All posts by lilmikesf

San Francisco’s $2.1 Billion Dollar Bus Barn Boondoggle

In #SanFrancisco, Where Homeless Tent Cities & Needle Strewn Sidewalks Overflow With Human Fecal Matter, The Transit Agencies Of The Local Mono Party Political Cabal Casually Squandered Two Billion Tax Dollar$ On A Fancy Bus Shelter That Is A Total Bust !

Due To Safety Concerns About Shoddy Construction, It Was Blocked Off From Public Access A Year Ago, Only Days After Opening, And Its Closure Escalated The Already Miserable Gridlock Downtown.

The Site, Which Even Empty Still Costs Taxpayers $2.5 Million A Month To Maintain, May Host Actual #TransitPassengers In Late July 2019, But As Designed, Will Still Have No Direct Connections To Existing Subways or Rail Lines.

Here’s A Few Seconds Of Footage I Got Of The Impractical Massive Monstrosity That Looks Like It Was Dreamed Up In As A Dubai Discotheque Landing Pad During The Brief Period It Was Open Last Year

The Empty Basement “Might” Someday Have A Rail Stop In The Very Far Off Nebulous Future, But Only If A Batsh/t Bait & Switch #BulletTrain Scheme Is Ever Fully Funded.

Remember Kids! This Is The Kind Of Magic #TheDemocrats Can Accomplish If Given A Super Majority And A Checkbook With Unfettered Reins Of Power! Good Job Gang! You’ve Made Us Proud In #TheCityThatKnowsHow !

Next Time You Are Standing In A Packed Bart Train At Rush Hour Wondering Why The System Sucks, Remember The Transit Masterminds Spent 2 Billion Tax Dollars On A Bus Barn To Nowhere Only A Few Blocks Away.

Osgood Slaughter – Weirdo On Your Block Locked In The Cellar (RIP Bruno Bersani)

Here are two songs featured on the original Osgood Slaughter cassette demo that was recorded with Jonathan Burnside at Razor’s Edge on Divisidero St in 1987, but recreated live in 2017 on stage some 30 years later.

One deals with parenting the late great Bruno Bersani way… Our hero recounts how he left the whiskey soaked bar crawls of SF’s side streets to raise a child, and how that demon had to be tamed. The second is about the “Weirdo On The Block” another concern of the young Bruno Bersani, and of which he undoubtedly feared he’d become…

These songs were recorded live at The Bottom Of The Hill October 14th 2017 at the band’s last known performance of tunes that originally surfaced on the 1987 Osgood Slaughter demo. The original studio versions are available at Bandcamp and one is embedded below for your streaming or downloading pleasure, as archived via the “ChewyMarzolo1” Bandcamp page, a treasure trove of indie music you likely ain’t heard.

Oh are you still here? … well then you get the ULTIMATE REWARD! This is a rarely seen clip of Bruno Bersani’s 1984 oddball electro pop group’s only video that aired on an Oregon cable access show… here’s a story about Bruno’s Moose Lodge cribbed from the panicon13th blog where I found it

The song comes from “a demo of amazing synth punk. Hilarious lyrics and a band that can really play. Years after this came out, John O’Neil told me he’d hung out with lead singer Bruno while he smashed copies of the tape in his garage with a hammer. Too bad, because there weren’t many to go around, my copy was #86 of 100. I only got to see them play once, it was at a high school dance where they had the plug pulled on them after 10 minutes. “It appears that we’re done for the evening…” Bruno said, barely started on his two liter bottle of wine cooler sitting prominently on his synth before a room of teenagers. “

Psst: Download 13 songs from Bruno’s Moose Lodge band demos here … http://panicon13th.blogspot.com/2011/07/moose-lodge-new-world-babies-cassette.html

Celebrity Skin – Darling Can’t You Hear Me ? (Live in SF 1991)

Jason, Bob, Don, Tim and Gary…today’s scary comic book opera characters a.k.a as the musical amalgamation called Celebrity Skin



S.O.S. as performed by Celebrity Skin live at The Kennel Club in San Francisco April 10th 1991

A ramshackle trashy late 80’z rock band from HollyWeird that ceased to exist by 1992, Celebrity Skin played quirky, too clever for their own good, glittering glam punk. They were the height of ridiculousness, perhaps poking fun at their more serious hair metal counterparts on the Sunset Strip, Celebrity Skin were inventing a type of metal that would get you thrown out the Cathouse or Gazzarri’s. Their onstage outfits oft were custom made to look like they were possibly dumpster dived, a mix of ostentatious outlandish and devilish derelict, a bit of gaudy glitter pirate meets tossed out space muppet.

The band was more New York Dolls than slick Hollywood radio rock stereotype, and unfortunately this was not as commercial a concept as their Sunset Strip rocking cohorts Jane’s Addiction, with the ticket selling traction that could sustain such a chameleon-esque commedia dell’arte  project.

Like every Sunset Strip band of that era, the Celeb Skins  were striving and pining to “be signed”, and were surviving on foodstamps & fruit loops, the kindness of stranger’s girlfriends and oft sleeping on floors on tour while opening for bands like Psychic TV.

Bassist Tim Ferris told Mark Lidell of a London based magazine called Riff-Raff when promoting their first and only album a few months after this video was shot : “We’re definitely not a Glam band, we hate that shit on Sunset Strip, y’know, black stretched jeans and all the fuckin’ tattoos and the bullshit…Don’t get me wrong. But if you were in LA you’d know what I was talking about. It’s the worst state rock has ever been in. It’s sexist, it’s prejudiced, it’s homophobic. It’s like everything rock’s not about. “Glam” always had bad connotations for us and then when we went to Germany, last year, everyone was saying that, just the way we used it. They liked it. So we learned through that, that we don’t really care what people call us. We just do what we do. We definitely consider ourselves glamorous, not glam!”

In 1988, Celebrity Skin’s over the top heavy metalized chaotic cheese whiz cover of “S.O.S.” ,originally by Swedish studio wunderkinds ABBA, was recorded and slated for the SST Records compilation put together by Dave Markey called The Melting Plot. The compilation LP featured some of the hottest underground bands around doing classic rock & top 40 covers and was ostensibly the soundtrack to a low budget indie movie that few if anyone ever saw. Click the button to hear a snippet of the studio version…



A website called Sleazegrinder has since surmised Celebrity Skin’s sensibility flew over the heads of the “not in on the joke” flannel wearin’ grunge and metal enthusiasts that were their potential demographic.

“The Celebrity’s still unforgivable androgyny and bizarre sense of humour was even lost on many of my own stonewashed bros from way out, who just never fully appreciated that whole whacky, zany, west coast silly joke-rock vibe, a la the Dickies. A lot of people don’t need their rock to be funny. Especially not rural Metal Church enthusiasts. “

The members of the band were an amalgam of not-so stereotypical rockers, neurotics, egomaniacs, misanthropes and of course, the oddball beat master Don Bolles of The Germs. Guitarist Jason Shapiro, who’d moved to California from Boston apparently once played in an early Verbal Abuse lineup, and is still making music these days as a member of the revitalized Redd Kross. As for the  rest of the Celebrity Skin members, they seem to have flittered off the face of Planet Rock.

I last saw singer Gary Celebrity (née Jacoby) touring via Greyhound bus, performing solo sets in bars to promote his Triple XXX label solo album in Sonoma county and that was over 25 years ago… There was apparently a one-off reunion in 2007 for an outdoor festival in LA but since then, most of the the band members have not made any TMZ headlines since, which actually might be a good thing. I wish they’d all made a final trip up to the SF Bay Area for their reunion a decade ago, as they still have some enthusiastic lingering fans from their hedonist glory days that woulda all loved to see them.

Thanx for the memories Celebrity Skin, glad I got a few minutes of video of you at the peak of your powers on tape that I can share for posterity at least!


Osgood Slaughter – “Live Like An Animal, Die Like A Vegetable!”

Here is footage of the SF based heavy comic rockers Osgood Slaughter performing a rock oddity about “Fruit Bats!” in the unlikely locale of a Guam public park circa 1989.

As I post this I just got word that Osgood Slaughter’s vocalist Bruno Bersani has left this earthly realm and I send condolences to his extended family and many friends. I was never tight with the guy, but always in awe of his gruff persona, and expecting a laugh. As my pal Dave Pehing wrote after his recent passing of his larger than life stage presence “Bruno was a brilliantly weird and compelling character onstage. ”

Bruno’s most memorable lyric in my opinion was the guttural chorus “Live like an animal, die like a vegetable!” and will I try to edit a clip of him performing that song at the band’s farewell reunion show for drummer Chewy Marzolo’s 50th birthday in 2017. In the meantime enjoy this one from the wayback machine…

Osgood Slaughter was a loud, enigmatic and unavoidably omnipresent force in the dark dingy maze of hedonist hell-hole nightclubs that were San Francisco’s rock scene for a few years in the tale end of the late 80’s through early 90’s. Osgood Slaughter were a confusing comedic combo, somewhat akin to a Northern California alternative to LA band Pygmy Love Circus in some ways, with a caustic and bizarre biting sense of Zappa-esque humor mixed with thrash metal proficiency. They were too weird for the metal crowd, being more bike messenger than biker gang, and not sad or serious enough for the indie rock effete elite, so Osgood Slaughter stomped, wailed and terrorized military bases, bars & backyard bar bq’s alike in search of fame and fortune on both US coasts, and even the South Pacific before disbanding and splintering off circa 1993.

When i first moved to San Francisco, this band soon hit my radar as more persistent than popular, but always active on the underground, and had revolving lineups featuring guitar work from a couple of my earliest punk guitar god pals, such as John Cobbett (of Malefice, Gwar and later Ludicra/Hammers of Misfortune) and one of the guitarists featured in the video posted here Barry D’live (known for touring ax man stints in Gwar and Me First & the Gimme Gimmes, several albums with RKL, and now playing with MDC).

The embedded Osgood Slaughter track “Time To Be A Transient” features the John Cobbett era lineup circa 1990 and is from their Take This All Of You, And Eat It album available on Bandcamp if you can’t find yr crusty old CD copy like me. If you delve into Chewy Marzolo’s overflowing bandcamp, you will find many more Osgood outtakes, unreleased would be albums, and side projects from the members.

Dirtbombs – Shake Shivaree in HD

In August 2001 the Dirtbombs from Detroit Michigan convened at the Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco for a memorable gig that has stood the test of time nearlt two decades later. Here’s an exclusive never before seen edited HD clip of the Dirtbombs opening number shot with two Sony digital video cameras in the back of a sweaty sold out club on a warm San Francisco night. This newly rediscovered & remastered HD edit of the opening number from the show features the closing track of their 12 song 1998 debut album “Horndog Fest”.

Then below this never before seen video is another of  the band tearing through a medley of back of back tunes from the same set:

Cedar Point ’76/ I’ll Be In Trouble/Chains Of Love/Maybe Your Baby

Dennis Loren designed rock poster art for The Dirtbombs 8/9/2001 show at Bottom Of The Hill with The Bellrays & Lords Of Altamont
Creem Mag inspired poster for the show by Detroit artist Dennis Loren

 The Dirtbombs, fronted by the then 35-year-old Mick Collins (already a veteran of budget garage rawk groups such as Blacktop & The Gories), were out and about mainly to promote their sophomore album, Ultraglide in Black on the In The Red label. At the time, rock scribe, Jennifer Maerz interviewed Collins for an interview that was published days prior to the gig in SF Weekly where she noted Collins got the idea for the Dirtbombs back in 1992, while on tour in Europe with the Gories. At that time, he said the punk trend was to chuck the bass player and just have drums and guitars — a trend he reacted to by having two bass players. Since then, the band has gone through 10 lineups. “There’s enough ex-Dirtbombs to make five whole bands. There’s a couple people whose names I don’t even remember,” chuckles Collins. (The latest configuration includes Ghetto Records owner Jim Diamond on bass, Tom Potter on “fuzz” bass, Pat Patano and Ben Blackwell on drums, and Collins on vocals, guitar, and harmonica.)

Mick told Maerz “We’re extremely loud live because we have two drum sets and two full bass rigs — and we keep the beat going all night,” says Collins. “In addition to “loud,’ I guess “unpredictable’ is a good word. We never know what’s going to happen. There’s a lot of give-and-take with the audience — the more they’re into it, the more we are. We encourage people to dress wild, wear costumes and stuff. Don’t worry about looking cool; don’t worry about that scenester crap. We don’t fit in, why should you? Let your freak flag fly high, baby! Let it all hang out!”

#TheInvestigation

This page contains an archived embed of the Live Stream of The Mueller Report dramatization “The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts”. #TheInvestigation was a one-night-only theatrical event performed in front of a live audience at New York’s Riverside Church and executive produced by heirs to the Disney entertainment dynasty.

The star-studded cast, which includes John Lithgow as Trump, not to mention Annette Bening, Kevin Kline, Michael Shannon , Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Sigourney Weaver, Alyssa Milano, Zachary Quinto, Alfre Woodard and Mark Hamill all amongst those who either read some excerpts or participated in conclusion synopsis of a Mueller Report inspired theatrical presentation held Monday June 24th 2019.

Towards the end of the hour plus reading, they highlight the ten main obstruction of justice acts committed by the sitting US President

“The Investigation: A Search for the Truth in Ten Acts” a one-night-only theatrical event  starring John Lithgow, Aisan Quinn, Gina Gershon, Annette Bening, Alyssa Milano and more produced by heirs to the Disney entertainment dynasty.

Uke-Hunt’s Depeche Mode Tribute Tune

Spike Slawson, leads Atom Ellis, Jamin Barton and Prairie Prince through a version of Depeche Mode’s classic “Enjoy The Silence” while performing at Slim’s on 11th street in San Francisco’s South of Market nightlife district.

Recorded live in concert at Slim’s, Uke-Hunt were appearing on a bill with Spike’s old band The Swingin’ Utters. The song was originally released by the British electronica group Depeche Mode as the second single from Violator, their seventh studio album, that was issued on Mute/Sire records on January 16th 1990.

Yo! pero esta versión de “Enjoy the Silence” merece su atención. Spike Slawson no es un cantante muy conocido, al menos fuera del círculo punk que es tan cerrado. Es el cantante de Me First and the Gimme Gimmes (grupo conformado por Slawson, Fat Mike de NOFX y el vocalist of Lagwagon, guitarrista de los Bad Religion and others) una banda que se dedica a hacer covers punk de canciones pop. Spike nee Sean Slawson performs Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy The Silence” with his lounge-core band Uke-Hunt at Slim’s featuring members of the much maligned but eminently lovable touring band The New Cars.

The Dicks – Sidewalk Begging

A rock concert video shot at big bear-like vocalist Gary Floyd’s ersatz 21st Anniversary Dicks celebration at the late great Paradise Lounge on 11th Street along Folsom Gulch in San Francisco.

Unable to bring together the Texas lineup for another year or so, this was a locals only version of the band featuring an all San Francisco citizen lineup. This song featured here, “Sidewalk Begging”, a caustic indictment of the SF Bay Area’s infamous yet still shocking urban poverty problem, first emerged on The Dicks 1985 album, “These People”, recorded and released on Alternative Tentacles records. Lynn Perko who plays drums on this live track, was in the later Dicks lineups with Gary ( as well as Sister Double Happiness), after moving to the region from Reno NV

The reunion here was really with Lynn Perko-Truell on drums, also recruited for the eve guitarist Matt Margolin ( R.I.P. Matt also played in Smoking Rhythm Prawns & Gary’s Black Kali Ma band) …plus Ed Cagnacci (later of Dirty Power, and now in PDX) on bass… This show was taped May 16th 2001 from the Paradise Lounge large room balcony… show was so loud it overloaded the lil’ microphone on my Sony Digital Video Camera…

The club this was shot at was originally known as Febe’s back when it was a South of Market gay biker bar in the 70’s and 80’s down the street from the original Stud location, in the late 80’s it was purchased by the late Robin Reichert and renamed the Paradise Lounge.

The bar grew from a small 50 person capacity joint to a multi-level club with many staircases, and even a large annex next door called the Transmission Theater. Eventually Dicks singer Gary Floyd was employed there in the mid 90’s after Sister Double Happiness deal with Warner Brothers dried up and the band members started to need some side money between gigs , and Gary often would be found working the door on many nights.

Here John reads a passage about how time takes its toll and about the lingering influence of bands like The Germs, Gun Club and Flipper. He recalls the first waves of punkers and not quite classic rockers like Top Jimmy, Biscuit Turner, D. Boon, Jeffrey Lee Pierce and Will Shatter who didn’t get a chance to live long enough to make the kind of money and acceptance available to 21st century bands that would later ape their memorable moves and music.

John Doe and Tom DeSavia authors of “More Fun In The New World” engaged in a book discussion with audience members as well as with moderator Beth Spotswood. Thanks to Craig Love for getting down to Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA and documenting this book release Q&A event 6/8/2019 .

Towards the end of this nearly hour long video Q & A segment, John Doe talks about doing a documentary of the first book he wrote with DeSavia, “Under The big Black Sun”, and securing Allison Anders as show runner “… so she’s gonna be our advocate, and so far so good, someone has approached us about doing a scripted version of it and we entertained that…but I think I’m gonna put the kibosh on that because they always get it wrong. There’s no movie even if it’s the best best ever network, it could end up like that horrible show “Vinyl”, embarrassing. I don’t want to see that ruined and I think the final nail in that coffin was hearing what everybody had to say about that one.

He talked about artists who didn’t get their due, like Top Jimmy, who “was a great blues singer and he killed himself because he drank too much, and Country Dick Montana, who was a great, like very simple drummer, and had this awesome voice, and he passed away because he also did too much of everything. So people look back on that, or Rank-and-File…the Germs were were a complete mess, and they would end their shows by playing this song called “Shut Down” which is a kind of similar to the Willie Dixon song “Spoonful” and it was endless and they they just they ended their show through attrition. So they were great, they transcended moments. The Alley Cats, The Plugz were and The Weirdos were all fantastic bands that didn’t really get their due, or get great recordings.”


You can read more about this and other topics covered by John Doe and Tom DeSavia as well as see over 4 dozen rarely seen photos of the era in their new DeCapo Press book “More Fun in the New World: The Unmaking and Legacy of L.A. Punk” which is linked below for purchase online…

Gray Matter – We Will Rock You

Geoff Turner, Mark Haggerty, Dante Ferrando, and Steve Niles unloaded a rawkin’ one buried in the WGNS vaults for decades.

Yes, just in time for the Oscar winning movie to confuse people that missed Queen the first time around, now Gray Matter creates further Gray areas. This time it’s with a punky revamp of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, a demo was recorded at WGNS when Grey Matter were rehearsing it to play at a benefit concert in DC and then shelved for decades…

Head over to http://SteveNiles.net to get your free MP3 version…

#GrayMatter #Dischord #DCHardcore #QueenTribute

Gray Matter Unreleased DCHC Queen Tribute Track

@LilMikeSF Media Maker Myriorama