Disclaimer: LOOOOONG post follows. Totally off the topic of flipping. Oh man, that'd make me feel old LOL. Well I don't have a lot of stories unfortunately, because I was about 16 during their heyday. Things were looser back then so even though I was too young to get into most clubs, I was almost never carded. However a mutual friend of Hank's (now known by his real name Henry Rosenthal, now an indie movie producer) would tell doormen that I was a roadie to get me in. Main thing I remember is that the band members had very strong personalities and were smart, smart, smart. Joey D'Kay and Hank were the "nice" members, although I'm told in later years they all mellowed out. One thing I remember is that the band "required" that newspaper ads for multiple shows always made the CRIME logo 40% bigger than any other band's ... and the papers actually complied! This pissed a lot of other bands off but I thought it was hilarious. Crime rejected the "punk" label, preferring to call themselves "San Francisco's only Rock'n'Roll band," which if course also pissed off people, especially hippies. My favorite memory is that Crime played a gig at San Quentin Prison wearing actual SFPD uniforms. The inmates got the joke and loved it. The cops were not amused. and got the board of supervisors to pass some legislation making it illegal to wear an SFPD uniform if you're not actually SFPD, which I think was already law anyway, whatever. I was a high school acquaintance of Mike Lucas' (then known as MAL, later bass player for the Phantom Surfers.) Mike moved in to The Complex on his own floor which is probably why I was there a lot. They still have that building on Stevenson Street between Market and Mission, which they call The Complex. Carola was a member of Versus, a punk girl band, and both were members of Other Music, which was a "justly intoned" American gamelan. They had feet in punk and 'New Music" at the same time. Somehow through these connections I was able to get Snakefinger, talented bizarro guitarist best known for his work the The Residents (one of whom also became a good friend in later years) to play a gig on the front lawn of my high school in San Mateo, which was pretty cool because even though most of the students weren't into punk, they were a very good, interested audience for Snakefinger's surreal music and antics. Anyway, most of my memories of Crime are from hanging out at The Complex, not the shows. Unfortunately I wasn't a big fan, being more into art punk bands like The Mutants and Tuxedomoon at the time. (Argh, I wish it was The Avengers, Crime, and the Nuns, but oh well. Youth.) My friend Tom Blahut and Mike had a band called The Junior Executives ... all Hillsborough boys from very wealthy families. They'd play Stooges-style punk in expensive business suits LOL. They opened for Crime many times. Once when Brian Eno was staying with Hank and Carola (he was giving lectures called "The History of the Recording Studio as a Compositional Tool" in the area) we played The Jr. Executives' only single, "Capital Gains Tax Increase Blues" for him. Mr. Eno remarked "that is the singularly worst-produced record I have ever heard," which of course the band members took as a huge compliment. The odd thing about the OG SF punk crowd that I hung with is that they were pretty much all wealthy, the exact opposite of what punk was about in the UK. Their interest was more aesthetic and rebellion against boredom and 70s mainstream culture than lost economic opportunities. Very artsy punk crowd ... e.g. Hank had originals by Warhol and Lichtenstein in his loft. In spite of the ostensible cultural dichotomy they were brilliant, very fun people, most of whom managed to survive the drugs etc. that ruined several others from those times. Mike and Hank announced a reformed Crime a couple of years ago, but so far as I'm aware, they've only played rare unannounced gigs at small clubs. I doubt if there are more than another 20 - 30 people left in San Francisco who were part of that scene. It's been a long time. I almost never run into anyone I recognize from those days, but hear stories now and then about this-or-that survivor. Sorry I don't have better stories about Crime, but I was more like the kid from the suburbs who hung around with wide-eyed fascination than an actual participant, as I was younger than everyone else. By the time I moved to SF on my own in '83, the OG scene was dead and LA bands and punk/goth had already taken over, so I got into Industrial (SPK, TG, SRL and all that) until disco beats redefined that scene and Acid House/Rave sort of took over.
awesome! Thank you! that was actually more than ive ever heard and I very much appreciate it.! I hope you don't mind me pasting this to my local email list because as east coasters we just dont run into too many people with Crime knowledge haha if you are at nerdquake I will be sure to badger you for more!
That was great - thanks! Any good Flipper stories? Flipper still rules, ok? BTW, I recently met one of the original members of the Avengers - a guy named Jonathan Postal who had been working as a photographer in Miami at a local alternative newspaper. I think he's now in Memphis - to extent you remember him from the old days. I wonder what the connection is between japanese vinyl toys and punk? that would be an interesting sociological/psychological study, n'est ce pas?
Yeah, I've noticed that there are a lot of punk fans here, and while it makes perfect sense on a gut level, I can only guess that it's a combo of generation and "underground" taste in general. My first year in college I wrote a long essay on the connection between punk and Dadaism LOL. Punk/kaiju? Again, makes sense to me, but I'll leave that essay to someone else. Thanks for the nice comments. I'm glad my rambling post didn't annoy people. Writing it made me want to look up some folks ... gotta do that and say "hi, are you alive?" Only Flipper story I have is that the last time I saw them (at the now-defunct Farm in SF) Will Shatter kept encouraging the skinheads in the audience to beat someone up. Well guess who they chose to beat on? I was dancing in a slam circle, and had a skinhead appearance at the time (although I was deeply anti-racist and couldn't hang with most of the skins as they were then.) I got hit a few times "by accident" and blew it off until one dude hit me so hard in the head that I passed out. I came to in the lobby ... some nice gals in lacy bras and leather jackets had dragged me out there. After the show, I ran into the skins outside ... they were standing around smoking a "j" and invited me to join them on a "no hard feelings" principle, I guess. Weird, but that's my only Flipper show memory.
I've often thought about this too. Being an old geezer I have seen many people from the punk scene in later years collecting toys. There must be some pychological connection, I would be very interested in someone doing some research on this.
There was actually an A&E special about collections, everything from Barbie, to old Root Beer kegs to cars. They sort of defined a collector personality as a person seeing little control in the world around them, so to find control they horde and collect things as their domain, or focus on that which they control. Would make sense of punk/HC record collecting and then add or progressing to toys and maybe later in life Victorian ceramic tea pots from Maine 15 years from now... It sort of rings true in a lot of ways, if my place caught no fire I would think, "My toys" before my TV or cds...
bad brains uh, back to the original post from brian. A great read brian, and if nothing else, would be a nice piece for the magazine as well, right next to the article bout the homeless doods that buy up the toys in japan for the flippers there.
I think aside from the progression of punk record collecting...which is so similar sometimes its scary... the fact is all this toy making is very punk.. theyre doing it on your own terms.. its alot like pressing low run 7" of their own band. It can be anything they want it to be.. or on the other side.. picking up a 7" of this small band and realizing its the best thing youve ever heard in your entire life and instantly being hooked. and knowing most people you meet on a daily basis wouldnt understand.... and maybe the world will just never get it.... and who cares? you and your friends get it and thats what matters.. fuck everybody else..
Great Crime info. There is a huge spread on them in a back issue of Ugly Thing's magagzine. On the cover and all. Cool.
no great mystery. I was around in the early Texas punk scene ( 1980-85) and almost all the 'punks' strarted out as nerds. nerds collect toys..so......
I'll second that, here in Chicago punk scene a lot of folks loved sci-fi, comics, toys etc. It's name checked and sang about in tons of song. (Big Black's Racer X, Raygun's Coldbringer, are the more well know). Plus, once a collector, always a collector. I ran out of music to collect, and got more focused on toys.
"the fact is all this toy making is very punk.. theyre doing it on your own terms.. its alot like pressing low run 7" of their own band. It can be anything they want it to be.. " yesh, there are definitely some aesthetic similarities. That whole mentality that this is a secret world that only the adventurous are willing to explore or can understand (i.e. the public will never get it and that's just the way we want it) - one of things that always attracted me to punk was the fact that the music was so genuine - no effort to polish it, make it marketable or make it appealing to others. It was honest, raw and genuine. Same thing with these toys - some of the designs are so wonderfully weird and fucked up - it's like they come from the subconscience mind of the creator - they're genuine. No effort to polish the image or appease anyone. And ironically, that's what people respond to - we want that. something genuine and honest and real among all the bullshit, hype and marketing. The shame of it is that this little world is starting to gain (and has been for several years because of the cult of KR) more popular acceptance which can ruin it for me. I've noticed that my collecting of japanese monsters followed the same pattern as collecting records. At first I started with Bandai Godzilla stuff because it was so unusual compared to anything I'd seen around that time (late 80's/early 90's) but when that got more popular and common i just started digging deeper into the pit of japanese weirdness (like the Barom 1 Rainbow figures to take a current example). Same thing with music - first time I saw and heard the 1st DK's album - it was a life changing event. But then i always find myself wanting to dig deeper, make my own discoveries, find the gems that really take some time and effort to uncover. that blast of genuine, raw emotional connection that seems to speak directly to you. The fun of browsing records, buying stuff just based on the cover art because it looks like it might be a wonderful discovery of some unknown, obscure band, is the same pleasure as surfing YJA looking for some fucked up monster that is stunning in its weirdness. ah, well . . . I've rambled enough. Back to work.
Great comments ... best thread drift ever LOL. I really liked the DIY comments ... that was such an important punk aesthetic. "Who cares if you don't have musical training? Pick up an instrument and go!" Also liked the comment about toys coming from the subconscious of the creators. I've thought about that a LOT ... what the various monsters might represent whether or not it has anything to do with their origin. King Godzilla is the most obvious example ... originally, Gojira was (in addition to being the great movie monster that he is) a representation of Japan's collective and understandable anxieties about nuclear technology. Hedorah is obvious too ... man's disrespect for his environment coming back to haunt him, or as the Charactic header says so beautifully ... "Man destroys the Earth, the Earth destroys Man!" Others are more subtle, mysterious, and open to interpretation. For example, the Blobpus Dokugan hits me hard on some deeper psychological level that I don't necessarily need to understand, but it's there ... I've even had dreams about that monster. But there I go again ... futher from punk futher from flippers. Maybe we should start a separate punk/kaiju thread if this one hasn't already played out. I'd love to read other peoples' punk scene stories.
yeah, there's no question that there's a psychological aspect to these monsters. I've shown them to a very talented photographer I know, as well as someone with a Ph.D. in clinical psychology - and they both agree with me that there's a subtext to these monsters. No question about it. As my photographer friend says: "There's something going on there." And i think, like a good punk record, what makes a good toy is that "I know it when I see it" response. There are toys that are genuine in their weirdness and those that are contrived (i.e. poseurs, if you will - we can all think of toys that fall into that category). What also is fascinating to me is that some of the most fucked-up, weird designs - especially among the vintage stuff produced in the 60's and 70's - come from a very repressed culture. Without meaning to insult anyone, that's my impression of Japanese culture circa 1960-1970 - very lockstep and repressed. Yet it's the same culture that produced the Hawaii Bullmark Hedorah or Kittyfire or Frankengeruge. Yeah, there's most definitely something going on with these monster below the surface level of vinyl and paint.
So the weekly "SOME EXPLAIN KAIJU TO ME! I DONT GET IT!!!!" threads aren't enough for you? The Japanese are known for throwing in weird psychological shit and deeper meanings where they're least expected. Anyone who has seen Evangelion knows that most of that stuff has no place in a show about giant robots, but somehow it works. I think the same kind of thing is happening with these kaiju. I read an article a while back about how the guy who designed the ultraman monsters worked modern art influences (ie. Dada) into his monsters, I'll have to see if I can find it.
Ok, my next question and I know this a nerd hobby so thats not the mystery, why arent there a bunch of rockabilly and metal people collecting? If we are going to connect underground music if you want to call it that these days to this hobby where are the non punk collectors? I know there are a few but why is it there are so many punks!?! I understand the DIY connection, that has always been an attraction for me about anything people do in a DIY way. I wish I could be more eloquent in my expression but maybe someone here knows what I am trying to get at.
in my opinion Rockabilly is more style over substance and i think the only thing they might collect is tattoos and hair grease. and i think a lot of peeps here enjoy metal. myself being one of them.
I enjoy metal too , I am just wondering why so many punks collect and have been for many years. I have been collecting for a long time and have met many more people into punk that collected toys than my metal friends, it has just been something I thought was strange for the last 17 years.
I think the preponderance of old punks and hardcore kids in this hobby may flow from the fact that art and graphic design were always pretty integral to those scenes...
My guess, Pushead record covers, and skateboarding graphics? Maybe? Plus during the eights, the show "Night Fights" on the USA cable, showed punk movies/videos and live action Japanese monster shows. I remember seeing the godzilla movies and ultraman playing on the TVs at clubs too (I'm taking around the mid-eighties). That were I became interested on all the monster stuff, because it was so weird.
