Following the demise of Some Ambulants, Dave continued living in San Diego and, since 1987, has been doing music full-time for a living. Dave divides his time between producing and engineering records in his studio, Beat ‘n Track Recording, teaching drums and guitar, and performing live with his wife, vocalist Robin Adler. Together, they began a project in 2005 exploring the work of Joni Mitchell, and assembled their own band Mutts of the Planet to be the performance vehicle for it. They have, to date, performed six complete Mitchell albums in concert, and released two CDs of their own arrangements of her music. Both are available via Robin Adler and Mutts of the Planet.

In 1984 Carmen moved from SD via Bagdad-by-the-bay to a little bump in the road on the east coast called NYC, ran sound at DuArt Media Services around the corner from The Ed Sullivan Theater on Broadway (with Studio 54 in between) for decades, then retired to the Catskills and set up shop playing and teaching ukulele to and for the local uke-cognoscenti there at a little bookshop called Magpie. That’s oversimplified and too brief and does not account for any of the bands and projects Carmen took on in the decades since he was the lead screamer for a frenetic new wave band from San Diego. So, check out some of these links on the works of Carmen Borgia through the years:

Secret Sons of the Pope Poster in a Museum

Orson Welk video: Party at Ray’s House

Worthy Sound Works

Ukulele Catskill

Ukulele Camp

Carmen on CDBaby

And Carmen is the only Ambulant with a Wikipedia page! Damn, girl! The interwebs knows all about you!

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In his own words…

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Everybody else in Some Ambulants was a hardened aspirational musician. I really noticed this on my recent trip with Ed (former Secret Sons of the Pope bandmate and best friend Ed Summerfield, now living in northern California), he was solid into wanting to have a great band from the minute he heard a great band. For me it was very different. I'd say you had all prepped solidly for this moment and others to follow, but I just kind of walked (was invited) into it with a sense of purpose and arrival. My first big rush of creative group vibe was theatre, and I had come to feel trapped in the routine and social circle of it. When you asked me to join in and make a band I was pretty solidly primed to jump. I packed up my theatre skills and brought everything I had, musical or no, to the effort. 

1982 was the year I got the memo on making my own art. I called it art because I was clearly not a musician, but all of the artists around me seemed to just be making shit up randomly, so I went with that. I wasn't really an artist, either. I basically just started barfing out anything I could with the tools at hand, my giant, manual, heavy typewriter that I did all of my work on through 1984 in S.F., so everything from the era has the signature of that typeface. I think a lot about the writing because that's what's in the bin now, but the performances drove everything for me. 

I wrote a play that I now know was ripped off from Ziggy Stardust, I wrote poems and lyrics as fast as I could. I cranked out short stories and any fragment that I could write down. It was important, I had to get it done.

Ambulants lasted a year, I think, and the writing kept going when I moved to San Francisco around January 1984. That energy got folded into the Secret Sons Of The Pope and I kept writing and song-making. 

Points of obsession and interest. Xerox machines, Robert Rauschenberg, having jobs, quitting jobs, calling things art that are no such thing. The performances were my favorite part by far, I didn't have words for what happened there, the writing was also a performance in a way. I carried a lot of this inside me for years. When I began mixing professionally I thought of my mixing as performance, until I met clients who just wanted a mixer. 

I thought of myself as a lyricist, I was sent to this earth to save Lyrics from Music. Apologies to the musicians! I felt like I hadn't done any of my homework, I had spent the past three years surrounded by high end theatre people, academics, grad students, world-class designers, I was learning in a fast and unpleasant ways that the theatre world that had taken me in had a social order that couldn't be bypassed, people who had accomplished great things, and saw the system up close for the first time. After all, I was from a small town, I had found a piece of myself doing theatre, but I didn't know about record producers, engineers, marketing, practicing, doing a gig when you don't feel like it, or a million other things. For better and worse, in Ambulants I was ready to leap over all of that in a single bound for the whole time that band was together. That's how I ended up on the roof.

After Some Ambulants broke up in early 1982, Andy, Dave and Scott formed Rue du Jour with Dave on drums, Scott on bass, Andy writing and playing guitar, and guitarist extraordinaire Vince Cooper on lead (an extraordinary player!). They put together a set of material, and then played exactly one gig at The Spirit Club before calling it quits. They were together maybe six weeks.

In 1983, Faunch joined forces with Michael and they became And And And. At the behest of their new management team, Strong Arm Management, they migrated to L.A., where Andy worked at the same fucking corner in Mar Vista the entire time he stayed in town. And that was a very long time.

When they moved to L.A., Andy grabbed the help wanted sign in the window of a t-shirt shop at the corner of Venice and Beethoven in December of 1983 and ended up working there there every single day of his life in L.A. until finally selling the business (yeah, he eventually bought the place!) in February of 2017, 33 1/2 years later, and then he moved he and his wife Cathi to North Carolina, where they now live.

Andy has made many recordings on his own through the years. Of note are two fully realized projects under the name faunch: "Dive" in 2000; and, "Venice & Beethoven", released in the summer of 2016, co-produced with Michael. Check out the music at faunchmusic.com.

Garside Band History

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Sygnet - Three snot-nosed prep school guys joined up with a very talented pair of college-age brothers to form Sygnet. We were a cover band playing the greater LA private school dance scene and a lot of church Rock Masses. We were very tight and good and very un-cool due to the brothers whose favorite band in the 70's was still the Beatles of the 60's. Despite that, we did well enough to make a fair amount of money and earn the hatred of our fellow snot-nosed prep school classmates.

We got the job to play innumerable performances of 'It's Cool in the Furnace', a kid Christian musical. One series of performances at All Saints, Beverly Hills had legendary CBS TV producer Harry Ackerman's daughter in the chorus. Having the world in his rolodex, Mr. Ackerman arranged for a performance to be recorded at his hillside estate. Of course, one would want to record such performance, so we showed up to find the remote recording trucks from "Don Kirshner's Rock Concert" ready to roll 48 tracks of 2" tapes. Sure wish we had cameras back then.

And yes, we did compete with Van Halen for the private school dances. They won. They played my Junior Prom. I ended up delivering pizzas to their mansion the summer after high school. Eddie & Alex's aunt Helen van Buskirk was the receptionist at Avon where my dad was an exec. She was my girlfriend when I was five or six years old. I used to run across the giant lobby and jump into her lap and ample breasts for a mutual snuggle.

Stan Kenton - I spent a couple of summer at the Stan Kenton Jazz Camp at Orange Coast College. I can't call it a band per se, but I got to play briefly in this little ensemble:

Stan Kenton - piano (Jazz Icon)

Grant Geissman - guitar (Chuck Mangione)

Peter Erskine - drums (Weather Report)

Scott Garside - bass (Scared shitless)

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Slapstick - When I showed up at UCSD in '79-ish and started hanging out with the wrong crowd, I met an overly-enthusiastic guy at the campus radio station, KSDT. Michael McClure couldn't wait to play and explain for me a track in this amazing time signature of 5/4. "Umm… Cool. Uh.. Mike is it?"

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We went on to jam and talk, and one afternoon on my deck at the beach house on Oceanfront Dr., while wondering if we could find a good drummer… (wait for it…) we hear amazing drumming coming from the house over the back fence. Michael and I changed into our Jehovah's Witness costumes and knocked on the door. Waving away emphatic apologies for the noise, we met Dr. Paul Kriese, UCSD med student and a really good drummer. 

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The trio was named Slapstick after a favorite Kurt Vonnegut novel, and we wrote a fair amount of pretty good stuff with some really good titles. "Splash of Dog-Like Feet" is still my favorite. We didn't perform much. Michael probably lost the cassette tapes we made when he got rid of his POS Volkswagen Rabbit.

And that brings my band history up to Some Ambulants. Never played in a band after that.

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Life After Some Ambulants 

Some Ambulants was fun/not fun. It was an intense artistic and community environment. If you are thinking of starting your own band, think twice about living in a compound with all of your bandmates, girlfriends, manager and 14 whippet dogs. And make sure you all have decent day jobs.

I was in a car accident a couple of years after Some Ambulants and lost the music-making use of the ring and little fingers of my left hand. I still own my basses, but I haven't played a note since then, so you can stop reading here if you’re wondering what musical activities I have pursued.

I parlayed my job at Guitar Center, San Diego from Pro Sound manager to Assistant Manager at store #12, employee #194. Pretty old school. It was like learning how to take a prison tattoo; a very tough and long-lasting education. GC now has 269 stores.

I went on to develop three businesses in San Diego into retail music stores by converting existing operations, or building from the ground up. You may remember such favorites including Musician's Repair Service which became Pro Sound & Music, New World Audio and Ja-Am Systems.

I jumped the fence to the manufacturing side of the music biz with PS Systems, makers of memory cards and hard drive products for sampling devices and DAWs. We developed a very early model of a digital mixer and a fully MIDI controlled tube/solid-state guitar amp before the market collapsed for RAM and HD prices, and R&D revenue disappeared. A good lesson learned, and to be learned again.

Freshly laid-off for the first time, with California unemployment checks and a modest inheritance from my grandmother, I took the advice of the family to cut loose. A dear friend had just moved to Woodinville, WA to take the position of National Sales Manager at this company call Mackie. I got ahold of an early copy of their "In Your Face" tabloid brochure/owner's manual/comic book, and was blown away. 

Working at Mackie for 10 years in the old days was awesome! I went from the third tech support guy ever, to Director of Market Research, to a stint as National Sales Manager, to Recording Products Market Manager. It was really cool until we went public. Then it sucked a lot and we all got laid-off; Greg Mackie too! 

I took a year off and learned the game of baseball by listening to every game of the 2002 Mariners season. Nice.

Rejoining my former Mackie boss, I spent the next 2.5 years at Genesis Advanced Technologies, manufacturing, marketing and selling audiophile stereo speakers costing up to $250,000 (shudder…). I did learn digital photography and the Adobe Creative Suite.

The Digital Engineering team fired from Mackie a day before me had formed SaneWave, Inc. and progressed well over this time. They needed a designated adult and I was bribed away from Genesis to fill that role. We spent the next 2.5 years developing core kernel-based motherboard level operating systems and hardware for digital recording and mixing, USB and FireWire to audio software, firmware and hardware, 100BaseT Ethernet audio networks and motorized  fader mixing and monitoring hardware. With this pile of IP, we tweaked and sold essentially the same design to the entire audio industry. We won a ton of awards for some pretty iconic products. Most satisfying was selling Mackie back their own engineering expertise at grossly inflated prices. That was fun.

One day, while on a bicycle break and a beer at Redhook Brewery, I got a phone call from a woman with an odd Asian accent telling me that Uli Behringer would call me in one hour. My spit-take made it almost all the way across the Sammamish Slough. (river, for you non-locals.) Turns out Ron Koliha, Mackie's iconoclastic marketing genius had accepted an offer to try to accomplish Uli's dream of the same branding miracle that he pulled-off at Mackie. Ron knew that I was a deep appreciator of irony and made my hire as Global Corporate Communications Manager a condition of his hire. Hmmm… What the fuck. I do like irony and I did like Uli's money.

No one lasts more than 2.5 years at Behringer, so we were right on schedule to get let go. I once again joined up with my former Mackie boss, this time in medical hardware and services marketing. What a frightening eye-opener to the Healthcare Industrial Complex. Yipes!

Brace Wireless found me for a year or so of marketing management and introduced me to a future character: very cool digital wireless guitar and bass systems, and the best endorsee list I've ever worked with.

Audix came calling with recommendations from friends, so I split time between microphones and dedicated breast MRI for another period. Enter stage right, former president of Brace, who had been brought into this new, weird, flat panel sound reinforcement speaker company now called Tectonic Audio Labs. Their intellectual property and patents are all based around Resonant Mode Audio technology. It’s flat panel displays vs. CRT TVs for audio. 

I was hired part-time as employee #4, splitting time with Audix, to start the marketing department at Tectonic. Fast forward almost five years to 2018 and Tectonic is a four division international company comprised of Tectonic Audio Labs branded pro audio products, Tectonic Elements OEM products manufacturer, Tectonic Commercial Products division and Tectonic Engineering Services; designing speaker solutions for Fortune 50 clients. I am the company "concierge" responsible for all outward-facing activities, the project manager for Tectonic Engineering Services and a proud owner of part of the company. 

"… and After Photo"

Me with my beloved Subaru Outback. This car was Greg Mackie's for a couple of years and was then a gift from him to me for 10 years of good work. Subaru USA just ponied-up $500 bucks to keep it in good shape. (The local service manager owns a Mackie mixer.)

After Some Ambulants called it quits in March of ’82 Michael got a job as a dishwasher at the Pannikin coffeehouse in Ja Jolla. During that illustrious stint he formed the electronic pop funk duo And And And with Andy Faunch, and put out the 4-song vinyl EP "HOLD", which found its way to L.A. and the hands of Strong Arm Management. This fortuitous occurrence got them signed to a management deal with Strong Arm. During their initial meeting with their new managers at a restaurant in Hillcrest in San Diego, the boys were convinced to move to L.A., and did so in late 1983. And And And gained some notoriety around town for a few years, eventually signing with man-about-town talent agent and former concert promoter Jim Rissmiller at CAA, but they were never able to nail down that elusive record deal. Bummer.

And And And broke up mid-’87 and Michael started writing music for film, scoring the underground science fiction film Vanity Kills, the surf film Liquid Thunder, and the children’s movie Laughing Matters (starring funny man Taylor Negron, RIP). In 1988 Michael became the music director at Aspect Ratio Inc., a film trailer house in Hollywood, and wrote and/or produced music for several film trailers of the day. These old trailers featuring his music can be found on the YouTube:

Rikky and Pete

Vice Versa

Hot To Trot

The Wrong Guys

Anguish

Michael continued in the biz for about a decade more, playing in many good bands and then finally threw in the proverbial towel (for the most part… read on) in 2000, when he finally shut down his digital recording studio, The Little Room. Michael continues to play, but stopped playing in bands a few years after the turn of the century.

Fast forward to present day: Michael has been with Walt Disney Animation Studios for 21+ years, currently as a Sr. Systems Administrator. Always wanting to stay connected to music, he has kept his hand in the biz a wee bit, playing guitar for longtime collaborator pal Andy Faunch as the opportunities presented themselves. Most recently Michael co-produced faunch’s 2016 CD, “Venice & Beethoven”, and also played some mean guitar licks here and there on the record. Michael, who created all of the Some Ambulants posters seen on this website under the name ipigrafix, has kept his pencils sharpened (though mostly unused) for work in that biz: he did all the photography and created the cover art for faunch’s “Venice & Beethoven” record, and he cobbled together Andy’s website, linked above, and also this website you are perusing right now. You can see his photographic works at MMCphoto. You can hear Michael’s solo music at his website. This Michael McClure is NOT the poet that worked with The Doors, nor is he the plein-aire painter of the same name who owns http://michaelmcclure.com. He’s always been bummed that he didn’t grab that domain first. Shoulda coulda woulda. Reach him via ipigrafix.

A recollection of Andy Nepal, by Carmen Borgia

Loading Zone afterward:

- We were playing at a club called the "Loading Zone".

- Guy in audience requests Free Bird.

- I say, go get your fucking Free Bird somewhere else, or the like.

- After the gig, parking lot, we've loaded the van. Free Bird gets into something with Andy Nepal in the lot. Yelling, shoving, escalating.

- I remember the guy pinning Nepal and banging his head against the pavement.

- At that point I advance on Free Bird and yell "YOU WILL BE DEAD!" I think I meant that Free Bird would one day die a sad and lonely death from being an asshole, but Free Bird dropped Andy and came lunging at me, for some reason, I hadn't prepared for that. 

- I remember being chased in a circle for a moment or two, and then ran off down the road, away from the club with Free Bird behind me.

- I look to my right and see Andy pulling close by in his van, leaning out the window. Blood was running down the left side of his face and he was laughing hysterically. For a minute he drove just fast enough so that I could catch him, Free Bird pursuing on foot. 

- I made it into the van and we sped off back to the house. 

- I got home feeling very angry and smashed up a chair and wrote the lyrics for Aggression. Jim had just arrived at the house from the airport. He hadn't seen the gig.

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- Probably my very favorite personal moment with Andy Nepal. -CB