Jose Sinatra is Kee-razy! (March 13, 2000)

"Jose Sinatra only cares if people like him. If they do, he’ll stay in character after the show. If they don’t, he comes back stage, rips off his fake mustache, and throws it on the floor."

The cul-de-sac off Sports Arena Boulevard - where Jose Sinatra and the Troy Dante Inferno conduct their rehearsal - is a small district of various wood and metal shops. On a cement wall that separates the street from the Interstate, a giant, snouty possum basks under the moon. This is hardly the place you would imagine rock and roll to happen.

The rehearsal room is a small wood shop, with a drill press, a table saw - and the smell of timber is pleasant and powerful. There is an assortment of bass guitars, in various stages of incompletion, hanging on the walls or propped on stands. On a shelf, in the back of the room, stands the only clue that music sometimes happens here: a solitary Dean Martin record album called The Door is Still Open to my Heart.

This is where drummer Owen Burke (stage name: "Otis") builds his own line of basses.

The band is setting and tuning up. Jose Sinatra, the band’s peculiar front man, seems to be tuning an instrument also. But it’s not a real instrument; not really. It is a programmed toy guitar and Sinatra fiddles with it as though it also needs tuning.

"This rehearsal is an introduction for Gregory," proclaims Troy Dante, the band’s guitarist and bandleader. His real name is Jan Tonnesen. He got the pseudonym from a list of obscure English Jazz performers.

"The name was the "Troy Dante Quintet," which is what I go by when Jose and I do the act as a duet. It was going to be the Troy Dante Experience, but calling myself a Quintet is in keeping with the spirit of Jose Sinatra."

The "Gregory," whom Troy Dante mentioned, is singer/songwriter Gregory Page. Today he starts his new job as the Inferno’s bass player. They are preparing him for an upcoming Java Joe’s show.

"You think I’ll get the call back," jokes Page, with the tentativeness of a boy who is new on the baseball team and hasn’t proved himself yet.

Everyone laughs and then Owen chimes in from behind the drum kit, "You’re the only number we got baby!"

Gregory Page is a local musician who is recognized for his serious, introspective songwriting skills and vocals. Jose Sinatra is recognized for taking rock and roll standards and tweaking them into depraved, psycho-sexual, lounge parodies - like Weird Al on Ecstasy. They seem an unlikely marriage. . .

Gregory Page lyric: "Here is now, now is gone. Time has a way of stealing someone."

Jose Sinatra lyric: "Touching me, knowing me, feeling me, blowing me. . . . That’s your disco love for me."

But Gregory’s ongoing frustrations with the music industry - about which he is unwilling to discuss - have left him queasy. And Jose Sinatra seems to have the tonic: laughter.

"We needed each other at exactly the same time," says Page.

Jose begins the rehearsal by telling Gregory, "We’re gonna work on our Jewel set now. . . . It’s called Jewelmania. Then we’ll do a spoken word thing where each of us will interpret one of her poems. I’m doing mine in dance."

Sinatra is joking about the dance. But without further warning, he snatches the mike and cries out painfully - like a man in the grip of unrequited love - "Jew-elll." He holds the second syllable for so long it seems like its own word.

*"Jew - elll, get outta my life. My love for you is way out of line. . . ." The band kicks in with the music from "Young Girl," by Gary Puckett and The Union Gap. This is a Jose Sinatra Classic: "Young Jewel."

"You bet-ter run girl, like egg foo young girl."

Sinatra’s birth name is Bill Richardson.

"Jose is an abandoned child who was found in an alley with his umbilical chord attached to a broken Frank Sinatra record," maintained Richardson about his alter-ego, as though Jose Sinatra were an entirely different person. "In this way Jose is bound to the music."

Jose, or "Hose," is dressed in a black leather jacket, a turquoise turtle neck shirt, enormous thick, black, plastic framed glasses, a black pimp hat, and black and white bowling shoes. He sips from a flat black, sports bottle with an attached straw.

"Young Jewel," second verse: "The first time I saw you at the coffee house. The songs you sang seemed just for me. Before I left, I put a dollar in your jar on stage. Those other jerks heard you for free. Oh oh oh, Young Jewel, get outta my mind. My love for you is in your behind. You better run girl. I’m much too hung girl."

It doesn’t take long to teach Gregory the bass parts, even though he is better known for guitar. Troy just gives him a quick run down of the notes, and Gregory is on it.

"I have a simple approach to the bass. All the notes you need can be played on two strings . . . . When I was in the Rugburns, I only had two strings on my bass. I didn’t ever need the other two strings. I do plan on using three strings with Hose though."

Sinatra adopts a classic rock and roller pose: forward lean into the microphone; rigid grip on the mike stand; front foot on tip-toe. It’s as though he is truly affected. Therein lies the comedy: how he almost cloaks ridiculous lyrics behind a serious, passionate demeanor. Sometimes he closes his eyes.

Third verse: "Shall I compare thee to a coffee blend. That metaphor is too rich to waste. ‘Cause when your songs are done, my cup is dry the last drop’s gone. Yet I still dream about your taste. . . ."

When the song is over, Jose asks Gregory if he’s going to adopt a persona too.

"Maybe you should have a native American Name," suggests Otis. "How about Running Beaver?"

Gregory shakes his head. He is not an alter-ego kind-of-guy. But he yields the final word to Hose: "We’re going to figure out a nom de plume for Gregory later," insists Sinatra.

"When I saw Hose at the Bacchanal years and years ago," Page reflects, "I never thought I’d be playing for him. I was in a gothic rock band called Baba Yaga and we were so serious. Who would have guessed I’d be playing for the Andy Kaufman of San Diego!"

They begin to play an original tune called "Too Young for Love," and Hose pulls the mike in close:

"I met her at the Five and Dime, she was fifteen, I was twenty-nine. We didn’t flirt but it was obvious. The situation could’ve been - dangerous . . . Good god yo!"

"Stop right there!" shouts Troy Dante over the amps, bringing the song to a halt. He turns to Gregory, "Now we come to the middle part." Page is attentive as he sits on his bass amp and scribbles the notes and chords given to him by Dante. While class is in session, Jose turns to me and says, "That was written by my late brother Tom. He wrote it for the Ravers before they became Rockola. Tom formed Rockola."

When Gregory learns the bridge, they continue the song:

"She broke my will, I was paralyzed. She held me hostage In those teenage thighs. So out of breath, I was getting pale. I had that tiger by her teenage tail. . . "

It is here that Jose lets out his trademark yelp. It’s a squeal that sounds like a young girl who was butt-pinched and almost enjoyed it. It makes the song.

Not until the rehearsal break, does Jose reveals what is in his flat black, sports bottle with the attached straw. It’s Magnum Malt Liquor, which he pulls out of a brown paper bag and pours into the sports bottle.

We step outside. Surprisingly the possum is still there. He doesn’t give a damn about us. The same thing can not be said about Sinatra. He is obviously perturbed.

"They are so evil. They are so fucking evil," he cries and heads back inside the rehearsal room. Leaving Otis and me behind.

Burke looks to be in his early forties. He has been with Sinatra for three years and doesn’t mind being in a band that will probably not see much success outside of San Diego.

"I play for Jose because it’s so much fun, and I’d work for him for nothing," he asserts with a smile. "My dreams of superstardom are gone and We don’t make enough money that we have to deal with any pressure. . . . I’ve actually given my ten dollar share to the sound man or a bum on the street . . . .

"What’s the difference between being in a serious band and being in a comedy band?"

"The difference is, people are laughing. . . . [I like] looking out at Jose’s audience and seeing these delighted expressions when Jose changes the lyrics to all these classics. . . . [Our crowd] has heard these songs already and doesn’t need to hear [us] trying to imitate someone else. Like Rockola. They’re great at what they do but they bore me shitless. . . .

"Let’s play some songs Goddamit," Troy hollers from inside the practice room. The band reassembles. They play Thunderball, the theme from the James Bond motion picture.

Hose is a movie buff. On Tuesday nights, at Java Joe’s, he shows 16 millimeter prints of his favorite movies: Women in Love, The Brides of Dracula, The Conqueror Worm, and To Sir With Love - to name a few.

"The next song," Jose announces to Gregory, "is actually a trilogy/ medley. It begins with the theme from, To Sir With Love, followed by ‘Whole Lotta Love’ and ends with ‘Theme from Love Boat.’ It’s called, ‘To Sir with a Whole Lotta Love Boat.’ It’s going to be complicated," he warns as Troy and Miff Laracy - the keyboardist and sax player - recite the chords to Gregory.

Laracy grew up in San Diego. He and Hose’s late brother, Tom Richardson, were best friends circa 1964. They both learned guitar together and started playing gigs like the old Spirit Club. Laracy is in another group too: an original, psychedelic band called Alternate Realities.

Speaking of "psychedelic," I notice there are no party favors here.

"For a rock and roll rehearsal, this is pretty lame," I declare, to nobody in particular. "Where’s the booze? Where are the drugs?"

"Why!" shouts Otis from behind the drum kit. "You got any crack?"

Next song: OJ’s coming, hide the white girls."

The rehearsal is over. Jose seems pleased with Gregory. He offers to slice his own palm open and become blood brothers. But only if Gregory gets an AIDS test. Gregory doesn’t hear the part about "blood brothers," and doesn’t understand why the band requires an AIDS test to join. Hose doesn’t bother to clear up the confusion.

We step outside to go home. The possum is gone.