UK Boot Boy Glam Rockers Cock Sparrer Present Their Classic Song “Teenage Heart” From The Flight Deck Of The U.S.S. Hornet Aircraft Carrier In Alameda CA.
The occasion was “Rock The Ship” a festival celebrating the 15th Anniversary Of Pirates Press Records, and quite an event and logistical nightmare it was, with shows taking place over multiple venues on 4 successive nights and peaking with this headlining set aboard a massive aircraft carrier.
Amongst the many details Pirates Press and their event production staff accounted for included the building of a separate 30 foot high entrance scaffolding to accommodate getting attendees up to the flight deck of the decommissioned aircraft carrier just for the event.
“Flinch” is the title of this song, and the video in this post features yet another Shotwell lineup recorded recently (48 hrs ago) in August 2019 at the Eagle in San Francisco, an historic gay bar that Jimmy said he was honored to perform at. The new lineup seen here features one of Shotwell’s original drummers, Steve Moriarty, who first played with the band in 1996, and a new bass player, who was introduced onstage with one name, but insisted it was something far less exotic else when asked about it later this past Thursday at the Eagle.
The song “Flinch” itself appeared originally on a cassette demo entitled “for The Devil Has Its Day” which is a lyric refrain from the song, and it first circulated in the fall of 2001 shortly after Shotwell’s Geneva Avenue Fallout split LP with Miami had sold out of its initial pressing. Eventually this tape surfaced as CD, a joint effort between two fledgling indie labels, one called S.P.A.M. who printed the discs, and later Plan-it X, who finished the job by actually getting some cardboard covers made. Here’s a live version recorded about 18 years later… I probably have a tape of Jimmy and a circa 2000 lineup doing this song, and perhaps will put that here for posterity when I find it.
The 4 track recorded demo this song came from was the sequel of sorts to that Shotwell/Miami split record, and featured at the time an all new lineup of Buzz and his friend Ken from Delaware. It was made deep in the recesses of the old Mission Records space, with the late Matty Luv twisting the knobs in the summer of 2001, right after the first wave of dot com stocks crashed but just before the twin towers fell in NYC.
The world was never the same, but somehow…despite umpteen lineup changes…Shotwell is. In fact the band has a new album very much in their quater century of mid tempo punk tradition, their first in a decade, it is entitled Dead Bats, that music is available via Revolver USA is you don’t see it at your local record store.
Jimmy in his Mission kitchen circa ’98
Jimmy Shotwell’s been living in SF since the late 80’s when he moved here from the midwest. He played guitar in a band called X-tal that released 3 albums with him involved on Alias Records. Jim grew gradually apart from the lighter college rock fare offered by X-tal and joined the punkier flavored Strawman with Tommy Strange in the early 90’s. They toured and released a few records on Allied before parting musical ways. Jim started Shotwell with Aaron Cometbus in the summer of 1994 and their very first gig was opening for Sublime at Komotion in SF.
Jim always was, and still is, a supportive presence to those helping keep D.I.Y. underground music alive. He prefers to play outside the nightclub circuit and truly emobodies the ook Yer Own Fkn Life DIY ethos. His green monster truck, maroon mini vans, RVs and other vehicles have hauled countless tons of gear and beer around the Bay Area and beyond. In the late 90s, as a favor to a friend, selflessly he drove across the country and took the unknown UK band Scarfo on their first US tour, which introduced Jamie Hince to Allison Mosshart of Discount, she was the singer of a band Shotwell had just made a split 7″ with. Eventually that indirect connection lead to the formation of The Kills. They‘ve since made millions apparently, while Jimmy is still hauling the broke and unknown around in his vehicles, barely makin‘ beer money.
He wouldn‘t have it any other way.
Never content to play by the rules, Jim has flourished and floundered but survived solely outside the mainstream day job employment and musical scenes. The boy has initiative and an ethos of personal industry that might irk a landlord, or perplex the typical wage slave, but he’s still here, unlike so many who couldn’t hack it in the mean streets of San Francisco.
A dedicated member of the volunteer run Komotion International musical collective during it’s early nineties heyday, Jim helped out with so many shows by so many bands including bringing through Pinhead Gunpowder, and majorly saving the day doing beer and gear runs for bands like Citizen Fish, Rancid, the Ex, Fifteen, Beat Happening, and many more. One night at the cajoling of your webmaster, he even helped invent Punk Rock Karaoke there between sweaty sets at a packed Bikini Kill and MDC show.
His main musical influences are punk bands from the old school such as The Clash, Circle Jerks, Stiff Little Fingers, old Misfits , Ramones, Black Flag and Johnny Thunders. All of the aforementioned also became part of the Punk-araoke repertoire at that 1991 gig.
I found mp3 and even scans of the Shotwell “Devil Has Its Day” cassette tape posted online here at a blog from punk archivist Greg Harvester called Remote Outposts and he has a bunch of Shotwell related posts here. Might as well grab it, because it’s not likely to hit Spotify anytime soon.
Since the late 1980’s the band NOFX has been torturing audiences coast to coast, and eventually worldwide, and they’ve only gotten more popular for some mysterious reason.
Below I’ve embedded a rare video I shot of the band circa 1992 at a show at the Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco, and you’ll get their 2019 single and the most recent US search trends data from Google on who is looking up the band.
I think the video above was shot an early all ages Sunday show circa December 1992 at Bottom Of The Hill in San Francisco. Aaron Abeyta ( aka El Hefe) was a recent addition, and I think the White Trash Two Heebs and a Bean album had just been released. It could’ve also been 1993…I can’t recall, I know NOFX toured Japan with All You Can Eat in 1994, but this is definitely before then… Does anyone else remember this gig?
Here’s google search data on where in the whirled peeps keeps looking these guys up
Jennifer Joseph, Publisher of Manic D Press introduces Dave Dictor at his first ever book store appearance to promote MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption, co-presented by 924 Gilman St Project. The punk singer and now author candidly talks about finding Raul’s club in Austin Tx in the late 1970’s and how it lead him to release the “John Wayne Was A Nazi” single, and begin a multi decade global odyssey of politically charged punk rock.
More excerpts from this talk forthcoming, subscribe for more. To learn more about Dave Dictor see his new website http://DaveDictor.com
To get Dave Dictor’s autobiography, request at your local bookseller or try this online link : http://amzn.to/29grKPh
Overall Dave’s book would be interesting to anyone interested in the behind the scenes history of D.I.Y. punk, with Dave’s personal path also being a parallel tale of a subculture, where punk music is not merely a fashion, or memorialized like a long gone artifact, but is treated as a living breathing movement.
Dictor’s book holds anecdotes and adventures as told through the eyes of a world weary Woody Guthrie-esque citizen soldier who has taken his lumps, learned lessons, and is still inspired to travel the road less traveled, and make a glorious din whenever and wherever he still can.
The die hard punk rock world MDC traverses is not that of the corporate sponsored festivals and action sports soundtracks, but one of more idealistic people powered shows, grass roots political benefits and the loosely connected friends and fellow travelers motivated not merely by money, but by a need to help each other network and navigate from town to town, nightclub to VFW Hall.
Dave Dictor’s view from the stage has included thousands at large sports halls and theaters, but more often than not was maybe a gig put on in a basement, squat or a community center, much like it was back when he first started touring in the early 1980’s.
Conveniently I scored my copy of Dave Dictor’s book at a reading he was doing at a local bookstore in Berkeley CA, and the audience there was rapt with attention as Dave regaled us with numerous stories of his 3 decades plus journey through American Hardcore Punk’s early days. Dave’s tales start even before that era, back in the late 60’s, when he was already becoming an iconoclastic teenager, dealing pot with the aide of a friend’s mom, bending gender & norms, and seeking out a vegetarian diet in an age when the only two people he’d heard of who’d existed like that were Hitler & Gandhi. Fortunately for us, Dave abandons his wannabe teen hippie persona behind on Long Island, and eventually hits Austin Texas just as Raul’s was starting to put on punk shows, where bands like The Big Boys and The Dicks were also forming, creating a feisty brand of Texan hardcore unlike the somewhat more macho & commercial flavors available in the more urbane coastal cities.
Dave Dictor released the “John Wayne Was a Nazi” single in 1979, his band The Stains later changed their name to MDC
In the book you’ll read of Dave leaving his seventies singer songwriter stylings behind to and eventually hit the West Coast full throttle as a punk rock pioneer living to the pulsebeat of politically aware subculture, subsisting through squatting and D.I.Y. touring, living out of vans, eating at soup kitchens and deftly dodging police and skinhead violence whenever possible. The book has tales of many shows including an early 90’s run behind the Iron Curtain, where border guards and paper work pose problems, and Russian promoters threaten to pull the plug on the tour if the band doesn’t come up with $5000 dollars overnight. You’ll learn about his friends and family, like his long time drummer Al who Dave met as a fellow Monkees fan in the 60’s, to both of ’em doing separate stints of prison time in the 1990’s.
As a memoir, and much like a friend telling a meandering adventure that no one is sure where it ends, the storyline occasionally drifts back and forth through time. Dave has met many thousands of people and magnanimously, many names are dropped briefly, while exact event details might get glossed over. Over 30 years of touring means some great stories got left out, while some chronological anachronisms occasionally appear, such as when he mentions a gig with Husker Du, where Dave relates feeling “like Prince was gonna show up, mount the stage” at First Avenue in Minneapolis “and do a few bars of Purple Rain” even though the MDC show referenced was back in 1982, and Prince was still several years away from creating that iconic cinematic moment.
Enjoy the vicarious rambling ride through these pages, Dave sure has, and one gets the feeling if some medical setbacks hadn’t sidelined him momentarily a few years ago so he’d have time to share these tales in print, most of these stories would’ve gone untold. Dictor had a serious health crisis and spiritual awakening just before penning the manuscript and feels lucky to be alive to still share his happiness and life story.
One criticism I heard of the book is that, despite conflicts and complications in a long career, this MDC book itself is not full of “dirt” and that Dave doesn’t talk hella sh/t about anyone. That is just the type of person he he is, and the author courageously, if not naively, still strives to find the positive side to everyone and everything. While allusions are made to occasional nefarious conduct by bit players in the book, Dave moves on rather than dwell on the painful parts. It is perhaps good advice for all of us. As he mentions near the end of the book on page 180, freshly leaving the hospital he almost died in, he tells a cab driver “From now on, only love will come from my mouth and be on my breath”.
Video was made at Dave Dictor’s first ever bookstore reading , the Mosh Lit release celebration for MDC: Memoir from a Damaged Civilization: Stories of Punk, Fear, and Redemption held at Pegasus Books in Berkeley CA May 25th 2016.
For over an hour, the author gave us all an informal, humorous, but deeply reflective overview of his multi decade journey through punk, as well as familial anecdotes, and life lessons. The tales dated as far back as his first cross dressing session with a 4 year old playmate to opinions on the 2016 Presidential campaign and the origins of his recently revived 40 year old slogan “No War , No KKK, No Fascist USA“.
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…
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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