(Cometbus Citation2002). Get out your pens and spraypaint. At first, the local Bay Area bands played in smaller ones. Here are a dozen things to experience at Fort Mason Center right now. Because San Francisco had an especially vibrant and attractive countercultural scene in the latter half of the 1960s, musicians from elsewhere (along with the famous hip multitude) came there. However, on the other, various DIY participants also often advocate for a more balanced strategy that acknowledges the impossibility of completely rejecting capitalist logic within American DIY scenes: The whole world runs on business, exchanging money for goods and services and a lot of people are going to try to sell and buy a lot of everything. (Personal communication, 22 November 2011). Soon after, Ralph J. Gleason and Jann Wenner, based in San Francisco, established Rolling Stone magazine (first issue's date: November 1967). However, there are also other ways in which DIY people enter into the relationship with capitalist modes of production. 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. I am immensely grateful to all of the participants of this research, for accepting me in their spaces and scenes, and for their invaluable insights on the matters discussed herein. For Teague and many other DIY participants in the US, music and other forms of reciprocity go hand in hand, each one engendering the other. San Francisco has a long history with jazz music. Third, the co-existence and interrelatedness of DIY/reciprocal and dominant/capitalist systems extends beyond a simplistic resistance vs power dichotomy. 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. Marx Citation1887). San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. American DIY shows similarly function as enclaved zones and rituals of decomoditization. While it is still a great spot to enjoy cheap beer in a low-key setting, the Saloon is now best known as an intimate venue to enjoy some of the best jazz and blues in the city. They're smaller, more intimate, your gear is at stake because of this, but its worth it because were fucking punk [] Its louder, youre in the crowd, its in your face. [18] Donahue was uniquely qualified, being savvy and enthusiastic about jazz, R&B, Soul, and ethnic music, besides the then-current rock music. 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. Lesh had developed his style on the foundation of having studied classical, brass-band, jazz, and modernist music on the violin and later the trumpet.[10]. He has lived in San Francisco for over 9 years and has worked in Travel & Tourism for over 7 of those. 7 For more on DIY touring in the US, and the notion of translocal reciprocity, see Verbu Citation2021 (chapter 8). However, the above examples demonstrate that at least some DIY participants in the US do not so much contradict themselves as consciously embrace their material condition, often working or negotiating with it creatively, in order to achieve and optimise their ideological and political goals. Additionally, there are numerous Jazz Festivalsthroughout the Bay Area during warmer months. This research also reveals how American DIY participants engage in flexible and part time jobs, live in low-rent areas, and reuse derelict capitalist products and spaces, through which they materially co-constitute both DIY and capitalist worlds. These included sharing of food and equipment among DIY houses, local and translocal exchange of venues, the system of free boxes (see Figure 1),Footnote1 donations at shows, and participatory organiser-performer-audience interactions practices that enabled the creation of alternative cultural DIY worlds, and which in turn informed DIY sounds and aesthetics. This is further emphasised when there are no financial profits generated for performers or intermediaries of these shows, and DIY spaces and modes of organisation are employed in the process including the exchange of venues, items, favours, and equipment and participants not only symbolically but also palpably experience the affective intimacy of the DIY community (Verbu Citation2018, Citation2021; Garcia Citation2020). Established in 1986, it has served as a template and inspiration for many other DIY venues across the US and internationally (Hannon Citation2010: 37). Figure 2. Accordingly, in order to avoid foreclosing the discursive and material space from alternative openings and possibilities, some authors emphasise a need for the ontological reframing and creative re-reading of these alternative economic practices in their relations with capitalism and neoliberalism (Gibson-Graham Citation2008). Wehr Citation2012: 146). Both Grace Slick (singing with Jefferson Airplane) and Joplin (singing initially with Big Brother & the Holding Company) gained a substantial following locally and, before long, across the country.[17]. 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. This is how Teague from Waffle house in NE Portland explained DIY reciprocity and communal living: Its about applying that kind of attitude to your whole lifesome people dont, some people are just like yeah, we have shows here but we dont apply that attitude toward anything else in our lives [], and sometimes you will play somewhere and its like really far-out neo-hippy communitywe have lands, and we grow our own foods, and have a lot of other community projects going on in [our] housea lot of houses that we played at [with his band] were really inspiring [in that sense] [] There would be people canning and processing food, making kombucha, making their own alcohol, [and having] screen printing shops, photo labs, art studio spaces built in the houses[there] would just be a house in a neighbourhood but there would be like nine people living there, and people [living] in the backyardjust every inch of house is utilized in a productive waylike in New York, it was like just a community living to an extreme in a couple of places I went to. Reviews on 80'S Music Clubs in San Francisco, CA - Barracuda '80's Decade Dance Party, Cat Club, Monroe, Bootie Mashup: SF, Butter, New Wave City, Bimbo's 365 Club, Club Gossip, Raven Bar, Oasis Food not bombs), DIY participants thus also enable the neoliberal premise of outsourcing of public services and governmental responsibilities to private entities and individuals (Dean Citation2015: Kirsch Citation2017). (Jennings Citation1998; emphasis added). This zine is a business but its the idea of people running their own business, bands, labels, zines, etc. This led him to feel compelled to create a similar kind of community and alternative economic system when he moved to the Waffle house in Portland. This is exemplified below by Portland DIY participant Aaron Scott, who discusses the relations of reciprocity between performers and organisers of shows, and between the individual and the scene. Monterey, California is about 120 road miles south of San Francisco. Real Estate Software Dubai > blog > san francisco music venues 1980's. san francisco music venues 1980's. Jun 12, 2022 . They explained that the area had a big enough pool [of houses] to be able to spread [the shows] out, so that no individual venue was made to feel overloaded (personal communication, 28 February 2012). DIY organisers who are often also musicians), may later seek out the return of the same favour when they, in turn, go on tour. This logic of capitalist subsumption also relates to other types of DIY tactics of diversion, from dumpsterdiving, to renting of houses in cheap and lower-income neighbourhoods, through which DIYers participate in gradual maximisation of market values of these commodities (Horton Citation1997; Giles Citation2014; Graham Citation2016: 559; Farrow Citation2020: 13); or by volunteering in a variety of cultural and charitable projects (for example, helping with the organisation of cultural and musical events, or participating in food distribution projects, e.g. Band members often switch musical instruments and roles, and thus defy internal ensemble hierarchy (practiced already in the early 1980s by the Raincoats and Beat Happening see Baumgarten Citation2012: 78; Worley Citation2017: 188), and many foster collective group singing (following the example of Fugazi and similar bands). how many calories in 1 single french fry; barbara picower house; scuba diving in florida keys without certification; how to show salary in bank statement This tendency is highlighted in the liner notes to a 1987 compilation of Gilman bands entitled Turn it Around!, published in collaboration with Maximum Rockandroll, an internationally renowned DIY zine from San Francisco: These bands were chosen [to be on the compilation] because of their support of the [Gilman] Project [] The people in these bands can be found at Gilman at any given night [] They come to the meetings, work the shows, play the benefits and put just as much, if not more, into the club than they get out of it. 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. 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. 13 See, for example, Moore Citation2004b: 313; Oakes Citation2009; Wehr Citation2012: 14, 15; Worley Citation2017: 5261, 141, 174; Verbu Citation2021: 5, 8, 879, 136, 1401, 194. [1] San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or spread out like Los Angeles. Aaron is the Manager of Digital & Social Media Marketing at San Francisco Travel. In North Beach, Comstock is a pre-Prohibition cocktail bar experience. The history of San Francisco is deep-rooted in its bond with the Black community. Thats what they think. A whole society, with its own economic . DIY economics of reciprocity, collective participation, and DIY practice, DIY tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist economic systems, https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2180050, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/the-paradox-of-life-affirming-death-traps/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. Among the oldest venues in San Francisco, The Warfield has hosted a number of great black artists, including Louis Armstrong and Prince. Outdoor performances, often organized by the band members themselves and their friends, also played their part. Select a holiday type to discover more or call us on 0161 888 5630 Offers; About Us; Brochures; Contact For instance, several scholars argue there is a tendency for alternative communities from 1960s countercultures to contemporary neo-bohemians to reject the capitalist system in symbolic terms while simultaneously depending upon it materially (Braunstein and Doyle Citation2002: 102; Lloyd Citation2005). Further, DIY venues also foster reciprocal relation with their performers and audiences. Sly & the Family Stone, a San Francisco-based group that got its start in the late 1960s, was an exception, being a racially integrated hippie band with a hefty influence from soul music, hence making use of brass instrumentation. By being discarded, they often either create scarcity and consequently contribute to market demand and supply patterns, or they enter alternative economic business models (small, grassroots, sustainable, eco, ethical, and/or community-oriented niche business entities, e.g. See international artists in state-of-the-art auditoriums or local artists in historic cocktail lounges, unique dive bars, iconic restaurants, modern art galleries, and off-the-beaten path record stores and bookstores. Thats as much of an end goal to them, just as it is for fans. Apart from the discursive dimensions embedded in Cometbus quote, I have observed how the notion of collective reciprocity has materially permeated both cultural and economic aspects of American DIY communities. However, as I demonstrate above, these same shows and recordings are also manifestations of alternative economic relations established within and outside these events. 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. If you have an inclination towards music, you will be startled to visit these music venues which were formed on the foundation of African-American culture. It is true that many of the San Francisco bands did record "three-minute" tracks when they desired pop-music station airplay for a song. [9] This questing bass quality has been wryly characterized as a "roving" (rather than the conventional "stay-at-home") style. Register to receive personalised research and resources by email. Celebrate San Francisco's deep-rooted black history at these music venues that have hosted some of music's most legendary black artists. Reciprocally, these local participants (i.e. DIY reciprocal relations were not restricted to the music sphere but pervaded all manner of everyday practices. The US DIY communities I encountered during my fieldwork, most of which at least partially identify as DIY communities and scenes, utilised a DIY approach partly for ideological purposes, as they strived for creative and social autonomy. Several scholars have discussed how DIY methods of music production result in lo-fi (low fidelity) sounds and aesthetics that reflect a DIY materiality of scarcity, independence, self-reliance, and amateurism (Fonarow Citation2006: 3950; Kruse Citation2010: 633). 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. All rights reserved. People from various N and NE Portland houses are folding cassette cases for the Goof Punx festival compilation, while a music jam session is happening at the same time. And so I understood the difference between supporting something and liking it. When I asked Rick Ele, who used to be one of the most active DIY organisers in Davis and Sacramento between late 1990s, and early 2010s, about the perception of making it within the DIY scenes in the US, he replied: I mean, a lot of people that don't know about underground music, they just think that every band is trying to make it. I therefore also employ both critical and constructive approaches to the alternative DIY economies in the US. In this excerpt, Cometbus outlines the central discursive tension existing within American DIY scenes. Here, Scott describes the basic theory of reciprocity, as outlined by anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his classic study The Gift ([Citation1925] Citation1990). 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. San Francisco's dearly departed nightclubs and music venues. San Francisco offers live jazz and blues each and every night of the week in various settings. Booking shows for this tour was greatly facilitated by the established DIY friendships of one band member who had previously made eight tours of the US. I was able to study this phenomenon ethnographically through focusing on a variety of local American DIY scenes and touring practices, permitting me to encounter a plethora of reciprocal activities. The house also incorporated four additional makeshift living spaces in the form of liveable rooms, three in the basement, and one in the garage. 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. Similar venue-performer, venue-audience, and performer-audience relations and forms of boundary-making have been present at most DIY shows I have attended. 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. [19] An important departure in this new era of "album oriented radio" (AOR) was that show hosts felt free to play lengthy tracks or two or more tracks at a stretch from a good record album. Due to the gradual musical and social diversification of punk and post-punk scenes in the last 40 years, and the redirection of attention from genre and sound to particular (DIY) ethos within these scenes, the DIY label started to be more commonly used as a synonym or a substitute for the term punk in reference to these scenes (ibid.). For example, in the Glitterdome house in NE Portland, these included sharing, borrowing, and exchanging items, goods and even spaces between houses and participants, be it food, free box items (clothes, shoes, books), tapes, or music equipment. Off the beaten path in the Outer Richmond and only a few blocks from Lands End, saxophonist Danny Brown and his family operate one of the citys best record stores and art galleries that features live jazz and jam sessions every Sunday afternoon. Punk rock included [] I mean, every DIY record label is a business you dont give your records away and you cant produce them for free. However, the present tense will be used when considering certain general specifics of the American DIY scenes. With a bar built in 1949, Club Deluxe harkens back to San Franciscos live music scene of the 1950s and 60s. A whole society, with its own economic system even. Moreover, it fosters reciprocal relations between the venue, bands, and audiences. 17 See also Ryan Citation1992: 53; Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Meter Citation2007; Taylor Citation2016: 155, 173. 9 The idea of support aesthetics is similar to the notion of participatory aesthetics (Turino Citation2008: 335) or relational aesthetics (Bourriaud [1998] Citation2006), which find the value and quality of art not in art objects or music sounds themselves, but in the level of social participation/interaction that they generate. E.g. In the summer of 2012, I toured with a band from Portland called 3 Moons, playing shows around the West Coast and the Midwest. And its time to show that creativity is still valued over money. San Francisco always honors its jazz and blues history while listening for what will push the music forward. Furthermore, alternative DIY socio-economic systems succeed in generating considerable symbolic, affective, material, and political value for DIY participants and scenes. From the psychedelic sounds of the '60s to the boundary . Its [also] like that for fans, you know. Both emphasise that gift-giving is not a free activity, but that it bonds an individual to reciprocate (returning the favour). Taylor Citation2016: 15476). 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. People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. Today, the music continues with a packed event calendar that combines new talent and seasoned performers. In the above account he notes how he was inspired by the alternative economic systems of various communal DIY houses, which he visited on his early music tours around the US. The many bands that formed signalled a shift from one subculture to the next. 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. The beatnik thing was black, cynical, and cold. The new music was loud and community-connected: bands sometimes presented free concerts in Golden Gate Park and "happenings" at the city's several psychedelic clubs and ballrooms. do-it-together (seattle diy.com Citation2009: 1). Cited by lists all citing articles based on Crossref citations.Articles with the Crossref icon will open in a new tab. Waffle house residents therefore engaged in collective gardening, and collective use of the various spaces of their compound (comprising a house and large separate garage) as a wood shop, art studio, welding area, bike shop, music rehearsal space, small greenhouse, and screen-printing area. Acoustic music had had an avid following far and wide, but it was "a fading world of traditional folk and Brechtian art songs. Participation between different houses was further emphasised by doing things collectively, such as traveling together to shows, festivals, swimming trips, and karaoke nights, or through collective listening to music, work activities, or music and social event organising (see Figure 2). To be able to tour, bands rely on the help of local participants (who organise shows for them, in their houses, or elsewhere). In addition, I made multiple additional one-day trips to Oakland during my stay in Davis. there is a diversity of possible causal factors that extend beyond the influence of the DIY system), as it is also implicated in the examples above. Rather, the two interact in complex, contradictory, and co-determining ways, as well as operating on multiple levels: ranging from DIY rejection of the dominant system, or the creation of temporary DIY enclaves, to various forms of partial co-dependence (pragmatic, hybrid, lateral, or tacit co-dependence). You can request songs from a library card catalog system. KAOS [from Olympia] was a community radio station; it wasnt saying, Heres a lot of really good music; it was saying Heres a lot of different kinds of music, independent music. Brasses and reeds, such as trumpets and saxophones were rarely used, unlike in contemporary R&B and soul bands and some of the white bands from the U.S. East Coast (e.g., Blood, Sweat & Tears or Chicago). 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. American DIY venues and performers also form a translocal network of reciprocity, which is created through the reciprocal relation of playing and booking each others shows across the US (and beyond). A few blocks from Union Square, Le Colonial serves French-inspired Vietnamese cuisine against the backdrop of live jazz, Monday to Friday, featuring music from the Django Reinhardt-influenced group, Le Jazz Hot, and the sultry soul sounds of Lavay Smith & Her Red Hot Skillet Lickers. This can include anything from the production, distribution, and promotion of music and arts, and self-organisation of spaces and concerts, to other social and daily activities such as making food and clothing, repairing or remodelling vehicles, and social and political self-organising (Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Metre Citation2007; Wehr Citation2012; Debies-Carl Citation2014). This preference for musical collaboration, collective decision-making, and collective musical interplay is also evident in more recent musical endeavours (Verbu Citation2021: 325, 189). Some of the country's biggest entertainers credit The Fillmore with launching their careers, including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Santana. When you see the Tony Bennett statue outside of theFairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, you will gain a better understanding of how San Francisco has embraced its jazz history. It is always advisable to contact the venues directly if you want to make the most of these cultural and musical avenues during your stay in San Francisco. The San Francisco bands' music was everything that AM-radio pop music wasn't. Figure 4. San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or . Dedicated in 2016, the statue signifies the citys ongoing love affair with the song, the music, and the musicians who make it. Appadurai terms these kinds of processes rituals of decomoditization (Citation1986: 26). Furthermore, DIY participants often reject the implied individualism of the DIY label (do-it-yourself), and instead emphasise the collective nature of the DIY method, by relabelling it as DIT, i.e. "[4] This recycling approach is highlighted by Jai from Glitterdome house, in Portland: We make all merch[andise] by ourselves, we can cut costs by collecting shirts from [free] boxes, [or by] using SCRAP, which stands for School and Community Resource Action Project [local community store selling scrap materials], we can use that to get different materials for making our merch, that helps us so whenever we do make money from that, we can make money to put in our gas tank, to keep going, or to put out more records. Cate Blanchett as Lydia Tr | Courtesy of Focus Features Films about classical music go back to at least the 1930s. For example, as explained by their bass player, Mike Watt, South Californian 1980s punk/DIY band Minutemen in this way adapted the ideas of collaborative equality to their music practice and sound: D. Boon [Minutemen guitarist] played really heavily with trebly new power chords and left all this room for the bass guitar [], and then worked with Georgie [the drummer] to make sure he had all these fills and parts to jam to and add movement to the songs. 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. 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). Nicks and Buckingham went on to bring that San Francisco sound to established British rock band Fleetwood Mac when they both joined in 1975. It features a house Hammond B-3 organ, played by the areas best organists, along with a huge record collection. Some DIY participants live in collective houses and engage in everyday sustainable and alternative economies, others open collectively run businesses, stores, coffee shops, and restaurants, and/or take part in collective grassroots political organising (Wehr Citation2012). Its insulting to the other people in the community who volunteer to put a lot of the work in. How much would you pay to hop into a time machine and visit San Francisco's long-gone Winterland Ballroom on Jan. 14, 1978, the night . It involved recording interviews, attending concerts, living in DIY houses, touring with bands (through West Coast and Midwest), and analysing DIY literature (e.g. This kind of diversion from the capitalist market economy and experience is vividly expressed by DIY participant James from Davis, California: [at DIY house shows] we are experiencing music outside of the [dominant] modes of exchange that we are used to, even if we still pay donation money [] For me, something that exists outside the normal form of exchange you go to a venue, bar making money, going buying drinks; this [DIY show] is much more visceral, conducive to real interchange between people. Furthermore, DIY performers also usually reject the notion of making it, which is a concept that refers to musicians efforts to succeed in the competitive capitalist music market. 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. Performances of an international super group like the Beatles were hosted in a huge venue like the Cow Palace. And on the other hand, practical efforts toward, but also failures and difficulties in, embracing the reciprocal social and economic relations, which include collective networks of mutual aid, active participation, and DIY methods. In this article, I examine the alternative economics of reciprocity in American DIY (do-it-yourself) culture. Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. 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.
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