Turds On the Run

And the beginnings of Bay Area punk rock

Dead Kennedys, Club Minimal, Sacramento, California, 1983

Thanks for reading, and welcome to you new subscribers! After the wild success of the No Kings protests, and San Francisco in particular capturing a lot of the national attention with some amazing photos, it seemed appropriate to revisit some classic Bay Area punk rock.

Apart from New York, the Bay Area claims the oldest continual punk scene in the United States. Silke Tudor and I chronicled this incredible arc of music & culture in our 2009 oral history, Gimme Something Better. (Many books have drilled down into this scene since then, most recently, Anna Brown’s collection of photography by Murray Bowles.) In GSB, we set about to chronicle a comprehensive overview of Bay Area punk from the mid-70s through the end of the 90s. We spoke to everyone from Billie Joe Armstrong to Rancid, Dead Kennedys, Operation Ivy, Crime, The Nuns, Nazi skinheads, Yeastie Girlz, The Avengers, Flipper, Mr. T Experience, Victims Family, The Beatnigs, Fang, Aaron Cometbus, the co-founders of Maximum Rock’n’Roll Radio, and a fellow named Bob Noxious, who was living somewhere in the Santa Cruz mountains and did our interview while sitting in a bathtub guzzling from a bottle of chartreuse.

We interviewed over 300 people, at least 700 hours worth. And we had no way to transcribe it all. We posted a listing on Craigslist, and for some reason the post was taken down. In a stroke of luck, I was seated next to Craig Newmark at a dinner party shortly thereafter, and he was appalled to hear this, so he personally saw that our listing was restored, and we then collected volunteer transcribers from all over the US and the UK to help finish the project (thank you again!).

For the prologue chapter of Gimme Something Better, “Turds On the Run,” we asked members of the first-wave Bay Area punk community: What was the zeitgeist musical landscape that led to the creation of punk rock? What sort of music pissed you off, or drove you crazy, at the time?

In order of appearance:

Howie Klein - executive, 415 Records, Sire Records, Reprise Records

Jello Biafra - vocalist, Dead Kennedys, proprietor of Alternative Tentacles Records

Dave Dictor - vocalist, MDC (Millions of Dead Cops)

Max Volume - guitarist, Naked Lady Wrestlers

James Stark - early punk photographer & author

Rozz Rezabek - vocalist, Negative Trend, Theater of Sheep

Jennifer Miro (RIP) - vocals & keyboards, The Nuns

Joe Rees - Target Video

Penelope Houston - vocalist, The Avengers

Ray Farrell - co-founder, Maximum RocknRoll Radio

Winston Smith - graphic artist, Dead Kennedys, Green Day, etc.

Dennis Kernohan (RIP) - vocalist for The Liars, Sudden Fun

Steve DePace - drummer, Flipper

Klaus Flouride - bassist, Dead Kennedys

East Bay Ray - guitarist, Dead Kennedys

Turds On the Run

Howie Klein: There was this hideous interlude of corporate rock where the cool Yardbirds turned into Led Zeppelin, and suddenly there was Journey and Kansas and REO Speedwagon, just all this pure garbage.

Jello Biafra: 99.9 percent of the population listened to Elton John and Saturday Night Fever. In a way, that music was a major influence on us because we hated it so much.

Dave Dictor: I couldn’t go see Marshall Tucker one more time. Allman Brothers, Grateful Dead, The Who, Yes. That arena rock, it was just numbing. You were like an ant, with 40,000 other people, and you really felt disconnected from what was going on.

MDC, On Broadway, San Francisco, circa 1980, photo: Jennifer Patterson Lohman

Max Volume: Journey. They were one of the worst.

James Stark: Journey, Jefferson Starship, all that kind of shit. Genesis.

Rozz Rezabek: Boston, Toto, REO Speedwagon, Air Supply. Michael Murphy’s “Wildfire.”

Jennifer Miro: I was in this horrible band in Mill Valley, and we did Doobie Brothers songs. I had to sing “China Grove.” It was the lowest point of my life.

Joe Rees: Anything disco. That type of music was part of a big corporate ripoff. It was threatening to take everyone’s mind away.

Penelope Houston: It looked like 1973. People were dressed in bell bottoms and long hair and stuff like that.

The Avengers, San Francisco, April 1977

Ray Farrell: There was a radio show on KPFA called “Music From the Hearts of Space.” Really fucking aggravating.

Winston Smith: Some of the bands were washed-up ‘60s bands, who were still doing bar acts.

Dennis Kernohan: Montrose, and fuckin’ Santana, and blah blah blah, the list goes on and on.

Steve DePace: Corporate rock bands of the day like Air Supply and Journey, the Doobie Brothers, Steely Dan, Rush. These bands were technically superb. If you were a 15-year-old kid, listening to that, you were going, “How do I do that? I just wanna be in a band with my buddies and play.”

Flipper, 9:30 Club, Washington D.C., 1984

Klaus Flouride: When people say “What got you into punk?” I say, “The Eagles.” Nothing in the mainstream that was calling itself rock ‘n’ roll was really rock ‘n’ roll. It was easy-listening music at that point.

East Bay Ray: The music I really hated the most was fusion jazz.

Klaus Flouride: I hated fusion opera even worse.

East Bay Ray: I think that’s called musicals.

Klaus Flouride: I think it’s called Yes. I had a dream that I was a roadie for Asia one time. I don’t know what the hell that was about.