Thursday, May 15, 2003
Copyright © Las Vegas Mercury

Music: For the record

Longtime local DJ, madman Bazooka Joe heads east

By Andrew Kiraly

The afternoon barflies at the Huntridge Tavern turn their heads when the song kicks in--the gutsy strains of The Kinfolks' "Mustang" rising up from behind the bank of video poker machines. Yeah, it's been an about an hour now that the crazy kid in the far booth has been blaring records on his portable Columbia GP-3 player; the manager's already come over once and told him to turn it down. But Bazooka Joe--head-bobbing and turkey-necking, his signature Gucci shades seemingly welded to his face--is rocking too hard to really give a shit. Joe lifts the needle, puts the 45 away, and produces yet another from his case.

"Yeah, this is 'The Duck,' a pretty bangin' soul-stomper here tellin' you to flap your arms like a duck and all that," he says. "When you get a bunch of drunk people in a room, especially at a house party and nobody cares about what the scene is, you play these records and people can't help but dance to 'em." Meanwhile, the Bobby Freeman tune starts whirling like a spiral of pink smoke in the dark bar. "Yeah, one of the great things about '60s songs is they tell you how to dance to 'em," Joe continues. "These songs have so much charm, and they're really sleazy. When you're really drinking a lot, you really feel it. Chances are the guys cutting the record were drunk out of their minds, too."

That's how Joe Almeida, best known as Bazooka Joe, talks, in a goony stream-of-consciousness rock-geek rant that's arrogant, inspired, terribly informed and, above all, enthusiastic. That same enthusiasm carries Bazooka Joe (named after a Big Black song) to New York next week, ending a colorful tenure in Vegas as a music scene fixture. He's a champion of '60s sounds, and veteran of DJ gigs ranging from KUNV to Venus to the Cooler Lounge to the infamous Chez Bippy, his home/party pad/art commune where most nights of the week scenesters could--to borrow a Bazookaism--"get stupid" at spontaneous living-room blowups that would erupt when Joe would get on the turntables and spin '60s garage, R&B and go-go until everyone passed out.

"Vegas is definitely losing one of its more unique and eclectic DJs, as well as one of its crazier characters," says friend and fellow DJ John Doe.

The truth shakes out after a few hours spent tossing back Jack and Cokes with the garrulous rock know-it-all: Between a not-quite-fairy tale romance and a hunger for a big-city life to match his energy level, Bazooka Joe fell for New York.

"I knew where my soul was, but when I got to New York, that's where the rest of my soul was," says the 1991 Chaparral High grad. "The town has so much energy, it's so hyper, there's no way I couldn't feel like I belong there." After a few visits that resulted in impromptu DJ gigs, one night Joe found himself crashing a housewarming party with a half-dozen soused friends. The chaos that ensued blossomed into love.

"It was midnight when we showed up," he says. "We walked in all smashed, the party is boring, so as soon as we got there, like six of us that walked in the place, started wrecking the place, like 'Waaah!' just going crazy, we go into her roommate's room and I started DJing, playing records, then I walked into the girl who's now my girlfriend's room, and I notice she had a poster hanging on her walls of one of my favorite bands, The Necessary Evils, and I couldn't believe it, 'cause there's only about a thousand people in the world who know who they are, and 900 of those people are guys.

"I just kinda flipped out. And she was running around acting like a goof, chugging whiskey out of a flask and pouring it down my throat, and she had this really good attitude and she was funny as hell, this crazy nut, there was no way I couldn't love her."

He's spent the past couple of weeks gingerly packing his 600 records and making NYC contacts for gigs; he's already landed one night at the Niagara Bar, and plans to work days at the Wowsville record store. Cig in hand, Bazooka Joe slips on another 45--a musky '66 track by Talk Talk--and muses on a tenure in Vegas that was appreciated more deeply than broadly. That is, while Bazooka Joe never became a household name much beyond the city's hipster cult, the rock goon is proud to have dished out so much guitar-fed sleaze to appreciative fans and friends.

"I gave Vegas the records I found, these are things that I believe could rock a party harder than anything else in the world. Even if there were only 10 people there, guess what? That party rocked harder than your thousand-person rave. It's insane to think this record could be dug up out of complete obscurity and it's rocking so hard, and the other thing is you're playing these records and you realize nobody else in the world is playing this right now. This is the only moment where this is happening."

It's New York's gain. But--true to his obsession with quality and soul in a big-box world--Bazooka Joe says someday Vegas might birth some of its own cool.

"It's not about me being unappreciated, it's about there not being enough people to enjoy that kinda thing," he says. "Vegas is not a hip town. It might get that way someday, since they're trying to go more adult, but the problem is the adults are so zombied out by SUV commercials that who really knows if they're gonna be cool again like how they were in the '60s and '50s, when things were brand new and they didn't have so many options?

"Anyway, this 45 is one of my favorites, I looked for this record for five years, it's by The Champs--you know, the same group that did 'Tequila'--but this one, 'Sombrero' is the one that shoulda been the hit..."