footage I shot of them performing a “LOUIE” song. It’s not the Richard Berry song, but it’s a tribute to one of the greatest microbiologists to ever walk the earth, Dr. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895).
Led by singer-songwriter Scott Long, this band had a lot of really great music that should have made them big stars in a perfect universe that acknowledged true talent. This particular video features drummer Lex van den Berghe, who took over after Kat Hill* left the band, becoming one of the longest running members in the band. Many years later, Lex later made a name for himself, as one of the stars in that hit CBS TV show, Survivor. The band may not exist any more, but they actually have a MySpace page like so many other long-gone bands.
This live performance took place on May 16, 1991 at the Oasis nightclub in San Jose, CA, which happened to be the night Dot 3 did their final performance. I shot this footage with a very bulky industrial camera, shooting 20 minute tapes with a portable 3/4″ Umatic video recorder attached to the camera like like a big umbilical cord. Nobody paid me to shoot this footage. I just did it because I loved the music.
Enjoy!