The Okay Samurai Chronicles - Chapter One: Geui
The story of Okay Samurai hits all the crucial marks that a band story should. Recording studio memories, certain landmark concerts, members leaving and joining, hundreds of practice sessions, buying new equipment, a small grassroots fanbase, and musical growth through our ten years together. We never focused on fame or money - the band was a hobby and an excuse to hang out. There have been hundreds of thousands of bands just like us, from high school all-girl punk bands to the more established frat party bands. This is just our story.
When my Mom was pregnant with me, she went to a Bob Dylan concert with my Dad. Needless to say, the air was saturated with a recognizable scent that you would expect at a Dylan concert. When I was born in 1980 (two hours before a leap year), I didn't cry. My widened eyes scanned the room, taking everything in. I have always been more of a listener than a talker, more reserved instead of outspoken, and relatively laid back - so I'd like to take the time now to officially thank Bob Dylan for all of that.
The earliest recorded video footage of me and my brother is from a wedding reception in the early 80s. We sing Great Balls of Fire. I think that Dad has shown it to just about every relative, girlfriend, neighbor and acquaintance of ours. But it's not really all that embarrassing - we loved to sing as kids. 1986 was a critical year - the year of Aunt Laurie's Radio Shack tape recorder present. Shortly thereafter, Andrew and I recorded the Songs of DAA - our first album! We had a fake company growing up called DAA (David And Andrew), and used it to make up all sorts of crazy construction paper things like our own TV Guide (The Lego Channel destroyed the competition in primetime).
Most of the recordings for The Songs of DAA were impromptu, or we rehearsed the choruses but made the verses up on the spot. Most of it was just singing, but my Casio monophonic keyboard made a few appearances as well. Songs like She's Wearing The Yellow Dress, Fatty In Scarf and Chinese Future were listed on a cassette sleeve with an orange cover scotch-taped to the edges. The album cover was a pencil drawing of the two of us singing on a stage with several hands reaching up from the crowd below. In addition, the tape recorder always came with us to our annual vacations in Bethany Beach, Delaware. Andrew and I recorded a DAA-sponsored radio show, and then we would turn it up to full volume and blast it out of our beach house window to the people walking by outside.
Andrew and I both took piano lessons during our elementary school days from a nice lady named Mrs. Evans. We played in several piano recitals and learned pretty fast after our parents bought a piano. Andrew stopped taking lessons after a couple of years because another instrument caught his attention - the drums. In fifth grade, Andrew joined the elementary school band and got a snare drum. I kept on playing piano and started to write my own songs after getting a new keyboard for Christmas. Andrew started to amass a collection of percussive instruments, like egg shakers and a small electronic drum pad.
When I entered middle school in 1992, I immediately became good friends with a guy called Don Simpson. He was in several of my classes and we started to hang out after school. I remember feeling awesome because I thought that Don was one of the "cool kids" - I would sometimes exchange messages between him and a girl in my typing class. He was interested in learning to play guitar at some point, and we started to talk - all the way back in seventh grade - about forming a band. I remember going over to Don's house once with my keyboard to write some songs using the preprogrammed beats and loops. We made a song called "Dis Dat Granny", which I have since forgotten and unfortunately (or fortunately) was never recorded. But then we started talking about the band at school, and everyone wanted in on the action. Nick Ovuka, Daniel Williams, Mike Walton, Chris Cox, Andrew, Don and I decided that we were going to make a band called Geui (pronounced "gooey"). I soon wrote our first song as a band - Grasshopper Suicide.
Video games were getting big in my life, and I started to learn my favorite songs from Super Nintendo games on the piano by ear. Grasshopper Suicide took the music from the first level of a game called Star Fox and made it into a rock song. I added nonsensical lyrics about how grasshoppers probably accidentally jump off of things like cliffs or buildings every once in a while. The song was a hit with Geui, which was now just our lunch table sans Andrew. I made a tee shirt with fabric crayons that said "Grasshopper Suicide Fever" under a cartoon grasshopper and I proudly wore it to school. But Geui died out with the end of middle school, mainly because most of our friends didn't actually play any instruments (yeah, harsh reality always crushes your dreams). Andrew and I could play music together whenever we wanted, and after I went on a mad cleaning frenzy one winter break, our basement became a new hangout and play area. We nicknamed it "The Basement of Doom" for no good reason. Our basement was unfinished, so the ceiling had steel braces and wood panels while the concrete walls were padded with insulation. We decorated the ceiling with old toys like Transformers and Care Bears, usually dangling from strings tied around nails or pipes. Andrew's drumset and my keyboard were the first of many countless other pieces of musical equipment that would one day call the Basement of Doom home.
My fifteen minutes of fame were used up early in my life, so I can't be deluded into thinking I'll ever be famous one day as a rockstar or writer or art director or whatever. Grasshopper Suicide was mentioned in the Letters to the Editor section of Gamepro Magazine in March 1994. They were the premier video game magazine back in the early 90s, and I wrote them a letter about the song and included a school picture in the envelope. In print, the text next to my photo reads "Here's an imaginative GamePro! Meet 14-year old David Werner of Burke, Virginia, who writes lyrics for video game music. He turned the music from Star Fox's Corneria level into a song called Grasshopper Suicide!" I felt so incredibly cool (even though I had actually appeared in Nintendo Power magazine during the previous month!). The magazine pages are hidden on this site somewhere...
Don and I agreed that we would be serious about "starting up Geui" in high school (at least that's what he wrote in my yearbook). Don was learning to play the guitar. Andrew got some new cymbals for his drumset and I got a small keyboard amp and microphone. High school would bring a new band member, two albums, and some unforgettable concerts. The rocking off of Robinson High School's collective pants was about to begin.
(The Okay Samurai Chronicles is the four-chapter story of our high school and college band. The second chapter is coming soon.)
Thursday, January 1 at 1:08 AM
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