Mento Buru and the Ghosts that haunted me on a Dim night
“Mento Buru is playing at Fishlips. Do you want to go?” I asked a friend who had been setting up my new laptop for me.

“It’s haunted.” I said as an enticement.

“Only to you.” He replied smirking.

He had read about the ghosts I encounter at Fishlips that haunted downtown building, on my blog. My love for Mento Buru, Matt Munoz and their Latin Ska music was the only reason I was going to Fishlips that night. Dim, that local 1990’s band was playing a reunion show with Mento Buru and I knew the ghosts would be there in full force taunting me.

When I walked through Fishlips door that night the ghost of the blonde bitch that haunts that downtown building whirled and twirled through the crowd flashing her cold face, letting me know she was there-- mocking me with her sinister smile. I tried to ignore her. I made my way to the bar to get a drink. The bartender, whom years earlier I had taught him his trade; smiled, asked me how I was and poured me a drink. As I was leaving the bar to go sit with friends, I ran into another ghost. An amoral ghost with two faces that I had been almost certain would be there that night to watch Dim play. He was a local artist who used to be a family friend. Used to be until his constant negativity, his jealousy, his obscure obsessions, and his passion for turning my life into town gossip was something I was tired of putting up with. I couldn’t take it anymore and I decided I would be better off not talking to him-- that my life would be much more peaceful without his kind of drama. I hadn’t spoken to him in a couple of years. And here he was pretending to care about me, my family, but really he was just fishing for information to gossip about. I saw right through his ghostly tongue not giving him anything, walked away from his negative force that dripped with disdain and went to hang out with NL.

NL had run into a few ghosts of his own proving to me that Fishlips was truly haunted and it wasn’t just my imagination. I told him about running into the artist at the bar. NL had his own history with this amoral two-faced ghost and had depicted the ghost's true self in relation to my past through stories told in his novel Thick White Crust.

Dim took the stage shortly after my run in with their biggest fan, the amoral two-faced ghost. Dim. The last time I had seen Dim perform was sometime in 1997 in the basement of Jerry’s Pizza. Back then everyone was in awe of Missy, Dim’s singer. Back then those around me described her as ethereal, and mysterious, with her trademark blood red lipstick, black fingernail polish, strange clothes and punk boots and a voice that belted out local angst into the darkness. Tonight Dim was on stage doing exactly what they had done years earlier, the same songs, the same moves, everything. Missy belted out songs with her same voice that held no magic in it as it had back then. I would have liked to have seen who Dim is now in 2005, not who they once were circa 1997.

I watched Dim perform and it dawned on me they were trying to recapture the past. Recapture that one moment in their life when they were special, when people loved them. And I was moving away from the past. I was building a new life for myself, something real. A life that had no more room in it for ghosts.

After Dim’s set I went to the bathroom. The blonde bitch ghost followed me to the bathroom reeking with contempt. She flitted about mocking me, trying to get a rise out of me. I looked at her, saw through her.

“You don’t have any power.” I said to the blonde bitch ghost.

“You haunt these walls, this building, but not me… not anymore.” I exclaimed before walking out of the bathroom.

Mento Buru took the stage and turned a haunted night into a feel good musical dance party. Their blend of Latin, Ska and Salsa music has a way of chasing away even the most aggressive ghosts. The blonde bitch ghost and the amoral two-faced ghost both receded to the farthest corners of the building while Mento Buru’s music lightened the spirits of all in the room. Matt Munoz played his saxophone; beat a percussion beat and belted out lyrics into an old time microphone. He is the Ska King! As always Mento Buru’s large ensemble band is so musically gifted they blow me away every time I hear them. Mento Buru is a band that has evolved through the years and remained a Bakersfield beloved favorite. And the people come out to see them, to hear them, and to dance the night away.

When I left Fishlips that night I turned for one last look at the ghosts that lurk there. The blonde bitch ghost and the amoral two-faced ghost stood arm in arm watching me walk away from them, from that haunted downtown building, from the past, toward the life I now live.  posted by Matildakay at 2:34 PM