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| 2009/10/8-21 [Reference/BayArea, Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan] UID:53437 Activity:nil |
10/7 danh@soda is heavily featured in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0143113801
\_ This guys articles are probably more relevant:
http://larrylivermore.com/?p=185&cpage=1 - danh
\_ Is this book worth owning? -ausman
\_ are you implying i know the guy referenced in this url:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-10-07/music/new-bay-area-punk-oral-history-unearths-dead-babies-stinky-roadies-and-strong-community-networks |
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| www.amazon.com/dp/0143113801 Show availability and shipping details * This item: Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day by Jack Boulware In Stock. Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details * This item: Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day by Jack Boulware In Stock. Eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Explore similar items Editorial Reviews Product Description An oral history of the modern punk-revival's West Coast Birthplace Outside of New York and London, California's Bay Area claims the oldest continuous punk-rock scene in the world. Gimme Something Better brings this outrageous and influential punk scene to life, from the notorious final performance of the Sex Pistols, to Jello Biafra's bid for mayor, the rise of Maximum RocknRoll magazine, and the East Bay pop-punk sound that sold millions around the globe. Throngs of punks, including members of the Dead Kennedys, Avengers, Flipper, MDC, Green Day, Rancid, NOFX, and AFI, tell their own stories in this definitive account, from the innovative art-damage of San Francisco's Fab Mab in North Beach, to the still vibrant all-ages DIY ethos of Berkeley's Gilman Street. Compiled by longtime Bay Area journalists Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor, Gimme Something Better chronicles more than two decades of punk music, progressive politics, social consciousness, and divine decadence, told by the people who made it happen. About the Author Jack Boulware is the author of San Francisco Bizarro, and was a columnist at SF Weekly throughout the 1990s. His writing has appeared in many publications including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Playboy and Mojo. Silke Tudor was born in the Bay Area and reared on punk. Create your own review Video reviews Video reviews Amazon now allows customers to upload product video reviews. Use a webcam or video camera to record and upload reviews to Amazon. An Intelligent Punk Rocker in Literary Fiction 5 15 days ago Search Customer Discussions Go Search all Amazon discussions The Punk community Latest activity 1 hour ago 3,803 customers have contributed 4,734 products, 488 lists & guides and more... |
| larrylivermore.com/?p=185&cpage=1 Facebook From Lookout magazine #39, Summer 1994 What was supposed to go in this space was a dead serious article about the origins and nature of material wealth, specifically, how things become valuable, how they're distributed, and whether it's possible for everyone to become rich. But while I'll still probably finish that article some day, my heart just wasn't in it at the moment, and instead I found myself writing this thing, which is an account of the origins of my own wealth - relatively speaking, of course; I just checked the Fortune list of the world's richest people and I still wasn't on it. But a considerable transformation has occurred in my finances since the time I started publishing this magazine almost ten years ago, and here is the true, unexpurgated story of how I went from there to here. Anybody planning on using my experience as a blueprint for their own success should be aware that I didn't plan for things to turn out this way; And more importantly, there are far more meaningful ways to measure success; as you'll see at the story's end, there's some question as to whether I'm really better off at all, regardless of the increased size of my bank balance or the increased influence I've gained over the direction of modern pop culture. Anyway, here's how it all happened: The summer and fall of 1984 were an increasingly bleak time for me, made worse by the fact that I had only the vaguest idea that things were going terribly wrong. The relationship I'd been in for nearly four years was coming undone in painful and ugly ways, and simultaneously, my finances were plummeting rapidly toward zero. My dulled senses interpreted all this as little more than a disquieting unease, something I thought might be cured by, oh, say a new hobby. I'd always liked writing, and had never been short of opinions to blather on about. I even had a bit of history in the self-publishing field, having started my own satirical newspaper back in seventh grade, and demonstrated my devotion, in those pre-xerox days, by printing the entire thing by hand, with several carbon copies. It was a wild success among the students and a source of much consternation among the school authorities. Though I hardly realized it at the time, a pattern had been set. I'd also written for several underground newspapers in the 1960s, at one time earning the munificent rate of 25 per column inch from the Berkeley Barb, which, combined with the income from selling copies of the newspaper on street corners and free meals in Provo Park, very nearly supported me. But once the first wave of the underground press faded away, I was left without an outlet for my writing, and besides, for a while there I had grown a bit too lazy to be bothered with having opinions. But in 1984 my long-dormant outrage began sputtering to the surface again. A psychologist might make the case that my fulminations against Reagan, the Contras, the Campaign Against Marijuana Planting, corporate timber's rape of the North Coast, and the petty corruption and short-sighted pigheadedness of local politicians and residents alike were at least in part motivated by frustration at how my own life was going awry, but all I knew was that I was in a bad mood and that things had better change, the sooner the better. Issue #1, which appeared in October 1984, consisted of four one-sided xeroxed sheets. The text was typed on my old Smith-Corona in two columns, not that drastically different from the format you see today, although the print was considerably larger. I hadn't yet mastered the concept of photo reductions, let alone computer typesetting, which in a way made it easier for me, since on a typewriter I could fill up a whole page in a matter of about twenty minutes. Also, I wasn't that concerned with a polished rhetorical style or niceties like subtlety or taste. Of far greater importance was to outrage, infuriate, or at the very least, gain the attention of my readers. Issue #1 was "printed" at the local feed store, the only place I knew of that had a reasonably priced xerox machine. The total press run was 50, of which I did 10 at a time, collating them by stacking the finished pages on 10 separate bags of manure. A fitting beginning, many critics of my journalistic efforts would later opine. If I had been seeking controversy, it could be said that I had mined a rich vein. Within a few days after the appearance of the first Lookout, outrage of varying stripes was rippling up and down the mountains where I lived, and through the hangouts and gathering places of nearby Laytonville. Finally something had come along to unite the hippies and rednecks: their universal hatred of moi. I had anticipated the ire of the local power brokers and their unwashed sycophants; what surprised, even shocked me, was the malice directed at me by the hippies and pot growers, whose interests I largely supported. Eventually a delegation of them marched down my driveway, with one of them even threatening to burn my house down if I persisted in publishing the Lookout. By this time I had grown fond of being an editor, and I was reluctant to give up on my fledgling magazine, whose press run had already increased to 150 (largely because some of the local hippies had taken to destroying any copies they found) after only three issues. Although I'd started out by writing mostly about extremely local topics like the quality of that year's pot harvest and which landowners might be getting ready to sell off their trees to the rape-and-ruin mills, I was flexible enough to not want my house to get burned down, so I started casting around for other subjects to write about. I had a lot of time on my hands anyway, because my girlfriend had finally got around to leaving me, right about the same time I ran out of money. Oh, I wasn't dead broke or anything, just broke enough to keep me from doing most of the things normal people do to get themselves in trouble. Anyway, I managed to placate the local hooligans by shifting my focus farther afield, to county-wide and national politics, for example, and, beginning with issue #4, by writing more and more about punk rock. I had been involved in the punk scene before, dating back to 1977, but as it turned more violent and drug-ridden in the early 80s, I lost interest. Moving to the mountains in 1982 was meant in part to be my final rejection of urban punk culture. That didn't stop me from trying to have a punk band, which in the grand tradition of most punk bands, went nowhere for years. But in 1984 and even more in 1985 my interest in the Bay Area scene began to be rekindled, in large part because of the Maximum Rocknroll radio program. Every Tuesday night I'd drive up to the top of the ridge, elevation 4000 feet, the only place where you could pick up KPFA, which broadcast from Berkeley. The smart-ass, street-corner tough guy attitude that I heard in the voice of Tim Yohannan and his fellow maxi-rockers, coupled with the intense energy of the music they played, gave me ideas about where my own life could or should be headed. My own band had suffered a severe setback when my girlfriend, who'd been the drummer, moved away. Luckily she had left behind a set of drums, and I started casting about for someone to play them. The mountain was full of musicians, but most of them thought I was insane. At any rate, I was looking for someone not burdened by preconceptions of what music should sound like. I finally asked the boy next door (next door in my case being a mile down the road), who'd never played drums in his life, but was very energetic and a natural showoff. He was 12 years old, and learned fast - well, fast enough to keep my with my own limited abilities anyway. His first name was Tre, and I thought it would be funny to call him Tre Cool. A few years later he went on to play with Green Day, and just earned his first gold record. Our bass player, another local boy, had been equally inexperienced when he joined the band. I'd picked him for the simple reason that he looked like a bass player. We practiced through the spring, our amps powered by photovoltaic panels (it was miles to the nearest PG&E pole), and ... |
| www.sfweekly.com/2009-10-07/music/new-bay-area-punk-oral-history-unearths-dead-babies-stinky-roadies-and-strong-community-networks Time Bomb Weather Underground leaders claimed their bombings were devised to avoid bloodshed. But FBI agents suspect the radical '70s group killed an SF cop in the name of revolution. Stimulus Wreckage Despite having been accused of deceptive business practices by the attorney general, former students, and ex-employees, Corinthian Colleges are getting millions in federal stimulus dollars. Stimulus Wreckage Despite having been accused of deceptive business practices by the attorney general, former students, and ex-employees, Corinthian Colleges are getting millions in federal stimulus dollars. Time Bomb Weather Underground leaders claimed their bombings were devised to avoid bloodshed. But FBI agents suspect the radical '70s group killed an SF cop in the name of revolution. Stimulus Wreckage Despite having been accused of deceptive business practices by the attorney general, former students, and ex-employees, Corinthian Colleges are getting millions in federal stimulus dollars. Reader's Picks Top Recommendations A short list of San Francisco's most popular hot spots. Maximum Rocknroll's first issue Maximum Rocknroll's first issue Where: Broadway Studios The Booksmith 924 Gilman Details: Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor appear at a couple of events this week with notable folks from their book. Gimme Something Better by Jennifer Maerz Few music books have had the impact of Please Kill Me Reading the classic 1996 "uncensored oral history of punk" was like breaking into your idols' diaries. It revealed outrageous stories about the genre's earliest progenitors, most of whom either lived in New York or formed alliances with the bands based there. Its gossipy, inspiring, and hilarious anecdotes came without interruption from an omniscient music critic, making the book as real and raw as the music it discussed. In 2001, We Got the Neutron Bomb used the same format to highlight Los Angeles' punk beginnings. That book also became a cult favorite, unearthing vivid memories from the Southern California scene. The Bay Area had the first full-fledged punk scene behind New York and London, and yet we've lacked a comprehensive Please Kill Me of our own. Misfits show), grisly stories (the dead baby hidden at Gilman, Fang's frontman murdering his girlfriend), or an important subdemographic (the Jak's Team crew, homocore, skinheads, girl gangs). These chapters have no introductory explanation -- just bold type for the names being quoted, with a who's-who index in the back. The recollections combine into witty behind-the-scenes bios of cultural instigators, arrogant pricks, relevant publications, and long-gone venues that have fostered the past three decades of punk rock. The book's title, from a song by unheralded local heroes Social Unrest, encapsulates punk's yearning ethos; Boulware tells me that the "occasionally pointless" tag affectionately refers a Bay Area tendency to "hurl an immense amount of energy into something that will yield you zero financial return." The best bits of Gimme Something Better show history repeating with a distinctly local slant. Some punk communities documented here were organized like political actions, with fierce commitments to alternately disrupt the status quo (aka piss people off) and address social ills. The book spotlights how this breed of activism has led to both creative breakthroughs and dogmatic political correctness. Tim Yohannan and his "shitworkers" at both Maximum Rocknroll and Gilman, who shunned bands signed to major labels -- are described with frustration and respect. The book also highlights the importance of punk communities as grassroots social networks. Before there was an Internet, Maximum Rocknroll offered scene reports from around the world -- and inspired bands to come to the Bay Area. Steve List (discussed in Gimme's addendum) photocopied listings of all the local underground shows. As Boulware and Tudor explained in a recent phone call, Gilman and Maximum became dominant narrative arcs because they've connected so many disparate factions and have survived the music industry crumbling around them. Of course, punk rock also wrestled with more banal quests -- kids getting drunk, getting high, refusing to shower (the stories by Richard the Roadie are so foul you can smell them through the book). Gimme offers many ridiculous and poignant memories of the harsh realities of addiction, death, and lesser downfalls that arose from so much speed and heroin abuse. The chapters on Flipper and Fang tell of the particular damage the needle has done. With an oral history of this sort, readers will inevitably come away with a slant they wish had been included more. I would have loved a deeper look at the synth-punk scene and the Mummies/Budget Rock garage world. Perhaps those are woven somewhere into the Web addendum, where the authors hope the content will continue to grow as more vets contribute their tales to the mix. With Gimme Something Better, the Bay Area finally has its own version of Please Kill Me Boulware and Tudor approach local punk from so many different angles that their book is an engaging, rapid-fire conversation. There are quarrels never laid to rest and jokes that never get old (mostly of the drunken variety). Here, punk is smart, irreverent, idiotic, playful, earnest, political, selfish, violent, and always reinventing itself -- which, of course, stands right in line with the region's fascinating cultural history as a whole. |