I got to see Clikatat Ikatowi play on October 8th, 2024. The set killed. 

In an earlier iteration of the novel I’m writing I made the bands from San Diego like Antioch Arrow and Clikatat Ikatowi central to my protagonist’s character and how he grew up.

I later realized I had cribbed the beginning of my novel from Bolaño’s 2666 in which his characters are searching for an elusive author – only, my character, Niko was searching for an elusive feeling. What was it about this music that affected him? that affected me? life? creativity? the primal push to creativity? I still don’t know. 

At the show I couldn’t remember if I had ever seen them play live. I had pictures of them, pictures my high school friend Marc had given me. Marc introduced their music to me (possibly in 1995?) when he gave me a copy of their demo. As a youngster, I was blown away by their energy and sound. 

After learning more about storytelling I ended up cutting that section from my novel, but I have sprinkled my own music taste throughout my manuscript and have given Niko my upbringing in Los Angeles. In one sense the music taste shows Niko as an outsider – and part of his journey (character arc) is being that of an outsider who comes home. The music taste makes Niko an outsider on two levels: he is an outsider in that music scene, he’s a Native American kid into punk. But he’s equally an outsider when he’s on the reservation – he grew up off the reservation listening to bands from Southern California. He grew up away from the culture of the reservation. It is the same space – a strangely tenuous outsider space – that I (and Niko) have occupied. A place for misfits, but that music felt like a home for a variety of misfits. 

It’s funny too because the name Clikatat Ikatowi most likely is taken from something Native American – whether that be from a place in the pacific NW named Klikatat, or something else. 

I remember talking with Marc about how great their music was. At one point we started talking about their name, where did it come from? 

“All I know is Clikatat is the name of a Native American tribe,” is what Marc said. 

I felt slightly embarrassed I was Native American and didn’t know that tribe. Was there some connection between the band and Indigeneity? Or, did they just think Natives were cool? I will never know. 

Clikatat Ikatowi are a little mysterious to me, as all bands from that time were. There were no glossy write-ups of them in Rolling Stone or Spin. I don’t know what their name meant. I don’t know what their politics were. But that world of DIY music opened me up to what creativity was and is. They were a part of an underground scene – one that made zines, one that had record labels and bands. And they opened my eyes to a DIY mentality that flirted with anarchism.

Picture from the Clikatat Ikatowi show at the Casbah on October 8th, 2024.