I was looking at the list of bands that Ryan Butler has been recording at his Arcane Digital studio and a lot of them are from Yuma. Besides the Wongs the only other Yuma band I know of was the Primates. The first time I ever played music in front of people (with a band called Block) was in Yuma at a show in an Elks Lodge. Almost 20 years and hundreds of shows followed but that show was by far the wildest I’ve ever played. One kid broke his arm in the pit, went to the hospital, had it set, and came back to the show! If my memory serves me right those Yuma shows were set up by a guy named John McCloud who played in this band, Primates. It’s too bad this band existed in Yuma in ’93 and not Tucson in ’99 because they would have been kin to the Blacks and the Spites with their love of the rawer early grunge sounds of Mudhoney and American garage punk. Last time I remember talking to McCloud he was going to try out for a Scottish-punk band, the Real Mackenzie’s, in Canada. (insert Rolling Stones/Scottish/Bestiality joke here).
