Wax

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Wax
left to right: Joe Sib, Dave Georgeff, Tom Gardocki, Loomis Fall
Background information
Origin	Los Angeles, CA
Years active	1991 – 1995 2009
Genre(s)	Pop punk
Label(s)	Caroline Records (1992-1994) Interscope (1995)
Former Members
Joe Sib Tom Gardocki Dave Georgeff Loomis Fall

Wax was a Los Angeles-based punk-pop band in the early 1990s. They released two albums in their initial four-year run: 1992's What Else Can We Do and 1995's 13 Unlucky Numbers. The latter contained "California," a minor hit. Wax and Weezer were closely associated in the early 1990s and regularly attended each other's live shows.

Origins

Prior to the existence of Wax, several of its future members were acquainted with people from the future Weezer scene. In the fall of 1988, Pat Finn started attending Musician's Institute in Hollywood, and there he met fellow students Matt Sharp and Tom Gardocki. Tom had come from Chicago, and several of his Chicago friends arrived around the same time, including future Wax members Dave Georgeff and Loomis Fall, as well as Bob Hnilo (later of The Dum-Dums), Jack Polick, and several others. These meetings pre-dated any of the aforementioned people meeting "the Connecticut crew", i.e. Rivers Cuomo, Justin Fisher, Kevin Ridel and other members of Avant Garde, who would arrive in spring of 1989. Rivers moved to Los Angeles under the pretense to his mom that he was going to attend M.I., but did not complete any classes. So initially he had very little contact with Pat Finn, Matt Sharp nor "the Chicago crew", despite them all sharing the same nascent scene.

Formation

While Tom Gardocki played with Pat Finn and Patrick Wilson during the summer of 1990 in Bush, other future Wax members were feeling out the scene as well, but no bands came of it until a new arrival entered their circle in 1991. Joe Sib was from San Jose CA and had been in several punk/pop-punk bands in that area in the late 80's including The End (changed to The Living End)(not the same Living End as the 90s Australian punk band), and Front Line. Once he was in L.A. he got acquainted with Tom, Dave and Loomis, they quickly decided to get a band going, and named themselves Wax.

Inspiration and assistance to weezer

Wax had a nearly immediate buzz in Hollywood despite the scene still being mired in the dying hair and glam metal scenes of the 80s, due to their extremely high energy shows and great vibes. Joe Sib was (and remains) known for his infectious positivity and good natured-ness, and his astoundingly good stage presence which stoked up the typically "stand and stare" LA club audience.

In late 1991, Wax had the audacity to somehow arrange to play an in-store at the Hollywood Del Taco fast food restaurant, on the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Highland Avenue. Patrick Wilson, Pat Finn, Bob Hnilo, Rob Zombie, Karl and at least 150 other L.A. scenesters packed into the small restaurant as Wax played, ordering tacos and burritos as the show went on. This event became a legendary tale that served as motivation for many bands around that time - ("look at Wax! They played a Del Taco, for crying out loud - what are WE gonna do?")

All this was hugely inspirational to Weezer, who were just getting started and found it hard to do more than simply play their songs on stage. There was no thought of actually "performing" or "putting on a show", the game was just survival. So Wax's approach left a big impression and something to live up to (someday).

Additionally, after becoming good friends with Wax (another association that can be traced back to Pat Finn, who somehow introduced nearly every single person on the scene to each other), Weezer sought to piggyback on their scene, getting on as many shows with them as possible and getting exposure to Wax's considerably larger audience.

Weezer connections

BMF/Weezer/El Mag ... 3 bands, who along with Wax defined the mini-scene that weezer was a part of then, trying to forge a non-hair band -yet- non-grunge scene.

—Karl Koch,

Weezer played "Conversationalist" live at a handful of shows in 1992. This was a reworked version of Wax's song "So Much Talk."

"Wax" is mentioned repeatedly in the spoken word verse parts of the The Real Demo version of "Undone - The Sweater Song."

The inspiration for Matt's "stoked guy" character in the "Undone" spoken part (1st verse) on The Blue Album is Joe Sib. However this was done as a good natured homage. Joe was (and remains) a truly amazingly positive person who didn't seem to have a cynical bone in his body, and that was both alien and highly impressive to the (then) highly pessimistic Rivers and Matt. When the song's roles called for a stoked guy to play off Karl's "bummed guy", there was no better person to draw inspiration from.

Wax reunited in 2009 with all original members, to open a Weezer show at the Palladium on October 24. Johnny Knoxville (who had been a part of the early scene and was a close associate of all the "Chicago people" despite hailing from Knoxville) introduced the band.

Shows played with Weezer

Date	City	Venue	Other band(s)	Concert	Source
May 7, 1992	West Hollywood, CA	The Central	--	Weezer concert: 05/07/1992
December 10, 1992	West Hollywood, CA	The Central	Four, It, Borax, Crank	Weezer concert: 12/10/1992 (just for the encore)
May 14, 1994	Santa Barbara, CA	Alex's Cantina	Popsicko, Green Thumb	Weezer concert: 05/14/1994
October 24, 2009	Los Angeles, CA	The Palladium	Sara Bareilles, Chamillionaire	Weezer concert: 10/24/2009

Members

• Joe Sib - vocals
• Tom Gardocki - guitar
• Dave Georgeff - bass
• Loomis Fall - drums