WORD SALAD

Word Salad - Full set from a 2007 show I booked for them in Berkeley, CA

Pigheart Transplant

Still Not Quiet On The Western Front: Sunday Matinee

Ludicra

Ludicra - Urban Guerrilla Zine b-day show in Berkeley, 2002

Photo by Sam Bortnick

Discordia

DISCORDIA - live in Mexico 

I used a song from their demo on the first Urban Guerrilla Zine compilation back in 2001 (it came free with a zine). This video looks like it was probably shot in the late 90s. Members of Discordia went on to play in bands like Bumbklaatt and Coaccion, both of which I booked shows for here (Bay Area) up until the late 2000s.

Still Not Quiet On The Western Front

Maximum Rocknroll presents their first fest in almost a decade! STILL NOT QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT Fest will be happening in the Bay Area Thursday February 11th through Sunday February 14th of 2016. Forty DIY punk bands from all over will be playing shows in San Francisco, Oakland, and Berkeley, with five main shows, two day shows, and three after shows. 

For more info: https://www.facebook.com/events/1717331005163685/

RIP Filip Fuchs

This photo was taken by Murray Bowles at a show See You In Hell played in Oakland at a now defunct cafe. Definitely not one of our (UGZ) shows, which is what happens sometimes when you lose touch over the years.  The show before that was in SF at a cool, basement style venue around the block from the old CW, but it’s not where I would've imagined SYIH playing after waiting so many years to to tour and play the Bay Area. Filip and I talked about a bunch of stuff (an attempt to quickly catch up) that night, but the one thing I definitely took away from our conversation was that his enthusiasm for that tour was waning, to say the least. As a booker/promoter I wasn't too stoked on the Oakland gig (although the bands were solid), but at least it was packed for that venue. I didn't recognize as many people as I would've even 5 years earlier, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything. At the end of See You In Hell's set, someone associated with the cafe got in Filip's face for who knows what reason.  I didn’t know or recognize the kid that did that, but already knowing how Filip felt about the tour prior to the Oakland show just added to the frustration I felt when I saw that.  To make matters worse I found out later that someone stole the band's tour money at that show.  Oakland, a city that Filip was genuinely excited about playing when we discussed it in the early two thousands at one of the Super Sabado Gigante shows had turned out to be nothing like the way I’d described it to him thirteen years earlier.  

Like I said, I lost touch with Filip and a bunch of my pre-social networking pen pals from back when Urban Guerrilla Zine was bigger, and a momentarily a record label, so it was cool to discover things I missed in the last 24 hours, like a video of See You In Hell playing a breakfast show in Austin at Chaos In Tejas, as well as videos of the band playing shows in BRNO, Czech Republic, including one where they dressed up like Discharge, charge hair and all.  I was writing and trading with Filip over a decade ago, but he was only in his mid-thirties when he lost his battle with cancer this past weekend.  I think his young age speaks to how active and committed he was to the spirit and ideal of hardcore D.I.Y. punk.  He accomplished a lot (more than I know actually) in his relatively short time here on this plane of existence, and his passing is our loss.  RIP Filip Fuchs.

Thursday Blog 1.7.16

Here is my first blog of the new year, and even though I’m looking forward to 2016, this is going to be a look back at Urban Guerrilla Zine in 2015.  I attempted to post a new blog every Monday towards the end of last year, which pretty quickly turned into every other Monday, but even so I’ve decided to commit to posting a couple a blogs a week in 2016.  Now, let’s take it back to time not so long ago.

In 2015, I managed to put out two zines, which isn’t that impressive.  On the other hand, when you’ve been putting out a zero zines per year for the last seven or eight years, two’s pretty good.  Urban Guerrilla Zine has never really gone away or stopped being active.  When there wasn’t a new issue of Urban Guerrilla Zine there were over a hundred UGZ Presents shows that I booked and promoted, like the UGZ Speed Trials for example, and when I stopped booking shows there was the internet.  When the internet started to feel a bit too isolating and detached, I decided to make zines again.  For most folks Urban Guerrilla Zine existed from 1997-2006, and that was pretty much it until 2015.

Urban Guerrilla Zine #17 was made to accompany a UGZ themed art show that took place in early 2015 at 1-2-3-4 Go! Records in Oakland, at the urging of Pat Libby for which I am grateful.  Urban Guerrilla Zine #17.5 was a half issue entitled “Summer Of No Love”, which was supposed to be out by late summer, but didn’t actually see the light of day until the fall due to issues with the printer.  In fact both zines had printer issues, and in both cases I found myself at Inkworks Press (a worker owned collective) in Berkeley, having to photocopy what were intended to be offset printed zines.  Inkworks doesn’t have the best copy machines, but they are well maintained, so the zines looked pretty good.  The biggest drop off from offset to photocopy would be the photo quality.  In the case of #17 I had to have it done in time for the art show, which we’d also advertised as a zine release party.  As far as the “Summer Of No Love” half issue went, I wanted that out as quickly as possible because I know me, and if I’d waited any longer then it would’ve ended up with all of the other unfinished projects cluttering my work area.

Urban Guerrilla Zine #17.5 is a very personal issue, but not a “personal zine”.  Maybe I should’ve made that distinction a bit more clear when describing it in previous posts.  I wasn’t that concerned with how much the graphics or stories resonated with the reader as much as I wanted to recreate this one summer in Emeryville, standing at a bus stop next to a casino that was in the process of being torn down, surrounded by elderly Asian gambling addicts and crack addicted prostitutes from the stroll a few blocks away on San Pablo Ave.  The vibe I felt while waiting to transfer to the bus I rode to my summer job at a bookstore, where I spent all day indoors when all I wanted was to hang out on Telegraph Ave with my friends.  I didn’t actually write any of that in the zine, but it’s there.

Looking ahead, I plan on doing more zines in 2016, one or two of those will be newer issues of UGZ for what has admittedly become a somewhat limited audience.  On the other hand, I don’t miss printing a thousand zines at a time, and distributing them, then trying to collect the money I’m owed from all the various distributors around the country.  I’m making zines at this point because I enjoy the process, and so I’ll see where that approach takes things from here on out.

If you didn’t get a copy of Urban Guerrilla Zine #17, the only remaining copies I know of are at Needles and Pens, 1173 Valencia St, San Francisco, CA

If you want a copy of Urban Guerrilla Zine #17.5 aka “Summer Of No Love”, then you can still purchase a copy at:

1-2-3-4 Go! Records, 420 40th Street #5, Oakland, CA

Issues Magazine + More, 20 Glen Ave, Oakland, CA

Pegasus Books, 2349 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley, CA

Bound Together Books, 1369 Haight St, San Francisco, CA

Darby Crash

Darby Crash (September 26, 1958 – December 7, 1980)

Triad

Urban Guerrilla Zine b-day show in Berkeley, 2002

Photo by Sam Bortnick

UGZ Speed Trials

Here’s a Larry Wolfley photo taken at Burnt Ramen, and in the background you can see the top of a UGZ Speed Trials poster from 2002, the first year we did one.

GERMS

Germs - 1979 interview on KROQ with Rodney Bingenheimer 

Alice Bag

Alice Bag at her mom’s house in 1978

Check out Alice's "Violence Girl" blog

LOGICAL NONSENSE

Logical Nonsense - 1999

SWANN DANGER

Jim Nastic playing drums for Swann Danger at a show we booked for them at 924 Gilman in 2008.

BLOWN TO BITS

I snapped this pic of an old Blown To Bits sticker down by the train tracks in Berkeley this past weekend.

Flashback Friday

Poster for day one of Gilman's 20th anniversary, which took place on the last weekend in December of 2006. I was voted in as head booker about two weeks prior to this, and with two weeks left to go we had no show for that night (the two bookers who originally had the night kinda, sorta dropped the ball). Long story short, Ariel Awesome, Nicole Beyries, and myself booked this in about a week, which gave me a week to make a poster and flyer the Bay Area. Of course some of our haters (same 3-4 people that still talk shit today) talked shit on the entire weekend in the weeks following, like we had some kind of agenda with these bills, when in reality we all just felt a lot of pressure to not blow it, which could've easily happened.

1984

1984 - CRUCIFIX 30TH Anniversary, which took place last Saturday in Oakland, California. 1984 performed the “Dehumanization” album in it’s entirety.

SBITCH

Sbitch from Austin, Texas, by way of El Paso, at Burnt Ramen in 2001. Rampaging Insane Depravity Fest. Photo by Sam Bortnick

REAGAN SS

Reagan SS set from the 2002 Rampaging Insane Depravity Fest. The 2002 R.I.D. Fest took place at various venues throughout the Bay Area and Southern California. This set in particular is from day two of the fest, which took place at both Warm Water Cove in San Francisco during the day and 924 Gilman in Berkeley at night. Reagan SS played the Gilman show in the Bay Area and a house party in Long Beach when the fest moved south the following weekend.