So anyway, Nate and I formed our first band, Merona. At first, Merona
consisted of Nate (Bike), Cory (Shacker, BP), Mike Papagni (Sexual
Jedi), Yale Ensminger, and Josh Boys. Yale eventually quit, and Josh
did too, because I don’t think either of them were super interested in
being in a “serious” band- Josh had a billion other obligations, and
Yale just wasn’t feeling it… we recorded two CDs as Merona: “Travels
and Adventures,” which was named after a little diary I wrote lyrics
in, and “If I Could Write This in Fire, I’d Write This in Fire.” For
the second record, we had with us Jesse Gifford (Aegis) who moved to
Ventura from Minneapolis.
Merona was a joke band, kind of- we had songs named dumb stuff like
“Tractor Beam,” “AWAP” (All Women Are Pyscho, ha ha ha ha jay kay), and
“Skelly Bones.” We were really into Primus, Weezer, and The Pixies.
We were also kind of a serious band in the way that we all loved music.
Ironically enough, Mike Papagni had only been playing drums for a few
months when Merona formed and Jesse Gifford got his bass maybe a few
months before joining, and now they’re super talented. Meanwhile, I
listen to Weird Al.
Anyway, I wrote a lot of the songs, but Nate wrote a lot of them too,
and he usually focused on repetitive, beautiful themes (he was super
into Sparklehorse and Spiritualized at the time, and his favorite band
is/was Radiohead). He didn’t sing at the time, so he would write these
pieces and we’d add melodies and words later.
After Merona broke up when I went to college, Nate continued to write
and record his music, coming out with albums like “Johnny Popular Makes
His Mark” and “Have The Terrorists Won?” Meanwhile, I was doing my
thing with Shacker/The Remnants. Sooner or later, Nate thought he’d
buy himself about 1,000 robots so he could force them to make out with
each other and record it…
THE CONCLUSION, PART III, COMING SOON…