san francisco music venues 1980's
"Rock & roll" was the point of departure for the new music. All rights reserved. A DIY approach, therefore, functioned both as a means to an end, and as an end in itself. DIY participants in this regard often endeavour to reduce their contribution to the capitalist system by engaging in alternative economic models, some of them by dropping out of society, or at least partially diverting their consumption and exchange of commodities into alternative regimes of value (e.g. Moreover, some venues and houses often collectively organised festivals and larger multi-venue events. And it might be to somebody else, but just to sort of keep the energy moving. As audiences grew, and audience dancing became customary, performances moved into venues with more floor space, such as the Longshoreman's Hall, the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, and the Carousel Ballroom (which was later renamed Fillmore West). Appadurai uses the term tournaments of value to refer to those, often calculative, movements of paths and diversions that actors instigate in order to negotiate the value of circulating commodities (Citation1986: 20, 21). there is a diversity of possible cultural and aesthetic effects existing within DIY scenes, which are not necessarily derived from DIY material relations) while not all bad, weird, and different sounds necessarily result from DIY practices of reciprocity (i.e. "[8] The Beats tended to be cagey, keeping their lives discreet (save for the few who published, in literary bursts, about their perceptions, enthusiasms, and activities); in a word, they generally kept cool. The young hippies were far more numerous, less wary, and had scarcely any inclination to keep their lifestyles concealed. Jennings Citation1998), At a certain level if you are accepted into a community, you shouldnt make more than a liveable wage [through DIY-related small businesses]. Further, DIY venues also foster reciprocal relation with their performers and audiences. It doesnt feel as a community so much when you have a show, when a bands a bunch of millionaires, and you have a bunch of people that just idolize them. In turn, these decomoditized objects come to symbolise values of DIY creativity, independence, and community, whilst constructing boundaries of cultural (DIY) distinction and authenticity. San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. Moreover, it fosters reciprocal relations between the venue, bands, and audiences. Collective reciprocity is also manifested in the structure of shows, where DIY organisers and performers often reject the hierarchical notion of openers and headliners (Verbu Citation2021: 219). The Saloon's history stretches all the way back to 1861, making it the oldest bar in San Francisco. 14 See Baumgarten Citation2012: 169; Threadgold Citation2017; Benham Citation2019; Martin-Iverson Citation2019. (Jennings Citation1998; see Figure 5)Footnote17, Figure 5. Soon after, Ralph J. Gleason and Jann Wenner, based in San Francisco, established Rolling Stone magazine (first issue's date: November 1967). The Boom Boom Room hosts local and international blues, funk, jam bands, and everything in between. A hideaway on Fell Street, Mr. Tipples presents live jazz nightly alongside inventive cocktails in a dark and sophisticated space. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. The music regularly turns the bar into a dance party. Until they do away with capitalism we wont be able to escape it, but we can put the money back into our own hands. What is gained in this way is an experience of intimate and affective community (real interchange), creativity, active participation, and autonomy, and also a sense of active and productive opposition to a presumably non-effective and exploitative capitalist economic and social model existing in the larger society. By 1967, fresh and adventurous improvisation during live performance (which many heard as being epitomized by the Grateful Dead and by the "cross-talk" guitar work of Moby Grape) was one characteristic of the San Francisco sound. Founded by the Ambassador of the American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, Feinsteins at the Nikko presents top Broadway artists, cabaret singers, and todays best interpreters of the Great American Songbook. Dylan from Glitterdome house, making a CD cover for their band Potsie (26 April 2012). 6 For further discussion of the practices and ideologies of audience participation within American DIY scenes, see Verbu Citation2018. Secondly, I discuss the cultural and aesthetic levels of this phenomenon, before finally focusing on the complexities and contradictions surrounding the coexistence of both alternative and dominant economic systems within American DIY scenes (highlighting some of the co-dependencies involved with italics, for greater conceptual clarity). These kinds of ideological tensions therefore often also serve as a form of micro-power to establish internal boundaries along the lines of ideological purity within the DIY communities and scenes (cf. autonomy]. However, while the link between DIY practice and lo-fi sound exists, it is also important to recognise that lo-fi aesthetics can reflect other causal factors, such as advanced studio manipulation, market calculation, and/or nostalgia for pre-modern simplicity (Hesmondhalgh Citation1999: 56; Oakes Citation2009; Sanden Citation2013: chapter 4). 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. There are evidently numerous innovative practices existing within American DIY scenes that work persistently and continuously, on a daily basis, and in multiple interconnected locales, toward demystification and destabilisation of capitalist processes, both on discursive and material levels, but which they also simultaneously sustain the capitalist system in different ways. Second, the meanings and goals of these practices are often contested and constantly negotiated by different DIY individuals and groups, as they oscillate between hierarchical and egalitarian, individualist and collectivist, and pragmatic and idealist orientations. Gibson-Graham (Citation2008) lists some of these diverse economies/markets. that is a positive thing. Exploration of chordal progressions previously uncommon in rock & roll, and a freer and more powerful use of all instruments (drums and other percussion, electric guitars, keyboards, as well as the bass) went along with this "psychedelic-era" music. For instance, Johanna from the Box Candy Mountain house in Bellingham told me that when they lost a good venue [show house] in their town, it all fell back on us (personal communication, 14 April 2012). Aaron is the Manager of Digital & Social Media Marketing at San Francisco Travel. This kind of orientation toward egalitarian collective action and reciprocity is also discernible in the musical organisation, performance, and sound of many American DIY bands. Through long term ethnographic study of local and translocal DIY scenes, including shows, spaces, and touring practices, I reveal a plethora of reciprocal musical and extra-musical activities that enable the creation of alternative DIY worlds. 2 See for example Gibson-Graham Citation2008; Eriksen Citation2010: 160, 161, 201, 202, 216; Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014; Tausig Citation2014; Dean Citation2015; Otten Citation2015; Graham Citation2016; Kirsch Citation2017. He also gives advice about how to straddle both worlds, and how to pay up (reciprocally) for what bands owe to the community. Registered in England & Wales No. For example, Gilman incorporates all-ages, non-alcohol, and safer space policiesFootnote5 alongside volunteer, collective, and consensus-based approaches to organisation. For example, the aesthetic and cultural notions of quality and individualism still remain present to some degree within American DIY scenes (i.e. Since my research mostly covers years 20104, and therefore does not address any recent changes in the scene (e.g., due to COVID-19 or other factors), the ethnographic findings in this article will be discussed using the past tense. Figure 4. Examples include the Sir Douglas Quintet, whose music took on more of the character of the San Francisco sound, while yet retaining some of its original Texas flavor, Mother Earth, fronted by female lead singer Tracy Nelson, who relocated to the Bay Area from Nashville, and the Electric Flag, bringing Chicago blues to the Bay Area care of former Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield. However, while capitalist commodities are seemingly transformed into non-market or DIY commodities, in a more tacit way they may be seen to co-constitute the capitalist economy. They are just consumers. In this excerpt, Cometbus outlines the central discursive tension existing within American DIY scenes. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. San Francisco always honors its jazz and blues history while listening for what will push the music forward. The Dead Kennedys are often seen as one of the most influential hardcore punk bands of the 1980s, instrumental in the rebellion against the hippie movement of the preceding decades. Moreover, while there is a tangible tendency within American DIY communities toward reciprocal interaction in multiple social and economic aspects of DIY sociability, it is also acknowledged within the DIY scenes that this kind of alternative economy has its own limits. (Personal communication, 29 December, 2010; see Figure 2), House shows are better. To some extent they also do this for wider society (e.g. You can request songs from a library card catalog system. Here are a dozen things to experience at Fort Mason Center right now. It is the oldest nightclub in the neighborhood, and the dcor is reminiscent of turn-of-the-century splendor. And I feel the same about house shows. And so I understood the difference between supporting something and liking it. (Personal communication, 23 January 2011). However, Scott also clarifies that DIY reciprocity is not about direct one-for-one reciprocation but can apply to anybody (somebody else), as long as participants are dedicated to sustaining the scene (keep the energy moving). For example, multiple north (N) and northeast (NE) Portland DIY houses joined together as a local DIY community to co-organise the second Gathering of Goof Punx festival in April 2012. Verbu Citation2018). The strong reciprocal relations between different houses of the DIY community was emphasised to me in an interview with Jai and Dylan from Glitterdome house, who explained that they had friends visit pretty constantly. Both James and Chris thus emphasise the added value of such enclaved DIY shows. It is important to note here that any act of gift-giving (for instance, organising shows) is always also an act that ties individuals to community. Its time we started showing by example that punk is still a community. With their aggressive, politically charged style of music, the Dead Kennedys were a giant middle finger to the status quo that many young punks learned to despise. They wouldnt be anything without the punk rock network of independent distributors, independent promoters, independent fanzines, all operating for mutual benefit, usually with little hope (or desire) for personal gain [] [Bands, y]ou owe punk rock something, so start paying up. Coming of age in the San Francisco Bay Area, famed singer/songwriter Stevie Nicks gained her first performing experience there in the 1960s with Lindsey Buckingham and his band. Thats awesome! In this way, they consciously acknowledge that DIY shows can exist both outside the capitalist system (as temporarily enclaved rituals of decomoditization), and at the same time, within the larger capitalist regime of value.Footnote19 DIY shows thus simultaneously counter as well as co-constitute a capitalist economic system.Footnote20. Thornton Citation1996). Jimi Hendrix lived in San Francisco in the 1960s and became one of the iconic musical talents of the Summer of Love. The Church warehouse in Oakland, during a DIY show (14 December 2012). Catch a show at one of San Francisco's legendary music venues, gems with a rich history and a lineup boasting fresh local artists and music's biggest names. It features a house Hammond B-3 organ, played by the areas best organists, along with a huge record collection. Through long term ethnographic study of local and translocal DIY scenes, including shows, spaces, and touring practices, I reveal a plethora of reciprocal musical and extra-musical activities that enable the creation of alternative DIY worlds. Both emphasise that gift-giving is not a free activity, but that it bonds an individual to reciprocate (returning the favour). Enjoy a show and a cocktail at B-Side, the lounge in the SFJAZZ Center. He refers to the circulation of commodities in the dominant regime as paths, and to divergences from such paths to the alternative regimes of value as diversions. When I asked what else they do communally, they mentioned collective chore charts, monthly cleaning days, and their communal craft supplies (sowing stations, craft materials, collage materials), which other DIY participants could borrow from them or use in Glitterdomes collective spaces (living room, kitchen, front porch, or backyard). In this way, they create alternative DIY systems that co-constitute capitalist ones, while simultaneously being co-constituted by them. 4 See Oakes Citation2009: 45; Threadgold Citation2017: 7, 8; Farrow Citation2020: 11; Haddon Citation2020; Pearson Citation2020: 7; Rogers and Whiting Citation2020: 6; Verbu Citation2021; cf. Accordingly, my central question in this article is: how do American DIY participants manage the tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist systems and worlds? This article is about the alternative economic system that underscores American DIY (do-it-yourself) music scenes, and about how it relates to the American dominant capitalist economy. We had this idea that it was a three-way tie [also the title of one of their albums] and not some hierarchy or aristocracy of guitar. A seminal venue in this regard is Gilman 924 (known also only as Gilman) in Berkeley, California. Oakes Citation2009: 88; emphasis added), I would book a lot ofwouldnt say bad shows, but bad bands, cause I just wanted to have a rule of, like, any kind of music is allowed to be played here, because, when I was a teen in high school [] it was so hard to get a show. Really thats just a fraction of why theyve been noticed. [9] This questing bass quality has been wryly characterized as a "roving" (rather than the conventional "stay-at-home") style. Jessica from Arcata, describing the local DIY scene there as reciprocal, assured me that when particular houses get busted [are forced to close down], different [other] people open their houses [for shows] (personal communication, 20 June 2012). However, there are also other ways in which DIY people enter into the relationship with capitalist modes of production. According to biography author Robert Greenfield, "Jon McIntire [manager of the Grateful Dead from the late sixties to the mid-eighties] points out that the great contribution of the hippie culture was this projection of joy. The San Francisco bands' music was everything that AM-radio pop music wasn't. 10 For another example of DIY egalitarian approach to music-making, by the 1980s and 1990s US group Fugazi, see Azerrad Citation2001: 392, 386, 401, 402. This is how DIY participants themselves, in this case, DIY zine writer and publisher Tom Jennings, describe this process: Bands selling records at shows arent amassing capital to be used later to control more money but probably to buy beer, a T-shirt from the other band, gas to drive to the next show with, and if theyre lucky, rent. However, as I demonstrate above, these same shows and recordings are also manifestations of alternative economic relations established within and outside these events. Named in honor of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and located off an alley near Jackson Square, BIX has been described as a civilized speakeasy, a supper club, and an elegant saloon, offering modern American cuisine served in a soaring two-story dining room to the strains of live jazz nightly. San Francisco's dearly departed nightclubs and music venues. But well known stars of rock & roll "were being called fifties primitives" by this time. Working party at the Glitterdome house, in Portland, 2 April 2012. Even if participants endeavour to detach DIY music making from the capitalist motives of larger society, traces of the dominant economy persist within DIY scenes. All these different kinds and degrees of reciprocity, as the examples above evidence, are interwoven areas of social, cultural, and economic activity that mutually engender each other, and thus also provide a material basis for the local and translocal DIY scenes across the US and internationally. Nevertheless, the system of general reciprocity also keeps these DIY boundaries open, as it works in a seemingly non-obligatory way, in which DIY individuals themselves decide how and when these debts should be reciprocated. Named for legendary saxophonist Charlie Bird Parker and Irish novelist Samuel Beckett, Bird & Beckett in Glen Park is a true neighborhood hotspot that features weekly jazz concerts, allowing you to hear and read about jazz at the same time. In this article, I examine the alternative economics of reciprocity in American DIY (do-it-yourself) culture. While some houses (and DIY spaces) hosted festival shows, others provided shelter for out-of-town visitors and musicians (some guests erecting tents in the backyard of the Glitterdome house), and some collected and distributed donated or dumpster-dived food.Footnote8 Members from most of the DIY houses also either helped with cleaning, cooking for guests or with other small organisational tasks (see Figure 3), as well as actively participating as audiences at festival shows. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > san francisco music venues 1980's. san francisco music venues 1980's. Jun 12, 2022 . The early band venues, while the new SF scene was emerging from folk and folk-rock beginnings, were often places like the Matrix nightclub. SFJAZZ has been at the helm of the city's jazz scene since its founding in the 1980s. Live music performances and music records/cassettes as standardised commodities are in this way diverted from their regular paths in the market economy to an alternative economic regime of value, often through the incorporation of alternative exchange systems (cf. Drawing on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (1986), alongside other authors who examine the co-existence of different economic systems, I chart how DIY practitioners tactically navigate the boundaries between these reciprocal and capitalist economic systems and worlds. In other words, Levy rejects approaches to collective organising that employ balanced reciprocity, with its obligation to reciprocate, as individualistic and selfish. DIY shows in the US are underscored by a complex conjunction of two economic regimes overlapping in one space and time. I therefore also employ both critical and constructive approaches to the alternative DIY economies in the US. San Francisco has a long history with jazz music. A number of key San Francisco rock musicians of the era cited John Coltrane and his circle of leading-edge jazz musicians as important influences. Figure 1. According to Jai we have people over to eat all the time, we make a lot of food for people, we get a lot of free food too, people will come and donate (personal communication, 28 February 2012). It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. Every discussion of the San Francisco music scene eventually turns to The Fillmore, which has hosted such legends as James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. I felt I was sort of a tourist in everybody elses scenes, when I was touring. San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. DIY participant Ben Wiesel, for example, observes that the DIY approach to the show/touring economy, where anything above gas money [as a payment to performers] is immoral, constitutes a twisted DIY ethics (Wiesel, in Makagon Citation2015: 56). However, it is also possible to identify more hierarchical and individualist practices and outcomes in contemporary DIY music-making (Verbu Citation2021: 189; see below). Dylan and Jai ended their reply with the following words: [Dylan] that was a goal, when we moved in, hoping that we will be able to provide for people to do whatever creative project they might have in mind[Jai]like pool our resources with that in mind[Dylan]and not only do we give out, but people also bring in so much. Finally, this study highlights the value of a dialectical scholarship that approaches social phenomena, such as music scenes, as constituted in contradictory and non-deterministic ways, which operate on multiple levels, and which are riven with socio-cultural difference. Steve Miller (who formed the Steve Miller Band) was from Wisconsin, by way of Chicago and New York City while bandmate Boz Scaggs originally called Texas home. DIY performers therefore usually approach and sustain the DIY scenes through the practice of communal reciprocity, by playing for their own fun, and for the interests of the DIY community (horizontal approach), and not for their own individual interests in financial gain and mainstream success (vertical approach). The historical building is large enough to comfortably accommodate more than 1,000 guests but small enough to ensure an intimate experience no matter where you watch the show. Learn about San Francisco's Jazz and Blues history and check out all the best places to see it performed live today. The people who opened their homes to me, honestly, I guarantee, some people [] didnt like the music we played, [] I mean it helps [], if they like the music you play, but [thats not the main reason]. Their performances contrasted with the "standard three-minute track" that had become a clich of the pop-music industry, due to the requirements of AM radio, to the sound capacity of the 45 RPM record, and to the limited potentials of many pop songs and song treatments.