The San Francisco Art Institute
THE GILMAN PUNK ROCK SUB-CULTURAL ZEITGEIST
THE SAN FRANCISCO EAST BAY AREA: OUR
MECHANISMS OF THE DREAM VISTA
A thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the
degree of
MASTER OF ARTS
In
URBAN STUDIES
By
Darin Allen Bauer
2013
The Thesis of is approved:
__________________________________________
Thesis Chair Robin Balliger
__________________________________________
First Reader Claire Daigle
__________________________________________
Second Reader JD Beltran
_________________________________________________
Claire Daigle
Copyright ©
by
Darin Allen
Bauer
2013
Table of Contents
v. Abstract
vi. Dedication
7. The Gilman Punk Rock Sub-cultural Zeitgeist
9. Personal Punk Rock Accountability
10. Punx Vista D’Ethos Appregio Mechanico: Songs and Fury!
14. Gilman and Bay Area Punk History
18. Sub-cultural Descriptive Modifiers
23. From the Desk of Mr. Lady; some kinda underground electro
feminist performance artists
27. New women at Gilman
32. Interview with Stephan and Christoph Von Pohl: Mechanisms
of influence, strategy, and intention
43. How did the city create, shape and change punk and how
did punk change the city?
46. 10 photos in
less than 10,000 words…
57. Some thoughts on the Dream Mechanism
61. Adieu! Our Mechanism of the Dream Vista; AT GILMAN
STREET!
63. Appendix
88. Bibliography
88. URLs
89. Pulp
89.
Discography
90. Songs
91. Punk Rock Easy Reference Guide,
(Punk Rock Things to Remember!)
Abstract
This
thesis presents a perspective of the Berkeley 924 Gilman Street sub-cultural zeitgeist. I am an amateur
ethnographer / sociologist and I was a participant at Gilman in the late 1980s
and 1990s. Gilman is a volunteer-run collective. For many, punk sub-culture
uses music to restore sanity in an insane post-industrialist neo-McCarthist and
now also post-Reaganomic era. Individuals involved in Gilman are and have been
involved in an on-going grassroots phenomenon. Gilman, like punk, has an
outreach that is global. Punks from around the world understand that the
message and standards for which this club was created helps keep ideas
regarding equality and non-conformity open and active. This bastion of creative
freedoms needs to be preserved. None of this is possible without the efforts of
those who continue to help explore the punk virtues that helped create 924
Gilman. In punk there is a punk repertoire, an anti-status, an oral history,
and there is a survival element and ethos against The Man. The man that is so
odious that we must throw ourselves upon his machinery to stop him.[1]
Our mechanism, our slam dancing, our social networks, and our genre reverses
the torque of said machinery and creates a catalyst of change for future
generations. Whatever he destroys we will build it again.[2] I
try not to take these facts for granted and keeping this in mind I explore the
ethos, space, and some gender-based analysis of Gilman based on my own
empirical ethnographic data.
This effort is dedicated to Tim and the gang, and all of the punks
The Gilman entrance from rcsi1 at DeviantART.com
People I
would like to thank for this project
My folks. Mike Limon, Steve List, Lawrence Livermore,
David Hayes, Aaron Cometbus (for the reading material,) Mike, and Julie
Uusinarkaus, Kirk Rastorfer, Ian Mc Kaye, Tim Yohannan (In the Happy Hunting
Grounds, a very punk place…), Christoph Von Pohl, Stephan Von Pohl, Jay Duffy,
Mike Welch, Peter Favro, Chris Frick, Brent Tashiro, Mike Paikos, The Rheem
Valley Sewer Punx , most of my ex-girlfriends, Robert Eggplant, Jello Biafra,
Chris Apple, Brian Edge, and people in bands / people who were in bands, Jesse,
Matt, and Lint, (OPIV, Rancid),
Neurosis, Econochrist, Christ On Parade, The Dead Kennedy’s, Sex Pistols, FEAR,
T.S.O.L., Billy and the guys from Green Day, Dave MDC, and MDC, The Voo Doo
Glowskulls, The Hell Billys, Kamalla of Kamalla and the Karnivores, Sweet Baby,
formally Sweet Baby Jesus, The Mr. T Experience, and a million other punk rock
bands…current Gilman Volunteers, Pat, Jeff, Karen, Jay, Robin, Autumn, Ingrid,
Snow… Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, Slingshot, and The Long Haul, East Bay Food Not
Bombs, Silke Tudor and Jack Bouleware, Gina Arnold, Running Wolf, many punx.
SFAI MA class of 2010 and 2011. Dale, JD, Robin, Claire, Krista and every
single one of my former professors, especially the sfai photography department
since about 1993. PUNX NOT DEAD!
The Gilman Punk Rock Sub-cultural Zeitgeist
In 1986 a
collective was formed in the Bay Area to produce a volunteer-run, all ages
venue that would cater to the local cultural phenomenon known as punk rock. As
a continuance of the sub-cultural zeitgeist that occurred in the Bay Area
during the mid to late-1970s, The Gilman
Street Project in Berkeley became a mainstay for the local independent
music scene, and also influenced the “Do
It Yourself” spirit. A few devout punks had been creating alternatives to
popular culture through radio, publications, and alternative venue musical
showcasing. A permanent fixture of punk had to be created. Eventually these
people agreed upon a location, the canning factory warehouse space at 924
Gilman Street, Berkeley California. Tim Yohannan, the founder and co-writer of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, put up the money
from his magazine, and in 1987, bands were playing every weekend. In its now
twenty-five years running the tenants of this club are still the prevalent
factors for not only 924 Gilman St., but also many alternative music venues
internationally. These kinds of clubs are often volunteer-run and operated.
Once jointly operated by the volunteer-run organization Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, Gilman St. is thought of as a musical and
cultural experiment. This helped create a safe haven for punk rock, in the Bay
Area that also continues to undermine the myth of pro-capitalist youth
consumerism linked to the music industry.
Typical “Gilman Bands” in the club’s
hey-day of the late-1980s and early-1990s included a “Geek Core” of pop-punk
bands that was usually associated with Lookout!
Records. Lookout!
was created by Lawrence Livermore, a prolific writer of Maximum Rock ‘n’
Roll, he also created his
own punk fanzine and punk band from the same title. Livermore wanted to create
independent recording options for bands with potential and talent, although
hardcore bands with positive messages, (part of the straight-edge movement or
left of center politics) were also among “Gilman” type bands. Punk bands like Neurosis, whose lyrics, and
philosophical allegiance to anti-death culture capitalist structure could help
people formulate their ideology outside of capitalist cultural quotient industries
and norms; some would switch from an independent and/or heavy metal label, to Lookout. Most people are familiar enough
with the band Green Day, and perhaps
have heard of Operation Ivy, or Rancid. The kinds of experimentation with genre in the sub-cultural
zeitgeist of the 924 Gilman during
the late 1980s and 1990s can be related to Toynbee as he uses Bourdieu’s
consensus regarding music as a popular formation.
Toynbee reconfigures
Bourdieu in arguing that making popular music is not an intuitive act of
self-expression, but depends on the continual planning, research and monitoring
of the outcome of creative decisions - in this way musicians are active
creative agents though their modes of expression are heavily prescribed. A
musician's habitus (personal dispositions, attitudes and predilections)
pre-disposes him/her to a set of approaches to playing, writing and performing
- Bourdieu calls these strategies. These strategies are deployed on a field - a
prescribed cultural space of popular music institutions and practices.
Musicians are argued to have a 'fuzzy' world-view that encapsulates the
competitive struggle for capital (economic and cultural) and a utopian drive -
success is measured by capital gains and in the effective promotion of both
libertarian individualism and/or social responsibility - a kind of (self)
conscious capitalism. Toynbee augments
Bourdieu by saying it is the space of possibilities that are key to understanding
cultural creativity. Possibilities arise in the relationship between the
habitus, the field of musical practice and the likelihood of selection (of
musical works, practices and strategies) from this field. This forms the basis
of the radius of creativity - a figurative space demonstrating the range of the
likely creative possibilities of an individual agent. From the radius the
creator constructs an individual voice that speaks through musical and spoken
languages 'already populated with the social intentions of others', but the
creator 'compels [them] to serve [their] own new intentions' (Bakhtin quoted in
Toynbee 2000, p. 46). There is room therefore to endorse the assertions of
artists claiming aesthetic and creative agency while recognizing how these are
also determined by historical, social and cultural relations.[3]
Toynbee could very well have been
using his analysis of Bourdieu to describe The
Gilman Street Project. In the past two decades the need for a safe, open
minded, and tolerant practice in sub-cultural production gave way to a
foundation of music that helped change the minds and ears of musicians,
performers and music lovers everywhere, and is still considered a major facet
of professional music culture today. The capitalist world does little to
encourage a wider range of idealism, without a punk venue such as Gilman in the
Bay Area the world might seem conspicuously darker. By my own account, I have
volunteered at Gilman over one hundred times in the 1990s. My seven-year
involvement has seen three different collectives own and run the efforts of all
of those involved with the venue that is 924
Gilman. My research into the major efforts regarding the most recent
collective has provided me with the insight that Gilman has not changed much since
1988.
Personal Punk Rock Accountability
My research draws, in part, on my own
history of participation at Gilman. My current research design includes
interviewing Gilman workers, fans,
and bands; I will also include photographic documentation in addition to
ethnographical and historical references. 924 Gilman Street is not, nor will
ever be Bill Graham Presents. Without
dedicated volunteerism there would be no Gilman.
A rich history of involvement in what was The
Gilman Street Project has given to the community many of the same types of
hard working individuals today that do not receive any foreseen immediate
benefits from their efforts, that only continue with the bond of love and
camaraderie that Gilman has to offer,
when in many cases the society in which we live does not consider a grass roots
collective otherwise relevant for individual development.
I have
been going back to shows at the Gilman to rethink the profound impact it had on
me in an earlier moment. After so many years I felt like I had neglected the
past so terribly that ultimately with my thesis in mind I knew that I was
doomed to repeat my past in unforeseeable ways, so I decided, with the advent
of The Berkeley Oak Grove Tree Sit, a
precedent and priority to me in regards of photographic documentary efforts,
that not only did I need a break from the office, I needed to become
re-acclimated to my former vestige of youth. My findings and interviews have
made me see that Gilman has not really changed, it has only improved in the
regard that it has become more of what it already was, a safe volunteer-run,
all-ages alternative venue for open-minded individuals to enjoy music and chaos
(fun.) The volunteerism there is still hard work. The efforts there are still a
labor of love and dedication, and I’ve seen for myself the success Gilman
appreciates as it continues to democratize itself in monthly club membership
meetings. Over the summer of 2009, and in the Fall semester I have seen that my
above observations are quite conclusive. The kids who now volunteer generally
as before still appreciate their efforts, as they see half a musical show for
free, also they get to socialize, acclimate, look marvelous, and get an actual
taste for what it is like inside of the music industry. I have interviewed and
spoken with many of the new people who are now involved with the Gilman. It is
weird being at the new Gilman meetings and watching volunteers, it is exactly
like being there in the 1990s. For me personally, every time I’m at 924 Gilman there is the possibility of
perpetual déjà-vu. The ghosts in the club are living volunteers and
participants. The former methods and processes of volunteerism are still
evident and as present as anyone so familiar with it as such in regards to the Gilman
would be to know. The club has improved. There are fewer fights and calls to
the police than there ever have been. Fascists tend to negotiate away from the
club. Skinheads were once a very major problem, but are and have a history of
being driven away by non-fascist club enthusiasts. Continuity is still a
prevalent complication however, and the same methods of democratic communal
decision making still rule the club. There are still bands coming to Gilman from everywhere in the world.
There are still amazing local bands that are up and coming that from my
experience I can see being the next big thing. Older bands still participate,
and newer bands from said conglomerations still proceed to play the Gilman.
Alternative and political awareness is still part of the underlying cohesive
consciousness of this structure. Many of the kids still feel like there never
was anything else for them, and nothing else for them to be involved with.
Popular culture has a historical account of alienation. Gilman Street is still a major turn against the status quo. Most
post-modern alternative foundations work similarly to this. In twenty-two years
Gilman is still experimenting with alternatives to the norm. Although the
foundations have been laid, the community facet that is the Gilman is a steadfast
force to be reckoned with.
Punx
Vista D’ethos Appregio Mechanico: Songs and Fury!
Through my decade and a half long
process of re-evaluating my sub-cultural experience with the San Francisco Bay
Area punk scene, I expand on the primary theories of the sub-cultural didactic.
We were shouting out against the “death-culture” and the mechanizations of the
mainstream. So often is the case that a grassroots community organizational
construct is really such a device to persevere against the models of post-modernism;
neo-liberal corporate tendencies, capitalism in general, main stream media,
political corruption, unfair popular quo-related bias’s often including various
forms of misrepresentation, irresponsible political foreign policies, and the
alarming advent of globalization/ transnationalism. Music is still the message.
We still rage against the machine somehow, many years later, if only in our
unassuming private manner. Some of us simply continued with our projects
aims/goals, some of us found new ways to continue, we’ve all learned something
new in the process. My examination of “Our Mechanizations of the Dream Vista,”
will explain a very Californian effort to build something positive out of the remains
of a decaying Post-Reaganomic/McCarthyist dogmatic.
The facets of urban sub-cultural methodology
has differentiated vastly. Back in the day a punk in the boons or wherever had
to wait for mail order. Even though this is basically the same, everything is
faster, the wait is less, and the tendencies now are that the suburban punk
will carry on forever without our intervention. Although this was more or less
the case then, it was much less easy to create alternatives to the status quo
then. Most importantly I need to record, for my own sense of purpose, the
designs and functions of our dream works that made our scene so special, so
unique, so famous, so infamous. Dream mechanizations can purposefully function
as a discourse in how to make miracles happen, and this idea draws me into
comparative analysis somewhat. By
miracles I specifically mean that at least for several hours one night a week a
utopian vista was made visible, and viable to those who choose to accept the
message. The message was usually to have fun by any means necessary.[4]
Martin Sprouse:
…The Mindfuck Committee was another
cool thing that I wish would have stuck around. Trying to make the shows
interesting, trying to mess with things. One thing they did was talking about
Apartheid in this really interesting way. Everyone got a South African passport,
and people would randomly get arrested during shows. Kind of performance art,
kind of political. A lot of great ideas but really hard to implement. Most
people just wanted to watch Neurosis play.[5]
This variation on the “utopian vista”
is based on punk performance work like that of the early Gilman band Isocracy and their “trash fest concerts”
which were also in keeping with The
Gilman Street Project’s infamous Mindfuck
Committee[6].
Isocracy would literally bring in
truck-loads of computer paper, plastic wrap from warehouses, confetti, old
toys, massive amounts of foam, and weird objects from the dumpster to combine
with the sights and smells of the club to enhance the slam pit and create an
addendum to the conceptual performance mystique of The Gilman Mindfuck Committee. Everyone at the time wanted to be in
a band, yet Isocracy ironically took
place as a continuance of when earlier punk manifestations of The Gilman Mindfuck Committee would have
logically had to reach new levels of insanity, both replacing and exceeding the
goals of the original Committee. Taken
literally, Isocracy is a sort of
jubilant non-political formation and generally taken to be a lighter approach
to liberal, anarchist or socialist tendencies of the late 1980s and early
1990s, which the punks of today more or less seem to at least give a nod to
occasionally. Sinda Gregory makes a similarity when comparing Marcus’ Lipstick Traces to anti-cultural
subcultural climes and methods of anti-art which seems to describe both The Gilman Mindfuck Committee and many
of Lookout! Record’s “Geek-core”
Gilman bands, especially Isocracy as
if both Marcus and Gregory were in attendance in Berkeley in the late 1980s.
Like Roberts's
study, Marcus's Lipstick Traces
addresses forms of literature and art that challenge traditional modes of
critical investigation-the "anti-art" produced by Dada, the French
Situationists, punk, and other related forms. The reasons that such art resists
conventional methods of evaluation and discussion inhere in its underlying
motivation, which is nothing less than the demolition of art and meaning (at
least in their rationalist guises), and with this the destruction of the entire
fabric of politics, economics, law, and social structures that has produced
Western culture. This radical motivation has been shared by utopian thinkers
who have challenged the status quo since the Middle Ages. But what makes the
outlooks of these artists different from those of, say, Thomas More, Karl Marx,
Henri Lefebvre is the depth of their loathing,
a disgust so boundless that any positive utopian impulses in their work exist
only in the freedom offered by death and pure chaos. It goes without saying
that the aesthetic impulses arising from such a motivation are necessarily
revolutionary. Madness, self-destruction, glossolalia, nonsense, ugliness,
horror, willful crudity, ephemerality, and pure noise-these are only a few
motifs employed by nearly all the artists examined here. Because the confluence
of elements that produced this radical, disruptive, and thus often censored and
forbidden art must be viewed within personal, aesthetic, and historical
contexts.[7]
Gilman volunteers, bands and their
fans felt and feel the same way Marcus does, this is too reminiscent a
similarity for me. Old enough to realize that Nietzsche was the brown acid that
the hippies must have mentioned and warned about in the original Woodstock, I
understand and still relate to the schism of nihilist philosophy of the young
and engaged, the seething and dissatisfied.
Ultimately something in the fact that
kids want to get away from their parents, and somehow the magic actually
begins, beyond this however …this being the basic fundamental truth of it, alas
never the less…and also in regards to a historical account of the actuality of
an urban underground culture…and so therefore the route of my belief in said
research would lead me to an investigation of my own culture and ideas. I am
reminded of Nirvana’s 1990s
appearance on MTVs Unplugged, and in
particular their cover of the song Plateau,
also The Mr. T Experience with …on Gilman Street.
There’s nothing on top but a bucket and a mop, and an
illustrated book about birds, there’s danger out there but don’t be scared, who
needs action when you’ve got words?[8]
Although Nirvana can now be considered an
over-popularized cultural cliché within and external from the sub-culture,
there was something satisfying about seeing grunge on television at the time.
An earlier theme on this would be the college rock feel. Examine in the following
selection how The Mr. T Experience
essentially is the first successful cross-over band from college or alternative
rock to geek core.
At Gilman Street:
Seems like it
was only yesterday, nothing to do and nowhere to play
but then we
could go down to Gilman Street, and see Op Ivy every week
no violence
drugs or alcohol, just maximum rock and roll
at Gilman Street
it's the place to be it's the seat of the punk rock scene
cause we got the
beat and we don't eat meat it's a club it's a place it's a thing.[9]
Exemplifying “Geek-core” to its
fullest, Dr. Frank and Jon Von of MTX[10]
always had zany fun sounds that like other bands of that time turned Gilman
Street into a sort of punk rock playground. Although sometimes lauded for being
sort of “Emo” they had songs about love, and also funny songs about some of the
weirdest stuff ever. This is what kept MTX
within the Gilman periphery; this is very much in keeping with “geek-core.”
Not many college rock bands would simply jump on with the nearest punk scene. MTX had a wider range, everyone in their
band seems to have gone to college, their lyrics explained part of the
frustrations of being between two cultures. One of the best songs that sort of
spelled out the perspective of the time would be their song, about a girl who
went shopping. Whimsical, funny, nostalgic, even sad, MTX actually inspired sincere feelings to a college audience that
was otherwise either bombarded with commercial music or something really;
really hardcore that ultimately might not necessarily make you think about the
larger issues.[11]
The Mr. T Experience tends to define
the geek core scene from the confines of the college rock experience. Although
it can be profound listening to sad songs about women when drunk and alone on
the weekend, often punk must also mean something more substantial.
Gilman and Bay Area
Punk History
My analysis of Gilman St. and its
importance emerged from my own experience at the club as a youth. In 1988 I was
taken to my first punk rock show at what was then The Gilman Street Project, a name then synonymous with urban
renewal. We had seen The Dead Jacksons[12]
at a house party somewhere south of Oakland off of HW 580, so we were cool. The
January 23rd Gilman Street
Project show also included, Vincent
Van Go Go[13],
Weeney Roast, The Web, and Bad Religion.[14]
From then until sometime in 1996 I tried to make at least one show every
weekend at Gilman St. In 1989 I had
begun volunteering. Of the major tenants I had assumed to be a general function
of the club was that of political awareness. As it turned out, most punks had
mostly already surpassed the ability to live, breathe, and otherwise express
hatred for the republican administration, including Ronald Reagan and George
Bush. By the mid – 1980s punk in the Bay Area had already experienced the
pinnacle of their Rock Against Reagan, Rock Against Ollie North
concerts, and political benefits, including The Dicks performance at the Democratic
Convention in the Moscone Center, also The
Dead Kennedy’s and others at Delores
Park. Political beliefs were the expected norms in many regards, and
especially as an extension of liberal Berkeley political beliefs, Gilman St. was also very much a radical
facilitation thereof.
As an anarchist
and a non-conservative I found Gilman to be the cutting edge of social
awareness. In 1987 alone there were seventeen benefit concerts, and alternative
performances at The Gilman St. Project,
not including their own non-profit fundraiser’s. No More Censorship Defense Fund (Jello Biafra’s anti-PMRC group), Animal Liberation Front (radical anti-vivisection), Diet For a Small Planet (Vegetarian
Environmentalists), Anti-High School
Night, Woman’s Liberation Front, Versailles Was Full Of Spiders - One Act
Play by the Theater Des Vampyres,
Vegan / Carnivore Basketball, Incoherent Nights (possibly prompted by Gilman’s
infamous Mind-Fuck Committee
performance group), Aids Benefit, Benefit for The African National Congress, Ramones
cover night (bands only play songs by the Ramones,)
Nicaragua Medical Aid, An Evening of
Pagan Goddess Worship (Female musicians play on this night). Gilman St. is also synonymous with art
gallery shows, Punk Rock Prom, Legal Funding and Bail out money benefits for
activists and friends of Gilman St.
and its community members. Punk Rock politics became synonymous with The Gilman Street Project and Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll in the late 1980s.[15]
The history of Gilman becomes slightly clearer in this light when we consider
the Bay Area’s punk history regarding Rock
Against Ronald Reagan.[16]
Reaganomic political policy alone was a loud and clear enough rationality to
create The Gilman Street Project.[17]
In the
mid-1980s, the punk scene in San Francisco had many obstacles. The pressure on
punks during an important election year kept getting worse, a curfew was set in
place, and thanks to then San Francisco Mayor Diane Feinstein, punks would be
arrested for being out past a certain hour, (like nine pm.) Through his
magazine, and radio show Maximum Rock ‘n’
Roll Tim Yohannan was able to organize curfew shows at the Mabuhay Gardens on Broadway Avenue in
San Francisco’s then extremely seedy North Beach district. That August, [1984]
due to the rock against Reaganing of the punks, local punk bands that had
participated in Rock Against Reagan
were actually invited to perform at the Democratic National Convention at the
Moscone Convention Center. This accumulated in a related protest at the Bank of
America world headquarters, and a City Hall sit-in related to said protest
arrests. The mass arrests during the Democratic convention escalated to numbers
surpassing that of protests in the late 1960s.[18]
So to Tim Yohannan, as well as many, The
Gilman Street Project, didn’t just drop down from the sky, but was an
accumulative account of punk politics and polemics. More recently the former
Gilman band Green Day’s 2004 album American Idiot, equated George Bush to
Hitler, and encouraged public outcry against the wars.
Green Day, NOFX, and Anti-Flag all participated in a political movement aimed at
derailing George W. Bush’s re-election as U.S. president in 2004. Organized by
NOFX lead-singer Mike ‘Fat Mike’ Burkett, the ‘Rock Against Bush’ project
entailed a U.S. national tour by over a dozen punk bands, two compilation
albums and the popular website punkvoter.com. Explicitly linking punk and
politics, the website stated, “We plan to use this election as a way to get our
fans engaged in politics and evolve our movement into becoming involved locally
to effect real change nationally” (quoted in Dunn, 2008, p.208). In short, the
rhetoric of the 2004 ‘Rock Against Bush’ project suggested that punk bands were
channeling and consolidating their separate, damning criticisms of the U.S.
‘war on terror’ in order to speak out more persuasively.[19]
Since the
dawn of punk in America it has been easy for punx to blame the Republicans for
all of the Bullshit, and praise the Democrats for all that is at least
tolerable. The running joke is that although the Bush administration was a grey
dirge hell bent on fucking the world, before it happened again in 2000, and
2004, the punx all joked that, “Well at least we’ll have four years of good
music.” Punk rock had become complacent, and the political strategies of bands
like Green Day, and NOFX [20],
who have financial limits regarding tours and albums, were also matched by inaccuracies
such as factors like the out of touch campaign decisions of the Kerry platform.
If Jello Biafra of The Dead Kennedy’s could
run in the 1979 San Francisco mayoral race, no one should have stopped the now
all-star punks from working a little closer with Kerry during his run for
office, should he have had the insight to include them as official endorsers.
What came from a tradition of Bay Area punk and punk politics actually
manifested in a variety of local punk bands that would influence bands such as Green Day.
In
the 1987 Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll
release of Turn It Around we find a
very interesting song by the band Sewer
Trout. A punk rock song that when performed acoustically could pass as a
folk song from Central America, tackles some interesting issues regarding
America’s view of President Ronald Reagan’s foreign policy.
Wally and the Beaver go to Nicaragua,
(featuring a conversation between Eager Beaver Contra and Lt. Col. Wally
North.)
E.B. - I don't know what to do - Yeah,
I'm a Contra too
Tell me how I can be - useful for
societys
W.N. - Hey Beav, let's go to Nicaragua
Socialists have come to power
We'll have to steal and kill and lie
Or else democracy will die.[21]
This
song has a catchy groovey bass rhythm that seethes with irony once the electric
guitar is added, (more substantial live unfortunately.) As early as 1987 Gilman
geek-core had political meaning and for some of us this was the outstanding
relevance and / or revelation that made for us a connection into politics and subculture.
Before 1986 there were alternatives
to mainstream culture in the Bay Area, there were just extreme limitations to
the expression and sustenance of such a counter culture. Following what many
would otherwise assume to be an advent or extension of California political and
cultural phenomena, punk had its beginning in the Bay Area in the 1970s when
bands like The Ramones, The Clash, and The Sex Pistols toured through San Francisco.[22]
These bands helped to create a devout following of alternative culture, and
this local movement began to develop beyond the normative scope of the merely
influenced, almost immediately. The Gilman’s founders, with this sense of local
interest and history in mind needed to develop something sustainable that would
influence and help create and propagate alternatives. An entire convention of
alternative ideology needed to be created to help assist with the sociological
foundations, and mostly just to propagate its own ideology, yet also to help
those within the culture to persist and function. By creating a community
within a sub-cultural clime, then this movement or group could function well
enough to explore its outreach and purpose on its own terms. This is something
that could not otherwise have been done, especially for the types of already
alternative-minded individuals that made up the community collective. Today we
here in Berkeley take for granted The
Longhaul Anarchist Community Center
and Infoshop[23],
a non-profit which had its beginning as one of the initial Gilman ownership’s
heyday ended. Previous to recent grass roots collectives in the Bay Area, there
was and still is, The Anarchist Bookstore[24]
in San Francisco, which is synonymous with the Beat and Hippy movements. Lookout! Records had a store in Berkeley
that was a hang-out, open to the public and also a safe place for alternative
minded individuals. Epicenter,
(1990-1999)[25]
a non-profit in San Francisco’s Mission District, (a former subsidiary of Maximum Rock ’n’ Roll) also was an
alternative hang out and record store. Especially taken for granted by the
local Berkeley community is the straight-edge following that historically had
originated in Washington D.C. in 1982 by Ian
MacKaye and Henry Rollins, and
their bands Minor Threat,
Black Flag, and later
transformations such as Fugazi,
and The Henry Rollins Band.
Alan O’Conner discusses further parallels with another punk experience with
that of Gilman, in appendix five.[26]
The straight-edge movement was
created as an alternative to drug and alcohol abuse within the punk scene, a
movement that in the 1990s became reinvented as part of the Gilman experience. Dischord
affiliated bands such as Rabid Lassie,
as well as other more prominently straight-edge bands such as Youth of Today would be considered
related hard-core bands to a Gilman “straight-edge,” audience. What would
eventually coincide with Gilman would
be benefit concerts such as one for survivors in Central America related to the
U.S. government influenced coup by the CIA,
Rock Against Racism, and later with
bands like those involved in the Straight-Edge movement, bands with a message were
clear to play and influence. What needed to happen was that we needed a place
to express our outrage and disobedience; we also needed a place to grow and
learn outside of government approved conventional methodology.
Sub-cultural Descriptive Modifiers
Darkness prevails in the club.
Graffiti litters the walls. One room has a concessions stand with candy and
soda, punk zines, sometimes t-shirts and punk paraphernalia. Stuff that might
be in magazine or record stores, the non-glossy kind of stuff. The god Xeroxes
had smoked cigars all night with the boys, he sneezed, and what was left was
this place. A big Dead Kennedy’s
symbol, Winston Smith’s original, towered above us in the warehouse space wall,
towards the ceiling, about as tall as I was. A very large gothic Americanesque
space heater hung from one of the ceiling supports on the far war closest to
the front door. (It was usually wrapped in sheets of foam by way of duct tape
due to endure indoor basket-brawl.) Those old dinosaurs are really expensive to
repair. Flyers for future and past events were and always are everywhere.
T-shirts and records, tapes, eventually CDs line the eastern wall. Also
stickers, posters and literature, mostly fan-zines.
In an earlier time the sound booth
was in the balcony, like a sweatshop overseer’s office. Now it is on the floor
at the far northern wall underneath where the Smith piece once was. The
basketball hoop still stands between the men and women’s rooms, and a cagey
garden wire enshrines the sound booth, although I think this is the second time
the booth has been located on the floor rather than the now more dangerously
rickety balcony. With success and technology not all of the sound equipment
would fit upstairs anymore as it once did. I am lead to believe Marshal Stax of
KALX Berkeley’s 90.7 FM,[27] and
a former Gilman sound engineer, took home his equipment after one of the
previous changes in ownership. I do not know that this is entirely true. He did
bring a little something from his home studio to record bands that played
there, this much I know for fact. For some reason I can’t just assume the old
equipment was simply sold off.[28]
The main speakers hang from heavy chains from the south ceiling support beams,
which stretch the length of the club overhead. Those speakers are still massive,
very loud, and very clear. You can really hear a cricket thinking in the spring
time all the way from Siberia when the speakers are on, and no sound is coming out
of them. I don’t know a more precise description.
The slam pit is
pretty vital. Tribal. Running in a circle like our species once did around the
life fire. Testament to a larger encompassment, a reminder of the larger
element, the astronomical, the skies dark at night rotate and the Mayan
calendar also reflects this. Visceral. Lots of drunks and violence, although
they try to curb that, and the worst offenders are generally kicked out. It’s a
lot nicer there now a days. Grade school kids play sometimes, and their
suburban folks, friends and neighbors are there to help and give encouragement
and support.[29]
Not everyone can find the best
expression for the release of raw visceral aggression and yet anticipate the
expectation of such raw energy in sound, often related to weekend performance. For
some reason I didn’t often consider earplugs in those days, but I’m sure you
can imagine. The “scherzo” of punk is so much faster, compared to normal tempos
and heart rates; it’s like having a seizure or a heart attack for five or so
sets of about twenty minutes to about an hour each with five to fifteen minute
intervals. The “scherzo” of rave music also creates a similar effect. Smoking
has been banned indoors. Grey snot, yum. Drugs and music, even Miles Davis used
speed, psychedelic, who knows. Punk scherzo tempo could be in response to
A.D.D., although I’m wondering how much mythology the pharms have created due
to mass production and consumer commodity. What is pro-zack? Who are these
brats? Like Valium or children in the suburbs, something to be bought sold and
traded. Anyone can imagine punx just needed to evade something they were stuck
in.
I am reminded of some of
the lyrics from Operation Ivy, (available
from Lookout!) Youth perspectives
have that sort of unveiled examination of the urban environment that
adulteration can sometimes revile. In my own recent activities in activism I am
reminded how fresh in my mind the ideas once seemed to be, and how relevant to
both today and yesterday’s circumstances. Their music targets disaffected punks and gives light to
their plight. On a very unique and personal level within punk sub-culture there
are fewer outlets for anti-mainstream culture. Similar to most punk bands,
arrangements, and circumstances, Gilman is the catalyst where the conceptual
arrangement of Operation Ivy often
performed.[30]
The joy
of music combined with a sense of togetherness, unity, and unilateral concern
for a continuous devastation of humanity by an insensible political construct
and general distrust of authority is what once brought us together. It is not
really an experience someone can feel endemically without the use of the actual
music itself, and of course all of your best friends nearby. We began to become
so accomplished with listening to the Mechanization
of the Dream Vista that it became a viable unconscious philosophical
standard, a belief, an understanding, one that I hope today is not only simply
a memory. “Big City” from Operation Ivy
is one of the greatest examples of urban disaffection that has come from the
early Gilman sound. Another dystopian punk song to check out is Chrimpshrine’s “Butterflies.” [31] Part
of the success of Operation Ivy was
that they had anthems and that the audience could sing along and participate,
which basically part of the whole punk thing supposedly is that part of the
punk process is to blur the lines between audience and performers. You would
have all of these kids climbing all over each other around the stage jumping,
dancing and singing, it was an amazing experience, and it was an amazing
feeling.[32]
In the
song “Big City,”[33]
Jesse[34]
from Operation Ivy sings about his
urban environment. Using negative connotations that interlink concrete with
chaos, and rhyming “giant rash” as an urban descriptive modifier with “bed of
ash” in reference to deforestation since Jesse sees his urban environment as a
place of disturbance. He indicates the plight of the homeless, and refers to
the city as, “a giant mechanical brain,” devoid of humanity. In his lyrics,
Jeff Ott from Crimpshrine [Appendix
Seven] pities the entire urban environment, and everyone within. His lyrics
depict overpopulation as the cause for “people closed up as a defense,
protecting what little space they have left.” Ott describes the city as a bleak
place where people’s stress makes them numb. Sometimes it becomes difficult to
explain to younger punks. I’m not just a punk enthusiast, I am an urban
analyst. I was and am witness to the activities of counter-culture and how that
sub-culture harbors the music and art of its genre. Again within the confines
of the urban, not just the suburban as Frank Black of The Pixies[35]
might dictate, the support systems and acknowledgement of what I consider to be
the evils of capitalism are part of a larger sub-cultural therapy. Another
theory might be more similar to that of Native American “Ghost Dances” in which
the dying tribes faced with genocide acknowledge their approach to the “Great
Spirit.” Elsewhere in this thesis I have mentioned that watching Gilman change
owners three times over was similar to watching a friend die more than once.
Although by the third time resentment could cloud rationality in this regard,
or offer a sense of hope for the future. Meanwhile it is important to note how
the club had traditionally dealt with the “disenchantment” of volunteering.
DEMOCRACY AND THE CLUB
There is a growing disenchantment with
the club on the part of many members. A
number of criticisms have been leveled which include:
“The booking committee runs the club.”
“A select group of individuals runs the
club without regard for the opinions or feelings of others.”
“If I have never been contacted or asked
to do anything for the club in spite of asking on numerous occasions if there
was anything I could do to help.”
Each of these remarks points to the need
to change the way the club deals with its members.[36]
Regarding Gilman Demos, it just seems
slightly too ironic that these larger more popular demagogic ideas, folks,
people, bands, governments cannot come together like people have done so at
Gilman and at least try to agree on a few basic things. Even when people at
Gilman couldn’t agree on anything I remember sitting on the sideline thinking
to myself, “I know what the solution is, they’ll either say I don’t know what
I’m talking about, and / or come up with a similar yet somehow different
solution, why are we arguing about this anyway?” I remember getting a shit ton
of criticism for not being DIY enough for the “hardcore” punx, (I was in my
‘tweens or maybe already 21) I always felt that those kinds of arguments were
stupid, they were preaching to the choir and they ought not to flog the horse.
Well, at least I retained my sense of politics.[37] At
Gilman there is still a hope for balance, and even a hope for grassroots
democracy[38],
which for young people is a nice balance because in real life someone else
doesn’t take credit for the solution, in actual Democracy there isn’t any
solution and the arguments on all sides contest the existence of such problems,
thereby solving nothing. So it is not without irony (also many punks are
anarchists,) that I close spatial harmonic relationships and punk descriptive
modifiers section by maintaining that most punks don’t expect democracy to work
as well as it does inside the 924, and that other than Gilman most punks
consider most public spaces out of tune with a basic consideration or
ideological foundation or function of isocratic notions. As government seems to
be at fault then the importance of ideas would seem to be repressed somehow by
society, so the need for a dialog on such matters, and a place to do so is
tantamount.
From the Desk of Mr. Lady; some kinda
underground electro feminist performance artists[39]
Although a place for open-mindedness
and tolerance it seems there wasn’t the most girl band activity at Gilman. Girl
nights at Gilman is and was almost an annual showcase sadly, although bands
with women are given equal booking[40]
at Gilman. It does now seem as if there are more women in the punk scene in
general. Most kids do not find the club to be a threatening environment; this
may be the most major contribution to the female punk population currently.
Also Gilman’s history of being anti-violent and anti-prejudiced seems to
contribute to a female punk population. There were fewer female volunteers and
audience members in the 1980s Gilman punk scene. Other Lookout! / Gilman bands such as Bitch
Fight, and Kamala And The Karnivores
also took advantage of the Berkeley sub-cultural zeitgeist of the late 1980s
and early 1990s. Kamala And The Karnivores
album Girl Band was released in 1989
(Lookout! Records #16.) Bitch Fight appeared on Lookout’s 1988 The Thing That Ate Floyd compilation album (Lookout! #11,) as did The
Karnivores. By the early to middle 1990s young women flocked to the club to
see Operation Ivy, and Green Day, the original Gilman punk rock
volunteers, band and audience members [both male and female] were occasionally
dumbfounded by the new groupies. Not to point fingers it was both a good thing
and a bad thing for Gilman, this can open up a source of new revenue...but then
they keep coming back. Gilman humor notwithstanding as a kid from the burbs I
knew I was both dumbfounded and dumbfounding. To continue about the women in
the Gilman scene and although I don’t like to call out the major arguments
within the scene, one long-term problem at Gilman was many punk women left the
Bay Area to start bands in Seattle, Olympia, or Portland, albeit for a variety
of reasons. In Berkeley we would consider the American Northwest considerably less
liberated, especially in the early 1990s.
Berkeley native Johanna Fateman moved
to Portland, Oregon[41] in
1991, a year after her high school graduation. I suppose the Riot Grrl! and
grunge scene must have seemed very exciting at that age. Liberal Evergreen
Community College in Olympia, Washington was a Riot Grrl! / Grunge, location /
sister city to Portland, and Berkeley also actually. Through music fanzines she
was able to merge from the Bay Area to the Northwest Territories. She has since
written for Art Forum and her girl-band Le Tigre, has been welcomed at Gilman.
Le Tigre shows at Gilman were like family reunions for her, and although I
sympathize for her homesickness, since her band did not become a Berkeley or
Gilman staple, it is difficult for me to get nostalgic at all in this regard.
The nerve of her! How dare she?! If you are going to leave the [Gilman] scene
at least send us a viable replacement like Chris Cornell or someone, geez.
Again, all jokes aside, The Donnas[42]
came into the Gilman scene a few years later and made up for her absence,
perhaps indicating a lost opportunity for Fateman, Le Tigre, and Berkeley. As stupid as it sounds, Gilman has had many
difficult, illogical, internal, and external difficulties.
The testosterone thing was a problem
at Gilman. Aggressive dancing is tolerated at Gilman to some degree.
Testosterone is a problem in excess. Aggressive dancing seems to sometimes
create violence which can cause problems. People don’t necessarily depreciate
the idea of testosterone at punk clubs such as Gilman. The idea of vulgar
displays of testosterone seems to be something that most mannered or cultured
punks would disrespect. In the past I have tried to find out what people of
different sexual orientations think on this issue, and the fact remains that
everyone is different and has a special opinion regardless of that. Most punks
[regardless of orientation or demographic,] want to dominate the slam pit
themselves, or dance in the manner that most befits themselves which is fine by
me! Gilman was an open space in theory anyway, so whoever or whatever you were
supposed to be was not the question of relevance. So as such there was and is also
a thriving homo-core scene at Gilman as also the bay area although in part due
to homosexuals who considered themselves part of the “Geek-Core” scene,
(Lawrence Livermore of Lookout! Records
would appear to have had been banking on this.) Homo-Core didn’t quite take in
the Berkeley Gilman scene as it had in San Francisco and many in the Homo-Core
scene actually blamed Lawrence for the rift, when frankly that didn’t make
sense for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being his own
homosexuality, or simply how illogical that would seem economically, which in
turn contradicts his contract policy that always favored his talent. Obviously
the economic reasons being something of a source of blame in itself for Lookout! Sometimes capitalism is not
honored within the punk sub-culture. David Haynes’, Very Small Records, had received similar complaints, which could
also be considered ironic today due to the fact that VSR downloads are now free from their blog. One very plain reason
for Gilman’s separation from the San Francisco Homo-core scene would simply be
the fact that as a bedroom community of San Francisco, Berkeley was still not
as liberated. Early Riot Grrl! formations in the late 1980s Gilman scene remind
us of sub-cultural diversity.
The Yeastie Girls[43] came out of a
punk attitude, and we called our style “live vaginacore a capella rap,” but it was
really more of an educational comedy performance with audience participation.
We used a lot of raw language, talked openly about bodily functions, threw
tampons around, and splattered the audience with yogurt (while explaining that
it’s a good home cure for yeast infections). Cammie played a tampon applicator
as a musical instrument. We tried to demystify all that “girl” stuff that no
one-girls or boys-ever talks about.[44]
A fair example of how things in the
world are supposed to operate, especially at places like Gilman would be how at
a Gilman 4th of July BBQ in 1986 when some female friends were
hanging out together and came up with an impromptu set and band concept, “The Yeastie Girlz,” because the Beastie Boys were so popular at the
time. The Yeastie Girls[45]
began playing at Gilman in 1987 and eventually signed with Berkeley’s own Lookout! Records after being on the Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll compilation album,
Turn it Around in 1989. Let’s hear
from a former Yeastie:
I wanted the
space to be more politically active-more benefits, more change, more
information put out on various topics. One thing that I did notice, and that
stuck me after a while, was that it was just a lot of boys. I would go there
and just see boys on stage, and boys in the pit, boys everywhere, except for a
few of us girls who were working at the place, and few in the audience. It started to kind of get to me. I really
wanted there to be more females in bands. I got tired of the whole gender
imbalance, not just Gilman, but the punk scene in general.[46]
The Yeasties came out of a feeling of
excessive aggressive male energy within the club that needed to be challenged.
Punk isn’t just a boy thing. Women work hard at the club also. Later on, “Prom
Night” at Gilman was another way of saying “Girl Band Night” at Gilman. To
enter the club during the “Prom” event one would have to enter a red satiny
vagina that transformed the doorway. This predates the L.A. Feminist Art
Exhibit entrance by almost twenty years.[47] Whatever
the case The Yeastie Girls were no
less a spectacle than say Isocracy
was, and that is the usual comparison in this regard. People would boo, and so
on, criticize The Yeasties, even when it was pretty obvious that they had no
regard for feminist issues what so ever. What not all of my readers can
understand is how awesome The Yeastie
Girls really were, performance-wise. The following is probably the best
example of their lyrics.
We’re the Yeastie Girlz and we got yeast
power
we don’t shave our armpits and we don’t’
shower
we don’t’ say thank you and we don’t say
please
we put things in our vaginas that you
wouldn’t believe
we’re not your babies and we’re not your
dolls
and we don’t give a shit about your blue
balls
don’t care about your biceps
don’t care about your dick
and when you open up your mouth
you make us all
feel sick
We’re the Yeastie Girlz and we’re the
hottest in the land
We are the very first of the Vagina-core
bands
If you want to join us you have to do
one thing
Grab onto your vagina and shout and
sing;
YEAST – POWER! YEAST – POWER![48]
Tim Yohannan took the girls
seriously, booked them repeatedly, and made sure they were on the first Gilman
compilation album through Maximum Rock
‘n’ Roll, because they were the only local Gilman “girl-band” or “Grrl! Band”.[49] Whatever the issues, and nothing ever seems
fair, Gilman was a good way to try to work that stuff out, once upon a time,
yes, I sure as hell wanted more women there, still do. There are a lot more
women at punk shows now than there used to be. As far as the worker of Gilman,
male or female, this didactic of volunteerism hasn’t really changed that much
in 23 years. Historically punk rose with post-industrialism, in light of
transnational devastation, it might be hard to imagine for some punk kids, but
most of them realize just how irrelevant avarice and its devices are. We need
to take for granted that fact for a moment and simply focus on how the research
interviews as a function operate in this thesis; I approach my research
interviews with some background reflection.
New Women at Gilman
Robin F. and Ingrid were two current
Gilman volunteers that I interviewed for data in this thesis. During my process
I was wondering if these ladies are going to start a band, how their
involvement will evolve, what had changed there? Towards the end of her
interview, Robin F. was more focused and involved, and at some point in the
process she commented in an email that the process was fun. She gave the best
overall answer to any question so far in this process. Robin F. was a twenty-something
volunteer at Gilman, and she was a show coordinator. As far as things go at
Gilman she was on my shoulders on the volunteering totem pole. If I volunteered
every weekend both she and I would be in thin air relative to the hierarchy.
This isn’t true of normal volunteers however; it takes years to get into positions
of authority at the club, although that isn’t terribly relevant to my
questionnaire results. Although the most salient sections of my interviews with
current Gilman volunteers appear in this section, in the appendix there are two
complete interviews with non-current Gilman enthusiasts. Also, for more
information about volunteer activities at Gilman, look no further than the 924
Gilman website for their video documentation. My questions and comments are in
italics.
Robin F
Do you believe that you are part of a
subculture? If so, or not so, what would be your stance on this, what do
you think society at large could do better? How do you, (or what would you
choose to do to) educate the public about your punk or collective punk
experience, or human experience?
I believe I am
part of a subculture, it's not a very strong or active subculture but it'll
circle back around eventually and more energy will come into it. I don’t want
general society to be a part of it. That’s why it’s a SUB-culture. I think what
society needs to learn is compassion. If people didn’t fuck with each other so
much then everyone would be better off, if banks didn't try to screw you out of
your money, if people didn't make power-plays all the time, if politicians were
honest, if people stopped raping and murdering each other. But I'm not
expecting that to happen. I am not very interested in fixing or helping
society, I am not an anarchist or believer in any sort of system. Shit gets
fucked up no matter what you do, its just human nature. More than
that, actually, I think it's just animal nature. Whoa, that sounds really
bitchy and horrible. Sorry.
Break interview
Robin’s response is a no-nonsense,
straight from the heart, if not straight out brutal reply to a kind of academic
question on sub-culture, designed to hopefully get a feeling of sub-cultural
value from the interviewee -which is not easy or always possible. Although I believe Robin F. to be the more
mature woman, Ingrid (a younger volunteer) was more fun to work with. Sometimes
Ingrid had the overall less mature response, but she kept trying until she got
it right. At Gilman perseverance is encouraged. Frankly I admire that, although
I think Robin F. may or may not be more reserved overall, I don’t know, I’m no
shrink, I liked both of their answers for different reasons I suppose. Most of
the younger people at Gilman seem to have an aversion to education in general,
so I’m trying to be respectful, as my K-12 was equally ridiculous. As far as
the questionnaire, in the following you will see that Ingrid hits the ground
running.
Ingrid
If you haven’t explained this
already, why is 924 Gilman important to you?
Gilman is pretty much my second home.
Hence the "Gilman Rat." It's weird because I've lived near it
all my life, and I went there at the age of 16. Gilman is the place where I can
go when I'm bored, lonely, excited, or basically if I wanna hear the bands.
I've made many friends there, and I've learned so much.
Volunteering is my favorite thing to do there, aside from moshing, seeing the bands, talking with the people there. I think I've done all of the volunteering positions, except for cleanup, but I've done a cleanup day so that counts. I've stage managed, coordinated, worked sound, and now I'm beginning to learn booking. Gilman is a place where you can experience things without having a Ph.D. or some major in business. It gives opportunities to everyone. Plus you get to see bands that go up to play for the sake of playing..well except for a few...*cough ZEROS cough*...Though I have seen the 924 Gilman documentary[50], I don't think it did the best job of explaining the Gilman as well as it could have. I mean, kudos to Jack Curran for putting the effort into it, but I guess there's just no perfect way of explaining Gilman. You have to go there, and one experience there will usually lead to another, and no experience can be captured on film. I don't like to blow my own horn or anything, but I think pictures capture the moments better than a movie camera.[51] The moments that I've had at Gilman, are moments that I will never have anywhere else. Even just being there makes me feel something. Kind of like I'm at home.
Volunteering is my favorite thing to do there, aside from moshing, seeing the bands, talking with the people there. I think I've done all of the volunteering positions, except for cleanup, but I've done a cleanup day so that counts. I've stage managed, coordinated, worked sound, and now I'm beginning to learn booking. Gilman is a place where you can experience things without having a Ph.D. or some major in business. It gives opportunities to everyone. Plus you get to see bands that go up to play for the sake of playing..well except for a few...*cough ZEROS cough*...Though I have seen the 924 Gilman documentary[50], I don't think it did the best job of explaining the Gilman as well as it could have. I mean, kudos to Jack Curran for putting the effort into it, but I guess there's just no perfect way of explaining Gilman. You have to go there, and one experience there will usually lead to another, and no experience can be captured on film. I don't like to blow my own horn or anything, but I think pictures capture the moments better than a movie camera.[51] The moments that I've had at Gilman, are moments that I will never have anywhere else. Even just being there makes me feel something. Kind of like I'm at home.
Ingrid, you are so right sister.
Break interview
Like many punks Ingrid feels as if
Gilman is a “home away from home” and that aspect typifies her as a volunteer. There
is enough relevance here to be mentioned, especially her dance lust relation,
her dislike of a “pop” band (The Zeros,
a band who is more interested in fame and money than in helping out a
volunteer-run club like Gilman), her amazing punk rock photography
documentation on her Flickr site, and
her next commentary on the Gilman documentary are all pretty much right on, so
Ingrid really rocks here.
Ingrid
As part of a collective, a
movement, or simply a music scene or genre, where or how do you place yourself
in your experience?
I hear about all
these well-known people that have been a part of the movement like they're some
rock star or something, and for some reason that bothers me. It's like;
everyone is a part of the scene. I like attention, I like having people mention
me as a "gilman rat", but I haven't really done a whole lot of stuff
for the "scene". In general, if I am involved in said punk movement,
I'd want to be known for helping out the Gilman and sort of running the gears
for a great cause. I like to make my own movement; I want to learn from older
folks who have been in the movement for a while. Many of these people are at Gilman,
in some sense, they are like role models to me. I get along much better
with adults than with teenagers. Sometimes I'm even mistaken for an adult. But
anyways, I do take pictures at the Gilman. I love documenting on the
punk/DIY/alternative scene because it's something that we keep trying to figure
out. Like teenagers: they are one of the most studied age groups in history. I
want to learn how the Punx function, what they're thinking, their politics,
what have they themselves done for the scene? I honestly don't want to make
another Gilman film or some documentary book like so many others have done. I
mean, maybe a photo book (portfolio) of pictures at Gilman. To be a part of the
scene is better than doing nothing like so many other assholes do in the world.
And what's better, to make your own scene. To stand out. The outrageous and
different things always seem to make an impression. I guess that's what I'd
like to do (and are currently doing) in the movement.
Gilman Rat, oh yeah, the memories are coming back for sure…I appreciate your independent stance here.
Basically I cannot say I wrote, felt,
or thought any differently about these kinds of things closer to when I was her
age, it’s like carbon dating something (the filth or grunge on the floor at The 924 for example, nothing personal to
Robin F. or Ingrid however…) to find out the number is always 8 somehow in some
sort of strange cryptic transcendent metaphysical Pi equivalency.
Ingrid
1Do you believe
that you are part of a subculture? If so or not, what would be your stance
on this: what do you think society at large could do better? How do you; or
what would you choose to do to educate the public about your punk or collective
punk experience, or human experience?
I believe that
if one thinks that they are a part of a subculture, then they place themselves
in a subculture. So maybe you're into punk music or you're begging on the
streets, but that doesn't truly mean you're part of a different culture. In a
way, this subculture is an establishment itself. Humans learn what they are
able to do themselves (DIY, indie labels, etc.) and then others follow that as
kind of a blueprint of how to live in this subculture. Of course, those
involved in the subculture are able to do anything their hearts desire, but
sometimes I (among some others as well) feel like there are rules to this
subculture. Extremists avoid big labels and corporations altogether, even
though they may need it. I'm just saying I know a few people who think
they're changing something when really, they're not. I ask some people at the Gilman
for instance, if they vote. A few say they don't, and if I remember correctly,
it's because they don't agree with the way society/governments/politics are run
or something. So it's like, you don't agree with democracy? You have a voice,
that's something that this country actually offers. That's what Gilman offers.
Come to the meetings if you don't like it, and change it. Sure, everyone is
equal, but, are we? My stance on politics is foggy and undecided. I guess
people would call me a moderate or a libertarian. But when you flood politics
with lies, then there really are no pros for a side. If it's all cons, we'll
just continue a battle that we've been trying to finish since the beginning of time.
Why can't we just agree to fucking disagree? Why can't we accept one another
and each other's ideologies as multiple options besides 2 or 3 main ones? Why
do you think we have revolutions? One voice, one mind, can do all of this and
more, so I suggest you not take yourself for granted, and quit thinking that
you can't do anything, because punk, for the last fucking time, is about doing
whatever is possible by any means necessary....to me at least. In a sense,
that's grass roots. From what I see, society at large is a giant knot that kind
of has to tangle itself out. It takes a lot of work and attention, but
eventually it'll become one straight line, or even better, a normal circle.
Like a necklace I guess.
Do you mean in people in
general? Who is thinking that they can’t
do anything? Why is this the last time, is this a slogan or a mantra? To
you at least, I was going to say…I don’t remember taking myself for granted
very recently… You know however there is that Tom Waits song about
self-seduction…”The next thing I know is I leave the bar and end up going home
and taking advantage of myself…”
Wow! Nice comeback there, or a Celtic band or
something for sure. Hey and you approached the grass roots issue as a tangible,
nice fucking job, I like that shit!
Ingrid’s response is similar and
different to Robin F.’s in various ways which aren’t really too relevant to my
purpose, at least you can see what I mean. Since most of the answers I received
were from volunteers in their teens and early twenties, I found it pretty
amusing to see that their collective consciousness was fairly evident. My jibes
at Ingrid are stupid and simple; I always have a stupid joke for people like
Ingrid, that’s the spirit of the punk rock support mechanism. The kids at
Gilman realize I only want to fill their heads with anti-capitalist propaganda.
They all think that Bush is a dick. It’s funny to have watched them operate
frankly.
The teen and
twenty-something disaffection to society at large is indicative to a larger
problematic which for untold decades has more or less not gone to the
responsibility of people in charge of themselves and unfortunately rather to
the Bureau or Ministry of Deaf Ears,
of which whom although the BMDE seems
to have been the majority in every recent American election, they neither vote
nor have a candidate.[52]
Disaffection with society is part of
life, or if you take another point of view into consideration, part of being
punk. Remembering the history of Gilman is important to me. I think it will be
too difficult to actually rationalize the “Dream Mechanism” here without access
to that knowledge. To many of us at that time period from the late 1980s to
mid-90s was one long Gilman experience. In this period there were three or four
different Gilman ownership situations. I was usually willing to go with the
flow. Eventually it just became too hard to just be there after too much time
had gone by, none of my friends were there, and it was alien. It’s the Virginia
Wolfe scenario at the Algonquin table; she turned around after speaking to the
table to come into eye contact with strangers.
I'm working on my relationship to a
place, and a relationship to a sort of community zeitgeist, it's a community
zeitgeist that continuously becomes part of a larger cohesion of music and
culture. Also I'm working on those memories, it's like the death of punk,
not the death of punk, the death of Gilman, not the death of Gilman, the death
of music, not the death of music, the death of life, or not…or is it
death? At the same time as my relationship to this place was diminishing,
and my relationship to place in general was something I began to question,
again, all the while Green Day kept
it up and continued and did pretty well, etc. No matter how well or poorly
I was doing, they were always great, even if they were no longer a local
community facet or a friendly familiar face on the streets of
Berkeley. Life just had to move on somehow. On the other hand, the
"new" Gilman crowds of the mid-to -late 1990s were more than happy to
be rid of both me and Green Day by
that time. The people I had enjoyed a scene with had since moved on, and
the newer crowd understood less and less how to deal with the older ones (as
far as current and former managements,) are they icons or people or just people
to hate? Eventually a newer new management was in control of the club and
only the older people knew me, and the older newer folks just weren't anywhere
anymore. (Keep in mind that the club began a year before I had attended,
and that punk in the Bay Area had about a ten year following by the time of
Tim’s ownership of lease of the 924 in 1986.) I was going to the club less,
from almost every weekend for something close to four years to maybe once or
twice a year. The new kids only saw what they chose to see, the older
folks were still there sometimes, sometimes weren’t (late 90s) and sometimes
still are. It's a weird investigation for me to say the least. Happily
enough there are enough of the older folks and newer folks that the newest
integration at Gilman is an overall positive one.
Interview with Stephan Von Pohl, and
Christoph Von Pohl: Mechanisms of influence, strategy, and intention
My friend and former high school classmates, although we
never had classes together, filled out my “Gilman Questionnaire” as did many
other individuals. Like many of my volunteer participants, it was a pleasure to
work with my friends and I was very relieved that they had taken the
questionnaire seriously. Most people (roughly 80%) gave minimal answers of only
a few sentences, if that much, if they filled in answers to the questions at
all.
Stephan and I share
certain relevant similarities. We were both at least somewhat active in Gilman
volunteerism in the 1990s. Stephan chose the University of California Berkeley
and his major was in Urban Geography, which is similar to my Urban Studies
major. As it turns out, we share a similar enthusiasm for authors such as Mike
Davis, although that fact isn’t particularly relevant to my thesis. My friends
and I shared a compassion, and passion for music and a subculture surrounding
that music.
Although Stephan’s fully
articulated answer formation to this questionnaire is unique, honestly his
point of view regarding the circumstances of his involvement with punk rock are
quite typical to the genre, and to the specific situation with Gilman as a
local grass roots movement or underground music scene. My sources to back up
this claim are based on my initial observances during the 1990s, as are many of
my claims. I had initially expected at least several responses like that of the
Von Pohl’s, when in fact I only received a few. It actually takes some arm
wrestling to receive a response to this questionnaire, and more than one of my
old friends have straight out told me that they are no longer comfortable with
“living with the past.” To that claim I am suspicious that they were not
partial to living in the present during the Gilman zeitgeist to begin with,
although their reasons must be private and their own. I would actually have responded
similarly to the Von Pohl’s, and to try to take some responsibility for the
past.
I am reminded that our
mutual friend “Mike Stand” had already done everything possible in that regard.
Mike worked booking at Gilman between 1988 and 1989. Finances at Gilman had
been put to strain due to unscrupulous accounting. In five months, and with a
lot of help from the punk community, Mike balanced the books, and the seas
around Gilman became less choppy.[53]
One problem that I am
capable of realizing is that “Mike Stand” often treated his position perhaps
too seriously, as a resume builder. Or perhaps was trying too hard, to the
point of exhaustion. As an observer, I have to admit, it was often the case in
Mike’s situation that if he had not volunteered for certain positions at
Gilman, it would have been likely that not many could have filled his shoes. So
like Mike, Chris, and Stephan, and beyond occasional community service, I find
the idea of continuing to volunteer at Gilman exhausting. I would think that most
of my friends would agree, although frankly it’s mostly the bands. On one hand
many of our favorite bands no longer exist, on the other hand we’ve all seen
the act.
The Von Pohl’s and Mike are the only friends
of mine from the past who I have any relevant data from in this essay. Although
it means very much to me, it is also somewhat disheartening that more people
cannot find ways to come to terms with their past in a productive manner.
Especially as the club is still and more than ever, on the chopping block, I
would think that the idea of continuous support to a grass roots organization
would have more of a draw. That’s my problem, I’m a dreamer. I have spoken
privately and candidly on this manner with my old punk friends, or perhaps
former punk friends, so I know that in fact my expectations are perhaps too
unrealistic for most people. Also, as time passes, people fulfill themselves in
different, new, or unexpected ways. Perhaps it’s actually only surprising that
I would still think similarly about Gilman as I once did. Stephan very much
does also, and I believe that’s the point. (See interview in appendix eight.)[54]
Stephan’s relationship to,
and acknowledgement of, early forms of music listening and music are vital in
two ways. Influence and strategy are the most important aspect, although we
could easily replace “intention” for either. The fact that his father could
further Stephan’s listening appreciation I believe speaks volumes about
participatory involvement, good parenting, and sadly even bourgeois
intellectualism. Strategic listening seemed to involve a “more involved” record
collection, although I believe most punks, and friends of mine would think we
simply have a “more evolved” auditory palette. Punk is obviously escape from
the lies of the mainstream media, and that kind of musical form, if you can
call that music. Punk is more political than mainstream music.
The fact that Stephan
could go to the Mab makes me a little jealous. (I was like fourteen or fifteen
at the time…) I believe my dad in fact said, “NO WAY IN HELL!” I think that’s
so hilarious now. Back to influence, strategy and intension I also think that
Stephan is obviously fortunate enough to take for granted European standards in
personal philosophy, and this in part is what has helped him with his taste in
music and to be a great person in general. With people like Steve I sometimes
wish he was in a band so I could see him and his wife whenever they go on tour.
That’s basically what successful punk bands do after all, not any different
than rock in many ways. He didn’t mention this, like many of my friends either
he or his brother had an electric guitar or bass to me at least it seems that
things could have been very different. Like Green
Day, the Turnitaround! album
turned around a lot of heads and changed many attitudes about how local punk
rock was seen or approached in the Bay Area, especially Berkeley. The Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, Turnitaround!
compilation album started everything, and was everything then. One punk
argument is about The Thing That Ate
Floyd, which compilation was more influential, important, which sounded
better, etc. This is classic punk argumentative semantics, they are mutually
relevant. It was something to say that your favorite band was on an album, or
that your friends were recording.
Steven
describes community, yet again; were it not for the club, the bands, and that
particular album, there would not have been much of a community. He doesn’t say
very much about volunteering, other than he had been a Gilman volunteer. One
fact about this that I can relate that I’ve noticed from research, especially
Brian Edge’s book[55]
is that volunteering at Gilman is cyclical. In other words, what happens when I
volunteer at Gilman is essentially the same experience if you yourself
volunteer, dear reader. Strangely enough, and I wish to focus upon this in the 8 photographs in less than 8000 words
section, this cyclical volunteering pattern also transcends time. The same
kinds of things always happen at Gilman, it’s kind of weird, it is also
systemic to the music industry in general. So history repeats itself. Some of
the bands and specifics alternate, other than that there isn’t a difference,
it’s the same job. There are more and better tours in the summer (generally
speaking) so the kinds of variety are actually fundamentally too similar. (Perhaps
you or someone you know works in a movie theater or just a theater…) Side door
people sneak people into the club, even inadvertently. Sometimes the after club
clean-up people ditch out, so that position goes to someone trustworthy (Me or
James McKinley usually…[56])
even my jibe is based on a standard occurrence, a punk rock cliché, hence the
song reference, hence the song.
Most
people interviewed believed that Gilman was a separate dynamic from its point
of origin. That issue is a traditionally hot debate in punk circles; at least I
know it used to be. Lots of people like to say, “Only in Berkeley…” Stephan
mentions a tradition of the Bay Area activist spirit. As to whether or not it
is only in Berkeley, finally I am forced to concede to subjectivity, I don’t
know if there is a correct answer or not. I used to get into the argument. It’s
funny going back into the club and not take a defensive stance on many
different issues actually.[57]
It’s really mind boggling. Ronald Reagan is still a dick. Not all that much has
changed. No matter the case, there isn’t anything exactly like Gilman anywhere;
there are similarities, facsimiles, other all ages places, volunteerisms,
that’s it. People who work in the industry elsewhere recognize this. Bands who
bring their friends on tour still engage this topic occasionally.[58]
It
is interesting to note that Stephan relates punk rock to an expression of
freedom. All interviewees had a variation on this. Essentially, “Punk = Free!
Gilman = Free, or Fun!” Most
interviewees considered volunteerism important on some level, and not simply a
means to an end, although there is the concept of the Gilman “lifer.” It is
punk rock to consider yourself something akin to incarceration, you know, the
bad is good paradigm. Within the clime of volunteerism and community Stephan
goes further and restates my claim that the community sub-cultural activity was
integral to its own prevalence, relevance, and perpetuity. The “punker than
thou” typical punk argument here is about levels of involvement. Punk rock
album consumerism is itself a punk rock cliché, although it’s an argument that
sells punk magazines at least. Are people like the Von Pohl brothers and I like
the music writer for The Rolling Stone in The Big Chill? This topic takes me so many different places. Punk
rock is full of ironies to this effect.
Relative
to anti-racist skinhead activity Steve remembers incorrectly. There have been
tons of fights at Gilman, albeit farther between than say at The Warfield Theater in San Francisco during the same punk zeitgeist. He got the
“bone-head” music enthusiast description correct, however drunks and violence
in the club notwithstanding. Even though it’s an anti-violence venue, people
still are slam dancing after all. It brings its own draw certainly, and that’s
not always a good thing. We would take turns driving to the club from the
burbs. Sometimes the designated driver had to be switched due to slam dancing
injuries. Who wants to drive home after getting mauled in the pit anyway? There
have been too many injuries over the years, countless, only a few that have
rocked the club in anyway.
There was a lawsuit by a
suburban parent, it is strange to think that the kid’s parents won a settlement,
and he was stage diving. That was in the early 1990s at Gilman anyway, he broke
his hip. It was during the straight edge thing, and the regular Gilman people
would tell him to fuck off when he came to see shows. There were even racist
skins that converted to straight edge, not that anybody would do that on
purpose to be allowed in to see a show or anything. Lots of craziness in the circuses…
The skinhead verses
Gilman thing started in 1986 and is always an underlying issue. Known fascists,
racists, sexists, bigots, or people with Nazi tattoos, or redneck credentials
are always turned away from the club. Beyond all of this and partially due to
these kinds of calamities, Gilman also has always operated locally with a large
target on its rear-end. Gilman generally feels defensive, and treated unfairly,
by the media, the music industry, the West Berkeley business association,
Nazis, rednecks, hippies, local suburban parents, republicans, conservatives,
etc. Violence isn’t always the key issue; it’s largely due to various
discrimination and prejudice. Punk is subversive.
I found Stephan’s NGO tie in to
sub-cultural organization interesting and refreshing somehow, although he makes
his former job sound terrible. I wish that Mike Stand could relate to me
further examples of how his Gilman experience has helped him in his
professional life, although I imagine he plays that down somewhat. Mr. Stand
didn’t go to college because he is one of those rare breeds that feels that it is
unnecessary for employment. (He might have taken some adult courses at the
community college over the years of course.) At least in his case, he is more
or less correct. He was a straight-A student so he didn’t actually really need
to do that. Not many people have that kind of gumption anymore. Mike has had
more significantly salaried jobs than I ever thought possible let alone
possible without a business degree. These kinds of facts aren’t relevant to
Stephan’s interview; they just give you a sense of variety within the
subculture. I was surprised in the 1990s to find out that Nondo, one of the Gilman
bouncers, ex-pro skateboarder, and bass player wanted to go into European car
mechanics. Would you like Nondo’s business card? I skateboarded with Nondo as
early as junior high. There is an ingenuity within the DO IT YOURSELF sub
cultural current, and a mechanism thereof also, that seems to adhere to the
Gilman individual, an independence that I’ve also noticed in art school. One
Gilman volunteer I interviewed Autumn, went to SF state and started The East Bay Free Skool[59],
Ingrid is finishing high school and volunteered at KALX[60], another
example would be my friend Robert Eggplant has done everything punk in Berkeley
and knows everybody.
I
found it profound that my friend Stephan should see continuity in his life
experience where I only could ask about volunteerism related memory as
cohesion. It’s neat that we are all grown up I guess. When he assessed the
whereabouts of the Gilman clientele I had to agree, the whole wide world goes
to Gilman though, not just kids from around the Bay Area. Finally I think I
know what he means; we didn’t really leave the subculture. In many ways it left
us somehow. The older volunteers at the 924 are quick to point out that they
are still there. I think I might rest on that fact.
Christoph
as it so happens is Stephan’s twin brother. There was family in punk. The guys
in Green Day and Operation Ivy knew each other from grade school. One of what I
thought was going to be the cool things about my relationship from the past with
the Von Pohl’s was I thought we were going to discuss their former Berkeley co-op
dorm Cloyne Court, and I was
wondering if the Von Pohl’s would reflect on some of the very killer punks
shows that helped to transform an otherwise “normative” colligate audience. To
date of writing the response is that it typified their college experience, and
not much more. In Christoph’s response to my Gilman questionnaire I find the
most interesting thing is among my friends I believe the answers could be
interchangeable depending on mood swings and circumstance. There might be some
debate there on certain questions and frequencies; I think we are more or less
of a similar mind on many issues. I wondered about this in 2009 before I had
responses from my old friends. I asked Ingrid if she thought about the same and
she said yes of her punk friends, although some of them don’t volunteer, are /
aren’t interested in radio, being in a music project, what have you, and
basically philosophically they all share motivations regarding punk. At the
time I was only glad that that much hadn’t changed. Ingrid is always respectful
and interested about how the scene was, because you can’t get all of it from a
book or a documentary video, like she mentioned, you have to find out things
for yourself. Integration is its own motivation. I wondered what she thought of
her older friends in reference to when the time comes, and she and her friends
are much older, and they have a chance then to recollect, and she basically
just said, “yeah.” I was really relieved and she and I could summarize that
once the guys from the old days get a minute to respond, although I probably
would have to hound them (I did) it will probably make sense like that somehow.
That my friends and I have interchangeable positions on punk rock is weird,
great or interesting depending on my mind frame. I wonder what Chris would say
to that?[61]
If
you have friends who are twins then you might be able to sympathize. I feel
like no matter how I think of it, or remember it, I’m always going to think it
was the other brother. The Von Pohl’s are dear friends of mine who I believe
understand punk as well as I do or did, and in some cases probably better than
I. Chris’s after-interview serves as a comparative analysis of the actual
ethnographic research itself of that of both brothers.
Compared
to Steph, Chris emphasizes punk as an agency to develop outside of mainstream
culture. Stephan indicated this with more subtlety. First Steve describes
popular music alternatives, and then he goes on to say that punk was also about
people with brains seeking alternatives. Chris cites ostracization including
people with brains. Stephan’s people with brains did extracurricular studies at
the Berkeley Lawrence Hall of Science[62]. So we know in
part that Steph actually means truly gifted brainiacs.
To
Stephan the Bay Area is his home, Chris experiences defining years there. Chris
grew out of punk rock and Stephan is concerned because his wife doesn’t
understand sub-culture and wants him to turn the volume down. Christoph
indicates that punk helped define common ground in the entirety of the Bay
Area, within scene, variations on sub-culture, or perhaps genre. Stephan says
punk was a way of not drowning anonymously in society, and punk allows Steph to
help him relate to himself.
I am
extremely jealous that both Chris and Steve made it to The Mabuhay Gardens on Broadway Avenue in San Francisco. The Mabuhay was recently immortalized by
Bruce Conner’s photography[63],
and in the oral history of punk as defined in Gimme Something Better, by Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor[64]. So
in a sense I feel like (thanks to time-travel,) I am already an expert and at
least I’ve been to The Mabuhay Gardens metaphysically. Even though the
Von Pohl brothers and I did not share a Mabuhay experience, we all visited The Gilman Street Project.
Gilman is important to Stephan
because the burbs were incredibly boring, and the Berkeley community must have seemed
almost to cater to the sub-culture. Although I feel like Chris and I would
agree, Chris merely reflects how important to his formative years, and explains
his relish towards rebellious freedom. Steven mentions Gilman membership, and
the membership fee, (which we know of from appendix seven and possibly
elsewhere) that helped out Gilman financially as they are an all ages
non-alcohol serving venue. Steven also mentions volunteering, his various
duties, none of which I was unfamiliar with personally, he mentions
participation as well. I believe Gilman was important to Chris for all of these
reasons also, again he only mentioned his formative years and rebellious
freedom. I find Chris’s response to be one dimensional and almost careless. He
might be too busy to recollect properly however.
Being
involved with punk broadened Chris’s horizons. Stephan mentions his variations
on musical tastes. Chris’s personal research into the punk genre helped broaden
his palette, whereas Steve might choose to say that punk helped enlighten his
music standards. Chris says that punk broadens his musical interest in a
multi-genre capacity; he mentions jazz, folk and blues. Stephan suggests that the
difficult or negative trend in punk rock is that it is pretty hard figuring out
what kind of human being you will eventually evolve into while you are so busy
standing up for non-conformity.
Both had
initially ignored my request for a kind of MA urban studies question that I’m
not asking, relevant to EBHC[65].
Stephan
believes the anti-establishment traditions in the Bay Area (he mentions the
activist spirit) have relations to Gilman although he disagrees that Gilman is
exclusive to Berkeley. Christoph agrees that Gilman is relatively parallel to
the Berkeley experience, mentions the D.I.Y. relationship to Gilman, the
anti-racist stance at Gilman, and recalls the club membership fee.
I have a question
where I try to go deeper into the topic of punk. Not being a critic, Stephan
claims the message; the lyrical intent is the most relevant purpose of punk.
Ingrid and other current Gilman volunteers would agree with Stephan and also
include the relationship of slam dancing to catharsis. Christoph agrees with me
that punk is an emancipatory experience; he continues to conclude that
disembarking from punk is as integral as its exploratory initiation. With
Stephan however, he and I would seem to believe, and including current
volunteers, that we are concerned with music as a catalyst of meaning outside
of our punk experience, at least somewhat less than that of punk itself.
Having
waited for a secondary email reply regarding Christoph’s review of active
listening, as it turns out he did not share his brother’s regard for his
father’s influence. Steve says that punk demands to be listened to actively.
This is a highly subjective area. Volunteers that I interviewed indicated that
like most music, “listening” was more focused with new albums or bands. You are
more inclined to listen carefully to albums new to yourself. In other words
punk music is just like music. Neither
of the Von Pohl’s are any longer part of a collective, a movement, or simply a
music scene or genre so they no longer place themselves in said regard. Stephan
worked for an NGO. Christoph’s email secondary reply is as follows.
Has punk influenced your professional
decision making later on in life?
I would say no,
it hasn't. Except that I sometimes feel like I should be working for other
people. I suppose there is a nagging punk ethos in me that would prefer I was
translating important things for NGOs and the like instead of for big
businesses.
I think
we can all relate to Chris’s last response. Both brothers I think would agree
that their children represent the pinnacle of their current creative projects.
Steve wishes to avoid ideology. Chris likes hopes and dreams, ideals of a
better world and dislikes “isms.” A few isms I hate like fascism and
totalitarianism, I am still a dreamer, so I’m happy for Chris. Like Chris and
David McNally I believe that Another
World Is Possible[66],
so I’m relieved that we are not all reconstructed corporate robots frankly.
Chris isn’t a corporate robot,
neither does Chris expand on his experience regarding rebellious freedom,
although I think we can assume. It may have been post-adolescent existential angst
or something akin to it perhaps. Or maybe Chris is too busy selecting
prospective NGOs and changing diapers to remember as clearly as he would like.
I choose to imagine it as something of all of the above, and that to some
degree that there must be some cross over with the experience of the two
brothers. My experience ranges between the two so I feel like I must need to
read all of the research interviews of most to all of my friends for a complete
rationality of the 1990s punk zeitgeist to have the most fully rendered
recollection.
In
regards to punk Stephan has continuity with his Gilman or punk involvement.
Christoph does not agree saying that there is nothing cohesive regarding his
Gilman involvement worth mentioning.
Christoph
has a conflicted love and hate, punk and urban experience. For Stephan, punk is
a suburban thing that he might not have found had he been raised in the city
exclusively. Steve requires the use of an extension cord, and regardless to
what he plugs into he is no longer punk, although Steven still regards his
sub-cultural experience as a coherency, something specific and definable. “I
felt like I was rebelling against something uniform and easy to define.” Steph
praises the grassroots creativity that Gilman has to offer.
To the Von Pohl brothers punk
sub-culture and music eventually seemed to become somehow too narrow a focus,
Chris was turned off by its occasional elitism, I imagine Stephan felt
similarly regarding the “punker than thou ethos”, and rock star scenario, which
is what neither Gilman nor punk is about. What I think Stephan is finally
relating is that punk helps us to relate to all people regardless of our own
proclivities.
As far as
what might be relevant for an urban studies MA questionnaire research question,
Stephan does not believe he knows the question that I am not asking him. Which
is daunting because A: He is older and received his degree some time ago, I
feel he should have an opinion. B: He and I share a relatively similar
background and academic field. Steve continues to explain his personal issues
regarding converting to Americana at a certain age as a German national, and
how he hated the suburbs. Christoph says he doesn’t know how to address the
issue of a relevant question in my field that I didn’t ask then asks me one
such question.
Chris’s Interview Question for Darin:
How did the city create, shape and
change punk and how did punk change the city?
Northwest
Berkeley, like west Berkeley, Oakland, and Emeryville, were once more
industrialized. These places, like the rest of the American rustbelt are continuously
gentrifying. The punk scene already had a facet in the ruination of
industrialization and democracy in general, in Berkeley, The State Of
California, the entire country, and most of western civilization. Gentrification
came in earnest with the revitalization of punk in the mid to late 1980s and
later the early 1990s. Personally I don’t really see the effects in my mind or
memory until the late 1990s once, punk had been officially reestablished and
taken advantage of, and so had everything else. With the fall of Clintonism,
and the commercialization of the grunge genre, Republicans once again felt as
if they had sublimated everything into a nice neat sterile consistency,
something that they could control. Like idiots watching the puppet show that’s
pretty much what happened. Punk however, exploded like crazy regardless, the
D.I.Y. movement in the 1990s and onward never slowed down, and the integration
of the internet within the punk sub culture allowed for a wider punk
assimilation. When you look at movies like Sid
and Nancy, Another State of Mind,
or Suburbia, those images, those
pictures of yesterday are exactly what America looked like then. The government
had been doing everything it could do in the meantime to avoid admitting that
the rustbelt is grander than the American infrastructure, but that is a lie, it
is propaganda. There is a remarkable section in Cometbus describing the America that Aaron and his friends saw
during the Crimpshrine tour.
Thirty-nine cent coffee, twenty-seven cent stamps, Gas at one dollar nine.[67]
For all extensive purposes America already had died. Its death occurred little
by little every time an angry American raised hell while waiting in line for
gasoline during the Carter administration. Some people said it died during the
Vietnam War. Whenever, it was long gone by the time Aaron had the opportunity
to compare band touring life with that of hopping freight trains. The decaying
rust belt was then in its un-restructured glory. The conceptual capitalist entitlement
of the post-modern 1990s variation on “bolovilles[68]” (
Basically a boloville is a utopian self-sustainable environment, similar to Arcosanti[69],)
as by described friends at Processed
World[70]
had yet been created. Processed World
described economic inequality and in the 90s architects were finding ways to
visually recreate it in as an invisible manner possible. In other words Occupy
was not there to encourage squatting en-masse due to the fiscal indiscretion of
banks and lenders. Lots of squats and abandoned factories, quite a bit of
defragmented Americana was on display in all of its spite and rage. Operation Ivy’s song “Big City,” Crimpshrine’s, “Sleep What’s That?” Album
and their song, “Butterflies” (Appendix
six and seven pages 66-67) reflect on this dystopian view of the misery of
decay due to eminent capitalist dogma, as most of the material from that album
was created during their first American tour.
What a pity
They've fucked up this city
Where I grew up
Now it's grown too big
And there's no room left for me
They've fucked up this city
Where I grew up
Now it's grown too big
And there's no room left for me
….
Now I need to find a place
Where I can grow and climb
And I can chase
Butterflies again
Where I can grow and climb
And I can chase
Butterflies again
Unlike Tolkien’s
elves, rather than emerge from the forest magically and ethereally, punk grew
out of the fissures in society that capitalist dogma created. We are still trying
to destroy capitalism, you must understand, these things take time. Not to be a
pessimist, Gene Roddenberry would seem to suggest another 200-300 year
struggle. It would be seemingly more relevant to suggest that the dystopianism
of capitalism, or the sufferance of this American totalitarianist capitalist
regime would surmount to punk rock and sub culture, an urban or suburban
context is merely coincidental. So that’s my answer. Thanks Chris!
10 photos in less than
10,000 words…(Photography by Bauer)
I would like to start with the
volunteers at Gilman. With Gilman front door handstamping[71] we are seeing the energy and
enthusiasm of the kids who make all the shit at Gilman work. If I didn’t know
any better I’d wonder if this photograph was fifteen years old rather than a
few years. The blonde girl had a sort of nervous breakdown at a Gilman meeting
and Karen in the back left (closer to my age, but I was polite enough not to
ask…) kind of mom’ed the blonde ladies’ situation pretty accurately I thought.
It’s this young ladies’ first professional volunteering, and it means a lot,
and it’s a ton of stress, etc. I’ve been to the meetings in the 1990s and the
same thing happened to me. I was lucky that there were sympathetic people there
and felt like I could grow closer to the community due to that. The blonde lady
swore she wasn’t going to come back to volunteer, she’d still go to see her
favorite bands and that’s it. (Eyes roll into head as the wisps of time travel
ether fly by…) I came back to interview Bum City Saints and guess who
was there? Broken record player… When it’s somebody else’s kid there’s a
different deal. Karen cut through the bullshit a few times during the meeting
and reminded the Blonde young lady the shape and diameter of the points at
hand. At the same time Karen acknowledges the young blond woman’s efforts
towards the club, and reminds the young starlet that it takes years
volunteering at Gilman before you get into the boardroom so to speak. She
wanted to book shows, Ingrid that very day at the meeting was recommended to
begin booking, which is huge, as she had been interning or training for it.
Ingrid has been there a few years so…So it ain’t fair boo hoo hoo. I was in a
position to explain that even though I haven’t attended a club meeting in something
like fifteen years I felt like I was doing the time warp and said some funny
things to that regard, real funny things, but funny none the less and that
softened some of the blow to her I suppose. Eggplant happened to be attending,
I was like, Robert, what fucking year is it man? Eggplant backed up my
situation report and added a cool story that was similar. Karen remarks that
that’s just the way it goes at Gilman, and it’s been that way forever and we
all lived happily ever after.
This is what the face of volunteerism
at 924 Gilman looks like.[72]
Next is Robert’s band Fugitive Kind.[73]
Somebody trustworthy works the concessions stand. It’s called the Stoar now. (I
don’t know why, but in Sweden there is sometimes an “o” above the a, as in
Står, touring Scandinavian bands get it…) The Gilman Store[74], seriously the place never looked
better. Off camera to the left there are more books and magazines, plus an old
Apple community computer to! Ohh la la! The booking room (the doorway to which
is in the first photo, Karen is standing in it…) also has a few Apples. Nobody
would so much as leave a typewriter overnight in the old days. The Gilman store
is famous for having Hansen’s
soda as an early staple in the late 1980s. Infamous maybe? I think they did Powerbar for a while also since they
were local. Some punk just walked into their corporate HQ off of Shattuck
Avenue and said they represented the club and nobody would speak to him on the
phone. Next week there was Powerbars available
for purchase at Gilman. It made the local paper. I don’t
know what year that was. The straight edge kids love the sugar, caffeine and
the power foods. Some of those kids / guys can really handle their intake; I
swear I would have to get my stomach pumped.
924 Gilman, hangin’
out[75]… Seriously that photograph could have
been taken twenty years ago. Aaron in the background leaning against the wall
is absolutely famous for drinking cheap coffee, Matt in the foreground
wandering around, well too bad his former band Operation Ivy isn’t playing tonight. I’m going to
get slightly chronological here. The band they are here to see is The
Classics of Love, Jesse’s first project I’m guessing since Operation Ivy. Were it not for the fact that this
band Classics is a recent incarnation…time-travel…it’s
uncanny. I was in shock that night, as I had volunteered recently previous to
that. The ghosts were full blown poltergeist out of the sub-cultural zeitgeist.
Dr. Frank[76]
follows here with my nostalgia theme doing his solo thing, ex-patrioted
from The Mr. T Experience. T.S.O.L.[77]
or True Sounds Of Liberty
got their name from the True Sons of Liberty who were early American
colonial pseudo-anarchists. Closer to today’s variation on liberal European
socialism, they were considered a threat to the monarchy etc. etc. It’s getting
where it’s not polite to mention the time travel with this kind of performance
group. The photos in this paragraph were taken from a few different shows. With
the Babyland[78]
photography it gets surreal
because I went to high school with the lead man. I have no idea how many times
his band has played at Gilman, who knew that a group of punks could develop
time travel by the 21st century? A yearly event since maybe 1989 or
199?, punk rock Joel’s birthday party[79]
also sends us spiraling backwards. You built a time-machine out of a punk rock
venue? Way to go Dr. Frank!
Hangin’ out.
Dr.
Frank.
T.S.O.L.(previous page,) followed by
Babyland, (next page,) followed by Punk Rock Joel’s Birthday celebration @ 924
Gilman.
Time
isn’t a rock. Punk rock takes time to develop. Punk has created many new
transformations. The band Appalachia Rising[80], or R.I.S.E. is an example of
grunge / bluegrass, steam punk, or hobo-core,
if you will. I would say they are steam punk rhythm and bluegrass. You might
also seem to think so because this Georgia band hits the issues and sounds like
something you could hear on KPFA[81].
With a sexy jazzy / rap acoustic or acappella vibe, and a very hardcore
appearance, their vimeo video
is on their website, you actually expect to hear lyrics like this.
“…get
the fuck out your car, walking’s good for you; follow blindly is that what you
do?”[82]
Or try their rendition of Bill Withers, Sunshine on Vimeo. Banjos! Nothing is more Steam
Punk than that. Rising Appalachia is named after the ecology movement of the same name. Although
they are independent, it is no surprise that they play at Burning Man
and similar festivals. R.I.S.E.
can be followed on MySpace and utube. Appalachia Rising to me
typifies what a Gilman band should be in this day and age. Actual hard-core
musicians playing and being HARD-CORE! You really won’t want to miss them.
B.C.S.
Bum City Saints[83] are a Gilman band to end all Gilman
bands, and hopefully they won’t. I was fortunate enough to conduct a video
interview with Bum City Saints.[84]
These guys seem like any other group of twenty somethings. For a few different
reasons BCS seem exactly similar to other kinds of early stage
successful Gilman bands and naturally formulation and formation are important
considerations. Much of my conclusions are based on my own ear however, and my
memory of earlier Gilman bands. Musically
as far as a comparison to the late 80s The Gilman Street Project punk
bands with BCS there are similarities to Econochrist, and Crimpshrine. The late
1980s is when these bands started to play around the bay area, sometimes
elsewhere, and make names for themselves in the Gilman punk scene. As a new
band these are large shoes for BCS
to fill, although not too much for these guys, they don't mind really
working hard on it. After twenty years of music and sub-cultural
experimentation Gilman has provided a few clues on what makes for a successful
band. BCS might be considered
the result of that study.
BCS has one thing that fewer good bands let alone good
sub-cultural genre related music groups have, and that is ethnic diversity.
Javier is from Peru, and Jasper is from Sweden. I tried to investigate a little
into cultural diversity with my interview although I had to also ask the more
relevant questions that typified the genre, as well as the nature of this form
of interviewing. So in my questions I tried to steer "typical music
genre" interview questions into other forms that perhaps related and could
answer to both interview formations.
Back to BCS Jasper begins the
interview explaining his decision to enlist in the Swedish armed forces for ten
months. I was under the impression that military service in Sweden is
obligatory. Jasper describes Socialism in Sweden as beautiful, and was probably
happy to spend more time in his punk band when his service expired. Jasper
began seeing shows at Gilman a few years ago and saw La Plebe[85] perform, a band he notes that was
known in Sweden. Jasper is the guitarist for BCS. In Sweden he was more
influenced by metal music initially. Jasper sites both Guns and Roses and Rancid as initial
influences, Rancid having
played Stockholm earlier this decade being very influential to the Swedish
music scene. Describing more aggressive speed or death metal music in Sweden
Jasper describes Swedes as doing it well.
Javier knew of punk bands in High
School in Peru. He explains that since Rancid and Green Day weren't playing in Lima at the time
(2001 or so) that I am to believe that Javier insinuates that Peruvian punks
were to create their own options. One option that Peruvians created in 2001 was
Fujimori’s resignation, and performing punk bands were a vocal part of the
political protest. In 2002 Javier exchanged compliments with the band Groovin'
Goulies when he was at
Gilman and that more or less seemed to influence his interest in 924 Gilman and I believe may have helped
him acclimate into the local punk scene.
Shadow is a typical young American
woman who happens to be from Hawaii. Eleven years ago she ditched out on her
mom, got lost in a Berkeley park, and ended up catching the last 45 minutes of
a Gilman punk show before it had ended. Her first punk show was in Hawaii and
was a house party featuring 86 List and Black Square. In her 6th through 11th grade experiences
Shadow was able to appreciate the punk zeitgeist that occurred in Honolulu. She
did not give exact dates. Shadow sang for Bum City Saints.
Brian typifies the Californian
suburban punk ethos in that he is from Sacramento. His high school involvement with
punk leads to a greater music appreciation that expanded as he played in bands
following his experience with public education. In particular he cited The
Offspring and Rancid's, Out Come The Wolves album. After high school, and playing in bands that toured he
became familiar with The Clash. In many ways this is how the building
blocks of punk are formulated in early punk music experimentation and
appreciation.
Bum City Saints are a collaboration; everyone in the
band contributes. Javier states that honesty and being genuine are relevant to
him in his search for truth within himself and his social interaction, and
experimentation with the sub-culture. This interpersonal research would seem to
relate to how their music and lyrics are created. Jasper would wish we would
look at the way in which the world is working. Jasper states that BCS have a song related to immigration
and migration worker exploitation. Jasper brings up sexual discrimination in
the workplace. "You need to be angry at some point." Jasper notes
that the culture in the Bay Area is much more diverse than that of Sweden, and
that to explore culture here would seem to be no more difficult than to take a
walk in San Francisco's Mission District. Shadow relates to anger and
frustration as a catalyzing force in her lyrics and
expression. Her
emotions can be used to channel into formations of song writing and singing. In
relation to her civil rights she acknowledges that she is in a liberated
position as a vocalist of BCS[86].
Javier states that the Ramones aren't
the most politically challenging band, yet they relate to the common everyday
aspects of experience in life, and that that is also important to note in
relation to the creation of music. The Bum City Saints offer a little
something more than your typical Gilman band. Their collective cultural
identity covers three continents, and the biggest ocean in the world. Using the
history of punk they are able to use commonality to relate to their fellow
punks, they love music, want to perform, and record on an independent label.
Their intensity and desire to play is noteworthy as popular Gilman bands during
its initial heyday, as such The Bum City Saints perform at Gilman often.
Some thoughts on the Dream Mechanism
I grew up in the burbs. We moved into
a red zone of the republic in about 1980, and left the crime rate of El Cerrito
behind us. I grew up hating yuppies, the rich, and rednecks in particular. I
would listen to the oldies station, which still is in existence, KFRC. I liked The Beatles and The Stones,
that’s what my folks had listened to. I used to read comic books, and at some
point in junior high school somebody had secretly purchased a P.O. Box and
began ordering punk albums unbeknownst to their parents. We would save up our
allowances, and once a month my best friend and I, or some group of us would go
to Berkeley for comics (Love and Rockets,
or maybe Spiderman,) pizza, and
eventually punk albums. This would have been sometime around 1987. I was really
interested in skateboarding at about fourteen. Freshman year in high school was
highly problematic because those assholes that used to beat us up when we were
in 6th grade didn’t have another idea in mind for us. Mike was a
recovering alcoholic on the five year plan, rejected from the neighboring
burbs’ high school. He liked to help out the little guy and start fights with
those who picked on us; he had been on the neighboring community’s football
team. To say the least we stuck to Mike like glue. Mike knew about the hardcore
movement and straight edge. He took some of us to our first punk show at
Gilman. This was about 1988, a couple of years after Gilman had started.
Everyone’s pretty much scared for their first show. Later on we would have a
pretty good time bringing our girlfriends to see a band like Operation Ivy or Green Day, and we would have to watch them be scared and try to act
tough. Basically that’s what everyone would do. Mike bragged relentlessly about
de-virginizing us to Gilman, basically because he had nothing else to talk about,
he didn’t like the people he was in school with either, I suppose he was
attractive to the ladies, so he probably helped encourage them to go to Gilman
as well. Eventually Mike and a few of us formed a pop-punk band, because that’s
what was popular at the clubs. By the time I was a senior in high school I
would volunteer at Gilman, save my money and buy magazines, stickers, t-shirts,
albums, and now this new thing called CDs which punk bands were beginning to
produce. We adopted Berkeley as “our town” and befriended the regulars that
attended shows at Gilman. We had boots, leather jackets, and torn ripped fucked
up clothing, and punk t-shirts that we might not choose to wash to help prevent
wear. I liked to dye my hair, shave the sides and back of my head and let the
top grow out. People in my graduating class really didn’t quite understand our
politics. There were maybe half a dozen of us in our class who were somewhat
like minded. Honestly the only one I still am in contact with would be my
original friend who I shared the love of comic books with. One thing would be
to say was Nirvana, ecology and
Clinton, MTV perhaps made a mark.
Sometimes my class mates would just ask or say something like, “wow, I guess
maybe Lollapalooza must have been a
lot of fun, I suppose Nirvana, the
Green movement, Clinton and MTV must have really made their mark.” You can
imagine it became somewhat inane. I tried to be encouraging, it was a new age.
We liked rap also. Myself only hardcore like Public Enemy, NWA, Dr. Dre, Snoop (somewhat), the early nineties were graced with Spike Lee,
and Quinton Tarantino. The younger rap enthusiast in remedial high school
business math class hated punk (secretly liking Green Day, of course I hounded him for that) he did seem to respect
my taste in rap, I didn’t like anything other than the hardcore, the political.
How could I like the Dead Kennedy’s, Green Day, and Public Enemy? Those bands are so different. Obviously the link
would be protest music, and the message is the music, and music is everything.
He liked the “baby-baby I love you rap,” and the “nigga-nigga” rap, which I
found to be boring. I liked the “Nazi-punks fuck off” punk, the “Blue-collar
protest” punk songs, and I wanted Hollywood to burn because 9-11 was a joke, I
wanted to fight the powers that be.[87] I
think eventually like many kids in math class, he did to. I’ve literally been
to hundreds of concerts, music venue events and have visited every club in the
greater Bay Area and by default almost also Kansas City (I have family there,
my cousin used to DJ radio.) The rap guy in Math and I found out we had
something in common, and there were at least a few of us in high school. I was
constantly bored so I would sing punk lyrics out loud on my way to class or
something. It made the girls blush, and some people angry. Often was the case
that I would sing menacingly about politics or an obvious anti-Reagan song from
the 80s. People took that shit really seriously, and there were fights. Since I
had already spent my formative years in El Cerrito, I had a steep climb for
about twelve years with conservatives, but I’ve since forgiven them for their
ignorance if not their ideology, some of them not at all actually. It was nice
about Clinton, he and Al at least shed some light on what our concerns were,
and people began to wake up a little bit. People actually switched political
parties because of that, and I have since learned to respect people’s
differences.
My first punk “album” was a mix tape
of mostly Los Angeles punk rock from the 1980s. The guy with the secret P.O.
Box turned into a racist skinhead, but nevertheless I loved the tape that he
made, even if he wanted to kick my ass for having it. The Dead Kennedy’s, Flipper,
D.I., T.S.O.L. (my favorite, True
Sounds of Liberty were named after the quasi-anarchist American foundation
True Sons of Liberty, from about the 1700s, but you know L.A. bands, they may
have paid somebody to come up with the best punk name, TSOL became a cheesy metal band in the 90s,
because that became the music trend in L.A.), Agent Orange, The Offs,
etc, it probably was the best tape mix ever.
In 1988 I got the Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, TurnitAround!, compilation album, which
is now lauded as a turning point in the Berkeley, and Bay Area punk scene,
removing the worst of the hardcore tendencies and going towards “Geek-Core” and
“homo-core” and other concepts as such that would eventually become known as
“girl-power.” If my former skinhead pal was any indication there wasn’t a whole
lot of love of equality in the world, and it was really becoming problematic.
The politics in Turnitaround!, and
the ideas that surfaced from it really helped people like me to think in
different ways to the same problems. Eventually most if not all of the bands on
the compilation would produce a 7” e.p. on Lookout!
Records. I guess this was the basis of the rivalry between Tim Yohannan of Maximum,
and Lawrence Livermore of Lookout!
Eventually Tim would quit Gilman, and Larry and his people took over, so Larry
made it look like he won or something, and Tim fed up with all of the
responsibility and despondency of the lack of volunteers knew better.
Eventually Larry found similar problems as Tim; Chris Apple took control of Lookout! Records, Tre Cool, left the
band The Lookouts! for an exclusive Green Day involvement.
Sometime around the Gilman turnover
the Lookout bands that were an exclusive Gilman staple had pretty much turned
the scene around, something that the previous scenesters resented or otherwise
refused to consider, stupid jaded fucks. Most of them have moved beyond that by
now anyway. Lookout! Record’s, The Thing That Ate Floyd
double 12” vinyl e.p. was excelsior to the more serious, political TurnitAround! double 7” e.p. Tim Yohannan
was a magazine editor, a guy who ran a non-profit record store, not so much an
exclusive club owner and record labeler anymore. My friends and I loved both
“scenes” and albums separately and often had the tedious task of arbitrating
around the scene when the bullshit was flying around. It was a lot worse for
the ‘separatists’ and the new and younger crowd made it apparent that such a
divide was of no interest in the then current zeitgeist, as today also.
There were the sort of trials to see
if people (when they were new to the scene) were going to stay punk, true to
the scene or whatever- things that happen in all types of clicks or movements.
It was harder to prove to Tim than Larry, and then disappointing when Larry,
like Tim became cantankerous and overwhelmed from lack of support. Watching the
scene die twice was like dying twice. Most of us became a little too old to
continue after that. The bands moved on, I hadn’t the funding to go to shows by
the end of the 1990s. I could I guess, but the kinds of bands I would see don’t
really play at Gilman anymore. Bands that were more into playing at bars and
things simply always had done so, and for the most part still do. The point was
we supported a grass roots volunteer run organization for a few good years and
were somewhat pivotal to the scene’s survival, as well as inspirational for
others perhaps.
Adieu! Our Mechanism of the Dream
Vista: AT GILMAN STREET
Gilman Street is and was a place to
“grow and climb, and chase butterflies again,”[88]
metaphorically speaking. Gilman is and was a place of focus and mediation.
Gilman was and is a place to justify and challenge preconceived ideology.
Gilman was and is Berkeley’s radical political hot seat in times of riot and
paradigm shift. Gilman is and was the role model for other venues, locations,
and things to come. Gilman was and is a free space for brains encased and
decorated by colored Mohawks and spikey hair. Gilman is an alternative space
for social integration. Gilman was and is the hope for newly found bands and
also older bands. Gilman is a vestige of survival for the dreams of musicians,
and the politically left of center. Gilman is still the heart of the underground
music scene in the Bay Area. Gilman is the last place to escape to from a world
gone mad by greed, corruption, and avarice. Gilman is the last place to go to,
to escape from the trivializations, inconsistencies, and dissatisfaction with
popular culture. Gilman is a communion of creativity, community, ideas, and
freedom of oppression. Gilman is the heart beat of Northern Californian
sub-cultural development. Gilman is a pretty good place for teenagers and young
adults to behave like themselves within their age limitations, and safely so at
that, a good place to avoid adulteration by the insanity of capitalist
endeavors. “As long as you keep a piece of Gilman in your heart, it will be
with you wherever you go…”[89]
Although Gilman has undergone vast transformations in terms of organization,
efficiency, and also historically, due to ownership, and management, this
history of independence and steadfastness has lent itself to the strengths of
the terra cotta and cinderblock warehouse owned by the canning factory
properties next door from 924 Gilman.
Gilman is a place for non-conformists (and the like) to find social,
metaphysical, and spiritual connections, through music, to the rest of the
universe, when for these punks-all other options are closed in this regard.
Gilman is a place to let off steam, to dance off the anger that accumulates due
to the ignorance of the masses. In this light I would argue that punk
represents, in many regards a form of urban post-modern, post-industrial
tribalism[90]
that otherwise would not exist in the world. “Gilman is a place, it’s a club,
it’s a thing, and it’s Gilman Street.”[91]
Appendix
Appendix Zero,
[from page eleven.]
Martin
Brohm: [Bass player for Isocracy and Samiam.] It was mostly John and Jason
driving around in John’s VW van, finding crap. I remember they found these huge
rolls of plastic wrap, four feet tall and three feet deep.
Jason
Beebout: [Musician, Isocracy, Samiam.] That was one of the worst. We
stopped at a burrito processing plant, got giant rolls of this really thin
cellophane. We started rollin’ ‘em out, and they became this bouncy blob that
took over the floor of Gilman. It was great because you could dive off the
stage onto it, like a trampoline. But then if you got tangled up it was
horrible……
Martin
Brohm: Matt Freeman went back to help clean up the next day, and this wad of
shit was too big to pull out the door……
Mike
K: [Bay Area Punk, Radical.] Al would roll his VW bus up to the side of Gilman.
You never knew what was going to start pouring out of the side of the thing……
Anna
Brown: One time Isocracy threw like a
hundred dictionaries off the stage.
Jeff
Ott: Reams and reams and reams of recycled paper.
Christopher
Appelgren: [Lookout! Records, S.F.
Noisepop.] Little tiny scraps of paper with handwritten messages about the
band that would be flying amidst all this other trash and clothes and weird
things: “Isocracy Rules.”
Jeff
Ott: Like, a hundred Big Wheels. But it was really good. Macho, scary-looking
punk rockers riding around on Big Wheels……
Tim
Armstrong: [OPIV,[92]
Rancid, Downfall, Basic Radio.]
That Isocracy shit, that was it. Them
guys came in with that vibe, it made them really fun. Just throwin’ shit
around, everyone jumping on each other. It was a celebration, man, it was
fuckin’ awesome……
Mike
K: The sense of humor was pretty sophisticated for teenage kids. Making fun of
the ritualization of this tough-guy mosh pit stuff.
Jesse
Michaels: [Singer, OPIV[93],
Common Rider, The Classics of Love.] The hardcore stuff got so ridiculous, you
couldn’t not make fun of it. Isocracy
were especially funny because they were playing hardcore type music but they
turned it into a big circus, and it was hilarious and it worked. They were like
on acid without acid.
Martin
Sprouse: [Infamous punk author and publisher.]
…The Mindfuck Committee was
another cool thing that I wish would have stuck around. Trying to make the
shows interesting, trying to mess with things. One thing they did was talking
about Apartheid in this really interesting way. Everyone got a South African
passport, and people would randomly get arrested during shows. Kind of
performance art, kind of political. A lot of great ideas but really hard to
implement. Most people just wanted to watch Neurosis
play.[94]
Appendix One,
[from page thirteen.]
The Mr. T Experience,
At Gilman Street,
“Seems
like it was only yesterday, nothing to do and nowhere to play
but
then we could go down to Gilman Street, and see Op Ivy every week
no
violence drugs or alcohol, just maximum rock and roll
at
Gilman Street it's the place to be it's the seat of the punk rock scene
cause
we got the beat and we don't eat meat it's a club it's a place it's a thing
and
if the band is hell of rad Tim will start to bounce his head
all
the kids will jump on the stage, and they'll hit the microphone in your face
and
you will get a fat lip in the pit
at
Gilman it's a safe retreat for a zillion punk rock bands
cause
they've got the club and it's not enough but at least it's not Bill Graham
It's
Gilman Street
Radley
does the sound, Honey watches the door, and James McKinney sweeps the floor
Isocracy
made a mess, we demand nothing less
and
if you've got nothing better to do, there's a meeting every Sunday afternoon
you
can talk about skinheads at the show, you can vote on whether or not to vote
and
you can make a speech you can rant you can rave you can preach
at
Gilman Street it's democracy it's just one big family
it's
a bunch of geeks it's a load of freaks it's a club it's a place it's a thing
it's
Gilman Street.”[95]
Appendix Two, (from
page fourteen.)
The Mr. T Experience,
A Song About A Girl Who Went Shopping,
“She
was young and she was free she went on a shopping spree
she
bought some records she bought a pot this is what she bought records and a pot
yeah
oh yeah
what
records did she buy? Naked Raygun and
Crimpshrine, Dickies, Rezillos and Aerosmith
this
is what she picked and a Lurkers
7"
yeah
oh yeah
she's
so beautiful she loves rock and roll she is pretty fun she's so fast and loud
yeah she's rockin out now she's making lunch where did she put this stuff there
wasn’t room enough she put these things in the trunk of her car that is where
they are the trunk of her car
yeah
oh yeah
she's
so wonderful she's a lovable lost and lonely child she's a little thing it's
the little things that make life worthwhile she went shopping she had a
shopping spree I was on her mind that's a special time in our otherwise
uneventful lives.”[96]
Appendix Three, [from
page fifteen.]
Sara
Cohen: [Musician, Phd Sociology.] Reaganomics, the Iran-Contra[97]
affair. That’s what Rock Against Reagan
was all about. We had a very clear understanding about what the fuck was going
on in our country, about what was going on in the world.
Oran
Canfield: [He is a local author, very much involved with the early punk scene
in Berkeley.] I had a real fear that we were all gonna die. In Berkeley and the
Bay Area, Reagan was seriously the devil. I would see him on the news and
nothing he ever said contradicted the idea that these fucking crazy egomaniacs
were gonna end up destroying the world.
Al
Schvitz: [Local musician. Very relevant to the local punk scene.] This was in
the midst of Reagan’s idiocy. MDC
came back to San Francisco from a tour in Europe and we got a copy of
Overthrow, the yippies’ magazine. On the back cover was a review of our first
album: “Album of the Year.” We didn’t
really know what the yippies were about, but they loved us. They were doing a
50-city tour, and they wanted to know, could we do any dates? Somehow this
evolved into us pretty much doing all 50 dates, and bringing any bands we
wanted. This was the Rock Against Reagan
tour.
It was a bunch of potheads. It
was pot money. Okay you weren’t gonna get Ian MacKaye to back you, but what the
hell, it seemed like a great opportunity. We wound up working with all our good
friends-The Dicks, Crucifucks, DRI, Toxic Reasons. We
played all these cool, cool venues that we never would have played.
……..When
we got back to San Francisco, we played Dolores Park with the Dead Kennedys. Whoopi Goldberg was
emceeing it, and Dennis Peron, the weed activist.
Kriss X: [Hell-raiser, 1970s punk
scenester.] There were thousands. It was exciting as hell! It was like us
against the world. I felt like we were all saying a huge “fuck you” to the
establishment and the Reagan administration. There was an overwhelming sense of
camaraderie in the park that day. I was still young and green, and to be
honest, politics was not at the top of my to-do list. But Feinstein was mayor
and she had upped all the cops. I remember punks getting hassled almost daily
for petty bullshit.[98]
Appendix
Four, (From page seventeen.)
Sewer Trout,
“Wally and the
Beaver go to Nicaragua, (featuring a conversation between Eager Beaver Contra
and Lt. Col. Wally North)
E.B.
- I don't know what to do - Yeah, I'm a Contra too
Tell
me how I can be - useful for society
W.N.
- Hey Beav, let's go to Nicaragua
Socialists
have come to power
We'll
have to steal and kill and lie
Or
else democracy will die
E.B.-
The people are so fun - they're proud of what they've done
They
threw out that Somoza dude - he was a fascist scum
W.N.
- Beaver don't be such a fool
It's
obvious they're miserable
How
can they be truly free
Without
Big Macs and MTV?
Fight
for Freedom - Fight for Coors
Drink
their beer and fight their wars
Help
the rich to kill the poor
Next
stop is El Salvador
E.B.
- What's this that I see - hanging from that tree
It
looks like that hamburger I bought at Tasty Freeze
W.N.
- Beaver that's a communist
We
burned his farm and slashed his wrists
Then
we strung him up to die
Good
thing that god is on our side.”[99]
Appendix Five,
[from page eighteen.]
“There were a variety of punk bands in
Washington including those inspired by British punk, new wave power pop and
artier bands. Within this field there emerged the now-famous groups on the
independent Dischord label: Teen Idles, Minor Threat, Rites of Spring
and eventually Fugazi. An important
factor in this is the personal integrity of Ian MacKaye, from an academic
family whose parents brought their young children to peace demonstrations in
the 1960s. Nonetheless he went to a public high school and worked part time
jobs as a teenager. Moving out from this one would need to talk about the
contrasts within the city of Washington: upscale club and shopping districts
(place to work and buy punk records) along with poor Black and Latino
neighborhoods (cheap shared houses and community spaces to rent for shows). The
ideological elements of many Dischord
bands should be situated within a habitus that includes the personal and the
social geography of the city. These elements are the philosophy of straight
edge, best understood as a matter of personal integrity rather than giving in
to group pressures around drinking, sex and drugs. The second is an emphasis on
individual honesty, or in some cases an understated emphasis on spirituality,
wrongly labeled from the beginning by a journalist as 'emo'. The third is a
solid commitment to benefit shows for community institutions in the poorer part
of the city. This practical assistance contrasts with a general tendency to
avoid explicitly leftist politics.3 A fourth element is the rejection of the corporate
rock industry. 'I think it's great', said MacKaye in the early 1980s, 'what is
happening right now, this kind of local or regional music scene, as opposed to
the nationwide music we've been living with all these years' (Anderson and
Jenkins 2001, p. 112). 3. Not all Dischord
bands avoid leftist politics. Among those with political lyrics are Beefeater
whose 1985 album Plays for Lovers has songs about Reaganomics, native issues
and right-wing religion.”[100]
Appendix
Six, (from page twenty.)
Operation Ivy,
Sound System
(Chorus)
“Sound system gonna bring me back up
One thing that I can depend on
“Sound system gonna bring me back up
One thing that I can depend on
Try
to describe to the limit of my ability:
Its there for a second
Then it's given up what it used to be
Contained in music somehow more than just sound
This inspiration coming and twisting things around
Because you always know that it's gonna have to go
You always know that you'll be back in the cold.
Point of departure sublimated in a song
Its always coming to give me that hope for just a second
Then it's gone, but!
(Chorus)
Static pulse inside of music bringing us escape.
Its always temporary, changing nothing in its wake...
Just a second where we're leaving all this shit behind
Just a second but its leaving just this much in mind:
To resist despair, that second makes you see
To resist despair, because you can't change everything
To resist despair, in this world is what it is to be free
(Chorus)
Wake up turn my box on
Bust the shade, let the sun in
times getting tougher 'bout time to start runnin'
Box in my hand music by my side
Skankin' to the rhythm of the music by my side” [101]
Its there for a second
Then it's given up what it used to be
Contained in music somehow more than just sound
This inspiration coming and twisting things around
Because you always know that it's gonna have to go
You always know that you'll be back in the cold.
Point of departure sublimated in a song
Its always coming to give me that hope for just a second
Then it's gone, but!
(Chorus)
Static pulse inside of music bringing us escape.
Its always temporary, changing nothing in its wake...
Just a second where we're leaving all this shit behind
Just a second but its leaving just this much in mind:
To resist despair, that second makes you see
To resist despair, because you can't change everything
To resist despair, in this world is what it is to be free
(Chorus)
Wake up turn my box on
Bust the shade, let the sun in
times getting tougher 'bout time to start runnin'
Box in my hand music by my side
Skankin' to the rhythm of the music by my side” [101]
Officer
“Do
you have to force yourself with power and control
Do feel a need to live your life playing up a role
Intimidating people with your wall of sight and sound
You and your kind destroy our underground
All the happiness that you have destroyed
All the brutal tactics that you always employ
All the fucking bullshit when will it ever stop
The comparison is obvious: you're just a fucking cop
Officer - you act like an animal, you're out of control
Officer - what the hell is wrong with you
Wear a tie if you want to wear a uniform
Join the army if you want to conform
Tough guy big man do what you can
Whatever you destroy we'll create it again”[102]
Do feel a need to live your life playing up a role
Intimidating people with your wall of sight and sound
You and your kind destroy our underground
All the happiness that you have destroyed
All the brutal tactics that you always employ
All the fucking bullshit when will it ever stop
The comparison is obvious: you're just a fucking cop
Officer - you act like an animal, you're out of control
Officer - what the hell is wrong with you
Wear a tie if you want to wear a uniform
Join the army if you want to conform
Tough guy big man do what you can
Whatever you destroy we'll create it again”[102]
Appendix Seven, [from
page twenty-one.]
Operation Ivy,
Big City
“Concrete
and chaos rise up
Spiderweb across the land
Like a giant rash
Forests lie down below
Foundations of buildings in a bed of ash
Some people here got it real good
Cuz the glass towers bring prosperity
Other people starve in the street
Because concrete knows no sympathy
Big city its a wishing well
Big city its a living hell
This town its fucking insane
How one will starve and another will gain
Like a giant mechanical brain
And the people are cells and the streets are veins
It thinks only of itself
A thousand limbs crawling as it expands and grows
And still the concrete sits there
Sits there stark grey and cold
And I think I wanna be a brick layer
So I can put another brick in the wall
It’s sanitary rational happy and sane
Growing like a flower to surround us all”[103]
Spiderweb across the land
Like a giant rash
Forests lie down below
Foundations of buildings in a bed of ash
Some people here got it real good
Cuz the glass towers bring prosperity
Other people starve in the street
Because concrete knows no sympathy
Big city its a wishing well
Big city its a living hell
This town its fucking insane
How one will starve and another will gain
Like a giant mechanical brain
And the people are cells and the streets are veins
It thinks only of itself
A thousand limbs crawling as it expands and grows
And still the concrete sits there
Sits there stark grey and cold
And I think I wanna be a brick layer
So I can put another brick in the wall
It’s sanitary rational happy and sane
Growing like a flower to surround us all”[103]
Crimpshrine,
Butterflies
”When
I was younger I chased butterflies
But now I look around and realize
That there are no butterflies around here anymore.
Now there's more people everywhere
And on ground that once was bare
They've built condos and shopping malls
And on streets I walked where the sun shined
Shadows grow as buildings climb
And I get older getting colder everyday
The concrete stretches for miles
They put it up in different styles
But it still looks pretty ugly to me...
What a pity
They've fucked up this city
Where I grew up
Now it's grown too big
And there's no room left for me
Maybe it was just cuz I was younger
But people here seemed friendlier
And life was so much simpler
When I was growing up
People closed up as a defense
Protecting what little space they had left
And now everyone's uptight and tense
The city's bleakness makes people numb
Sounds and lights and escape
From having to deal with anyone
I want to live in a place where
I can see a smile on the face
Of someone passing by and say "hi"...
Now I need to find a place
Where I can grow and climb
And I can chase
Butterflies again”[104]
But now I look around and realize
That there are no butterflies around here anymore.
Now there's more people everywhere
And on ground that once was bare
They've built condos and shopping malls
And on streets I walked where the sun shined
Shadows grow as buildings climb
And I get older getting colder everyday
The concrete stretches for miles
They put it up in different styles
But it still looks pretty ugly to me...
What a pity
They've fucked up this city
Where I grew up
Now it's grown too big
And there's no room left for me
Maybe it was just cuz I was younger
But people here seemed friendlier
And life was so much simpler
When I was growing up
People closed up as a defense
Protecting what little space they had left
And now everyone's uptight and tense
The city's bleakness makes people numb
Sounds and lights and escape
From having to deal with anyone
I want to live in a place where
I can see a smile on the face
Of someone passing by and say "hi"...
Now I need to find a place
Where I can grow and climb
And I can chase
Butterflies again”[104]
Appendix Eight, from
page [thirty-three.]
“Even before I started going to shows, I
was interested in the music, because the people were better. I could tell right
away that the people into punk rock were better than the people who were into
say, bad hair metal, for instance. It just seemed natural to me to go to a
place like Gilman and surround myself with a cooler crowd of people than I had
been. Right from the start, even before I went to Gilman, punk rock was more
than just the music-it was the people, the sense of community and activity.
For
the first year or year–and-a-half that I went to the club, it was hard for me
to get to the meetings, so I rarely went. The meetings were on Sundays back
then. I worked occasionally during my first year there, then once I turned
sixteen and could drive, I started working more. I just worked the door
basically. The other jobs, like stage manager or show coordinator, were usually
worked by people older than me, who seemed more worldly and knew more about how
things worked there, so I didn’t pursue those jobs. I was taken by surprise by
the shutdown in fall 1988. I wasn’t paying too much attention up to that point.
I wasn’t part of the meetings about starting it up again after the closure
either, although I did know some of the people involved.
Pretty
quickly I got involved with working again after I reopened in late 1988. After
working the door again for a few shows, I was pulled aside by one of the main
people helping to run the space and was asked to get more involved in the
space. I think it was because I knew how to do math! At first I was helping
with the count-outs after the show, but I couldn’t always stay late, so I
started stage managing instead. I really liked that, getting to meet people,
hang out, be as helpful as I could. I started going to meetings a lot. I would
go there during the week, do some desk-top publishing-type things, help with
the calendar, stuff like that. That’s when I started getting exposed to the
behind-the-scenes type stuff, and learned about organization, etc. I felt
really comfortable working with the second group that took over running Gilman;
I felt like we had a good bunch of people. There just weren’t a lot of people
involved, in particular not a lot of “kids” involved-it was mostly older
people. But everyone coming to the meetings seemed to have a common vision and
a common goal for what the club should be and what kind of shows we should put
on. That was probably the most fun I had working shows, up to about 1989. It
was tough for us though, financially-a 60-person show was a good-sized show. I
don’t think we ever had a sold-out show.”[105]
. . . . .
“It
was a good time to try and get the club out of debt, with the rising popularity
of Green Day and Rancid, along with
others like Econochrist and Jawbreaker, and Lookout Records. Gilman is a really-I won’t say easy organization
to run from a business standpoint-but it’s fairly straightforward. You don’t
have any inventory to take care of; you don’t have any assets other than the
sound system and the money from the door at the end of a show. The bookkeeping
in very straightforward, money is split with the bands (Gilman was taking fifty
percent at the time). The security guards were being paid as independent
contractors, so we didn’t have to worry about payroll taxes. At the time, we
were blowing off sales tax, so we didn’t have to worry about figuring out sales
tax on the stuff we sold in the store. We went round and round with the
membership thing. Ultimately we decided on $2 yearly membership with $5/$6
doors. The membership fee provided significant additional income for us.
Compared to a regular club, it somewhat took the place of alcohol sales. The
membership money wasn’t split with the bands. I felt it was one of the keys to
our continuing financial solvency. Sometimes things that are good ideas for one
reason end up being good ideas for other reasons. The membership concept
started out as a way to help foster the community aspects of Gilman, but really
turned out mostly as a big financial help. I don’t think Gilman would lose its
sense of community if we dumped the yearly membership, but it would be a lot
harder to make ends meet money-wise.”[106]
Appendix Nine, [from
page thirty-four.]
Questionnaire regarding punk rock and Gilman: 1990s East Bay Punk Rock; Our Mechanism of
the Dream Vista. Target: Stephan.
This is kind of generic, it’s designed to open you up, warm you up, and
help me think of more important questions. I will probably have secondary
questions for everybody. Thanks!
Long or short answer okay; you never know what kind of answers might
prove to be significant so at least try to honestly reply if you don’t mind.
Describe
your background in music; describe your relationship to punk rock / the bay
area.
I’d say that music has always been a
defining part of my life. I started listening to music on the radio around the
age of 9 or 10. Before that, it was mostly my father’s classical LPs. On the
radio (we were living in Germany at the time), I listened to the local “hit
parade” – I remember that they used to play The
Beatles, but also contemporary hits. I would record the top ten countdowns
almost every week. Songs I really liked at the time include the Flash Gordon theme by Queen, Fade to Gray by Visage, and AC/DC. The
first record I ever bought was Back in
Black – a schoolyard transaction that felt almost forbidden. I’m surprised my
parents let me listen to that music. As a ten-year-old I didn’t understand any
of the sexual innuendo at all.
When I moved to the states in 1982
(age 11), I mostly listened to Bay Area Top 40, but never bought any albums
from the artists they played, except for cassettes by Quiet Riot and the Scorpions.
I was a pretty geeky kid, I think. Scrawny and with glasses, but I never felt
like a “nerd” or outcast. I just seemed to be drawn to music that makes you
want to bang your head.
My first exposure to punk rock was in
the 8th grade, when I was 14 or 15. Some friends started circulating 2nd, 3rd,
and 4th-hand copies of The Dead Kennedys and Suicidal Tendencies (I’m defining ‘punk’ pretty broadly here, I
suppose). I think that at first, I found the lyrics funny, humorous – maybe
because they pushed the envelope, because the bands sang about forbidden things
like suicide and politics. Actually, I don’t think I considered it politics – I
just thought it was funny to sing about a holiday in Cambodia or about eating
the poor.
Bay Area: I consider the Bay Area my
home – I lived there from age 11 to 30, really the most formative years of my
life. Specifically, I consider the East Bay my home, Oakland and Berkeley,
although I lived in Moraga from 1982 to 1990. My exposure to punk rock and its
rebellious attitude towards middle-class conformity coincided with my
realization that I didn’t like living in the suburbs. This realization had
begun to coalesce much earlier. Even as a 12-year-old I found life there to be
much different to the way we had lived in Germany – in Germany I had taken the
bus to the big city alone at age 11. Here, there weren’t even any sidewalks, we
lived in a neighborhood that was several miles from the nearest store, and my
parents’ friends thought it odd that I would be at home alone (at age 12!) or
take the bus and BART to Berkeley after school to take classes at Lawrence Hall
of Science. By age 15, I was more than open to something that would give shape
to these simmering uncertainties.
If you haven’t
explained this already why is music / punk rock / the bay area important to
you?
The Bay Area is important to me,
because it is my home. Even though I spent the first 11 years of my life
elsewhere and the past ten years elsewhere, too. Punk rock is no longer a part
of my life, but music always has been and always will. I live with someone (my
wife) who is not like this. Whenever I put on music, she says turn it down or
turn that off (if it's too "energetic", which is most of my music).
Without music, there is a part of me missing. I already feel incomplete by the
fact that, where I live now, I don't know the music scene very well, I don't go
to many concerts, and I can't listen to the music I like at the volume I like
at home (without putting headphones on, which isn't the same thing).
But why is it so important to me? I
don't know. It's just part of my constitution, by genetics maybe. Ever since
punk, it has been a source of identity, a way of not drowning anonymously in
society, but of knowing who I am and where I stand.
Describe
your first Punk experience.
There were the cassettes that we
listened to at school in the 8th grade. My first concert was at age 16. Circle Jerks at the Mabuhay Gardens in SF. We had to leave early because I had promised
my folks that I wouldn’t drive into the city (I think I only had my license for
a few weeks), and so we left the car at BART in Orinda and Barted into town. I
don’t really remember the opening acts. Asexuals? I distinctly remember that
the moment the Jerks started playing, the whole room turned into a mosh pit. In
my memory, I can almost see tables and chairs flying, but of course that’s just
my imagination.
What was
your first punk rock show? Musical show or concert?
Well, that was the previous answer.
When were
you first at Gilman?
I think it was in the fall of 1987
(or maybe 1988?). I think Gilman had just celebrated its first anniversary. I
don’t remember the show, but I remember that I bought
the MRR 7-inch Turn it Around compilation.
I seem to remember that actually. I had to buy it after I heard it, it was too
good.
If you
haven’t explained this already, why is 924 Gilman important to you?
It offered me an escape from suburban
conformity, a sense of community, and the feeling that I was a part of
something, of some social phenomenon, something dynamic. By contrast, the
suburbs where a place where nothing happened, which were in fact designed to
exist separate from social change, social movements.
Gilman's sense of community came from
the feeling that we all were there because of the same thing: music and the
inability or unwillingness to "fit in." It was also a club, meaning
you had to purchase membership. I'm sure some people just paid the membership
fee because that's what you had to do in order to get in, but I also
volunteered (mostly security at the side door, keeping an eye on band
equipment, and cleaning up after shows, occasionally also taking money at the
door) and so had the feeling that I was really participating in something.
If you
haven’t explained this already, how long have you been involved with 924
Gilman?
I attended shows at Gilman from
1987/88 until roughly 1992/3. I probably was at one or two shows after that. I
think that while in high school (1987-1990) I attended a show a month. I was ‘involved’
at Gilman by attending meetings or volunteering (mostly by working the door,
the side door, or helping to clean up after shows) in the late eighties.
Reminiscent of the past / music genre / scenes
/ former Gilman / tell me where your influences regarding the past here in the
bay area or elsewhere have helped you formulate your experiences / musically /
artistically / in general-what have you. [Example: I liked L.A. Surfer punk
from the 1980s before I enjoyed British punk. This isn’t a very relevant
example, so I would think to include influences before and after the Sex
Pistols as a sort of balance, in my case leading up to my time at Gilman in
1988 or so.]
My musical tastes have shifted a lot.
If anything, my experience at Gilman has made me aware of the difference
between being a consumer of music and being rooted in a particular form of
music. Unfortunately, I don't feel that I am a part of any particular scene
anymore. I suppose I could call myself an enlightened consumer of music. :-) I
like to seek out local music wherever I am. I prefer small clubs to large
auditoriums or arenas (I've never been to a concert larger than several hundred
people).
Generally speaking, my punk
experience has also had some (in my view) negative impacts. I spent a lot of
time defining myself in opposition to mainstream culture and society, defining
myself by what I was not. I was anti this, anti that. As an adult, I have had
difficulties figuring out who/what I am. I know who/what I am not (or don't
want to be): conformist, middle-class, etc. Although in some ways I am those
things, too.
Enlighten
me with some kind of information I am not asking you, that you might think
would be relevant for someone who is kind of doing a before and after thesis on
EBHC.
11. I’m going to try to reiterate some of the
previous questions.
#3.
The Bay Area has a value of music of its own accord, Jefferson Starship,
some of us are familiar with the Grateful Dead, we’ve had maybe four major punk
scenes in our local history including the current one, lots of bands have come
from here, even some good ones, so I’m wondering, and especially in light of
your experience with the scene, and music in general, especially considering
your background in music, is there something simply “Berkeley” about Gilman for
example, I would rather think that there is a long established tradition of
protest music, alternative cultures here.
What are your thoughts on this?
I've never thought of Gilman as being
"only in Berkeley" or "only in the Bay Area." On the other
hand, I think the ideas behind Gilman, the spirit in which it was founded, etc.
have to do with the anti-establishment traditions of the Bay Area and the
activist spirit.
#9 is actually a follow through of
#3, now that I am realizing, and it’s my academic way of trying to go deeper
into your influences, both musically, socially, in this case on a local level
of geology, and intrinsically, which is to say, Punk has changed all of our
lives for the better, although some people might play down the level and depth
of experimentation as far as music comprehension, or even in other areas such
as the fine arts, or even fashion…now I’m not trying to get you to design a
punk purse for Dior, but I’m only saying that punk is here to stay and I’m
trying to coordinate a question to help you dive into what it is about the music.
Is it the political message? Is it a form of freedom from isolation, freedom in
general, punk has emancipatorial elements, what is it to you? Spiritually
speaking, it seems we are happier with our forms of music, I’m trying to find
ways to understand how this is part of your being and / or expression as well
as trying to understand the current facets of a (newer to me) post-modern
sub-cultural zeitgeist.
I'm no music critic, and I don't think
there is anything special about the music itself. Punk is one of the few
musical genres where, for me anyway, the text is more important than the music.
The music is just a means of delivering the text. It's the message that's
important. It doesn't even have to be political. There were bands that I liked
that weren't in the least bit political. They sang about personal issues.
(Right, I know: the personal is political. But that's just a tired old phrase
that I don't really buy into.) Or they sang just totally ridiculous stuff, like
Stikky, for instance. But the lyrics
were always the most important part – I listened to a band because I liked its
lyrics. I don't do that with other music. Metallica,
Pink Floyd, Tom Waits – to name just a few performers who I listen to or have
listened to – I listen to them because of their music; they lyrics are
secondary.
But back to punk. There is a sense of
freedom to it. I don't know if it has to do with freedom from isolation,
although it liberated me from the stultifying isolation of suburban America and
made me feel like I was a part of something. It's about throwing off chains of
self-control, sometimes violently as when you throw yourself around the mosh
pit. Throwing off all your inhibitions. That has its negative features, too.
Violence, drugs. There weren't many fights at Gilman, but occasionally people
came whose idea of freedom was the freedom to take out all of their aggression
and anger on others. I suppose some of them were also running away from
something, though maybe it wasn't Middle America like in my case. Abusive
parents? Dysfunctional families? Failed relationships?
If you can expand on #5, as far as
your musical appreciation or experience is concerned, if you have not already
done so I would appreciate it.
Funny thing is, I think I learned my
musical appreciation from my father, who often listened to his classical music
records. Because of him, I was probably predisposed to take an attitude towards
music that was more than just having the radio on in the background. I listen
actively. I can sit in my room just listening to music, listening attentively,
like reading a book. You can't read a book "in the background" – it's
an active activity. And punk as music demands to be listened to actively.
Really new questions:
12.
As part of a collective, a movement, or simply a music scene or genre,
where or how do you place yourself in your experience?
Right now, nowhere. My last attempt
at defining myself through what I do or which "movement" I am
involved in was while working with an environmental NGO. I think it is
important for people to have an idea of where they belong, of belonging, or
doing, of being active in something. I got burnt out trying to work an
underpaid job in a chaotic, unorganized group (the aforementioned NGO). I
haven't been involved in anything since then. My identity is based on being a
father and, I suppose, on being a foreigner in the country where I now live
(the Czech Republic).
From punk, I got a sense of urgency,
that sense of having to do something different, something that will change the
world, something meaningful. To
create something, artistically, politically or otherwise. To not just be a
consumer, an uninvolved citizen. My only creative project right now is my son.
Which isn't a bad project – I've realized that our western society is so
focused on careers (and this includes the attempt of us so-called alternative
types to avoid careers by being or wanting to be different, creative, and meaningful) that we have forgotten
that the creative project of reproduction (and I don't mean that in the
biological sense, but in the sense of passing on your ideas, your ideals, your
philosophy, your approach to life, and so on) is equally rewarding and just as
important, if not more so.
13.
Are you, or do you consider yourself a typical Gilman shit worker? [This was the regular generic term in my heyday…]
I don’t remember this term. I suppose
I was, and if I used the term then, then probably proudly. ---Your brother would
remember, I think.
14.
Do you have hopes or certain ideals, ideologies?
I hate to sound like a jaded
40-year-old, but I definitely am through with ideologies. As for hopes and
ideals… well, I don’t really think about that very much anymore. I don’t think
I’ve “resigned on life” and am left to live “day-to-day”, but I have lately
been living mostly in the present. I am self-employed and don’t have to worry
about the future. I am raising a child and am married. These things keep me
pretty busy. I don’t think that they necessarily prevent you from thinking
about hopes and ideals, but in my case they keep me busy enough not to (want
to? have to?) think about such things.
15.
Do you consider yourself a member of a grass roots collective?
No. Although I used to be (see question 12.)
16.
Is there the cohesion there for you about your involvement that perhaps
you can speak of it somewhat for me?
Cohesion? If you are asking whether I
feel that the me of today is still the me who was involved in Gilman, then yes.
I have taken a lot of that ethos with me through life. See question 12. Even if
I don't listen to punk anymore and Gilman has little to offer to me today, I
can't think of those years as a "phase" in my life. I don't like that
term. It's used by people to diminish the importance certain ideas have to
someone. People use it to describe themselves when they are ashamed or
embarrassed by some things they did in the past – which only means that they
are unable to accept who they are and who they were. Who I was in the past has
shaped who I am today. There is continuity – maybe that's the word I was
subconsciously thinking of when I heard the word 'cohesion.' My life is
continuous, it's not divided into phases or stages or epochs or what have you.
17.
How does your for lack of a better term, urban experience relate to your
variation on your experience with punk subculture?
Funnily, if I had grown up in the
city, I may never have become punk. My view is that American punk is much more
a suburban experience. The kids at Gilman came not only (maybe not even the
majority) from Berkeley, but from Pinole, Hercules, Concord, Walnut Creek,
Danville, San Ramon, Lamorinda, and god knows where else. For me personally,
anyway, punk was a rebellion against suburban conformity. Through punk (but not
only through punk), I was able to redefine myself as an urban inhabitant.
Essentially, I would turn the question upside down: it isn’t my urban
experience that relates to my punk experience, but my punk experience that
relates to my urban identity.
18+.Do you believe that you are part
of a subculture? If so or not so what
would be your stance on this, what do you think society at large could do
better? How do you or what would you
choose to do to educate the public about your punk or collective punk
experience, or human experience?
I no longer consider myself part of a
subculture. This is partially the result of my move to another country, where I
didn’t have a ready-made subculture to plug into.*
But even so: I don’t need a subculture to offer me an identity or validate my
identity. I ride a bike and attend critical mass, but I am not a part of the
biker subculture. I have too many diverse interests. The term “subculture”
implies something vaguely organized something coherent, like punk rock, or
hippies, or so on. Society is not a monolithic entity and there are many
“niches” that people can occupy, sometimes they can occupy several at the same
time. I think it was easier for me to be a punk rocker when I felt that I was
rebelling against something uniform and easy to define.
[*Is that a problem, do
you need an extension cord? ;)]
What could society at large do
better? To use two tired old clichés: “small is beautiful” and “think globally,
act locally.” I think the wonderful thing about subcultures is that they are
small and locally based. Society, especially American consumer society, is too
big to be something that you can feel a part of. It is something you consume,
not something you create. For me, Gilman and punk, was a perfect example of people
creating culture themselves, not having it created for them. The same thing
goes for all the musicians and artists I knew and whose gigs I attended in
Berkeley and Oakland long after I had stopped going to punk concerts. Maybe
they (we?) were something you could call a subculture – a loosely organized
group of people who shared similar musical tastes. That is one of the things I
miss most from the Bay Area: the grassroots creativity, the many different
circles of people, often doing things that the “outside” world (the world
outside a group of a few hundred people) has no clue about. I don’t know if
this exists elsewhere in the same way. I’m sure it does, even in suburbs. But
in the Bay Area, I felt like an insider and everywhere else (even here, where I
have been living for 10 years), I feel like I’m just visiting.
19.
What do you think is relevant for an urban studies student in my
situation as far as what I should be asking you?
I don’t know. My identity as a “punk rocker” is certainly
closely related to my identity as an “urban inhabitant.” It took me a long time
and a lock of kicking and screaming to agree to leave the city again, to live
in what – for lack of a better word – is the Czech equivalent of “suburbs”. I
don’t think that they’re quite the same as my image of American suburbs. But as
a “clueless foreigner” maybe I just don’t know any better. Maybe my neighbors
are just as ignorant as the people I used to despise in Moraga. Or maybe, the
people in Moraga are not at all as I thought they were.
You are lucky to have gotten away when you did really.
[Email
response from Stephan.]
Hey there,
sorry for the delay. I don't think I said that punk is a suburban thing. But if I had grown up in the city, I probably wouldn't have "needed" punk. I think punk is an urban thing, and something that offers an urban alternative to alienated suburban youth. It is a subculture, a random gathering of people - things that the suburbs, with their separation of functions, car culture, and segregation don't allow.
Punk in the US is suburban (and this is only my unscientific observation) only in the sense that it tends to attract suburban kids. Even if they come from such economically diverse suburbs as Hercules and San Ramon. Its ethos is urban, though.
In other words, it's complicated.
Peace,
Steve
sorry for the delay. I don't think I said that punk is a suburban thing. But if I had grown up in the city, I probably wouldn't have "needed" punk. I think punk is an urban thing, and something that offers an urban alternative to alienated suburban youth. It is a subculture, a random gathering of people - things that the suburbs, with their separation of functions, car culture, and segregation don't allow.
Punk in the US is suburban (and this is only my unscientific observation) only in the sense that it tends to attract suburban kids. Even if they come from such economically diverse suburbs as Hercules and San Ramon. Its ethos is urban, though.
In other words, it's complicated.
Peace,
Steve
End of
interview.
Appendix Ten, [from
page thirty-nine.]
Questionnaire regarding punk rock in light of my MA Urban
Studies Thesis: 1990s East Bay Punk
Rock; Our Mechanism of the Dream Vista. Target: Christoph.
This is kind of generic,
it’s designed to open you up, warm you up, and help me think of more important
questions also. I will probably have
secondary questions for everybody.
Thanks!
Long or short answer
okay, you never know what kind of answers might prove to be significant so at
least try to honestly reply if you don’t mind.
Describe your background in music, describe your relationship
to punk rock / the bay area.
Punk rock was in my youth
(ages about 15 to early/mid 20s) an important defining influence, experience,
“moment”… I felt it gave “outsiders” a chance to fit in by falling out. Most of
the people I knew who were involved in or interested in the punk scene even
marginally were in some way outcasts in the social hierarchy at school (nerds,
geeks, skaters, smokers, stoners). At the same time, despite sharing the same
interest in music and possibly being driven to it by virtue of being
ostracized, the people included straight-A students as much as drop-outs, the
artistically inclined as well as the more scientific type, and people of all
kinds of political convictions – this made it an interesting reflection of
society in miniature while also being a sort of anti-society. But mostly, I was
fascinated and captivated by the power of the music: simple, stripped down,
straight-forward.
If you haven’t explained
this already why is music / punk rock / the bay area important to you?
Music is important to me
in general because music has the power to move the soul. This is true for all
kinds of music. Punk rock was a part of my youth. As such it will always be a
part of me, even though I would have my disagreements with my former self were
I to meet him. In some ways, I feel like I have “grown out of” punk rock, so I
personally have an ambiguous relationship with the music of then. Twenty years
later, some of it has staying power. Some of it sounds simply stupid and
immature. The Bay Area as a whole and the word itself evoke a sense of home for
me. I only lived there from 1982 to 1997 but they were defining years for me. And
the “punk scene” (later the East Bay music scene in a larger scope) brought me
in touch with many creative people, a great number of clubs and house parties,
and extended my knowledge of the region from gritty industrial sections of
Oakland all the way to luxurious homes in the Berkeley hills.
Describe your first Punk
experience.
My first punk experience
was either listening to the Dead Kennedys,
Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables at
a friend’s house or going to a Circle
Jerks concert at The Mabuhay Gardens
in SF. The record was among the first punk I heard. I think the next was The Feederz, Teachers in Space. Both were wonderfully irreverent towards
everything, something I have to say I disagree with today. They must be
insulting who aren’t “in on the joke”. Still, even today, I respect the
strength of conviction of the lyrics and recognize the importance of the shock
value at the time. At any rate, it opened a whole new world for me. The concert
came later, but could also be defined as my first punk experience. In many
ways, actually, it was a negative experience: Nazi salutes in the pit, big jock
types bashing each other, fights… Finding Gilman St. later on was a revelation.
When were you first at
Gilman?
Sometime in 1987, I
think. Maybe 1988.
If you haven’t explained
this already, why is 924 Gilman important to you?
In retrospect, as an
important part of my formative years. At the time, for the sense of rebellious
freedom it gave me.
If you haven’t explained
this already, how long have you been involved with 924 Gilman?
I’m not involved with
Gilman Street anymore.
Reminiscent of the past /
music genre / scenes / former Gilman / tell me where your influences regarding
the past here in the bay area or elsewhere have helped you formulate your
experiences / musically / artistically / in general-what have you. [Example:
I liked L.A. Surfer punk from the 1980s before I enjoyed British
punk. This isn’t a very relevant
example, so I would think to include influences before and after the Sex
Pistols as a sort of balance, in my case leading up to my time at Gilman in
1988 or so.]
I’m not sure I understand
the question. Being “involved” in the punk scene in the Bay Area opened me to a
wide array of “alternative” interests, views and venues. It broadened my horizons
by bringing me in contact with Anarchists, revolutionaries (both real and
wannabe) and activists of many persuasions. I went to shows and festivals with
political themes or merely for the sake of partying. I became interested in the
origins of punk/hardcore and its relation with other contemporary musical
genres. This led to my discovery of proto-punk musicians from Iggy Pop to New York Dolls to Pere Ubu
and more as well into post-punk / “alternative”. In general, it broadened my
interest in music overall – folk, jazz, blues, and - especially with regard to
the specific band or genre’s place in history and relation to other genres.
Enlighten me with some kind of information I am not asking
you, that you might think would be relevant for someone who is kind of doing a
before and after thesis on EBHC.
11. I’m going to try to reiterate some of the
previous questions.
#3. The Bay Area has a value of music of its own
accord, Jefferson Starship, some of us are familiar with the Grateful Dead,
we’ve had maybe four major punk scenes in our local history including the
current one, lots of bands have come from here, even some good ones, so I’m
wondering, and especially in light of your experience with the scene, and music
in general, especially considering your background in music, is there something
simply “Berkeley” about Gilman for example, I would rather think that there is
a long established tradition of protest music, alternative cultures here. What are your thoughts on this?
I would say so. Some
things that seem specifically “Berkeley” about Gilman is the extreme DIY
mentality, the politically correct censorship of not hosting racist or
misogynist bands, the “membership” fee.
#9 is actually a follow
through of #3, now that I am realizing, and it’s my academic way of trying to
go deeper into your influences, both musically, socially, in this case on a
local level of geology, and intrinsically, which is to say, Punk has changed
all of our lives for the better, although some people might play down the level
and depth of experimentation as far as music comprehension, or even in other
areas such as the fine arts, or even fashion…now I’m not trying to get you to
design a punk purse for Dior, but I’m only saying that punk is here to stay and
I’m trying to coordinate a question to help you dive into what it is about the
music. Is it the political message? Is it a form of freedom from isolation,
freedom in general, punk has emancipatorial elements, what is it to you? Spiritually speaking, it seems we are happier
with our forms of music, I’m trying to find ways to understand how this is part
of your being and / or expression as well as trying to understand the current
facets of a (newer to me) post-modern cultural zeitgeist.
Punk for me personally
was an emancipating experience, but I think it could happen to anyone with
other forms of music too. I appreciate the experience but find that,
spiritually speaking, I’m happy to have moved on (not “beyond” punk, but to
more forms) so that I don’t define myself by any one musical label anymore. I
would say that other forms of music have helped emancipate me from the limiting
experience of calling myself a “punk”.
If you can expand on #5,
as far as your musical appreciation or experience is concerned, if you have not
already done so I would appreciate it.
Really new
questions:
12. As part of a collective, a movement, or
simply a music scene or genre, where or how do you place yourself in your
experience?
I don’t see myself as
part of any collective or scene. I see myself as a human being living in
society at large. I connect with people or don’t connect with people based on a
variety of factors and shared interests.
13. Are you, or do you consider yourself a
typical Gilman shit worker? [This was
the regular generic term in my heyday…]
No and I never did.
14. Do you have hopes or certain ideals,
ideologies?
Probably, but no –isms.
Hopes, dreams, ideals of a better me in a better world.
15. Do you consider yourself a member of a grass
roots collective?
No.
16. Is there the cohesion there for you about
your involvement that perhaps you can speak of it somewhat for me?
N/A.
17. How does your for lack of a better term,
urban experience relate to your variation on your experience with punk
subculture?
My “urban experience”...
if that means: how do I experience / relate to the city, how do I live in an
urban environment, then I would say the word that sums it up best is
“conflicted”. Also as a result of my punk experience. Having sucked up a lot of
political lyrics with various takes on the urban / modern experience, I have
been left with a sort of love-hate relationship with the city. There remains a
sort of grungy, dingy love for the dirty underbelly of urban conglomerations.
At the same time, I have an idealist desire for better living situations for
people. I also like to get out of the city and sometimes can’t stand all the
people.
18+.Do you believe that
you are part of a subculture? If so or
not so what would be your stance on this, what do you think society at large
could do better? How do you, or what
would you choose to do to educate the public about your punk or collective punk
experience, or human experience?
I don’t consider myself
part of a subculture. I think that being a part of a subculture can help you
emotionally and can help put you in contact with other views, but remaining a
part of a subculture for too long seems to me limiting and restrictive. In
fact, I found there to be too much elitism in punk and alternative, many people
feeling they were better than the “normal” people almost like the hippies who
disdained the “squares”. I prefer to live in the greater society where I can
meet “normal” people with “normal” problems and can interact with anyone who
shares any one of my varied interests – only one of them being music, and only
one genre thereof being punk/hardcore/whatever. I don’t feel I have to educate
anyone about the punk experience. I don’t feel I need to be educated about
other experiences – though it is interesting when it does happen – as there are
so many experiences out there and one cannot understand them all.
19. What do you think is relevant for an urban
studies student in my situation as far as what I should be asking you?
Me personally, I don’t know. Interesting for me
when I think about punk and urban studies is the mutual and reciprocal
relationship of one with the other. How did the city create, shape and change
punk and how did punk change the city?
Break in
interview.
Email follow-up,
[Christoph.]
Volunteerism, hence the term
"shitworker," most kids have heard of the term, I take my terminology
for granted. Can you volunteer some info about volunteerism related to Gilman
or punk in general?
Also you guys had the most amazing performances at Cloyne, and neither you or your brother mention this in the interview initially or so far I should say. I find that really amazing since everyone was drunk having the time of their lives and meeting women, etc. In a sense, you guys were part of an influence to a higher academic caliber that maybe wouldn't have bought an Operation Ivy album from Lookout! initially, although with friends such as Shalene, I would have to say most collegians that I spoke to would simply typify a killer punk concert at cloyne as a college experience. Except Mendiola...
#7 was meant to indicate the length of your Gilman or punk enthusiasm as far at the Gilman scene.
Also you guys had the most amazing performances at Cloyne, and neither you or your brother mention this in the interview initially or so far I should say. I find that really amazing since everyone was drunk having the time of their lives and meeting women, etc. In a sense, you guys were part of an influence to a higher academic caliber that maybe wouldn't have bought an Operation Ivy album from Lookout! initially, although with friends such as Shalene, I would have to say most collegians that I spoke to would simply typify a killer punk concert at cloyne as a college experience. Except Mendiola...
#7 was meant to indicate the length of your Gilman or punk enthusiasm as far at the Gilman scene.
What have you been listening to?
Remind what your degree was?
Hiya,
Erm... I never volunteered at Gilman myself, as far as I can remember. I think I did address to some degree that what made Gilman so "Berkeley" was the extreme DIY aspect. That would include the volunteerism.
Regarding Cloyne parties... ah, well I don't consider Cloyne part of the punk scene. There were different events there and concerts with punk bands were part of it all. As far as having "the time of my life" I wouldn't go that far. I've had plenty of times of my life since then. And I never did meet or even try to meet women at Cloyne parties or Gilman...
Not sure what you mean about academic types not buying Op Ivy records. It is just at college that many people discover (college radio!) alternative music genres. I think the punk scene is a microcosm of greater society, so you have college grads (erm... Mr. T Experience anyone), college professors (Bad Religion) as much as high school dropouts.
What am I listening to these days? Not much. I don't really find time to listen to music or read, between work and the CD player being occupied by my children. While I'm working I often listen to Spain's Radio 3 online and particularly enjoy the eclectic mix. Some of the latest joys have been Iron & Wine and Eilen Jewell. I was turned on to Muse recently. Mostly, however, I enjoy the music and forget to take note of who the artist was.
Erm... I never volunteered at Gilman myself, as far as I can remember. I think I did address to some degree that what made Gilman so "Berkeley" was the extreme DIY aspect. That would include the volunteerism.
Regarding Cloyne parties... ah, well I don't consider Cloyne part of the punk scene. There were different events there and concerts with punk bands were part of it all. As far as having "the time of my life" I wouldn't go that far. I've had plenty of times of my life since then. And I never did meet or even try to meet women at Cloyne parties or Gilman...
Not sure what you mean about academic types not buying Op Ivy records. It is just at college that many people discover (college radio!) alternative music genres. I think the punk scene is a microcosm of greater society, so you have college grads (erm... Mr. T Experience anyone), college professors (Bad Religion) as much as high school dropouts.
What am I listening to these days? Not much. I don't really find time to listen to music or read, between work and the CD player being occupied by my children. While I'm working I often listen to Spain's Radio 3 online and particularly enjoy the eclectic mix. Some of the latest joys have been Iron & Wine and Eilen Jewell. I was turned on to Muse recently. Mostly, however, I enjoy the music and forget to take note of who the artist was.
Really truly "punk" stuff is probably not on the
playlist. I'll check out the bluegrass-punk, I often find the merger of genres
can be innovative.
Ciao!
-Christoph
PS - My major at Berkeley was "Integrative Biology" = organismal and evolutionary biology (as compared to Molecular Biology)
I have since studied Translation (BA) and am hoping to find the time to complete my Masters.
Ciao!
-Christoph
PS - My major at Berkeley was "Integrative Biology" = organismal and evolutionary biology (as compared to Molecular Biology)
I have since studied Translation (BA) and am hoping to find the time to complete my Masters.
End of
interview.
Bibliography
(See
the punk rock easy reference guide at the end of the Bibliography.)
URLs:
http://eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com/wiki/East_Bay_Free_Skool_Wiki
http://file23magazine.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/burning-one-for-the-gipper/
http://gordonzola.livejournal.com/28377.html
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/2143642787/ (Rock Against Reagan.)
http://kalx.berkeley.edu/
http://maximumrocknroll.com/
http://thelonghaul.org/
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/product.php?product=1592
http://www.arcosanti.org/
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/bruce_conner
http://www.boundtogetherbooks.com/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/30001672@N02/
(Ingrid’s Photostream.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/
(Darin’s Photostream.)
http://www.gimmesomethingbetter.com
http://www.laplebe.com/
http://www.myspace.com/blacksquare
http://www.myspace.com/the86list
http://www.myspace.com/yeastiegirlzofficial
http://www.processedworld.com/
http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue17/17bolo.htm
http://www.processedworld.com/carlsson/
http://www.risingappalachia.com/
http://www.rockagainstracism.org/
http://www.smurph.org/zines/
http://www.theyeastiegirlz.com
http://www.threateningsociety.com/6_dead_jacksons.html
http://www.vincentvangogo.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pBNN1XKg5Y
Pulp
Know
History!: John Lydon, Cultural Capital and the Prog/Punk Dialectic Author(s):
Sean Albiez Source: Popular Music, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Oct., 2003), pp. 357-374
Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877580
Kiss This: Punk In The Present Tense, Gina Arnold, 1997,
First St. Martin’s Griffin, New York.
Gimme
Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, And Occasionally Pointless History
Of Bay Area Punk From Dead Kennedys To Green Day. Jack Boulware and Silke
Tudor, New York, Penquin, 2009.
Women
with a message Feminist trio Le Tigre mixes politics, pleasure, Neva Chonin,
Sunday March 3, 2002, San Francisco Chronicle.
924 Gilman: The Story So Far, Brian Edge, San Francisco,
Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2004.
Greenday: Rebels With a Cause, Gillian G. Gaar, London,
Omnibus Press, 2007.
Junk
and Punk Aesthetics Author(s): Sinda Gregory Source: American Literary History,
Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991), pp. 648-654 Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/490022
The
Life And Death Of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs, 1961, 1993, Random House,
Modern Library Edition
Another World Is Possible: Globalization &
Anti-Capitalism, David McNally, Arbeiter Ring, 2006.
Discography
Crimpshrine, Sleep,
What’s That? 7” E.P., Lookout! Records, 1988. Berkeley, California.
Le Tigre, From the Desk
of Mr. Lady (E.P. )and Feminist
Sweepstakes, Mr. Lady Records, 2001.
Nirvana, MTV unplugged
in New York, 1994 DGC.
Operation Ivy, Hectic,
Lookout! Records, 1989.
Pixies, Trompe La Monde,
1991, Elektra.
Public Enemy, Fear Of A
Black Planet, Def Jam/Columbia, 1990.
R.I.S.E. (Rising Appalachia,) Evolutions In Sound: LIVE, self-published, 2007-2008.
The Mr. T Experience, Night
Shift at the Thrill Factory, 1988, Rough Trade, 1996, Lookout!
Records.
The Mr. T Experience, Big
Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood, 1989, Rough Trade Records, and 1997, Lookout!
Records.
The Thing That Ate Floyd, Compilation Album, Lookout!
Records, 1988.
Turnitaround! Compilation Album, Maximum Rock ‘n’
Roll, 1987, Very Small Records, 1992.
Songs
Crimpshrine;
“Butterflies;” from the Sleep What’s
That? Album, Lookout! Records, 1988, Berkeley, California.
Operation
Ivy; “Officer,” Turnitaround! Compilation
album, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1988, Energy, Big City, Sound System, Hectic,
Lookout! Records, 1989.
Nirvana; “Plateau,” MTV
unplugged in New York, 1994 DGC.
Pixies; “Subbacultcha,” Trompe
La Monde, 1991, Elektra.
Public
Enemy; “9-11 Is A Joke,” “Burn Hollywood Burn,” “Fight The Power,” “Fear Of A
Black Planet,” Def Jam/Columbia, 1990.
R.I.S.E. (Rising Appalachia;) “Scale Down,” Evolutions In Sound: LIVE,
self-published 2007-2008.
Sewer
Trout; “Wally and The Beaver Go To Nicaraqua,” from the compilation album, TurnitAround!, 1987, Maximum Rock ‘n’
Roll, with a re-release in 1992 by Very Small Records
Le Tigre, TGIF, From
the Desk of Mr. Lady, Mr. Lady Records, 2001.
The
Mr. T Experience; “A Story About A Girl Who Went Shopping…,” Night Shift At The Thrill Factory, 1988
Rough Trade Records, and 1996, Lookout! Records. “At Gilman Street,” from the Big Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood album,
1989, Rough Trade Records, and 1997, Lookout! Records.
Punk Rock
Easy Reference Guide, (Punk Rock Things To Remember!)
The East Bay Free Skool, Came mostly from Autumn, and is a direct offspring of
The Long Haul Anarchist Collective And
Info Shop. Punk rock place, community alternative space in Berkeley,
California. I mention Autumn, although her interview is not included in my
thesis.
924;
Center of the known universe, from post-modern urban punk and possibly Ohlone
mythology.
Aaron Cometbus; Coffee, weird obsessions with Xeroxing his own
handwriting for his fanzine which bears his last name. Cheap beer and coffee.
Free stuff for Aaron. Dumpster diving co-sponsor. Pogo extraordinaire. Ride the
bohl whip! Crimpshrine Rules! Aaron
is a sub-cultural icon of sorts, although mostly folks from the old days really
like their ambiguity and privacy, thanks. Punk rock author.
Adeline Records, Thanx 2 William Joseph Green Day. Independent music label. (Berkeley)
Alternative Tentacle Records; Jello Biafra’s bastard love child from Hell.
Independent music label. (San Francisco) A.T.
bands tend to be more political. Independent (punk rock) record label.
Another State Of Mind; Both a great Social
Distortion album, and documentary film featuring Social D. Also featured in the movie are Minor Threat from D.C. and Youth
Brigade, also known as, The Brigade.
This film is one of the better depictions of punk life from the early 1980s,
although with some drawbacks, such as the punx for Christ and so on. Also see Suburbia. Punk rock movie.
Bill Graham; Local totalitarian music mogul, currently zombified.
Monopoly.
Blag Flag; Punk rock band from D.C. associated somewhat with
the straight-edge movement, although chiefly due to the fact that Henry Rollins sang for them. Punk band.
Black Francis; I don’t know what it was about Boston. Sang for The Pixies. Currently has a solo career.
Alternative musician.
Cometbus; A variation on localized storytelling with emphasis
on Berkeley, traveling on the dole, kind of a Charles Bukowski meets veganism.
Endemic to the Berkeley and Gilman Street
Punk Rock sub-cultural zeitgeist. Punk rock fanzine. Stories by Aaron Cometbus,
local punk scenester.
Crimpshrine; An original Gilman band on Lookout! Records. Jeff Ott was the main singer, songwriter, and
musician.
Dischord Records; Ian MacKaye’s bastard love child from Hell.
Independent music label. (D.C.)
Do It Yourself; This movement is typically related to the punk
zeitgeist of the 1990s and even the 1980s sometimes. This movement is also
associated with the “get off of your ass and do something about it movement….”
G.O.O.Y.A.A.D.S.A.I.M. Extremely grassroots and independent from mainstream
coalitions, this group has no set foundation as it transcends chronology. Punk
rock philosophy.
Econochrist; While women were leaving the East Bay to join Grrl!
Bands in Portland and Seatle, Econochrist,
in the late twentieth century moved to Oakland. Punk rock band.
Enigma; Record label often related to the 1980s punk rock zeitgeist in Los
Angeles.
Fear Of A Black Planet; During the 1990s punk zeitgeist, many punk rock
enthusiasts also appreciated musical releases from the group, Public Enemy. The similarity in music
appreciation is often based on a left wing political foundation, although many
punks tended to have bias against the Islamic tendencies of the group, and
conversely many rap enthusiasts found punk beneath them. Racism is one of the
main reasons for this non-allegiance. Hard-core rap album.
Fugazi; Ian MacKaye’s other brainchild. One of the best bands in rock. Known
for their independence from the mainstream music industry, this band is
currently on hiatus. Politically correct emo punk rock band from D.C..
Grooven Goulies; I don’t know much about this band other than the
fact that they are a lot of fun! They are a Gilman band original to the 1990s
punk zeitgeist.
Henry Rollins; Singer for Black
Flag, and The Henry Rollins Band
or Rollins Band. Co-founder of The
Straight Edge Movement, which is related exclusively to Ian MacKaye and D.C. The
S x E movement was basically founded as a premise for punx to stay away from
drugs and alcohol. To use their brains and not their fists, and for some reason
always reminds me of Malcolm X. This is partly due to the fact that strait
edgers are often identified by the black X’s on the back of their hands written
in very wide marker. Henry has popularized Alternative Music in his satellite
or cable television show, and is considered a sub-cultural icon. Popular punk
icon.
Ian MacKaye; Constantly hounded as the founder of the
straight-edge movement, Ian has played in the bands Minor Threat, Embrace,
and Fugazi. Ian is at least partly
responsible for Dischord Records, and
was last known hanging out in the D.C. area. Punk rocker.
Iran Contra Affair; What the CIA does in the 1980s is not very different
from what it does today. For some reason in recent years the politicians have
decided to cover up their scandalous behavior with warfare. Again this is not
very different from American politics historically. At least notably we can see
that the recent war in Iraq was related to George Bush Sr. selling weapons to
Iraq and having made the mistake of installing a fascist totalitarian, his son
and Jr’s stooges devised a plan to clean up. Ha! The US makes a deal to supply
weapons to Israel, who sell weapons to Iran, the money was to support the
Contras. The US government secretly sponsored Contras due to oil companies who
are responsible for ecological disaster in and around the Caribbean, and US /
and related economic interests in Panama. Essentially Communism was out of the
question due to a strict Reaganomic legitimacy of totalitarian xenophobia,
especially in light of post-McCarthyism. [See Lyrics of Sewer Trout, Wally and the Beaver Go To Nicaragua. Appendix Four
page 51] The Hezbollah deteriorated the “trade agreement” into a arms for
hostages ordeal, and Oliver North was the Reagan / CIA patsy for that failed
brokerage. Somehow avoidance tactics are related to the Iran Contra Hearings
during which time the skateboarding stunt “the Ollie” began to come into
mainstream popularity. Skate or die! The “Ollie” is still one of the most
important tricks in skateboarding. It has become quite clear since that time
that Bush Sr. (a former CIA operative) must have had more to do with this
arrangement than was publicly known, and that Reagan seemed to be little more
than an over wizened puppet for the CIA, and the Republican party. It would
then seem that Oliver North at least in part played dumb during the hearings
because it would seem more logical not to believe everything one is told, and
blaming George Bush Sr. would have at least seemed more accurate than blaming
Ronald Reagan who frankly not unlike George Bush Sr. also seemed publicly
senile and aberrant. The difference being that Ronald Reagan was a former
actor, and not a former CIA stooge. However, if Reagan did know everything that
North had claimed (he more than likely did, or must have, or at least was
told…) then Reagan is a lot more evil than people seem to have given him credit
for. Punk politics.
Iscocracy; They really really really suck okay? They are very
noisy and stupid, make a huge mess and then act audaciously silly at all times
to help them build notoriety and ambiguity. They are probably one of the best
bands to ever perform at Gilman and their surreal adherence to the standards of
The Gilman Mindfuck Committee seems
to have somehow maintained Gilman’s popularity in the late 1980s and early
1990s. They must be great actors because they sure can’t play music. SamIam and Tilt are at least somewhat considered to be offspring from Isocracy, except that they can play
music. Isocracy was endemic to the
initial creation of the Gilman punk experience. You call that music?
Jello Biafra; Notably famous [notorious] for singing in The Dead Kennedy’s, and for being the
founder of Alternative Tentacles Records.
His solo career and spoken word career table both Cher and William S.
Burroughs. To many older punk rockers he will always be the Mayor of San
Francisco. Hail to the chief! Punk rock iconoclast / musician.
Lookout Records!; We blame Lawrence Livermore, David Hayes, and Chris
Apple for this mess. Those guys-man…I mean who else would offer a record deal
to Isocracy? Lookout! music is synonymous with the initial Gilman sound, and
arguably the Gilman sound in general. Lookout!
is also at least in part synonymous with the “Geek-Core” sound and experience,
although there have been many co-conspirators outside of the Northern
California Bay Area who have benefited us with their influences as well.
Finally territorially speaking Lookout!
was a large part of the punk scene in the East Bay (Berkeley) and beyond. In
other words, it’s a bird, no, no, uhh, it’s a plane? It’s Lookout!
Mabuhay Gardens; I’m too pissed off at the older punks and my parents
for not being able to see punk shows at The
Mabuhay before they closed. The Photography of Bruce Conner, and punk bands
from the 1970s are related to this former San Francisco, North Beach, Broadway
Avenue night club.
Mario Savio; The chairperson of political protest in Berkeley in
the 1960s.
Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll; The bastard love child of Tim Yohannan. This punk
rock magazine started sometime in the 1970s and is today still the best punk
review of international punkdom.
Minor Threat; They were a straight edge punk rock band from D.C.
on Dischord Records in the 1980s. Ian
MacKaye sang and founded this music project.
Perry Ferrel; Brainchild of Lollapalooza,
and singer of Jane’s Addiction, and Pornos For Pyros, among others. Although
able to retain independence from the music industry through his traveling
multi-performance spectacle Lollapalooza,
he also typifies rock star phantasmagoria with his stage performances, albeit
they are alternative in nature. Also his two bands mentioned here have never
signed to independent labels, always maintaining superstar status within the
industry and Warner Music. Like the
band Pearl Jam, the Lollapalooza festival sells their
tickets independent of mainstream influence and also takes pains to retain a softer
carbon footprint than other events. However most Lollapalooza bands are very much part of the music industry. He is
often criticized for this contradiction. Alternative music iconoclast /
musician.
The Pixies; This band was a popular alternative act in the 1980s
and 1990s. The lead singer Kim Deal moved on to create The Breeders, and other acts, and Frank Black began a solo career.
For Black’s enthusiasm, Deal is as often considered the back bone of the band.
Band.
Subcultcha; A vulgaresque Pixies song, a parody that portrays a
dismissive regard for sub-culture, and quite possibly a jibe at conservative
Bostonians. Song.
Robert Eggplant; I mean it’s fucking amazing how does he have the
free time right? Robert has been in at least a few punk bands, was and is an
early Gilman enthusiast, and volunteer, created Absolutely Zippo Fanzine,
during the Gilman zeitgeist, helped keep Berkeley’s liberal Slingshot Magazine, and The Long Haul Anarchist Collective and Info
Shop alive during times of universal American conservatism, has volunteered
for Food Not Bombs, and lived in one
of the most radical communal households in the East Bay. How does he find the
time to sleep? East Bay Area alternative lifestyle iconoclast, author,
community magazine editor, volunteer, musician.
Rock Against Racism; It would be nice if someone could figure out, list,
and detail all of the great performances over the years. There have been these kinds
of benefit concerts for a lot longer than since I’ve been involved in music
appreciation. The idea is that this kind of concert would raise awareness about
the problems surrounding racism. Consciousness raising musical event.
Rollins Band; Hank’s punk rock band.
Sid and Nancy; Sid was an articulate anarchist until he got wound
up with dope and his girlfriend. New York City in the late 1970s and early
1980s must have been hell. Punk rock movie, sort of.
Suburbia; Flea, from The
Red Hot Chili Peppers was in this film. It truly explores the depths of
punk sub-culture in the greater Los Angeles area. It’s kind of a punk
exploitation genre B-film, just like Sid
and Nancy, or even in a way Another
State of Mind, but in that particular film the documentation merely
depicted the ongoing manipulations involved with punk rock at that time. Some
might argue that Suburbia transcends
B-movie status, in that it started out with random kids who remained punk after
the film was finished. In knowing this fact some might argue that the film has
some interesting documentary effects. Punk rock movie, actually.
The Big Chill; [Not punk rock;] I sort of wonder why more punk
bands haven’t covered more hippy songs? The beginning Joy To The World scene in
the movie would be a great video for a band like NOFX to do with their kids, or maybe Green Day. Canada’s SNFU
covered Wild World by Cat Stevens, J.F.A. [Jody Foster’s Army,]is
famous for doing surf punk or skate rock variations on 1960s songs, such as of
the likes of Agent Orange’s cover of
the song Miserlou by Dick Dale. Who can forget The Butthole Surfers Donovan cover of The Hurdy Gurdy Man? Or The Dead Kennedy’s infamous destruction
of the 1960s Viva Los Vegas, or I Fought The Law? I should be a
salesman. Don’t delay, all of this and much much more!!! $29.99? Nooo! $19.99?
Nooo! Only $9.99 plus shipping and handling fee, plus regional taxation, offer
void where illegal.
The Blues Brothers; I guess BB
King would make for great punk cover songs also. Princess Lea with an M-16!
Riot! Not punk rock, although I am beginning to wonder why not.
The Thing That Ate Floyd; Original Lookout!
Records compilation. Following the release of Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll’s Turnitaround! Compilation, this was the
second local album to exclusively feature Gilman bands in any compilation. Very
very punk rock.
Tim Yohannan; Considered by many to be the godfather of bay area
punk rock, Tim was responsible for Maximum
Rock ‘n’ Roll magazine, radio show, the creation of The Gilman Street
Project, and The Epicenter Record Store,
which offered a punk oasis in the then troubled and gentrifying Mission
District in San Francisco. Godfather of Bay Area Punk, magazine founder,
author, editor…some might say punk iconoclast, screw them!
Turnitaround!; Tim obviously wanted his local Gilman bands to get
out of the closet somehow. I’m kidding, a great compilation. These comps remind
me somewhat of Alternative Tentacles
Virus #4; Let Them Eat Jellybeans, they just had an enormous impact. Very
very punk. Reminds me also of the 1989 release of Make The Collector Nerd Sweat, from Very Small Records. The
Collector Nerd was a pretty good album, but not quite as influential an
impact for its day…it was a very radical continuance of local comp, which was
awesome in its own right. Maybe it’s geek-core or something, I’m harder pressed
beyond Virus 4, Floyd, Turnit, and Nerd,
for local punk compilations as I think the scene had changed a little too much
after that.
Winston Smith; Originally an artistic staple for Alternative Tentacles album covers his
work has also appeared on more popular albums such as that of Green Day. Widely acclaimed as a
low-brow guru, Smith is known for his politically radical collage. He might not
consider himself to be punk, punk artist.
Rock Against Reagan. See Iran-Contra scandal earlier identified as “punk
politics.” Earlier also there is a Rock
Against Racism that I find similarities with in this glossary.
KALX; “Whenever I’m breathing and awake I enjoy listening to Berkeley’s
volunteer run 90.7 F.M. despite the University of California’s obvious
affiliation.” [Actual Jello Biafra quote.] If you can find a better radio
station contact me immediately.
The Long Haul Anarchist Collective and
Info Shop; I like movie nights, and I
sometimes like it when I get to cook there, hungry people are really nice when
you offer them food. It’s a great place to relax after The Berkeley Critical Mass. Usually no decaf though. Punk place.
[Sometimes there is tea!] Home of Slingshot
Magazine.
“I
need to watch the 924 Gilman movie by
Jack Curran again and get back to you. You should do the same.” [Actual quote
from Tim Yohannan.]
Arcosanti is a place for snobby artsy fartsy architects and
carpenters to have orgies together and do drugs. Artsy fartsy place, not punk
at all.
Bruce Conner knows more about punk and how it relates to The San
Francisco Art Institute than you do. Punk photographer.
Bound Together Anarchist Bookstore in San Francisco is one of a few similar places in
the United States. Remember the idea of freedom?
Ingrid would make a great sfai photo department undergrad, she has got the
stuff. New punk rock photographer reminiscent of Larry Wolf and Murray Bowels.
Don’t
talk to me about the Berkeley tree sit unless you want to sit down for a while.
Jack
and Silke wrote Gimme Something Better,
and I had the best time with that. I really miss those people sometimes. Punk
rock book about Bay Area Punk.
La Plebe, a new Gilman punk band.
Black Square, punk band, Hawaiian.
86 List, punk band, Hawaiian.
The Yeastie Girlz, Gilman punk band, Berkeley, extinct.
Processed World, Chris Carlsson, PM and their graphic design buddies
could see that computers were destroying their careers. So to offset that
effect they produced an anti-capitalism magazine that is usually in reference
to worker’s rights issues. Political magazine, San Francisco, seems punk to me,
extinct.
Rising Appalachia or R.I.S.E.
is the transcendence of vagina core punk, or a steam punk / rhythm and
bluegrass band.
Rock Against Racism has a dot org although it would be really nice if
there was one website to cover all of the rocking against racism, with all
events past present and future accounted for.
The Epicenter/Free Radical/Mission Records Zine Library was originally a
project of the Epicenter Zone, a punk
rock record store/community space which existed in the Mission District of San
Francisco from 1990 to 1999. When The
Epicenter Zone closed The Free
Radical collective adopted the zine library. Half of the library was put on
display at Mission Records, another
Mission district punk rock space, while the other half of the library was
stored in the apartments of various members of the Free Radical Collective. The collective's goal was to eventually
house the zine library in their own space, but those were hard years for
finding space to rent in San Francisco. In 2003 Mission Records closed and the
entire zine library is now stored in a single apartment.
The Dead Jacksons was a punk glam band that did some cover songs and
drank a lot of beer. 1980s Gilman band.
Vincent Van Go Go was a punk glam band that did some cover songs and
drank a lot of beer. 1980s Gilman band.
My
interview with The Bum City Saints
was okay, when I lightened the picture the file size was too big to put on
u-tube, sorry. They are a newer Gilman punk band.
[1] Paraphrasing Mario Savio, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Savio.
[2] Paraphrasing Operation
Ivy lyrics Officer, Turn It Around! Compilation
album, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1987, Very Small Records, 1992.
[3] Know
History!: John Lydon, Cultural Capital and the Prog/Punk Dialectic
Author(s): Sean Albiez Source: Popular Music, Vol. 22, No. 3 (Oct., 2003), pp.
357-374 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877580.
[4] Gimme Something
Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay
Area Punk From Dead Kennedys to Green Day, Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor,
Penquin, 2009, Chapter 34, 10 Seconds of
Anarchy, pages 287-290.
[5] Appendix Zero, page sixty-three. (Description of Gilman Mindfuck
Committee and Isocracy performance, Tudor, Boulware.)
[6] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far, Brian Edge, 2004, Maximum
Rock ‘n’ Roll.
[7] Junk and Punk Aesthetics Author(s):
Sinda Gregory Source: American Literary History, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Autumn, 1991),
pp. 648-654 Published by: Oxford University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/490022
[8] Nirvana, MTV Unplugged In New York, 1994 DGC.
This song was a Leadbelly blues
cover.
[9] Mr. T Experience,
Night Shift at the Thrill Factory,
1996. Now available through Lookout! Records. Complete lyrics on page sixty-four, Appendix One.
[10] Fun with punk abbreviations! MTX = The Mr. T Experience!
[11] Complete lyrics on page sixty-four, Appendix Two. (Song about a girl
who went shopping.)
[12]
http://www.threateningsociety.com/6_dead_jacksons.html.
[13] http://www.vincentvangogo.com/.
[14] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far, Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll 2004.
[15] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far, Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll 2004.
[16] http://gordonzola.livejournal.com/28377.html,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lifeontheedge/2143642787/,
http://file23magazine.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/burning-one-for-the-gipper/.
[17] Appendix Three, page sixty-five.
(Description of Bay Area 1980s punk politics, localized Reaganomics, Tudor,
Boulware.)
[18] Gimme Something
Better: The Profound, Progressive, And Occasionally Pointless History Of Bay
Area Punk From Dead Kennedys To Green Day. Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor,
2009, Penquin. Chapter 29, Fucked Up
Ronnie.
[19] Journal of Critical Globalisation Studies, Issue I
(2009,) ‘Fuck the Border’? Music, Gender
and Globalisation, Samuel Dwinell.
[20] Green Day and NOFX are
both former Gilman bands, although NOFX is from Los Angeles, like The Offspring, and Bad
Religion, are honorary former Gilman bands so to speak.
[21] Sewer Trout song Wally
and The Beaver Go To Nicaraqua, from the compilation album, TurnitAround!, 1987, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, with a re-release
in 1992 by Very Small Records. It should also be noted that the S.F. Bay Area
demographic included Nicaraguan refugees as early as the early 1980s. Complete lyrics on page sixty-five, Appendix Four.
[22] Gimme Something
Better: The Profound, Progressive, And Occasionally Pointless History Of Bay
Area Punk From Dead Kennedys To Green Day. Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor,
2009, Penquin.
[23] http://thelonghaul.org/.
[24] http://www.boundtogetherbooks.com/.
[25] http://www.smurph.org/zines/.
[26] Appendix Five, page sixty-six,
(O’Conner on Ian MacKaye.)
[27] http://kalx.berkeley.edu/.
[28] Edge, 102. I have had at least one phone conversation and one
outside conversation with Marshal in the past few years to find these kinds of
memories.
[29] More or less the words of Oren, a punk rock writer who is included also
in Gimme Something Better, Jack
Boulware and Silke Tudor, 2009 Penquin. I’m paraphrasing what I thought he read
at a book tour
reading event
that occurred recently for Jack and Silke On Broadway Avenue, in North Beach,
San Francisco.
[30] Complete lyrics
on page sixty-seven, Appendix Six.
[31] Complete lyrics on page sixty-eight, Appendix Seven.
[32] Operation
Ivy lyrics, Appendix Six.
[33] Operation Ivy lyrics, Appendix Seven, page sixty-eight.
[34] Now in The Classics of Love.
[35] Literally referencing the song Subbacultcha from their 1991 Trompe
Le Monde album; http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/pixies/subbacultcha.html.
[36] From AMF (Alternative Music Foundation) democratic
guidelines, [’88 or ‘89] which Al, Kerry, and Green Day had obviously abandoned
[democracy] before 2000, 924 Gilman: The Story So Far, Edge. Had Billy Joe
been much more assertive, however the guys in Green Day weren’t really aware at the time that they had that kind
of power of influence. Reprint courtesy of Brian Edge; 924 Gilman: The Story So Far, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2004.
[37] This is one of the most universal laments from Gilman
volunteers in Edge’s 924 Gilman.
[38] “Consensus,”
now a popular modality for occupy has been part of counter-culture and activism
for many years.
[39] Le Tigre’s E.P.
Title; From The Desk of Mr. Lady, Mr.
Lady Records, 2001, and respectively a recording element of song TGIF from album Feminist Sweepstakes, 2001, Mr. Lady Records. (Some kinda…) With thanks to Neva Chonin and the San Francisco Chronicle
for the reminder.
[40] “Equal booking,” is old school back room language
related to the music industry, possibly related to Mafioso circumstances in Las
Vegas, or old “tinsel town,” Hollywood usage, or both.
[41] Neva Chonin, San
Francisco Chronicle Pop Music Critic, Women
with a message Feminist trio Le Tigre mixes politics, pleasure, Sunday
March 3, 2002.
[42] The Donnas;
for the record they are really fun live, although they represented a different
aspect of the geek-core tribe at Gilman.
The Donnas came along a little late
for my personal appreciation. Could they have formed three years earlier, the
world would have been a different place, at least in my mind for Berkeley
anyway. They represent a lot of the liberation that the initial outset of punk
didn’t have time to celebrate, and that’s how I see many punk bands today,
although this is a fact of general subjectivity. A similar and earlier relevant
Gilman band would be The Groovin Goulies, as female lead Kepi Goulie, has dominated the bands
following.
[43] http://www.theyeastiegirlz.com.
[44] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far, Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll 2004.
[45] http://www.myspace.com/yeastiegirlzofficial.
[46] Cammie T., from 924,
Edge, page 56.
[47] Local queens (gay, transgender,) would swear that this
kind of artwork had also happened at their regular venues, and probably since
the 1970s or even before that decade, I think resonance is relevant to consider
within creative climes.
[48] Turn It Around! Maximum
Rock ‘n’ Roll, 1987, Very Small Records, 1992, Produced by Kevin Army.
[49] Obviously this was happening everywhere in punk rock
at the time. Seattle “grunge” band the Riot Grrls!, Bikini Kill, and the like not only did
their best, later in the decade to
exemplify this problematic, but would eventually play to sellout crowds at
Gilman and elsewhere.
[50]
http://www.alternativetentacles.com/product.php?product=1592.
[51] http://www.flickr.com/photos/30001672@N02/.
[52] Paraphrasing Jane Jacobs from; The Life And Death Of Great American Cities, 1961, 1993, Random
House, Modern Library Edition.
[53] Appendix
Eight, Mike Stand’s memoir excerpt from Brian Edge, page sixty-nine.
[54] Appendix
Nine, Stephan’s questionnaire response, page seventy.
[55] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far… Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2006.
[56] From the lyrics At
Gilman Street, by The Mr. T
Experience, Big Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood, Rough Trade, 1989, Lookout!
1997.
[57] Jerrymandering like this is an infamous tool of the Mindfuck committee, take a stance, don’t
take a stance…start a commotion, start a riot…
[58] These kinds of facts are based on personal research
and personal conversations with 924
Gilman volunteers, and folks at the club, thanks guys!
[59] http://eastbayfreeskool.wikia.com/
[60] KALX 90.7 FM
is the listener sponsored radio station of The
University of California, Berkeley, and for many years KALX aired Tim and the gang on Maximum
Rock ‘n’ Roll, during the humble beginnings of post-modern college radio.
[61] Appendix
Ten, Christoph’s questionnaire response, page eighty.
[62] http://lawrencehallofscience.org.
[63] http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/exhibition/bruce_conner,
summer 2008.
[64] http://www.Gimmesomethingbetter.com.
[65] Re: punk abbreviations, EBHC= east bay hard core.
[66] Another World Is Possible: Globalization &
Anti-Capitalism, David McNally, Arbeiter Ring, 2006.
[67] I’m paraphrasing Aaron Cometbus, try Cometbus Omnibus, Last Gasp, 2002, for
details of life on tour, or hopping trains.
[68] http://www.processedworld.com/Issues/issue17/17bolo.htm,
Processed World, #17, 1986, Bolo-log, and Komodo, by PM, end page. The description of bolovilles is an
extension of Bolo’Bolo, by PM, originally
printed in German in 1983. 30th Anniversary Edition, (3rd
English edition,) Autonomedia / Ardent Press, Brooklyn, NY. Bolo’Bolo gave emphasis on utopian or
possibly isocratic urban and permacultural communities as well as sociological
synthesis for the travelers of the world. So the original bolo, was free public space, more in tune with Arcosanti and other squats or communes conceptually speaking.
[69] http://www.arcosanti.org/.
[70] http://www.processedworld.com/.
[71]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5242179451/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[72]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5212708629/in/set-72157623925793366/,
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5213308474/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[73]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5242812944/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[74]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5213306668/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[75]http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5242848122/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[76]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5242218559/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[77]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5213304518/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[78]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5213269796/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[79]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5213273630/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[80] http://www.risingappalachia.com/.
[81] http://www.kpfa.org, California listener sponsored
radio from Berkeley.
[82] Scale Down, from
R.I.S.E. (Rising Appalachia) Evolutions
In Sound: LIVE, self-published 2007-2008.
[83]
http://www.flickr.com/photos/darinbaueroakgroveberkeley/5212709625/in/set-72157623925793366/.
[84] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pBNN1XKg5Y.
[85] http://www.laplebe.com/.
[86] We were in a hurry to see the following band play and
Shadow was the last interview focus, so I spoke to her briefly after the
interview to confirm this information. I believe she said, “Fuck yeah, I’m in a
liberated position!” The point is that she feels there is band equality in BCS, and she feels comfortable being a
contributing member of the band.
[87] 9-11 is a Joke,
Burn Hollywood Burn, and Fight the Power appear on Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet album,
1990, Def Jam. Fight The Power came originally to us via MTV and Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing, in 1989.
[88] Crimpshrine, Butterflies, from the Sleep What’s That? Album, Lookout! Records, 1988, Berkeley,
California.
[89] Mike Limon, 1990s, I
remembered he said this upon occasion while volunteering at Gilman. He was
bullshiting; just the same, we all felt the same way. That kind of sarcasm
seems referent to Walt Disney
somehow.
[90] Apologies to Monsieur Michel Maffesoli.
[91] The Mr. T Experience, At
Gilman Street, from the Big Black
Bugs Bleed Blue Blood album, 1989, Rough Trade Records, and 1997, Lookout! Records.
[92] Operation Ivy.
[93] Operation Ivy.
[94] Gimme Something
Better, Silke, Tudor, Penquin, 2006.
[95] Mr. T Experience,
Night Shift at the Thrill Factory,
1996. Now available through Lookout! Records.
[96] Mr. T
Experience, Big Black Bugs Bleed Blue Blood, 1989, Lookout! Records.
[97] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran-Contra_affair.
[98] Gimme Something
Better: The Profound, Progressive, And Occasionally Pointless History Of Bay
Area Punk From Dead Kennedys To Green Day. Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor,
2009, Penquin. Pages 246-248.
[99] Sewer Trout song
Wally and The Beaver Go To Nicaraqua, from
the compilation album, TurnitAround!, 1987,
Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, with a re-release in 1992 by Very Small Records.
[100] Local Scenes and Dangerous Crossroads: Punk and Theories of Cultural
Hybridity Author(s): Alan O'Connor Source: Popular Music, Vol. 21, No. 2
(May, 2002), pp. 225-236 Published by: Cambridge University Press Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/853684
[101] Energy appears on Operation
Ivy’s, Hectic album which appear in 1989 via Lookout! Records.
[102] The song Officer appeared on the Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll compilation Turn it Around released in 1988.
[103] Operation Ivy,
Big City, Hectic album 1989, Lookout! Records.
[104] Crimpshrine,
Sleep, What’s That? 1988, Lookout!
Records.
[105] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far… Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2004, page 187.
[106] 924 Gilman: The
Story So Far… Brian Edge, Maximum Rock ‘n’ Roll, 2004, page 188.
