Gary Floyd’s Black Kali Ma band shot live at the Fillmore in San Francisco joined onstage by the large and lovely Stinky’s Peep Show Go-Go Dancers.
Black Kali Ma was a hard rock band fronted by singer Gary Floyd and at the time of this recording consisted of drummer Bruce Ducheneaux (BOMB, Assassins Of God), bassist JT Antonopoulos (RHYTHM PIGS), and guitarists Matt Margolin (SMOKIN’ RHYTHM PRAWNS), and Danny Roman (SISTER DOUBLE HAPPINESS, THE GARY FLOYD BAND). The hard rocking San Francisco based group, which originally featured ex-Sister Double Happiness bassist Miles Montalbano was formed to build upon the bluesy punk spirit of Floyd’s previous bands and Jello Biafra released their album “You Ride the Pony, I’ll Be the Bunny” on his Alternative Tentacles label in 2000.
Big voiced and big bear-like frontman Gary Floyd first emerged with seminal Austin, TX “commie-fag” band the Dicks in 1980 who later relocated to San Francisco. After the 80’s hardcore scene grew tiresome, Gary resurfaced in Sister Double Happiness, a San Francisco band with a solid, bluesy roots rock sound built around Gary’s passionate emotive vocals and perhaps the first band to create rock music peppered by lyrics influenced by the AIDS epidemic. At the height of their post punk buzz and after their first album came out on SST Gary quit the group and pursued what he calls a “spiritual journey.” While he was studying Hindu deities and considering joining a monastery, but soon major label A&R came sniffing around, Gary reformed the group and dismissed the prospects of a monk like life. He told SF weekly in 1999 “I figured if I joined a monastery I’d probably end up being a pretty bad monk. Miserable me, you know, fucking fag sitting around a monastery pissed off at everyone.” With his group signed to a major label at the crux of the rise of “Alternative rock”, they were on the road opening shows for Nirvana and the future looked bright. Despite promising press coverage, it became clear their reputation as a live band far surpassed their album sales, and after touring the US and Europe multiple times with multiple bassists and releasing albums on a slew of labels, including the aforementioned SST, as well as Warner Brothers, Dutch East India they hung it up as a unit.
Gary continued writing and performing music, doing several solo albums as a blues singer, many of the tunes of which he still does to this day. His life story is told in his published memoir Please Bee Nice,My Life Up ‘Til Now: A Gary Floyd Memoir now available at this link: evnt.bz/BeeNice
Click his name for links to past performances by Gary Floyd, as I’ve been documenting shows by this gentleman for decades and likely have one of the largest repositories of his live music videos to be seen anywhere. You’ll catch videos of him performing in combos such as The Dicks, Sister Double Happiness, Black Kali Ma, and his most recent group The Buddha Brothers.