As of this writing, it looks, too, like our old band, Ye Olde Buttfuck, will play a rare reunion at the Chattanooga show. We had our first show eight long years ago on the night after the 2000 election when they were still counting — or not counting — the votes. That night we proudly debuted what we announced was “the first anti-President George W. Bush song by any punk band in America”, our hastily written song, “Double Fuck W.” In December 2008, we hope to get some of the shit off our backs and close the door on this long, doomed era with one more show! You can listen to our 2003 song “Sirens” here, or listen to our “cover” of former Attorney General, John Ashcroft’s song, “Let The Eagle Soar” from a live show at Gilman Street in Berkeley in January 2004 here.

As of this writing, the Chattanooga punks are still looking for a place to hold the show. Location TBA.

On The Lower Frequencies/I’m Like This Everyday Tour

December 5 Chattanooga, TN w/ Eric Nelson acoustic at Ziggy’s 7:00 PM. (Ye Olde Buttfuck and Hidden Spots play up the street at Anarchtica at 10:00 PM!)

December 6 Asheville, NC at Bookworks w/ Blaire Menace and Josh Mayfield

The release party for On The Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of The City at Counterpulse turned out to be a real blow out — as inspiring and chaotic as many of the illegal punk rock shows and activist events I describe in the book itself. Because so much of the material in the book describes the work of a large community fighting together against gentrification and the war over these past ten years, I felt very strongly that I didn’t want the first book party to be a typical author event that would be all about me. It didn’t seem fitting to stand up and read for an hour out of the book when there were so many other people involved. So, for the release party, I tried to get many of the folks who are in the book to come do presentations in some way about what they’re doing now. What I didn’t count on was that there would be a line of 75-100 folks around the block who couldn’t get in to the overcapacity space, or that it would be that one insanely hot day that SF has every 5 years. With the heat and the crowd, it was pretty crazy.

In the style of the 949 Market Squat shows detailed in the book, the release party was all about “What we’re for, not what we’re against” in its presentation. There was a mountain of excellent free vegan food, provided by Kaliflower and cooked by underground chef, Leif Hebendal. There was a wall of flyers from the past ten years above the food table. Next to that on the wall was an enormous silkscreened tapestry, designed and sewn by Zara Thustra and Ivy Jeanne. Then Heather Renee Russ of Cutter Photozine provided a wall of her excellent photos from the same era — photos that featured lots of protests and dancing. Prints of parts of the tapestry were available for free, as was a pile of old copies of the Turd-Filled Donut, and Sy Loady and Frog’s new street paper, The Orifice.

Next up were the speakers. Due to the heat and lack of oxygen, I declined to read. Instead I showed a slide show of some of the events from the book and talked about our Mayor’s new whiz kid idea to fix homelessness in SF (this time he aims to put old parking meters around town that people can put change into instead of giving cash to panhandlers!) Then Mary Howe and Ro Giuliano from SF Needle Exchange talked about how the exchange was formed ten years ago and what they’re doing today to keep providing their invaluable public health service despite the anti-homeless climate in the city today. (The SFNE is in the book. An old interview with Matty Luv and Ro details how they went and did the exchange illegally and were arrested several times doing it until the cops finally negotiated with them and they became a legally sanctioned exchange!) Next, Paul Boden founder and former director of the Coalition On Homelessness came up to talk about how the COH formed with a small group of pissed off homeless folks 20 years ago, how they’ve never taken government funding, and about the group of homeless folks known as United Poor People who were camped out at that very moment in front of City Hall in Portland, OR. he got everyone really pumped up. Next up was Antonio Roman-Alcala from Alemany Farm, who talked about how some folks just sort-of took over and started farming the abandoned Alemany Farm next to the Alemany Projects in 2005. Today, they, too are sanctioned officially by the City.

Bands came next — Shotwell, talking about Prop 98; then Black Rainbow. The cops came during the Judy Experience, in the show’s last 15 minutes. Luckily everyone was so pumped up from all the anti-police speeches that the crowd jumped into action to try to keep the cops from illegally entering the space. There were, of course, several activist attorneys familiar with working street demos on hand, too. But for a minute it seemed real tense. When the music stopped, though, the cops seemed satisfied and left. Several people, of course, joked that I had called them myself to make the show look cooler!

Big thanks to everyone who waited in line for a chance to come in, to all who bought books, and to all the speakers, artists, food providers, etc. It was a very special night for me and so, so fitting!

SF artist, Rigo 23 and I have, at last, finished the epic project of making box sets out of the zines from Rigo’s 2007 exhibition Backtrackin’ 199485! Last year, for an exhibition at the Luggage Store Gallery in san Francisco, Rigo made nine enormous paintings of events in semi-recent Bay Area political history (between 1985 and 1994) that influenced his development as a political artist in some way. The subjects of the paintings included protesters taking over the Bay Bridge in the 1991 Gulf War Protests, the explosion of Judi Bari’s car, the first Critical Mass bike rides in downtown SF, the murder of Huey Newton in West Oakland, and the ongoing harassment of Food Not Bombs by SFPD. Rigo asked me to make a 40-page zine to accompany each painting that would include historical information about the events depicted in the paintings. Now, we have collected the zines together in a limited edition box set and included a 10th zine with pictures of the art from the show and writing about the show by Rigo and I. You get about 400 pages of lost radical history all for ONLY $20!

To see paintings at the exhibition click here

Order from Needles and Pens or Booklyn

Song #1: NOLA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds63VQ7qaxw

Song #2: Ornamental

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uRiFJQGVrs