Infinite Decay into Nothingness by Ajax Green
I moved to SF in '93 to get my life together. I had been spinning my wheels in London England, working in all-night cafe and playing bass in a dream-pop band that I didn't love (we were not as good as the Sundays). I was going nowhere and decided go back to college in the USA.
My friend Cory lived in SF so I moved there - I had one friend! He found me a room in a giant 4-bedroom, 2-story apartment on McAllister & Baker in the Western Addition ($350). I lived with a graphic designer, a singing waiter, and a lonely girl who could often be heard weeping behind her closed door. We weren't friends, but every Thursday night the four of us would gather in the living room to watch the new, mind-blowing TV show "Seinfeld" and, ironically, "Friends".
Cory was friends with a band called Granfaloon Bus, who had already put out two great records but after their guitarist/clarinetist was fired (for accidentally kicking an audience member in the face while climbing on the bar at the Blue Lamp) they needed a new guy to make noises in between the verses. I strapped my guitar to my back and rode my bike to the rehearsal studio way out in the Excelsior district and somehow passed the audition - without a clarinet! I was very bad at guitar then, which was a plus - these guys didn't want to hear any notes that had been played before.
I signed up with a temp agency to make money. In the morning I would ride my bike from the Western Addition to SF State for classes. At lunchtime I would ride my bike over Twin Peaks and zoom down Market Street all the way to the Financial District to do dumb office work in the afternoon. What a thrill to be on the top of the city every day and barrel down the hill as fast as possible into the gleaming metal canyons of downtown! I really wanted to be a bike messenger. They were cool and I thought it must be the perfect career - the city was full of dirty cyclists back then and they were like independent punk cowboys - but I didn't pursue it and instead sat in cubicles and made photocopies of legal briefs and got really good at Minesweeper.
A year later my girlfriend joined me from London and we moved to a 1 bedroom on South Van Ness and 24th in a beautiful restored victorian ($700). Across the street was a dilapidated bar called "The Phone Booth" that I was scared of, until one night after school I found some courage and went for a drink. It was an old-man bar, but they were playing bizarre electronic music and I met a few nice gay drunks. They also had a ruddy old pianist who sometimes would play songs, but I never recognized a single tune. He took requests too but he had never heard of any of the songs I suggested - the venn diagram of our musical overlap was completely empty. "How is this even possible?" I wondered. "I know a lot of songs!"
At SF State a weird old man who looked like Ernest Hemingway always tried to talk to me after Spanish class. I ignored him for a semester, but then when he showed up in Spanish 2 I relented. Every week we'd have a coffee date at Muddy Water's on Valencia St, where he would regale me with stories from his ribald life. It was just like "Tuesday's With Morrie" except that all his stories and life-lessons were about blow jobs. He often insisted that I must have a wonderful penis, but I never showed it to him. Cruel!
Granfaloon Bus gigged at a few places - the Nightbreak, the Paradise Lounge, The Hotel Utah, some weird basement; but mostly we played the Make Out Room in the Mission because Marty (the owner) loved our music (and was also the singer's roomate). The G-Bus songwriting was exceptional and I felt so lucky to be in the same band with a lyrical genius - the Bob Dylan of Capp Street! The band was a reaction to loud, predicatable rock and roll, and we tried to do everything the opposite of what had come before. We liked to play songs that got quieter and quieter on an infinite decay into nothingness, and I loved to hear the chatter of the audience in the Make Out Room overwhelm our tiny music until it finally disappeared.
The Subtle Plague (another SF band) got us a record deal in Germany, and we toured northern Europe a few times. Those first tours were the best days of my life - young, wild, and free, with nothing to do but get weird with my friends on stage every night.
Four years later I had a kid and my wife wanted to leave the city. "Why?" I argued. "The 3 of us can live in this 1 bedroom apartment FOREVER!"
I did not win that argument.
Ajax Green is a cherished man-about-town in both Oakland and San Francisco. His band Thundebleed, aka Blind Vengeance, has been thrilling fans of 70’s rock for half a century. Follow him here and here, although he’s sworn chiefly off the socials.
