Welcome to The Death of Local Music
If you found your way here, there is a good chance that at some point in your life you stood in a club, a rehearsal room, a record store, a parking lot, a backyard, a warehouse, or some other forgotten corner of Arizona and watched local music happen right in front of you.
Maybe you were in the band.
Maybe you booked the show.
Maybe you ran sound, took photographs, worked radio, printed flyers, sold tickets, hauled gear, managed somebody, promoted the night, or simply stood in front of the stage and remembered what happened when the lights went down.
That is what The Death of Local Music is about.
My name is Richard N. Ornelas, also known as Reverend Black Jack McBride, and I created this project because too much local music history disappears when the people who lived it stop telling the stories.
The famous bands usually leave a trail behind them. They have albums, magazine articles, interviews, videos, record-company paperwork, photographs, websites, and people continuing to write about them.
Local bands are different.
Sometimes all that remains is a cassette in a box.
A flyer folded inside an old photo album.
A shirt nobody has worn in thirty years.
A handful of pictures.
A name written on the back of a photograph.
Or one person saying, “Man, I remember those guys.”
That is history too.
Volume II — Arizona Legacy Bands
The current work is The Death of Local Music — Volume II: Arizona Legacy Bands, focused primarily on the Arizona music scene of the 1980s and 1990s, while also following the roots that reach back into the 1960s and 1970s and the stories that carried forward into the 2000s.
This is not meant to be a popularity contest.
It is not a ranking of who was the biggest band, who sold the most records, who had the best guitarist, or who should have gotten signed.
The bands that never made it out of town matter too.
The musicians who played every weekend and then disappeared matter.
The promoters, photographers, club owners, managers, DJs, sound engineers, road crews, fans, girlfriends, boyfriends, wives, husbands, brothers, sisters, parents, and friends who helped hold the scene together matter.
All of it matters because all of it helped create the Arizona music scene.
This Is an Oral-History Project
Accuracy matters to me.
I do not want to repeat a story just because somebody has been repeating it for thirty years.
Whenever possible, I want to hear directly from the people who were there.
I want names spelled correctly.
I want the right musicians in the right bands.
I want dates checked when we can check them.
I want old flyers, photographs, demos, album artwork, newspaper articles, set lists, advertisements, recordings, ticket stubs, and anything else that can help establish what really happened.
Memory is not perfect, and that is okay.
Two people can remember the same night differently.
If that happens, I would rather preserve both memories honestly than pretend I know which one is right.
The goal is not to make history cleaner.
The goal is to keep it from disappearing.
Were You There?
If you were part of the Arizona scene, I want to hear from you.
If you played in a band, tell me about it.
If you managed bands, booked shows, promoted concerts, worked at a club, worked in radio, photographed musicians, recorded demos, ran sound, sold merchandise, printed flyers, or helped behind the scenes, your story may belong here.
If you have old material sitting in a box somewhere, do not assume nobody cares about it.
I care.
That old cassette may be the only surviving recording of a band.
That flyer may establish a date nobody remembers.
That photograph may contain a musician whose name has disappeared from the story.
That newspaper clipping may settle an argument that has been going on for thirty years.
And sometimes one name leads to another name, which leads to another band, which leads to a venue, which leads to another interview, and suddenly a piece of Arizona music history that had almost vanished starts coming back together.
That is how this project works.
Corrections Are Welcome
If you see something here that is wrong, tell me.
Seriously.
I would rather correct a mistake than defend one.
If I have somebody's name spelled incorrectly, tell me.
If I put somebody in the wrong lineup, tell me.
If a date is wrong, tell me.
If you have a flyer or photograph that proves something happened differently, I want to see it.
This archive is supposed to grow stronger as more people contribute to it.
What You Will Find Here
This website will continue growing alongside the books.
You will find firsthand interviews, band histories, archival discoveries, old flyers, photographs, cassette information, venue stories, corrections, book updates, and pieces of Arizona music history that may not exist anywhere else anymore.
Some stories will be complete.
Some will be fragments.
Some may begin with nothing more than a band name and one person who remembers hearing them thirty-five years ago.
That is enough to start.
Because the whole reason this project exists is simple:
If we do not preserve this history now, eventually there may be nobody left who remembers how it really happened.
So if you were there, reach out.
If you remember something, tell the story.
If you have something sitting in a box, pull it out.
If somebody's name has been forgotten, speak it again.
This is Arizona music history.
And it belongs to the people who lived it.
Richard N. Ornelas
aka Reverend Black Jack McBride
Author — The Death of Local Music
Smoke Wagon Productions
Phoenix, Arizona
KEEP LOCAL MUSIC ALIVE