The Black Dahlia

UGZ #15 visits The Black Dahlia's grave.

The Slaughterhaus

Here's a Throwback Thursday photo that first appeared in UGZ #16.  Carlos Antagony and Loren Motor at the Slaughterhaus in Oakland, CA circa 2004.  Photo by Larry Wolfley

Time Warp: 2007

Check out this short video (very short) from the biggest Gilman show of 2007. It was my first time booking Joel's annual birthday weekend, which I did for a couple of years before handing it off to a fellow booker at some point.  This wasn't even the headliner, it's the last song (a cover) from our co-headliner that night, the Groovie Ghoulies.  Joel and I worked out a good system where he micromanaged one night, and I booked a more over the top version of his show the next night. This was the 'next night', headlined by Gravy Train.

Gilman's 20th Anniversary weekend took place a month prior to this, and the second show of that weekend turned out to be the biggest show of 2006 (at Gilman).  In a very short period of time, Gilman went from a club that was so unwilling to change that volunteers would often make statments at monthly membership meetings like, 'I'd rather we closed our doors for good than raise door prices', or 'If Gilman can't survive having 50 person shows, then maybe it's time to let it die', to a collective that was constantly looking forward, and eager to approve any changes that would allow Gilman to continue on long after most of us had moved on.

El Sob

"El Sob" by the Asheville, NC band ASTRID OTO.  This song also appeared on the Urban Guerrilla Zine compilation that accompanied issue ten of our zine.

Night Vision

Look Back And Laugh video from the first night of a Christ On Parade reunion weekend that we booked at 924 Gilman in 2007.  This was one of a handful of videos that were shot by UGZ friend and supporter Chris Sickdog, formerly of the dogmalice.com website.  Chris' videos utilized the night vision function on his camera, which is why they lack color depth.

Here are two more examples taken from the same weekend as the LBAL video above.

Christ On Parade

Attitude Adjustment

S.T.F.U.

This was going to be a Flashback Friday post, but we'll start off a new week with this photo of Tony S.T.F.U., from the band S.T.F.U., hanging outside of a Dischord tribute show we booked at Burnt Ramen Studios in Richmond, California in 2003.  I've posted the flyer design below, but it's important to note that the actual flyers for that show were all hand screened using various color combinations.  Due to our D.I.Y. approach, and a lack of silkscreening experience, no two were the same.  The bands that played the Dischord tribute show, with the exception of the Scurvy Dogs, were all bands that we'd booked numerous times at venues like Burnt Ramen, Mission Records, and Gilman between 2001-2004.

BABYLAND

A throwback Thursday photo from 2008, taken at a BABYLAND show we booked at 924 Gilman in Berkeley.  We were not the first to book a Babyland show at Gilman, although unfortunately we were the last since the band broke up prior to an announced final show we'd set up for them in 2009.

If there was one thing that set most of the Babyland shows we did apart from the band's previous shows at the club, then it would have to be that we booked Babyland shows from the top down.  The bills and promotion were all about Babyland, from the posters to the club cards to the way we staffed and soundchecked the band.  Once we painted the entire club black, with the only hint of color being a blue Babyland logo on the wall behind the stage.  Eventually we made connections with bands and bookers from the industrial scene, and for a moment it seemed as if that scene might be able to establish itself at Gilman the way Babyland had a decade earlier, but after Babyland called it a day in 2009, it was as if those conversations had never taken place.

Babyland - "Dismissal" live at Gilman in 2007

Babyland poster from 2007

Babyland club cards from 2008 and 2009

NEEDLES

Needles opening a show we co-booked with Nunca Mas for Total Fury (Japan) at 924 Gilman in 2009.  This is an early performance by what could be referred to as a superband, featuring members of Los Crudos, Talk Is Poison, Limpwrist, Kill The Man Who Questions, Dead And Gone, Black Fork, and more.  Shot by our buddy Dan at KillThatCat.com

POCOS PERO LOCOS

It wasn't that long ago that finding videos of GRIMPLE performing live in the early nineties online seemed nearly impossible.  I remember scanning the lists of many a video trader way back in the AOL days of the internet and only seeing one, that being a reunion show the band played at a memorial/benefit show for a friend (Lucky Dog) who passed away in the late nineties.  The video of that performance, if you could track a copy down, was always a second or third generation copy (best case scenario).  In spite of the grainy quality and less than optimum sound quality, that video really captured what was the stand out performance of a stacked bill that also featured sets from ELDOPA(1332), FILTH, and EXODUS.

A few years after tracking down that grainy copy of the GRIMPLE reunion at Lucky Dog's memorial show, I came across a second video from that same night, shot from a different (better) angle.  A friend of mine - Carlos Antagony - had master copies of both GRIMPLE and ELDOPA's set, the quality of which blew everything else away.  To make a long story short, Carlos and I edited the GRIMPLE set down to include on a GRIMPLE discography CD that I was going to release on my label at the time, but when members of the band mentioned wanting both Vinyl reissues, as well as a CD containing the first LP, 7" EP, and some unreleased songs, we passed the project along to Prank Records.  Prank Records was a much more established label, with superior distribution, and of course its owner Ken Sanderson had drawn the cover art for the band's first LP - "Up Your Ass".  We gave Ken everything we had at the time, including the video, which was supposed to appear on the Prank version of the CD reissue, but even though it's listed on the CD insert, the video is nowhere to be found.  You can probably chalk up the videos omission to excessive cost or perhaps the limitations of technology at the time, but till this day very few people have ever seen a good quality version of what the band's guitar player Greg told me was the best set GRIMPLE ever played.

More recently, Dan Hashthrash from KillThatCat.com has tracked down and posted two different videos featuring live performances from GRIMPLE during the "Up Your Ass" era at 924 Gilman.  What makes these videos interesting to me is the way the band mixes in songs from the first 7" with songs from the "Up Your Ass" LP, then they'll throw in a song or two from their considerably more metal influenced split with LOGICAL NONSENSE, before returning once more to the melodic thrash of their earlier releases, after a quick spoken word or freestyle rap by lead vocalist Pat Vigil of course.

Update from Ken at Prank Records: 'Met with Pat Grimple this week, and we are finally going to start rolling the ball on the Split LP and Re-issuing "Up Your ass". Kinda thinking the Split remastered with a gatefold sleeve and the 1st LP as a picture disc.  Fall....'

ATRIARCH

We quickly cranked out this flier for the ATRIARCH show on May 25th at Gilman, and we'll be there to support the best show happening that night in the Bay Area.  If you haven't been to Gilman for a while, then this is a good bill to come back to since it's a departure from what the club's been doing the last couple of years.

NO STATIK

How about a Flashback Friday post to help kick start a newer, more active phase of this blog, and the zine itself?  Here's an entire set of NO STATIK opening for RORSCHACH a couple of years ago (2011) at 924 Gilman in Berkeley, CA.



The RORSCHACH show was one of three shows that UGZ booked and promoted at Gilman in 2011 (along with YOB and POISON IDEA shows).  The profits from those shows equaled the amount of money the club made that year, which is a coincidence of course since there were other big shows booked that year by Max Montez and others, but without those three shows the club would've lost money in 2011, so we felt like we contributed a little something that year in spite of being mostly inactive in terms of booking and promoting.  Just as important as the money was the fact that we booked three awesome shows, all of them four band bills, and each one of them representing different musical styles and scenes within the greater scene.  Thanks to Dan Hashthrash for shooting and uploading this video to his Kill That Cat channel.

SUICIDIDAL TENDENCIES

Check out this killer interview that Chris Kontos did (for Capital Chaos TV) with Mike Muir of SUICIDAL TENDENCIES backstage at the Regency Ballroom in San Francisco.  Mike explains his approach to the band after all these years, his philosophy for life and how he lives it, really breaking it down for anyone that's willing to listen.

Part 1:

SUICIDAL TENDENCIES (interview part 1) on... by CapitalChaosTV

Part 2:
SUICIDAL TENDENCIES (interview part 2) on... by CapitalChaosTV