AND THE AWARD GOES TO...
- anchorprint
- Dec 12, 2023
- 9 min read
The Musicians Wanted ad in the back of The Rocket read:
Guitarist looking to join up with like minded individuals. Influences include Iggy and The Stooges, Sonic Youth, and The Cramps.
That was all I needed to see. This had to be my guy. I was looking for musicians, having just left Rancid Vat and Alcoholics Unanimous.
AT SMEGMA STUDIOS WITH RANCID VAT 1992
My own project, for the 1st time.
Actually, I had another “project band” in Tucson called Butchers 4 Piece.
I wanted to start a “Dirge” band. Pre “Grunge” The Melvins were pretty much as heavy as you could get. B4P was my need to play heavy guitar and write with my best buddy Abel. We picked on every clique in the scene with the lyrics.
Having heard the Melvins on tour in 87’, I was blown away. We were in Riverside CA with a band called Twisted.
The band I was in, Opinion Zero from Tucson, was gonna be on Alchemy Records, which is the label the Melvins 1st album was on.
SO, these Twisted fellas say… “Hey, you ever heard of these dudes, The Melvins?”
“Uh…. NO. What kinda name is The MELVINS!!!”
The sound that came out was a methed out, metal riffing, band that stopped on a dime and then went into a heroin paced dirge that was heavier than Black Sabbath.
I loved it!!!
Song titles likeThe Heaviness of the Load, Big as a Mountain, Over From Under the Excrement. Man!!!
Anyway…
I was hoping to get back to doing a HEAVY band again and this ad just spoke to me. The Rocket was a Seattle-Portland Rock magazine, in newsprint form.
It was the Bible for what was happening throughout each month in Seattle and Portland. Feature articles on local musicians and all the club listings and personal ads! It was priceless, in that sweet spot we had going in the 90’s.
I get on the old land line phone and end up gettin a hold of this “Jerry” guy and we make plans for him to come over with his guitar to jam. The day comes, he shows up with his guitar, amp and a 6 pack.
We set up in the attic at 27 N. Thompson, where I was living. We make small talk and then I’m propose…
“Lets play a Cramps song!!!”
I can see this makes him a slightly uncomfortable and he shifts in his seat and says
“Which one?”
“Anyone!” I replied.
He starts to play Goo Goo Muck or Human Fly, and it’s not really all there. Already, I can see the ad was more of a description of bands he was INTO and not really his ability level or influences.
No worries…
We jam a bit more, and in my mind, I figure I’ll just keep on looking. After wrapping up our best attempts at a jam, we talk some more.
Little did I know that I would be spending more time with this guy, inside of a van, than ANY band I have EVER been in.
He starts by telling me he is from Portland (Salem actually) and had moved to L.A. for a bit and was just getting back to Portland. He played with a band called Trashcan School, a band I knew of and had read about.
JERRY LA BUCK AND HIS FIRST BORN.
I was impressed!!!
I asked what he did for work, he said he ran a security company in L.A.
He told me, mainly set security for movies.
Now, this IS “Hollywood” and his resume had titles like, oh…
Chopper Chicks From Zombietown
Your usual B list movies, I thought, but he explained that movies worked under working titles sometimes to keep people off the scent. You couldn’t say “Yeah, we are filming Rocky 8 but keep it under your lid!” Although that would have been good….
So this all sounded pretty interesting to my ear.
Myself, I had done security before and had actually recently been fired from my job of 3 years. It was my first job in Portland and it’s where I learned Screen Printing.
My profession, basically.
It was at Goldsmiths in Old Town on 5th and Burnside.
Anyway, I got fired from there. Can you believe it?
ON a side note…
One day I got a call right after this, and it was the daughter of one of the older Vietnamese women that I worked with. She was old school and spoke no english.
Mooey!!!
That’s was her name….
I loved all 4’5” of her. Such a lovely woman.
So her daughter called the house one day and it sounds like someone on tour or something.
A foreign voice and kind of broken up, and we are speaking over each other…
I can’t really think of who I know on tour in Japan.
It’s Mooey, having her daughter translate to me that she misses me at work and can’t believe they fired me. She said she loved me and I was a good guy.
Man, I will never forget that phone call EVER. I tried real hard to learn what I could while I worked with that crew of Vietnamese. What I learned was, that you can come to America after being lost on the ocean for 3 weeks on a raft, and end up owning 3 homes and a small market. That’s just one of the many incredible things I learned.
Inspiring/Respect
Back to Jerry….
He said he wanted to do something similar up here with the movies and security thing.
He had a few connections with location managers, but what he really needed was security team.
He had been doing most of all this work by himself. A lot of this was just sitting in a car and watching a trailer or some prop on set. But still, that could be hard work. And he needed help. So, I threw my hat in the ring and said let me know if you end up getting a movie.
Right away, he had a gig.
And it was big.
I wanna say, a 3 month shoot?
Almost all of it being shot in Portland.
Timothy Hutton, Faye Dunaway, and Murdock from the A-Team were the main actors he said.
I had no car at the time and Jerry had a 65 Dodge Dart we called the Clam.
The trunk didn’t latch and had been connected with bungee cords. Every single bump in the road, that thing would start bouncing up and down. It looked like it was talking to you.
Man, we had barricades and cones and all sorts of stuff in that car.
We had to block off parking spots and various roads at certain hours for shoots.
(To annoy a Portland that WAS NOT Hollywood friendly)- Pre Portlandia.
“Go back to California!!!” was the most common one you were guaranteed to hear.
We had half of Downtown ready to kill us one afternoon. The shot never even made the final cut.
Another incident we had all lanes of the Marquam Bridge blocked on a Friday morning, at rush hour, just to get a helicopter shot. 4 TIMES AROUND!!!! There was one guy who followed us to the off ramp, down to Old Spaghetti Factory.
Pretty scary!!!
I mean SCARY, like when we had to move all the big wigs out of their personal apartments.
We found dildos, handcuffs and all sorts of stuff. All the crap they were definitely not taking home.
There were many things I can recall from those long days on my feet, but I’ll just throw a couple at you.
Towards the end of the shoot one day, Timothy Hutton had a tape he wanted the Make Up guys to play.
It was a tape of prank phone calls.
The Jerky Boys.
First time most people had heard that stuff at that point.
Speaking of Make Up, I witnessed nothing short of miracles come out of those Make Up trailers.
The magic they can do with the human face.
Speaking of magic and faces…
I ended up gettin some face time with Faye Dunaway.
I had my Barfly book, by Bukowski, with me and had an angle to get it signed by the time she was done.
On the last day, it was the day to do it.
I asked her P.A. and she shut me down.
NO WAY.
Well, this WAS her last day and Faye seemed in a really good mood.
As she was leaving, Some people were getting autographs. I wasn’t too much concerned how we looked as a security team, as I was a fan and wanted MY book signed.
I put it in the mix of outreached hand and she looked at it with a surprised expression.
She said she had not seen this. NICE…
I had the page marked and she thumbed her way towards it, stopping to remark on certain pictures and relate little stories. Everyone was enraptured and I was the hero.
Man, was her P.A. fuming by this time.
Faye signed it and handed it back to me with that smile.
NO WIRE HANGERS!!!
I shrunk off a little awkward but victorious.
I ended up working one last movie with Jerry and Buckeye Security.
This one was awesome.
It was… Even Cowgirls Get The Blues.
From Wiki:
According to film critic/historian Leonard Maltin, "The novel was hopelessly dated, and there is not enough peyote in the entire American Southwest to render this movie comprehensible or endurable...K.D. Lang's score is the picture's sole worthy component.”
Directed by Gus Van Sant.
A legend in Portland.
Whole slew of stars in this one. Uma Thurman, Keanu Reeves, Crispin Glover et al.
Totally different vibe on this movie.
With Gus, you had a more laid back, punk rock, “we are all in this together” feel.
Most actors made themselves available to chat up and get to know.
This set was SO laid back, I remember Gus had some Nitrous Oxide delivered to the Camera Truck for the purpose of “cleaning lenses” he said.
Well, as soon as they gave a brief rundown of the how’s and what not’s, we all made a B line to get a hit from the tit.
It was pretty sweet.
It ended up at his house later that night, I heard, for his NO on 9 benefit party.
The wrap party itself was pretty cool, because Tom Robbins the author of Cowgirls showed up to the tiny little bar they had rented.
The premier that afternoon, was a trip as well. It was the first showing ever and in the opening credits he had JUST ADDED a dedication to River Phoenix.
River was in Gus’s “Private Idaho” and was also in Cowgirls.
Pretty sad day.
There were a lot of actors in this film that made cameos and also just NW legend types.
We had hired a kid to help us on security and he told us he was the son of Ken Babbs.
His name was Simon Babbs, and he was a total sweetheart.
His father was joined at the hip with Ken Kesey and these cats were the real deal when it came to being there on the edge of counter culture.
They practiced what they preached, and also I wanted some of the sacred sacrament.
This was the guy who turned the nation on as far as I’m concerned and punks is hippies.
Well… I put my request in via the son of the gun who road shotgun with Kesey.
It came through. Nice stuff.
Years later, I would end up on the Further Bus with Ken Kesey’s son, buying sheets of acid art (non electrified!), but that’s another story.
ON BOARD FURTHR2 WITH ZANE KESEY
We also had a dude on our crew that was training to be a fire fighter.
He and his lady had recently split and he was moping around, being a sad sack.
This really got to him and his good friend could really notice his mood changes etc.
He actually felt sorry for this hard working kid and saw his determination to be a fire fighter, to train all day and then come and do this stupid job.
So this friend put pen to paper.
He told Aaron’s girl that she was really missing out on a good guy and that if she maybe just gave it another shot, who knows?!?!
I watched this whole thing go down. I then watched him give Aaron the note, to give to his uncertain lover.
And that “friend” of his was none other than Keanu Reeves.
That guy was so down to earth and a genuine, righteous dude.
I don’t know if this whole thing worked for the girl or not, but I sure know it worked for me.
It was one of the coolest things I’ve seen.
Really…. From Bill and Ted to Rivers Edge, that guy may come off like a “HImbo”, but I saw just the opposite. Totally aware and compassionate person.
I would like to thank Jerry for letting me make mad money while getting to zip up Sean Young’s dress when she couldn’t reach it.
For being able to help Crispin Glover get in character.
He had asked me for a cigarette and I told him “I don’t smoke! I don’t have any cigarettes.”
He said “Neither do I.” and walked away.
It was totally Crispin Glover.
CRISIN GLOVER AUTOGRAPH.
He later walked past me holding a cigarette very awkward and asked me how to hold one. Weird dude for sure.
And, thanks Jerry Sandifer for putting that ad in the Rocket.
If you hadn’t we would have never met and I would have never met Ken Stevenson.
It’s this connection that brought my wife and I together. Ken would come to mean so much to me in my life and would later marry me and Darcy.
Jerry and I would eventually live together for a while,
THIS IS ME PLAYING JERRY’S GUITAR (WHICH I OWN) PLUS THIS IS AT THE HOUSE WE LIVED IN TOGETHER ON SHERMAN ST. IN BETWEEN CHRIS TENSE FROM POISON IDEA AND THE BLOODMEN HOUSE.
We would also play music in a Halloween themed cover band called the Punkins. So, I guess the ad did work… Just took us a while.
Kind of a full circle thing…
Friends for life my brother.
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