Ozma's 'Rock and Roll Part Three' At 25
BOOK EXCERPT: Jose Galvez
Our semi-annual Remember The Lightning: A Guitar Pop Journal is on an indefinite hiatus, but we’re really proud of the four volumes we released over the last couple of years. Those print/ebooks are still available, but please enjoy this fantastic personal reflection on Ozma’s debut album by founding member/guitarist Jose Galvez—S.W. Lauden
Rock And Roll Part Three
Ozma’s Debut Album Turns 25
By Jose Galvez
The year was 1994. My Thursday nights were blocked out for Must See TV, and my Case Logic compact disc sleeves were maxed out with poorly decorated burned CDs.
At my private Catholic high school in Pasadena, CA, I had heard that these two guys in my grade had a band. “Are you serious? That's so friggin' rad,” I thought. I couldn't believe kids my age were doing what I imagined was the coolest thing possible. Drummer Pat Edwards (who lived about three minutes away from me) and guitarist Ryen Slegr were in an alt-rock trio called SAPP, but the band broke up when they started high school.
I befriended Pat and Ryen thinking that maybe I would be able to jam with them, but the funny thing was I didn't know how to play guitar...even though I told them I did. After a crash course on my mom's classical guitar—along with Pat and Ryen being super nice and forgiving guys—I jammed with them multiple times, even though I was a complete novice.
Ozma wasn’t fully materialized until I found Daniel Brummel on AOL Member Profiles in ‘95. I had done a search with three keywords: “Pasadena,” “Weezer,” and “Bass.” Daniel’s screen name was the only one that fit this very specific search criteria, so Ozma came together during a few jam sessions with him. After playing mostly birthday parties, high school talent shows, and local coffee shops, we added Star Wick on the Casio keyboard. The songs started to show some real promise and uniqueness as Daniel and Ryen hit their stride as songwriters.
After high school, Ryen and I decided to stick around locally. Maybe it wasn’t our parents' favorite thing to see their private high school investment lead to Pasadena City College, but they were all still 100% supportive nonetheless (BIG shout out to the Oz-Moms & Pops). In ‘98, as 18-year-olds, an air of seriousness took over as our Saturday practices extended to 5-7 hours. A website with the longest URL was created and the crowds at our shows were no longer just high school classmates. We wanted to see what Ozma could do!
The songs were starting to get really catchy and the parts got more complex in a good way.
Ryen would write the verse and Daniel would write the chorus or vice versa—there was a lot of mixing and matching going on. It was always a fun challenge trying to blend everyone's good ideas into any given song. I mostly focused on dynamics and worked with Pat on the drum parts, adding an occasional melody into our unintended "potluck" method.
I remember driving to school the Monday after a weekend mega-practice and listening to a tape-recorded rehearsal of the song “Battlescars” (my commute was only eight minutes, the exact length of the song). I thought, “How did we make an eight-minute song without any of us even realizing it?!”
After a joint garage sale of items from our collective family homes, we had earned just about enough to maybe record our first full length album. It wasn't much, around 800 bucks. I was a big fan of Linus of Hollywood and his work in Size 14, which led me to some of his other affliations including Pop Squad Studios, run by Florida legend Bruce Witkin.
Linus and Bruce agreed to meet with us at their garage-turned-studio.
We blocked out some dates and went off to rehearse. Drums, bass and rhythm guitars were all done in two days, and the entire record—including mixing—was completed in about two weeks.
I remember showing up around day six when Daniel looked at me and said something like, “Dude, as I walked in, fuckin’... Johnny Depp was walking out! I guess Bruce, Ryen and Johnny Depp were all just sitting here shooting the shit, and Ryen had no idea that it was Johnny Depp!”
I looked at Ryen with a WTF? face, and he just sheepishly shrugged his shoulders. Apparently, Johnny and Bruce were bandmates.
Anyway, working with Bruce was amazing. He was effortlessly cool and a giant influence/power pop mentor for us. The album was recorded before computers so Bruce had tons of great tricks and moves (all without a mouse) to work around editing some tricky teenage performances.
We pressed up about 200 copies of Rock and Roll Part Three, surprisingly selling out at subsequent local shows.
The kids were starting to hear about us! One of those CDs was purchased by local show promoter at the time, Jason Garcia. Jason played the CD in the car as he randomly drove Weezer guitarist Brian Bell back to LA after the recently reemerged band played a show at Jerry’s Pizza in Bakersfield.
Brian asked, ‘Who are these guys?’ Jason gave him the Ozma pitch and Brian told him to have us bring copies to Weezer’s show in Long Beach the next week.
Jason told me the crazy Bakersfield ride share story and even though I didn’t have a ticket to that sold out show in Long Beach, I made my way down there with four copies of Rock and Roll Part Three in hand. I gave all those CDs to Brian before the show and he had this grateful look on his face.
I was a little scared at that moment, but he reassured me that I wasn’t bothering him and that he was excited to listen to Ozma again. I remember thinking, “It would be a miracle if Rivers would even care to listen to it. It is Rivers after all and he’s got better things to do.”
I spent the whole show in the parking lot, but Rivers came out afterward and signed my mom’s classical guitar, the one I taught myself to play on. That Yamaha is my ‘run back into your burning house and grab one thing’ answer even though the signature completely wore off in about a year. This was an exciting time because Weezer were back after a 3-4 year absence, so I was simply happy to see my favorite band again.
Weezer played the Warped Tour in Anaheim about ten days later, a show I actually had a ticket for. I spotted Rivers watching Jurassic 5 by himself just on the other side of a barricade on the wing. I walked over and apologized immediately for being ‘that guy with a demo CD.’ He looked rather nonchalant and had an appeasing smile on his face that completely transformed when he read the album cover. “You're in Ozma?!”
At this point I didn't believe him and thought he was being a jerk, but he was actually serious. “Brian gave me this last week. It’s all I’ve been listening to. Give me your phone number, maybe you guys could play some shows with us.” This memory is burned deep in my brain. Every time I tell the story, a little part of me feels what it felt like at the time: my dreams were coming true right before my eyes.
Sure enough, Rivers called me on my family’s home phone and asked Ozma to play three shows with them the following month. He told me to check with the band and get back to him. I simply said, “I don't have to check; we can do those shows!”
Those three shows eventually led to touring with Weezer—and not just some rough-and-tumble, depress-o tour that most of our contemporaries warned us about.
Our first time playing out of state was opening for our heroes (as well as the Get Up Kids) to the tune of 1,000 to 5,000 people a night all over the country. Weezer even took our gear on their trucks so all we had to do was drive the van around. Insane! As a 21-year-old I remember thinking, “Yeah, we ARE pretty lucky, but we're also pretty good! All these new people we're playing for are into it!”
Our second tour after that was the obligatory smoky club tour, more akin to what up-and-coming bands do to earn their stripes—but I’m telling you, we lucked out on that one as well because that tour was with our other heroes, Nada Surf. Rilo Kiley was on their first tour ever opening first-of-three, with Ozma playing direct support.
A few years down the road—after we released other albums—touring with Superdrag was another “pinch myself” experience. So were the Weezer Cruises in 2012 and 2014, an exciting highlight for our band because we weren’t playing much at that point in our career. It was a real honor to be the only band invited to both cruises.
Even though Rock and Roll Part Three was created by teenagers, it’s both surprising and not-surprising that it was able to grab so many diehard fans. Sure, there are some lyrics that we giggle at during rehearsals and in no way did we ever imagine we’d still be playing those songs 25 years later. Crowd favorites “Eponine” and “Gameover” (later released on Spending Time on the Borderline) almost made it onto that debut album, so we were already thinking ahead to the next couple of records.
We definitely didn’t think we were creating a “classic” since we only had $800 worth of studio time (not much), so we were just making sure we got it done.
That’s what I remember most about making that record. We had so much growing up to do, and so many better songs to write. Even though I do think we have written better songs since then, there’s just an unexplainable spark to those songs that’s evident every time we crack into a Rock and Roll Part Three tune live.
Planning the 25th year anniversary shows last December, we weren’t sure what the response was going to be. Our last show was right before COVID, so we hadn’t played together in five years. You just never know who’s going to be there for you when you come back. The fact that all three shows sold out was a great reminder about what this album meant to everyone—especially us.
Jose Galvez is a songwriter/producer from Pasadena, CA primarily known as a founding and current guitarist of the band Ozma. His solo work expanded over a decade with multiple full lengths and EPs. Vicious Animal, his female-fronted indie pop project, will release its debut album in Fall 2024.
Great read and memories of this album. I would frequently throw “Natalie Portman” on a lot of my road trip mix CDs in college.
I will never tire of reading origin stories, be they about rock bands, authors, civil rights heroes, TV shows, cities, soft drink brands, or anything else. Thanks for sharing this one – it reads like every teenage music lover's dream come true.