Last week I went to a talk about the book Gimme Something Better at Bluestockings, a radical bookstore in Manhattan. The speakers were Silke Tudor, who is one of the book’s authors, Larry Livermore, Aaron Cometbus, journalist A.C. Thompson, and author Jennifer Blowdryer, all of whom were part of East Bay punk history.

The audience was more book nerds than punks (including my book-nerd self), but it was nice to see the topic of the book discussed in its own context. Bluestockings is part of a wide community committed to social justice and equality that extends all over the world, and that includes creative and subversive subcultures like punk rock.

It might seem odd to refer to punk rock as “subversive,” because it’s so accepted and commonplace nowadays, but its essence has always been as a vehicle for independent expression (often of radical ideas), separate from and an antidote to commercial music made only for profit. That hasn’t changed. Wherever you are, there’s probably a DIY punk rock scene somewhere not too far away.

That wasn’t specifically discussed that night, because it’s all kind of a given. But the panelists talked about how they each experienced the East Bay punk scene. Aaron Cometbus said that one of the things he liked about this book is that it talks about a particular time period without disparaging what came before or after, something that accounts of punk scenes tend to do: everyone thinks that punk is dead once they stop paying attention to it. A.C. Thompson talked about how goofy and fun the East Bay scene was: it was highly political but not dead-serious all the time.

Someone in the audience asked the panelists what show was the most memorable for them. Larry Livermore said that was impossible to answer, but he mentioned the last show Green Day played at Gilman before Dookie came out, but after they had signed to Warner, in December of 1993, which was moving and bittersweet, because everyone knew things were going to change. I think he said people were actually waltzing, if I heard him right…

Tudor said that they were approached to write a history of Gilman St., but the project became much bigger than just Gilman St. It took three years to compile instead of the planned-on one year, and ended up being 800 pages, which had to be cut down to 400 for publication. Some of the outtakes are on the website.

If you haven’t read this one, about Blatz (a band Billie Joe played in, apparently while on acid…) and the zine Absolutely Zippo, it’s pretty funny… Ben Saari says: “I never even knew Billie Joe. But from a distance I was like, ‘Oh, I don’t like that guy, he’s too nice and too pretty.’”

Billie Joe talks about Absolutely Zippo in the book (and I’m posting this here just because it’s funny):

“Robert [Eggplant] would come to school with copies of his zine and he’d say, ‘Billie, take ten and go around. They’re a quarter apiece.’ It was filled with profanity, and the trendier kids in 11th and 12th grade, of course, thought it was the coolest thing ever. My teacher came up and grabbed one, ‘What are you selling there?’ and I said, ‘It’s my friend’s magazine. It’s a quarter. Do you want one?’ The cover said ‘Legalize Crack!’ I got suspended for five days, something like that.’”

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Related post:
Pinhead Gunpowder, Absolutely Zippo, and DIY

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