All of these recordings were made with my little hand-held Aiwa pocket stereo casette recorder, with a very nice stereo mike. Overall, the audio isn't bad, but there are a lot of artifacts from the mike banging around and scraping on clothing. There's also a lot of ambient noise it all of them, because I'm usually wandering around and talking to people. Also these were social events, not media events, and the impulse to record every fart and stoner-thought didn't quite exist then.
For those of you not familiar with cassettes as a medium, they are linear tapes, with two sides, each about 45 minutes maximum length. They are fairly noisy, but these tapes aren't too bad in that regard.
I ripped each side then pasted them together into one file. There's always a gap between the two, I usually cut it down to one or two seconds. There may be other gaps as well.
The Beatnigs at Gilman Street Project, 29 January 1988. Recorded live, with great difficulty (you try standing in one place in a punk club). Enjoy, dammit.
Gartland-Pit-and-aftermath-26Sep1987. Victims Family? opens, gets two songs in, cops come. Tom and mostly Duke gently harass and confuse the cops playing them off each other. We got another hour out of the show, until Duke got hauled off by the cops for talking too much. MDC, Mudwimmin, yay!
The-Farm-post-Gartland-Pit-maybe. When the Gartland Pit show ended, it moved to The Farm. I think there was a show scheduled for that night anyways, it just got started early. It's only a partial recording.
Hit'n'Run-Mudwimmin-27Oct1987. Probably at Beale and Brannan at the Base of the Bay Bridge, our favorite alliterative location (Bambi Nonymous talks about the good echo... echo... echo... probably off the bridge base). One of those rare times when we were not shut down by the cops, and Mudwimmin just played ... until they were done! Cool...
Hit'n'Run-Tragic-Mulatto-Glorius-Clitorius-03Apr1988. Probably at Beale and Brannan at the Base of the Bay Bridge, again.
Banging. We had just leased the space at 164 Shipley, it was some 1800 feet I think of concrete floored space with a 18 foot ceiling, just raw space, with a bare bathroom up on a platform at the 10 foot level by itself. We built a loft for the back 1200 square feet, to connect to the bathroom in front. We swiped a crapload of old 2x6 tongue and groove flooring from a demolition site in what's now South Beach. This is us nailing down the 1/2" (yes, half inch) particle board over the joists we made out of said flooring. Duke scientifically designed the narrow joist spacing, 16", by jumping a scrap of particle board laid over two 2x4's. Have to say, it never failed us, though it was a bit dippy when you walked on it. This was recorded on a 4-track Fostek mini-studio cassette deck, with decent microphones spaced 10 feet apart, hanging from the rafters pointing at the floor. We wanted to record this because the sound was quite hypnotic, hence the lack of talking.
MDC-vs-Pope. The Catholic Pope (that old replaceable guy from Rome) visited San Francisco, and as luck would have it, was visting Mission Dolores church that just happened to be across the street from the Rat House (aka Rathaus) where MDC (Millions of Dead Cops, Millions of Damned Christians, etc) lived. San Francisco was under a police lockdown; no one allowed on the streets outside designated sidewalk areas, etc and especially -- especially! no one allowed on the roof! So MDC decides to play... for the Pope... from the roof. We had a plan, a good one it turned out. The band quietly set up on the roof, we left all the doors to the house open, then with literally synchronized watches, I went out to inform the multitude of police that there was going to be a musical pope-protest on the roof. The whole thin was done with good humor and no anger. The cops weren't even all that upset. Took all our ID info and all that of course. I had my trusty Aiwa in my pocket, and recorded the whole thing. Alas, the tape isn't that interesting, but it was a moment in fun time... that's Cammy and me at the start, and various people throughout; Radical Ray Reich, Lil' Mike, Dave MDC, Al Schwitz, Franco, Jane Guskin (her and Cammie were the Yeastie Girlz), and others I don't recall the names of... The tape is edited to remove content-free spots.
HOMOCORE-2 Hmm, I seem to have overlooked this. Oh well.
HOMOCORE-3. Not very sequential, this is a bad recording of the third Homocore show at the Women's Building. Daisy Anarchy (sorry, very noisy), Fugazi, the Knuckleheads (I think Dave Dictor and child?), Swollen Boss Toad. These were all benefits for the Women's Building I'm pretty sure. Shawn Ford continued to put on W.B. benefits beyond Homocore shows for quite a while.
HOMOCORE-6-12Feb1989. Kamala and the Karnivores, Popstitutes, Diamanda Dali Haagen Das, and MDC. This was our only Deaf Club show, and I believe the very last punk show ever at the Deaf Club. The cover of HOMOCORE #4 has Jerome Caja having a personal posathon against the luxurious panelled walls of the Deaf Club. The deaf patrons had a swell time too and were most generously accomodating of a bunch of punks and weirdos. Alas, this tape only captures MDC, due to some long-lost technical snafu. Only one side of the tape had content.
The-Scabs-Gilman-Street-1987. The Scabs were two mainly kids, Guliano and Jacob. They were like 10 and 12. Guiliano was wild, insanely smart, and bounced off the walls with energy. Michael Dean maintains a great page about them at http://www.rollingscabs.com/. Guiliano died at 15 when attempting to scale an elevator shaft (hands and feet on opposite sides of the shaft) and fell from some great height. The songs on the tape are, in order, Fuck safe sex, M&Ms on our Tonka toys, My mom smokes pot, Fuck one get one free, Tim Yohannan is my uncle Jello Biafra is my dad, I am a peace punk. Unfortunately this is an edited tape; I lost the original. I clipped out the intro, inter-song chatter, etc. Oh well. Songs are all there, some of which are not on the 7 inch.
Sabot-at-Studio4-2702-18th-St-13May1989. Chris and Hilary's band Sabot, they've since fled the U.S. for Chzech Republic leaving the rest of us assholes to rot in place. Studio4 was one of the plethora (stupid word, that) of group houses/intentional communities/punk houses that are now all gone because of the "real estate boom". Bust goes culture.
Maximumrockandrollradio-HOMOCORE-KPFA-FM-11Apr1989. I did a guest radio show on MRR radio one night. Ray Reich was there, I'm not sure who else. I'm not totally embarrassed by it today, somehow. You can hear a lot of the JD's HOMOCORE HITS tape. Man, the sound quality is bad! The JDs tape was produced on crap home decks, tape to tape, and therefore the tape itself is third-generation; then *this* tape was made off the radio station board, so it's now 4th generation... Aww, the Nikki Parasite song is so cool! [Note: many show announcements and band line ups and times and dates mentioned, may tie down other loose ends.]