It was a greatthrillto catch Chip Kinman, his drum bashing son Giuliano Scarfo and their energetic hair whipping friend Brian Melendez on bass all rip through a set of Dils classics at a sold out Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco for the fortieth anniversary of The Temple Beautiful. In this video Chip Kinman, now 63, mentions a recent cover version of his song “Class War” by Ty Segall and seeing the “younger set” get into the music has inspired him, before he plays it himself with his spritely new backing band.
Since the death of his brother Tony, with whom he co-founded The Dils in the late 1970’s, Chip’s finally seen fit to revisit the beloved band’s past punk rock glories and brought his son along to revive their fiery message laden music, that blended the best of power pop and the brashness of early punk.
The Dils, founded by brothers Chip & Tony Kinman arose first out of suburban Carlsbad, California in late 1976, and soon relocated to San Francisco, later moving to Los Angeles and even recording some of their seminal material in Vancouver CA. Their tight brotherly harmonies fed into fierce , fast tunes oft with fearless political stances, made them one of the preeminent punk bands up and down the West Coast. Use your cursor to navigate within the 360° video embedded below Chip Kinman recounts recording “Sound Of The Rain” in Vancouver with late drummer “Zippy Pinhead“, whose supportive father was in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and wasn’t keen on lyrics about dead cops.
The brothers dropped The Dils name by 1981, and went through various incarnations over the years including Rank & File, Blackbird and Cowboy Nation, but never performed again as The Dils.Prior to this latest iteration, the last Dils gig was in 1980 at Blackie’s in Los Angeles (Black Flag opened the show.)
Here’s the whole Dils set from the show as shot from deep in the jostling joy that was the pit down by the floor wedge monitors at stage front by Gil Warguez on a trusty Sony MV-1 synched to the audio from one of my stray cams that caught a slight bit more vocal…
There was a unique Roky Erickson Birthday Tribute earlier this week by several local musicians of note in San Francisco. GibbsMo emCee Parker Gibbs introduces Eric Moffatt’s JACKSHACK . This cover of Roky’s “Goodbye Sweet Dreams” was by the loose coalition known as JACKSHACK featuring Eric Moffatt on guitar & vocals, with Cindy Giuliani on bass, Ricky Wayne Garrett on drums, and Roman Yamilov on guitar.
Video is excerpted from footage I recorded at the recent Sad Bastard’s Club Roky Erickson Tribute Night held at The Make-Out Room in San Francisco July 15th 2019 … Eric Moffat insists on calling his rotating backup band JACKSHACK, and until he comes up with an even shittier name I guess I’ll let him. Personally I already suggested Chief Sour Mashantucket & His Pale White Jazz Hands but he wasn’t interested.
Live footage of The Buttertones in San Francisco performing Life Coach, an original song that appears on their 2016 self released “American Brunch” LP.
The cinematic surf noir of The Buttertones captured on multiple foggy lensed cameras in a darkly lit crowded low ceilinged basement full of hysterical sweaty shrieking females, whats not to like?
This video is a multi-cam clip from their 2017 summer tour which I captured below the Swedish American Hall on Market St at the nocturnal retreat otherwise known as DuNord.
The Buttertones, an educated and enigmatic five-piece combo that arose from the Los Angeles basin at the time consisting of Richard Araiza (vocals/guitar), Sean Redman (bass), Modesto Cobian (drums), London Guzmán (saxophone) and Dakota Böettcher (guitar). I have just read that as of July 2019, guitarist Dakota has left the group, so it should interesting as they forge ahead without his additional musical influence.
On the occasion of the band’s 40th Anniversary, the noise mongers collectively known as Flipper assembled on the stage at The Great American Music Hall shortly after 11 pm to deliver their sonic sermon last night.
Prompt , showered and shaved, frontman for the occasion, Mr David Yow greeted some people beside the stage including a bored 15 year old brought 1500 miles by her mother.
After the pleasantries, our cameras turn to capture the opening feedback salvo from Ted, a brief intro of the Flipper as the “the greatest band in the history of forever” be a young female fan in the audience, and Yow & Co take over. David soon leaps into the sold out crowd of some 500 attendees and we’re officially off!
The joyous din kept going until well after midnight. Here are the first few moments of some of the nihilistic nostalgia and friendly frenzy that ensued.
Above is the version from last night, followed below by a video from 2006 of the band featuring original vocalist Bruce Loose at Cafe DuNord in San Francisco with Kris Novoselic on bass.
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.
Flipper’s 40th anniversary is this year and they are playing later this week in their hometown of San Francisco at Great American Music Hall. I guess I gotta shell out the big bucks if I wanna see ’em again. Should I do it? It will be sorta like a family reunion, in that not everyone will be there, and those that are, might not even be recognizable the way you remembered them, or even the members you’d want to see the most.
Here’s live video clips I made featuring songs made infamous during Flipper’s early years…
One further down below is newer from the 21st century, featuring current vocalist David Yow doing Love Canal and Ha Ha Ha which were on an early single. The other just below is about 20 years older, you hear part of their final Subterranean single “Someday” and the closing song “Way Of The World” from a daytime outdoor show in the early 90’s when the reconstituted band soldiered on after the death of original member Will Shatter. At the time a guy named John Dougherty was brought in on bass, and just like Will, Dougherty too would also die of a heroin overdose shortly after this 8mm footage was shot.
Here’s a more recent live lineup performing past glories from the band’s break-thru single originally released on Subterranean Records in 1981
Both songs are masterfully jaded methed up narcoleptic noise rock takes on the American Dream gone awry, setting the tone for the emerging ennui amidst a painful wasteland of suburban consumer conformity and corporate malfeasance that would be known as the 1980’s.
For a year or two in the late eighties, I used to answer Flipper’s fan mail, not for the money, uh, just for the glory I think… besides they were too lazy. Their singer Will Shatter would show up and sit beside me at the Subterranean record label store front on Valencia St circa 10 am with a Bartles & Jaymes wine cooler in hand. He was really just hoping to cash spare royalty checks before the rest of his bandmates, and seemed disinterested in the fan mail I showed him from geeky kids in far off Poland and Kentucky. The label guy would maybe throw him a few bucks to get rid of him lurking around the storefront, and Will might even pilfer a couple 7″s on his way out to sell somewhere else. But Will was a beatnik poet, and really just a guy from Gilroy, and he died soon after of an OD…
me on day will shatter’s death hit the news
The Flippant Men Who Make The, Uh, I Guess You’d Call It “Music”
Steve DePace is the entrepreneurial mercenary and life force trying to preserve the band’s legacy, Ted is more chill, a laconic Vietnam Vet, frazzled and still the easiest to be around to this day. I think Will was the sweetest of the bunch, while Bruce, now put out to pasture, was obviously the most mischievous, which is kinda cute when you’re young, less so as you creep into middle age.
When Flipper Kinda Lost Its Way In The World …
By the early 90’s Bruce’s drug taking manifested itself beyond pranks into petty feuds and worse, he became such a jerk, that after Will died, he was actually caught climbing through the ceiling vents of his own indie label warehouse to steal his own master tapes. It was all part of a coked up cash-in ploy and they sold the reels to Rick Rubin and Henry Rollins for chump change.
Bruce “Loose” Calderwood on stage 1994
Selling the tapes got a cash infusion, but sorta proved to be a stupid move, as not only did they burn the true foundational business bridge to their past glories, as soon they took the new money from Rubin, (an amount that barely woulda bought a decent new van), all the early Flipper tapes & LPs were soon out of print. Most of their legacy material was basically lost to the netherworlds of corporate negligence… They put out one new record on a major label in 1993 that stiffed, and I think Steve DePace had to sue to buy back their own music from Sony or whomever ended up owned and kept it dormant for well over a decade into the 21st century long after iTunes and eMusic downloads were already in decline.
Flipper mighta been a buncha drug ravaged idiots, but they were also brutally inspired artists without fear who made a definite caustic sonic mark on the rock music world. Really a band with no apologies, and a legacy of noise that still always makes me smile despite actually knowing the muther fuckers. Original singer Bruce “loose” Calderwood is a more than half crazy old mountain man misanthrope, constantly complaining online about his back, lashing out in recriminating rants while David Yow of Jesus Lizard cavorts the globe singing the songs Bruce made famous, much to Bruce’s chagrin and anger.
They were one of the great band’s of the early 80’s post-punk scene, and the only thing that held them back was everything. especially their own dysfunctionality. I consider them America’s nasty little answer to the pomp & circumspect Public Image Limited., but with much more sincerity, true grit and heart. They made dark deep wounding records that still stand the test of time, and their songs churn away in the background like psychic sewer dweller anthems. As Krist Novoselic of Nirvana has said of the band he briefly joined “Their music drew me into a universe where bleak was beautiful. I realized the work was as heavy and transcendent as anything in the rock echelon. Mainstream convention was shattered. Flipper were too weird and dangerous for the world. And if the world didn’t get it, that was just another loss for humanity. “
Apparently the world as another chance to catch on. Steve DePace mentioned to me in April when I inquired about the band’s 40th anniversary tour, and working on a documentary of their career “The time is right! I am going to get it all done over the next year or two! We will be rebuilding and relaunching the brand and the band in a big way. Lots of shows and many other things…”
On a Sunday afternoon in the fall of 2015 the Public Flipper Limited corporation reconvened their bored members and brought the beast out for a walk. David Yow (best known as frontman of Jesus Lizard and Scratch Acid) took the lead vocal mic for a brief tour that saw the band play San Francisco, Southern California, Brooklyn, Philly and I believe some tempting gigs in Italy that were the real date bait.
Here’s some footage from the show I was able to capture, it was pretty dark but the sound was good and gives ya an idea of how it went.
The lineup also consisted of Bruno DeSmartAss (also of Flipper pals band The Sluglords) on bass, original skinsman Steve DePace , and veteran guitarrorist Ted Falconi plucking the six strings…
“Ever” is a dark Will Shatter era classic from their 1981 “Generic Flipper’ LP, seen here performed at The Bottom Of The Hill in SF 10/10/2015.
Ever live a life that’s real
Full of zest, but no appeal
Ever want to cry so much
You want to die
Ever feel that you’ve been had
Had so much that you turn mad
Ever been depressed that (to) those you turn to, you bring distress
Ever sit in tormenting silence
That turns so loud, you start to scream
Ever take control of a dream
And play all the parts and set all the scenes
Ever do nothing and gain nothing from it
Ever feel stupid and then know that you really are
Ever think you’re smart and then find out you aren’t
Ever play the fool and then find out that you’re worse
Ever look at a flower and hate it
Ever see a couple kissing and get sickened by it
Ever wish the human race didn’t exist
And then realize you’re one too Well, have you … ever .. I have
So what
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Apache the band specializes in lousy good ol’ fashioned not too serious, raunchy robust beer drinkin’ goofball fun… and this song is the epitome of their misfit casual cool attitude
This was a great show at the old Elbo Room in San Francisco that I happened to be at in January 2017. Here’s Apache doing “Boyz’ Life” at the Elbo Room in San Francisco, CA, January 27, 2017.
Apache released their first album “Boomtown Gems” in 2008. Touring the world ensued and their sophomore album “Radical Sabbatical” was released in 2010.
Joining the 2019 Burger Boogaloo onstage revue was Derv Gordon, the Septuagenarian original singer of London based swinging sixties two tone rockers The Equals. He is amused that an obscure novelty single he had long disregarded called “Michael and The Slipper Tree” still gets requests.
Here is Derv performing The Equals biggest hit, one that was atop the music pop charts in several countries in 1968. It was number 1 in the UK, Belgium and South Africa, and top ten across the rest of Europe and Canada, and hit the top 40 in the US.
Like fellow UK rockers of the same era, the Small Faces, the Equals also never toured the USA in their prime and many fans were excited to hear of a chance to catch some of the seminal sixties band’s under appreciated psychedelic pop rock live on stage.
With the original lineup spread asunder and after decades of bitter business dealings etc, they were not on “the best of terms”, so the Equals original vocalist has found musicians from the East Bay based band So What to back him up and they do a damned good job. Guitarist Jason Duncan is such an Equals aficionado that in the course of collecting their records, and then working on a book about the ground breaking band, he became part of the story after awhile. He began a correspondence as a fan with singer Derv Gordon that eventually evolved into a full fledged and interestingly fruitful musical partnership.
The first Derv Gordon / So What show was his US debut back in January 2017, and then 68 years old, Derv fought off a bad flu, and delivered a steamy set of sixties faves to a sold out crowd in San Francisco at the old Elbo Room. Since then they’ve developed a unique punchy foot stompin’ sound that harkens back to the Equals but with a truly hard glam & punk flavored edge. The group have now done shows on the East Coast and in Europe since then, and tightened their set up a lot too.
It is truly great to be able to see an original member of one of the most amazing, yet under rated groups of their time play songs that have laid dormant in the dustbins for decades. The Equals were one of the few multi-racial rock bands anywhere, much less in London, and were putting out records in 1965 on the President label. Derv was the lead-vocalist and his twin brother Lincoln played the bass, while Eddy Grant was the guitarist and main songwriter. If you’ve never heard of them, you owe it to yourself to check out their back catalog from the 60’s that was ahead of its time, as it combines psychedelic soul, with an early glam rock edge and of course a Caribbean rhythmic influence too.
A Tribute to Elvis Costello featuring loud mouth blabbering Blag Dahlia, HeWhoCannotBeNamed playing with his organ & Salt Peter putting the bass in yo face just like he always did in that classic Dwarves line-up are seen here tackling Elvis Costello’s Mystery Dance, joined by fk’d up friends Eric Moffat on guitar & Dave Leonard on drums.
Multi-Cam Clip shot live at the Make-Out Room in 2016 by @LilMikeSF
