This page is dedicated to the best 1990s live rock band you NEVER heard: Alice I Wonder.

I had the honor to play trombone and keyboards in it around 1991. Monica Page Subia was the main creative force behind this amazing band. She composed all the music for it, sang lead most of the time in it, and played amazing electric guitar in it.

It is hard to describe the style of music Alice I Wonder played. It was much more than rock or pop. I think some described it also as "Cabaret" music. It was often funny, intense, but always fun and always crowd-pleasing. The group played in practically all the clubs along the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, along with performing elsewhere in places like Santa Monica.

Monica's songs were always so creative, and often did creative surprises. The singer who at the time was the lead singer for music I was writing, Doug Rich, sang as one of the THREE backup singers in Alice I Wonder (AIW). He encouraged me to check them out. Can't recall where on the Sunset Strip, but I think it was the Whisky a Go Go. From the start, I was blown away by the band, which included something like seven people. Everyone sang or played at a professional level. But it was a group that had a wonderful seriousness and intensity mixed with humor. The first thing I noticed was Monica was dressed like a 1950s housewife, in a dress of that era, topped off with wearing a kitchen apron. This was perfect especially for one of their zany but catchy songs, Oven.

For some reason (probably Doug), Monica asked me to audition with the band. I have been asked many times to play keyboards and/or trombone in various rock bands before that, but their songs never moved me. But the AIW songs were different, different in amazingly wonderful ways.

I ended up initially just playing trombone in AIW, but later played some keyboard, when the keyboardist at the time left the group.

Well, I rambled enough about this group. Let's listen to some of their music. I only had cassette tape duplications from cassette tapes. I did my best using music production software to take all the noise out, and try to do some post-production work to make the songs sound more like I remembered them.

Here is a live set. Sadly, I was not able to make most of the live cassette recordings sound listenable, but this one came out OK. It gives you an idea how exciting it was to hear them live, and you also get to hear how AIW's faithful audience often would show up and cheer us on. As mostly a professional classical and jazz musician, I was not used to all that cheering and clapping that we got. I'm sure you will enjoy this recording of various songs recorded live:

AIW Live

Next are 3 live AIW recordings that included me soloing on trombone. The first one is a cover of Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. I did my usual crazy soloing. But near the end of the song, a house speaker suddenly blew off its cover, and you can hear the crowd go wild, as if I caused that to happen (probably just a coincidence). But it was an especially fun moment for me in the band. Here are those three songs:

AIW, with Arnie soloing

I hope you enjoyed hearing this great band that I had the honor of playing in.

This page dedicated to AIW is brought to you by SKySWiM.