Gimme Something Better (2 page)

Steve DePace:
Corporate rock bands of the day like Air Supply and Journey, the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Rush. These bands were technically superb. If you were a 15-year-old kid, listening to that, you were going, “How do I do
that
? I just wanna be in a band with my buddies and play.”

Klaus Flouride:
When people say, “What got you into punk?” I say, “The Eagles.” Nothing in the mainstream that was calling itself rock ’n’ roll was really rock ’n’ roll. It was easy-listening music at that point.

East Bay Ray:
The music I really hated the most was fusion jazz.

Klaus Flouride:
I hated fusion opera even worse.

East Bay Ray:
I think that’s called musicals.

Klaus Flouride:
I think it’s called Yes. I had a dream that I was a roadie for Asia one time. I don’t know what the hell that was about.

Ray Farrell:
A lot of what San Francisco was about, in terms of local music, was kind of cabaret. There weren’t a lot of rock bands.

Joe Rees:
The big influence in San Francisco at the time was the Tubes. They used a lot of theater people, 35 or 40 people onstage. I did some performances with them. I played this pop icon of Colonel Sanders. I would dress in a white outfit, and I had a neon cane and neon shoes. “White Punks on Dope” built up to a crescendo at the very end, and I would march in front of the stage and then stand behind Prairie Prince, the drummer, and hold up my cane like Moses.

Johnny Strike:
Because of the glam scene, that was what was left over. Bowie and Roxy Music and the Dolls and that kind of stuff. The Tubes were considered the glam group of San Francisco. And we didn’t like ’em.

Edwin Heaven:
The Tubes were dangerous. When they first started, they had topless girls onstage, people were protesting them. Great bands are dangerous.

Dave Chavez:
They were talking about white punks on dope. That’s what POD stood for, Punk On Dope. Not the white punks, the Tubes added that. The PODs existed all over, in the Sunset, in El Sobrante and the East Bay. A lot of Hell’s Angels came from there, too. In El Sobrante they hung out at the movie theater but they never went in. They would just hang out in front. They posed a lot, and looked really dumb. They wore the Levi’s jackets with the wool on the inside. And bell-bottoms, long hair. Most of them were thugs. Total goons.

Bruce Loose:
I was a WPOD, White Punks On Dope. We wore big mountain-climbin’ boots, and Levi’s bell-bottoms. The original grunge fucking Pendleton shirts, all that shit. It was cheap, and it kept you warm in the goddamn fog when you’re out wandering around, blazed out of your brains on acid. Like every good San Francisco child should be.

Dennis Kernohan:
Jon Hunt and I were working for Berserkeley Records, doing their sound. Jon and Bob Howe, they already had a band called AK47 in high school, Oakland Tech. An MC5 kind of band. They were on it early, this was like ’74. The first punk bands of the East Bay, I’d have to say it was the Rockets, with Eddie Money and Dan Alexander. In ’72. This really good punky band. You’ve heard Eddie sing. Eddie can’t sing. They didn’t give a shit. It was like an attitude.

Jimmy Crucifix:
I grew up in Fremont, man. Before there was punk rock there wasn’t a whole lot. We were all rock ’n’ roll people. We hung out with bands like Y&T, Mile High, all these weird East Bay bands.

Dennis Kernohan:
Patti Smith came through and she was really preaching the do-it-yourself, anybody-can-do-this kind of thing. She talked to all the kids at the shows. She played four shows at the Boarding House and four shows in Berkeley at Rather Ripped Records.

Al Ennis:
The first kind of punk act in San Francisco was Mary Monday. She was more in the gay scene. She had red-dyed hair, and was really into the fashion.

Dirk Dirksen:
Mary was a topless dancer from Vancouver, who wanted very badly to make an impact in San Francisco.

Al Ennis:
She got a rock band together, Mary Monday and the Bitches. I saw her over on Polk Street. She rented out a little place and did her punk thing. She came out with a single at the time, “I Gave My Punk Jacket to Rickie.” A little bit hokey.

Ginger Coyote:
The Garden of Earthly Delights and the Green Earth Cafe did an occasional show. The Palms and Rose & Thistle had shows but they were strictly rock ’n’ roll.

Dennis Kernohan:
The first DJs to play punk rock stuff were Richard Gossett and Beverly Wilshire, on KSAN. They’d already been playing all the Iggy and the Ramones.

Al Ennis:
I’d pick up
Melody Maker
,
New Musical Express
,
Sounds
,
Rock Scene
.

Dennis Kernohan:
Anybody who says they didn’t read those magazines is lying to you. We all read them. They were at everybody’s houses.

Jennifer Blowdryer:
When I was in Berkeley High, we would bring a bunch of books to Moe’s Records for trade, and then I would look through the stacks. I would see a New York Dolls album cover and I would be like, this is the shit. I had that stuff on cassette tape. I’d be in biology class, and I would press one of those old-fashioned flat tape recorders below the desk and put my ear down. I had to listen. Just to keep going, you know.

Aaron Cometbus:
Jennifer Blowdryer was reputed to be the first punk at Berkeley High. The first to graduate, at least.

Jennifer Blowdryer:
There wasn’t any fashion ’cause you couldn’t buy peg-leg pants. You had to make them. I scribbled “Anarchy” on a T-shirt and ripped it up. I cut my hair really badly and I lied to my mom, said I got glue on it from a poster. She took me to Macy’s and I met one of my first hairdressers. For some reason, I said I want to look like Liberace. I got it dyed silver, a little bouffant, I don’t know.

Tim Tonooka:
In the summer of 1976 I ended up in Berkeley. Me and my friends would hang out on Telegraph and listen to portable radios. One of my friends was a crazy guy on SSI who’d pour glue in a paper bag and huff the fumes. He really got into the Ramones—ironic, considering their songs about sniffing glue. Johnny Genocide: In 1976 there were very few of us. We didn’t have punk rock stores in the mall. We had to create our world one stitch at a time. The Bagel was the epicenter of our scene.

Rozz Rezabek:
The Bagel was down on like Pine and Polk, and all the punk rockers would hang out there. Somebody would always be getting a check from home, or some food stamps, or money or something.

Johnny Genocide:
Back then, Polk was a lively gay area where you could dress as crazy as you wanted without being beaten up. At 16 years old, going to Polk Street was an adventure in everything your parents warned you about.

Penelope Houston:
There were a couple East Bay bands. The Liars, they were the first ones.

Dennis Kernohan:
Bob and Jon and I would go over to Berserkeley’s rehearsal space and set up for the bands. They would never show up, so we would play their instruments. Jon started playing guitar, and I started singing. It was weird how it all happened. We were bored, and we had all this equipment. We actually rehearsed for a year and a half, learning songs.

Al Ennis:
I was in Berkeley, coming over to San Francisco, but there was
nothing
going on.

Winston Smith:
I had to take some equipment to the Savoy Tivoli in North Beach. They had a narrow staircase that went upstairs, to a tiny little room. I just remember what a dingy dark joint it was, up these rickety stairs. And thinking, wow, they should really make another entrance to this place. Somebody’s gonna have a lawsuit about this. The Ramones were there. I’d never heard of them.

Howie Klein:
The Ramones were like the Johnny Appleseed of the punk movement. Wherever they went, punk sprouted, and that included L.A. and London. When they first came here, they played the Savoy Tivoli. I was at that show. I was so excited. And I thought, wow, this is going on all over the country. Everywhere they go, they’re planting seeds and new bands are popping up.

James Stark:
I knew nothing about them. People were like, “You gotta go see the Ramones.” So we went to go see the Ramones.

Danny Furious
: I tried to get a few buddies to come along but ended up going alone. They played for 10 or 12 people whom I later found out were members of the Nuns and Crime, plus a handful of people who were curious, myself included. Dee Dee was amazing. I left totally inspired and immediately called Greg in SoCal and told him about it and that it was time to start a band and he agreed. My friend Mark Hubbard told me later, he thought I was going to see some mariachi band that night.

Jennifer Miro:
I was there and so were some other members of the Nuns, I think Jeff and Alejandro. We all went, and we were all thinking the same thing. I really want to be on that stage, I really want to make my statement.

Johnny Strike:
That show was before anybody really played out yet. We were in garages at that point. There were like 50 people there. It was everybody that was in a band. The Nuns were there, and we were there. Seeing the Ramones at the Savoy, we said, “Oh, well, this is for real. These guys are from New York and they’re doing it, too.”

James Stark:
I don’t think the set was even a half hour long. They must have played 30, 40 songs. It was pretty mind-boggling. There was a group of people who were waiting for this to happen. With what Crime had been doing, with the Nuns, it was like, here it is. This is what’s happening now.

Edwin Heaven:
I saw the Ramones with Boz Scaggs and his wife Carmella, Prairie Prince, Michael Cotton, Kenny Ortega. The show we went to, there were a dozen people. They went on, and they performed as if there were 1,000 people. Right away, we looked at each other, and we loved them.

Merle Kessler:
Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater opened for them. Nobody was paying attention. There was a drag queen on Quaaludes during the break, who stumbled around trying to get backstage. Except there wasn’t a backstage, just a curtain covering a brick wall. But she kept trying different places, with a big smile on her face. Moving the curtain aside, walking into the wall. Joey introduced one song: “After seeing Duck’s Breath Mystery Theater . . . gimme gimme gimme shock treatment!” Their roadies sneered at my marijuana.

Winston Smith:
I had to stay around until they finished to collect the mics and take some amps back. I remember thinking, oh, they’re not bad, maybe this will catch on.

Penelope Houston:
The Mabuhay was just a little Filipino restaurant that had mostly Filipino acts perform. Ness [Aquino] was trying to bring in people that would do some kind of cabaret-style crazy stuff. To bring in more people to drink after dinnertime. They served really terrible Filipino food. Deeply deep-fried food.

Dirk Dirksen:
I moved here in 1974, and was looking to put a nightclub together that would give us the opportunity to document the seminal moment of an artist. The genesis of an artist. My interest was the artist before they got into the recording stage.

Joe Rees:
Dirk had a background in television production. His big claim to fame is, he worked with Tony Dow, from
Leave It to Beaver
.

Dirk Dirksen:
I did a lot of half-hour shows in L.A., followed by associate producing a soap opera on ABC. The first soap opera geared to teenagers, with Tony Dow. From that I began producing concerts in the mid-’60s. San Bernardino, Riverside, Newport—I did the Doors in Bakersfield.

Penelope Houston:
Dirksen started having people come in. I think he had comedians as well. And pretty soon he realized that the people who were really drawing crowds were these young bands, playing this outrageously noisy rock ’n’ roll. So he just steered it in that direction. But he also mixed it up, he had a lot of real oddball people play. Arty percussionists. Whoever wanted to come up. He wouldn’t pay you. The first couple times. But if you showed that you actually had an audience, then he would start paying you.

James Stark:
The first couple of Crime shows, and the Nuns, Dirk had nothing to do with those. He came a little bit later.