A LOT of people remember what they were doing on Aug. 9, 1995. That’s because it’s the day Jerry Garcia died. The Grateful Dead was never Joe Sib’s thing, but he still remembers all too well what he was doing that day. He was on tour with Wax in San Jose, about to get whacked by his band in a hotel off the 280. “I walked into the room, and I knew,” he remembers. “It was like a scene out of Goodfellas.”
It happened just as Wax seemed primed to break in a big way. When they released their first album in 1992, the mainstream didn’t get their Pixies-infused-with-Ramones sound. But now the era of Green Day and the Offspring had dawned. Wax was signed to Interscope, its major-label debut 13 Unlucky Numbers was just out and it already had a popular video for its song “California,” in which up-and-coming director Spike Jonze had lit a guy on fire. Their song “Mallrats” was on the soundtrack for Kevin Smith’s film of the same name. Their second single was about to drop, and all indications were that it could be a huge hit. But Sib’s biggest hopes and dreams for Wax ended with the closing of a hotel door on that day the tie-dye music died.
Almost 15 years later, with Wax newly reformed and about to return to the scene of the crime with a show at the Blank Club on Friday, lead vocalist Sib has no hard feelings.
“I can sometimes be a real ass to deal with,” he admits. “I’m a very take-action, let’s-make-it-happen guy. When you’re first in a band, that guy’s great, ’cause stuff gets done. After a while, you start to hate that guy.”
In fact, Sib already had some experience getting thrown out of bands in San Jose. He grew up here, and hung with the tight-knit South Bay skate community in the early ’80s. His experiences with that now-legendary scene are the subject of a one-man show Sib put together called “California Cargo” (he calls it “broken word” rather than “spoken word”) that he’ll be bringing back to his hometown next year. Back in the ’80s, Sib was in a San Jose punk band called Front-Line. “We played with the Factor. We played with Ribsy. We were part of the whole scene with Frontier Wives, what was called the Laundry Works scene,” he says.
When Front-Line gave him the boot in 1990, after a five-year run, Sib moved to Los Angeles, where he formed Wax with guitarist Tom “Soda” Gardocki, bassist Dave Georgeff and drummer Loomis Fall. Fall would go on to be known as a member of the Jackass crew. In fact, Sib saw one of the earliest moments of Jackass’ genesis when Spike Jonze—who would go on to be closely involved with the show—was directing their video for “Hush.”
“Loomis rides his bike into the front of a car in that video,” says Sib. “The whole night they were like ‘Let’s do stunts!’ Spike nailed his head and they had to take him to the hospital.”
Far more infamous was their video for “California,” in which Jonze, who the band had met skateboarding, set a man on fire and filmed him running through the streets for about 40 seconds. Reduced to slow motion, the shot was made to last almost the entire length of the two-minute, 15-second song. The end result disturbed so many people that MTV banned it from daytime airplay.
The video became legendary, and the song became a minor hit, but despite their success, Wax broke up not long after firing their vocalist. Sib stayed in L.A. and founded Sideonedummy Records, which now includes bands like the Gaslight Anthem, Flogging Molly, Gogol Bordello and Anti-Flag on its roster.
Oh, and of course Wax. After getting together to play earlier this year—the first time they’d been in a room together in 14 years—the band booked some gigs and released a vinyl 7-inch on Sideonedummy featuring four unreleased songs from the 13 Unlucky Numbers sessions. The proceeds are being donated to UCP Wheels for Humanity, a group that provides wheelchairs to children and adults with disabilities in Third World countries. Sib is very serious about his support for the organization—after the Dec. 3 benefit he’s organized in San Francisco featuring headliners NOFX, he’ll have helped to raise over $100,000 for them in four years.
“What they do is so punk,” he says.
Wax has benefited from a little support, as well. One of their biggest fans is Weezer’s Rivers Cuomo, who played his first show opening for them. This year he returned the favor, booking Wax to play with Weezer at the Hollywood Palladium. “It was so nice to have someone go, ‘Hey, take a listen. This band is important.’ It was just us and them, and 4,500 people. You couldn’t put another person in there,” says Sib. “It felt like it had come full circle. If you’d told me when they kicked me out of the band in ’95 that I would ever play with these guys again, let alone at the Palladium, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
WAX performs Friday, Dec. 4, at 8pm at the Blank Club, 44 S. Almaden Ave., San Jose. Tickets are $10. (408.292.5265)
