a short story about a nightclub singer at war
Pioelmalo
Or
The tell-all, name-dropping confession of a unrepentant
Gig addict
It dawned on me a couple of months back, while I was playing to yet another
sweaty, happy, horny, and drunken crowd, that I have been singing in nightclubs
almost all of my life.
My name is Piero Ornelas and I am a nightclub singer.
Most of my friends who used to play with me have long since quit music for
more secure and less dangerous lives. And most of them seem pretty content with
it. not that I blame them, playing in a band is one of those things that a lot
of people get into when they’re in high school, living at home with energy to
burn, and optimistic about almost everything. and as the world closes in on
them with all of it’s compromises, and demands, it seems only natural to put
away childhood things and get down to the business of life.
not me. this is my life
I am one of those strange creatures, someone who just won’t give up no matter
how bad I get my ass kicked.
my reasons are many:
I never got much of an academic education to speak of, growing up in Berkeley
in the 70’s and all, with alternative education consisting mostly of groovy
field trips, arts and crafts, and how to roll joints properly, all courtesy of
a well meaning if somewhat misgiuded mother and friends who were the founders
of the berkeley alternative school district. not to mention my traditional
schooling ending in disaster when I refused to recite the pledge of alligance
in third grade..c.;
( my mother ended up cussing the principle out.) but I have recived an
education of another sort late in life. by way of being a bandleader I have
learned conversational Ethiopian, Japanese, and Arabic. I have learned
gardening, I have learned cooking, sewing, first aid, evasive driving, contract
negotiation, computer skills, how to make love, how to make war, and how to
make out in general.
also my family while not ever being really POOR (I’ve been to brazil and seen
REAL poor people and NO ONE I have ever met in cali qualfies, don’t fuck with
me on this unless you are prepared to live in a favela for a week)was always
BROKE that effected every relationship I ever had because I learned to share
with other broke kids and because a lot of people didn’t ever want thier kids
to hang out with my family because we were (and acted like) kids from the wrong
side of the tracks. but once again, for every door that was closed by fortune
and economics ten others opened to the young sincere artist ( me) and that put
me in touch with the world in a way that most millionares envy
by way of being a percussionist, singer,and band leader, I have met
extraordinary people who have left impressions that have lasted a lifetime, and
for some reason it just seems correct
for me to remember them in my music:
the people and the places:
the crackhead who gave me his last 3 dollars when I got stuck after a gig at
the paradise lounge in the city,
a bodyworker who touched me on the shoulder and made me cry at a party we were
playing at, and gently asked me ”you were molested as a child weren’t you?”
getting jumped by two beautiful women on my birthday and after one of those
nights where I have my wildest dreams come true, only to wake up to an empty
house in walnut creek being stared at by some angry looking guy with a gun who
wanted to know what I was doing there.
accidentally wiping out a whole squad of law enforcement vehicles (more on that
later) standing vigil at a friend’s bedside as he recovered from brain surgery,
assisting in the birth of a fan’s baby and being present for the baby’s naming
ceremony. and hitting a perfect James brown slide right off the stage at the
civic center at sound check for the bammies , and crashing into nightranger’s
drum kit, (well I was only a lad)
the action:
music and my life in it have also brought me into conflict with some real
assholes
and being the hands-on guy that I am, and feeling responsible things that went
on around me ( these days I think they call that kind of behavior co-dependant)
has got me into over 200 streetfights and I won them all, except for the time
when I was working for digital underground’s album release party, and a 300
pound guy with security flashlight cracked me in the head when I wasn’t
looking, with all his might splitting my skull, and giving me a twitch in the
ring finger of my right hand that won’t go away not to mention teaching me a
much needed lesson that I was very mortal. fate later placed him in a
wheelchair, but then we all get our knocks in this biz
and the parties. oh, the parties. and the excesses, roll over caligula!
I have partied with mayors, senators, city council members, prostitutes,
health care workers , save-the-rainforest activists, smitten college girls who
found my dark side fascinating, baddass dykes who taught me a thing or two
about who could drink who under the table, drug dealers ( oh my!) off duty
police (ooh, you traitor) and big time rock stars. (you just wait, I’ll be one
of them by the time that this article comes out, just kidding!) I’ve stayed up
for days on huge mountains of pure coke, smoked fistfuls of powerful greenbud,
and came down with the help of bowls filled to the brim with vailums,
Quaaludes, and codines. I have acid tripped naked right into the middle of
forests with people I had just met at parties, I have feasted on lobster
bisque, salmon, fillet mignon, huge fruit and cheese trays, I’ve played giant
food festivals like a Francis Ford Coppola benefit, where 100 restaurants
rolled out their best goodies. I have tasted incredibly expensive wines,
liquors, cigars, and champagnes that I never would have been to enjoy had I not
been a singer with happening band. ( well I was just a lad)
and the intrigue:
I have had to match wits with totally corrupt and bloated rock managers like
David r*****n (full name deleted for legal reasons)who hated the fact that I
still had a shred of innocence in me at 24, and destroyed my band the, freaky
executives while making a ton of money for himself and breaking up some of my
oldest and dearest friendships in the process. ( my naiveté on the other hand
was something he positively adored. final score david r******n=1 Piero=0)
tough old Mafia types like the Corona brothers who ran the old Stone on
Broadway in s.f. who treated me like a son only after I showed a willingness to
mix it up (fight) with them over how much money we were supposed to make at a
gig one night.
there are lots of funny memories too,
like the time Greg Khin played a show with us (goodtime cafe a late 80’s
television series) coming backstage after his set, he busted out several
bottles
of champagne, made a toast to us “here’s to the freaky executives!” and then
pulled out his acoustic guitar and sang some old tunes with us till his ride
came for him.
five minutes later the comedian Steve bernstein comes in shouting “who the fuck
drank my champagne?!
and the unknown:
the totally improbable, x files type of impossible shit like coming home
from pleasant valley via Dublin and being mistaken for an infamous stickup
artist, by a multi agency task force (1 FBI 2 local) who had staked out the gas
station for what later turned out to be my double. we got back on the freeway
and got pulled over. the driver mark baum, (who now plays with buddy love)
saxophonist extrodinare, and all-around nice guy, thinking we were just
getting a parking ticket gets out smiling license in hand, only to face a
rather large group of nervous law enforcement officials with semi-automatic
weapons screaming at the top of their lungs on megaphones GET BACK IN THE CAR!
doing just that, he then got a new set of orders, GET OUT OF THE CAR! NO! NOT
YOU! YOU ! IN THE BACK WITH THE LEATHER JACKET! referring to our guitarist mike
maung (the original guitarist for the heavy metal band Exodus and with me the
CO-founder of the freaky executives who was proudly sporting his floor length
gray leather jacket) YEAH! YOU! backing up with his hands on his head as per
their orders, he was quickly surrounded by them, holding guns to his head, all
the while not realizing that when the three cars had pulled us over, the last
car had left it’s rear end out in the lane a few feet, when all of a sudden a
18 wheeler driven by a tweaked out white rastafarian from fresno (not common in
those days) slammed into the last car, which crashed into the middle car, which
rolled into the first car and the whole group of cars then collided with a nice
crunch into a cement wall of an overpass like one big metallic smoothie. fat
cops flying through the air, screaming FBI agents and us, just a tired band
from Berkeley, all thought it was over when the gas tanks from the big rig
ruptured, raining diesel fuel on all of us (who by then, were pretty much
prepared to die.) only the crackle of police radios could be heard on that
quiet summer night in 1986.
( FBI and police=0 -freaky executives=3)
the personal and tragi-comic drama:
my relations with the other singer in our band the mighty Scotty roberts, one
of the baddest multi- instrumentalists and groove writers alive, were not
helped when his sister (then 15) and I fell madly in love, and as if there was
not already enough drama going on , now we had Romeo and Juliet, the hatfields
and MCcoys, complete with her brothers wanting to kick my ass every time they
saw me. it ended up breaking up the band and I left town for many years after I
had to let her go and still have not recovered from her absense in my life.
and the personal struggles with my inner demons:
my self destructive side climbing the huge construction crane on the campus
and dangling off the side, wondering who would even care if I let go, plottng
the death of the man who brainwashed my mother into thinking he was god and
then desroyed my family
nights crying alone in total terror of my fucked-up life without a family,
sleeping on steam vents to stay warm, stealing food from the hare krishna
storeroom on oregon st, and feasting on the plentiful plum and apricot trees
that gave fruit in the summertime on benvenue ave, hopping rides on the back
of AC transit busses by grabbing the signpost and holding on for dear life just
in time to make to a gig at a party where I could eat all the food I wanted,
and the one most beautiful moment where I was rocked gently to sleep on a long
flat tree branch of a weeping willow in the middle of Ho Chi Mein (willard)
park, kept cozy from the warm air that rose from the ground, protected from
the rain in the middle of a lightning storm.
for all my complaints, I would not trade that moment for anything.
the badguy:
looking back on those wild times I wonder just how much damage I must have
done,
packing weapons, doing drugs, chasing women relentlessly, fighting at the drop
of a hat, lying my ass off and just being full of myself in general. if I could
remember everybody I hurt I would send a written apology to all of them but I
don’t think there’s enough paper to print them all on. not to say that I was a
badguy, but I did give myself the surname “El Malo”.
the good guy:
I made it my business to defend, on-call any ladies in distress, younger guys
in trouble, women being stalked by their ex’s , and would join any territorial
gang disputes where I felt I was needed. in short I was a low-budget barrio
jump-over-the-wrecked-car-save-the-baby-and-knock-out the bad-guy wannabe
superhero, with mixed results and then some.
the mysterious past:
my father was a black and Cuban urban criminal poet who is something of a cult
figure to a whole generation of Chicano art professors like Jose montoya and
Esteban villas to whom he taught communist gangster philosophy when he talked
them into
getting into the UC educational system, they later became the first Chicano art
professors in California history and now both live in Sacramento, Jose’s son
Richard
montoya is a brilliant performer with Culture Clash the Latino comedy ensemble.
I found about my father’s colorful history from the montoyas by accident when
I met Richard at the cafe med one day and he knew me from my band, my new band
that is, Los Angelitos. I have never made sense of all the contradicting
stories about his life , stuff he was supposed to have done, (stealing actor
gorge raft’s entire wardrobe, surviving a 4 story fall from a building starting
the latino political movement in northern California) friends and enemies he
made et. etc. but I like to think that my father ralphael ornelas would be
proud of me for being a kickass performer, I would write more about him but it
would take volumes and I haven’t decided how I feel about the man I never
really knew.
did I say kickass? oh yeah, I’ve packed almost every gig I have played in 20
years
I play timbales, piano, drums, I sing, act, arrange, bandlead, write, manage,
book,
and talk shit in general. and most of my life, I have paid my rent doing it.
at some point people reading this will think I am just tooting my horn, well
just check this out: TOOT! TOOT! TOOT! I earned it! I am an authentic O.G. so
y’all
just cool out while I finish my story!
hanging out with the big boys:
my favorite thing about being a bandleader is the chance to check out some
truly
gifted musicians and performers up-close I have had the honor to have played
the same shows with James Brown, Chaka Khan, Morris Day and the time, the
greatful dead, Huey Lewis and the news, Primus, Los Papines Sonora Poncena the
red hot chili peppers, the busboys, Santana, Bobby valentin
and a whole slew of my local heroes like, chrome dinette, the Tubes, the
uptones
The limbomanics , Big city, zula pool, the looters, papa’s culture, and our
protegees the mofessionals who carried on the tradition of the freaky
executives, and kicked ass.
the continuing struggle for musical unity:
the freakies did something that nobody else at the time did: we brought
together low riders, brothers, frat boys, punk rockers, feminists, politicians,
gangsters, new wavers, metalheads, and gay rights activists, into one room and
gave them a reason to party together like family. and my new band Los Angelitos
has done it even better but the job is harder now. that cross cultural shit
where people dug hanging out with others who were different than them has been
replaced by a clickish my-shit-is the-only-cool-shit-and-if
you’re-not-down-with-my-shit-then-you-ain’t-about-shit mentality, (not helped
by whiney, culturally ignorant journalists like you know who)
which is funny, cause so many “trendsetting” journalists are just little
pre-programmed MTV babies who can’t wait to slurp down another pepsi, and smoke
another pack of lucky strikes just because some so-called “alternative” type ad
told them to. yes I’m guilty too, with my cotton baggies, cholo pullovers, pimp
socks and clove cigarettes smelling of amber perfume with grease in my hair and
a cool beatnick goatee, guilty as charged. but I try to keep an open mind.
I AM A GIGWARRIOR, night after night, gig after gig, fight after fight, I get
my ass kicked by life in the music biz, and with a black eye and a bloody lip I
show up every time at every gig with a gleam in my eye, ready for more I’m a
gig addict who can’t get enough and nothing you can do or say will ever stop me
until the day I die. in fact I’m just getting started, I am a baddass,
unstoppable show machine, radiating can-do, the , a musical warrior who fights
to the finish, a statewide cultural ambassador who can go into any musical
scene I care to at will, where others fear to tread, I go boldly, shamelessly
and without fear
yeah I have an atttitude, but at least it’s a good one.
I draw my strength from my heroes (mostly dead now) Huey Newton, who fed me,
Jerry rubin, who gave me quarters to by candy with, on the Ave, swami
prabupahda , the man who started the Krishna movement for asking me to pray,
( chant my son, chant!) Rick stevens who sang for tower of power before going
to San quintin for murder 1, who saw me and my brother hungry outside a gig at
harmon gym on campus and brought us inside and backstage where we feasted on
deli trays,(I think it was here that I decided to sing) and my godmother jackie
Wilson and her husband Kenneth Okulolo (singer and bass player for afro beat
band kotoja) who always gave me shelter and relentlessly taught me how to see
the gray.
countless surrogate mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers, who selflessly
offered me help when I was a fucked -up kid wandering the avenue with no place
to go, all of them are my power
their love for me has kept me alive and kicking
the politics:
revisionist historians (like kate colman) will hate this but fuck it, while
people who
wanted so bad to be revolutionary were sleeping off the LSD from their
all-night love -ins the black panthers were getting up at 7 A.M. and feeding
me breakfast. and while the RCP and the spartacus youth league and the sexual
freedom league
(led by William brumfield AKA Richard thorne the infamous child molester.) were
fighting the forces of evil, we were a whole generation of broken hearted kids
who got crushed in the middle of your “sexual revolution” is it any wonder why
so many of us distrust your so-called leftist bullshit? your jive sneering
guilt driven politics, your total inability to come to terms with the fact that
while you were serving your own emotional needs we were getting molested and
fucked over on a epidemic scale. most of you now are just bitter old hacks who
thought you were so much better than everybody else . all your gurus, all your
self-help, all your attempts to escape your culturally bankrupt pasts, have
come to this. and you think you are heroes when you tell me to put out my
cigarette, or when you have your stupid Critical Mass “rallies” where you
shout, and scream, and pretend like you are doing something “revolutionary”
breaking windows on telegraph Ave when poorer of us and the less educated of
us already fought and got our asses kicked by the FBI and local police so long
ago that some people wonder if there ever really were real riots in Berkeley,
yeah I was there yeah I got gassed Yeah, I was scared when tanks full of
national guard came rolling into our town enforcing martial law and squashing
what was left of an already ailing left. so don’t fucking pretend like you are
fighting tooth and nail to prevent the spread of fascism because many leftists
are fascists. sexually repressed, drug addicted, mean spirited, elitists of an
old Berkeley leftist ethic that never really existed in the first place, you’re
not revolutionaries, real revolutionaries take care of their children. and when
some baddass beats up some girl, or someone gets their purse snatched or
someone draws a gun you turn into scared little citizens more than ready to
call some of those big bad policemen you claim to hate so much. you all know
who you are, so hang that on the rotted coat rack of your guilty white
conciounce and get out of my face! angry enough for you? good! now that we got
that out of the way we can get on with the story
the freaky years:
I was hanging out on telegraph Ave in 1981 with the son of a very rich Berkeley
landlord and restrauntuer, name of stewart, who just happened to be a master
thief
which was funny, in the light of the fact that his family was rich, maybe he
needed
the thrills. anyway, him and I took to each other and started a petty drug
dealing ring, with drugs we had stolen from another dealer. I had just quit my
son montuno
band Conjunto Carabali which featured josh Jones who now leads hueman flavor on
timbales and me on vocals, I was tired of all the petty bullshit that went on
within the Latin music scene so I just up and quit, and got into my criminal
side
that summer mike maung approached me about starting a band me and mike
were always bumping into each other at the Berkeley square, where we would come
to see the English beat, the bow bow , talk talk, the clash and many others
and Scotty roberts
was then putting together one of his bands Scotty and the rockers he had just
got a huge wad of cash from his uncle, and he called me about writing some
songs for his record. by the time we got around to writing the songs, me and
mike had been playing with our band which was
inspired by a show by a band called Mojo where lead singer Arno Elzy blew us
away
wearing a golden g-string, 6 inch platforms, and one of those glittery
wrap-around snake bracelets so popular in the 80’s sang his ass off and made
straightforward political commentary
we knew that was what we wanted to do and we named the band The freaky
Executives ( an inside joke between us and Richard Moron, our first manager)
Scotty came by the little apartment on the corner of martin Luther king and
Berkeley way one morning and said “lets go to the studio!” we did, and hung out
at the record plant in sausalito where we ordered out expensive Thai food and
smoked lots of weed and actually got some recording done. we took uptempo raw
funk beats, added ska and salsa horns and guitars, and sung about, dance,
music, sex, and romance, the record deal never came though, and soon me and
mike were back to our political funk-rock band. in 1983 after relentlessly
bothering Michael Bailey at the Berkeley square (who now is the manager of the
Fillmore in S.F.) we finally landed a gig opening for the Uptones. led by Eric
Dinwiddie (who now leads the Stiff Richards) our drummer at the time wasn’t
very tight and when Scotty heard that we were playing with the Uptones, who at
that time ruled the Berkeley and San Francisco club scene, he offered to play
drums for the gig, he did and we blew the crowd away with our salsafunkabilly
ska-political sound and from that on the “freakies” as we came to be called
took over the whole area musically speaking.
later came David rubinson the manager for herbie hancock and producer for the
pointer sisters in the 70’s he wowed us with his row after row of platinum and
gold records on the wall of his office and studio The Automat things went well
under his guidance gig’s got bigger, our press got louder, and we started
negotiating a record contract with Warner brothers records, everything was
going until the subject of money came up between band members, who would get
what? I the founder and lead singer and writer of most of the material was
told that I was should get more than the others okay, I thought , I do more
work so I should get something extra, what I didn’t know was that rubinson had
already turned Scotty and most of the band against me ( not hard, as I was the
wild one in the group and was more concerned about loyalties and fun, then a
record deal) I was portrayed as the crazy mixed-up one who surely would spoil
the deal for every body , truth was rubinson was planning to fleece the entire
band out of a lot of money, and I was the only one in the way. I was set-up at
a meeting at long life vege house in Berkeley, surrounded by the band members
rubinson had chosen for the meeting, I was told never again to cuss on stage,
and that I would have to turn over more of the singing to Scotty ( the failed
production of the album revealed why: they wanted a prince clone and Scotty,
looked liked prince) I after realizing that this was an ambush, told all of
them to go fuck themselves, and the next day had my lawyer call them about
buying the name freaky executives from me. and after stalling me for about 6
months they folded and I walked with a settlement. they did a few gigs but
turned into a low budget version of the time, the album was shelved, and some
three quarters of a million dollars badly spent, wound up in the pockets of the
producer chico bennet, the executive producer benny medina, and david rubinson.
session after session of unnecessary mastering and “sweetening” were all sent
to me
as proof that every thing was on the level, I was still involved at that
because the tunes they were recording were mostly mine, but when I saw what
kind of money had been generated using my music, I felt suckered for the very
first time in my life.
over the next 5 years I managed the erotic-exotic ball, set up a series of
performances called Eco-Rap with the performance artist Leonard pitt, at life
on the water theater in S.F. worked on several film scores, did a documentary
on bay area music, managed a couple of nightclubs learned a little Arabic, and
I guess, grew a little as a person (I hope) but you see, none of these things ,
that would have been adventuresome, satisfying, diverse stuff for someone else
meant little to me, because although I didn’t know it at the time I was
desperate to return to singing.
the revenge of the B-town mob:
in 1992 alphabet soup, the brown fellini’s, and the acid jazz scene were in
full swing when I wandered into cafe du nord on market street in S.F. and their
rapper, Chris burger (also with the mofo’s) handed me the mike a little
nervous, I sang a song taught to me as a kid by Bobi Cespedes of the salsa-son
band Conjunto Cespedes (apologies to bobi here for I offer only what I remember
of the song, and she wanted me to take the whole religion more seriously)
when I was briefly involved with a play called “Chango De Ima”
the song is a afro cuban classic known to anybody with a knowledge of santeria
Enu aye mi mosheo, enu aye mi baba,
Obatala ta wini wini, se kure’ bobo la ina ferere..........
the groove was a tight slow hip hop chop, with a big sustained bass line and
a marching downbeat of fender Rhodes piano in chromatic descent and was totally
hypnotic. and it was me who was blown away when this whole fucking crowd of
total strangers went bezerk and almost perfectly, sang the whole song back to
me REALLY LOUD! it was that night that I realized that this was what I was born
for, this is where I was headed to , and that ultimately this is what I could
not escape.
I quit my job writing music for a film company the next day, and just like
magic
I received a phone call from the man who would for the next couple of years be
my partner in crime, the unshakable mexican bass player, Xaime Casillas
We cruised around in his 1964 white cadalliac two-door listening to kid Creole
and the coconuts, Ismael Miranda and talking big shit about tight our band Los
Angelitos was. (we hadn’t even had one rehearsal at the time) but once again
like magic, the will to believe and a childlike love of fun overcame most of
the hurdles and soon we were playing to sweaty packed crowds everywhere we
went, we got our picture in a feature on us in the pink section of the
chronicle, I got another bammie, and had the dubious distinction of having our
music on “Nash Bridges” (thanks cheech!) and once again we ruled the club
scene. at least until me and Xaime burned each other out, and went our separate
ways. I have learned that partings like this are bittersweet reality that we as
musicians have to deal with when we unexpectedly change from who we were into
what we are . I still love and miss Xaime and the band terribly, but that was
then and this is now and my past has never equaled my present.
the promise of the unstoppable future:
now most of the earlier band members are gone, but my boys from the Eastside,
(Oakland to all you Rhodes scholars) and from the mission have come through
again to play with me, and now as I start the whole process all over I am
once again filled with lusty bravado for what might become my best work ever,
cause you see, I’ve got a demo in my pocket that will blow away you man, and my
new band smokes! the guitarist is the bomb!
I mean we kick ass! I mean you really got to hear us! are you feeling me? hey
want to go get some coffee and talk about music? politics? sex? what are you
doing Saturday? want to go to a party? OOPS, got to go now, my beloved knocks
at my window to take me to the studio where I have just been signed to a
recording contract, with a baddass Latin-ska-funk-swing band called Los mocosos
(don’t ask) and after I get off tour with them, I go back into the studio to
mix Los Angelitos’s first album! and after 20 years of pouring myself into this
thing called gigging I am still ready to go out and mash! I love this shit! do
you hear me? I love it!
and to all of you out there I say this: never give up, never give in, and know
that I love all of you who sing, play, act, dance, write paint, and do standup
I love the mixers, the roadies, the bartenders, the bookers, the lighting
people, All y’all!
go do it! do it now! do it while you still have time!
and so, bloody but unbowed, and In solidarity and respect, from the front lines
I bid you peace,
Piero Andres Ornelas (abdul basit ash-shaheed-el warith)
the singer from the 510