making a scene
improvised music bay area
In 1990 I started booking a weekly series of improvised music shows at a venue in San Francisco. Recently I was given 3 large boxes of material documenting much of the activity that inspired me to pursue that series, and even more on what happened after. I’m going to tell you that story now, and then I’m going to ask you: what should be done with all this material?
The series was called Improv at Olive’s, or Improvised Music with Teeth, or simply Improvcore, a term I read about in some interview on the NY improvised music scene, most likely with John Zorn. NYC had long been the mecca for improvised music and “new” music of any kind, and a lot of chatter about a venue catering exclusively to that was filtering through to my location on the west coast. The venue was The Knitting Factory.
By 1990 I was fully immersed in improvised music and knew most of the players in the San Francisco area by name if not by acquaintance. Some of them participated with me in my own version of noise improv that I played on electric guitar and other devices. I was dabbling with gigging, but there was so much more going on around me that I knew we needed our own Knitting Factory in SF. Just prior to this I was toying with the idea of moving to Berlin and took my second trip there. On my first trip less than two years prior, The Wall was still intact and West Berlin was probably still much like it had been when it inspired Bowie and Eno. At least that’s the way it seemed in my mind. On this latest trip however, The Wall had just come down, and with it any notion I may have had of moving there. Soon after I returned to San Francisco I started looking for a venue to do a weekly series. Not only was I discovering what “home” means, I would soon discover what “community” means.
I need to say a few things before I ramble on with this story so you don’t get the wrong impression. First off, I am no “expert” on any music scene in San Francisco or elsewhere. My involvement in improvised music as an active participant lasted only a few years … a little over two years as a music series promoter, and maybe a few years on either end of that as a player and a fan helping out others when I could. I would not give up those two years of my life for anything, but they left their mark on me in ways I still don’t completely understand. I was having the time of my life putting on weekly shows of the music I loved, making deep friendships that would last a lifetime, and becoming so utterly depressed that I gained a massive amount of weight in less than 6 months. Not only would I stop playing guitar, I stopped listening to music.
But let’s get back to the happy time. Berlin was fascinating and I’d been to NYC a few times too, but now it was time to find the venue for the new Knitting Factory SF. It didn’t take me long. I think I had my eye on this place for awhile. It was in a fringe district of SF at the time called China Basin right on the water front on Pier 50. I used to run for exercise in that area because of the lack of traffic and the great views of the bay. There were a handful of cafes scattered along the waterfront, mostly serving the lunch crowd and maybe brunch on weekends. This was one of those with a full bar. It was called Olive Oil’s (it’s still there and now called ATwater Tavern if you want to look it up). I may have called them first, but as I recall I met the manager there one day and pitched him my idea for a weekly series. He was a very likeable guy and seemed convinced by my story of a Knitting Factory SF even though I’m sure he’d never heard of the Knitting Factory or had any idea what improvised music was. He was pretty savvy about SF night life though, having been in the business for awhile at other venues and he knew this out-of-the-way place needed something to get people to show up after sundown, so Thursday nights were mine. But not weekly. I got monthly first for about three shows and then he let me go weekly.
Up until this point I was not aware of any weekly series of improvised music in San Francisco, although there might have been one before 1985 when I moved into the city. There were these one-off shows that would happen every couple of months and my favorite of these were organized by a couple of promoters going by the name of Sound Affects. I would talk to one of the Sound Affects people before and after their shows and eventually she was the one that convinced me I could do this. I didn’t realize then that she was passing me a baton that I would eventually pass on to others. I don’t know what happened to her as I lost contact soon after. I assume, or heard from others, that she moved away. Such is the ebb and flow of this scene, and I was about to start paddling with the flow as hard as I could.
As much as I enjoyed those shows, for me there was something missing. Most of them were in academic or gallery settings. They could get loud, and sometimes even rock-out, but they rarely got into the heavy territory that I wanted to explore. Sometimes there would be an improv show at a rock club, and I remember going and seeing one of my favorite local bands and continuously haranguing them from the crowd to take it further … go more out … be more heavy. It didn’t happen. I would have to make it happen.
I saw it happening in NYC. The heavy improv music that I loved there was influenced by punk, hardcore, and more recently metal. I loved metal and in NY I went to a show at CBGB’s to see one of my favorite bands that used noise, dissonance, odd meters and more to create a huge and heavy sound. Today they are called a prog-metal band (a term that’s become catch-all), and I still love the sound of Blind Idiot Got. The billing that night was made even more interesting by the presence of the recently dubbed grindcore metal band (metal was on the verge of segmenting into hundreds if not thousands of sub-genres) from England called Napalm Death, making their very first USA live show that night. And to top off the evening was an opening band I’d never heard of before, but would fall in love with immediately called Prong. I had come to NY on this trip to see a festival of improvised and “new” music, and here I was at CBGB’s in dissonant heaven. There was no improv being played that night with the exception of the usual punk-style chaos that ensued. But the connection was still there, for me and a few others, like John Zorn, although I’m not sure if he was present. He was attracted to this extreme music like a moth to the flame and would team up with Napalm Death label Earache to release music by his bands Naked City and Painkiller … see more on that here:
I was determined to bring this esthetic to the SF Improv scene, so on my Thur night series I started booking the heaviest improv bands I could find, and lacking that I would book adventurous rock bands along with a full-on improv band and get them to agree to an end of night improv set together. Needless to say this did not always work out very well, but when it did it was glorious.
For the first few months it wasn’t clear that this series was going to continue for much longer. This music was always a tough sell and getting any new series going at an out-of-the-way venue that’s never done it before was going to take some time. The manager of Olive’s was surprisingly patient, maybe more so than myself, and he gave me that time. I kept trying to find ways to get an audience faster, often booking bands that I had no interest in. I learned from my mistakes and the manager continued to hang in there with me and we had some great shows. Some of the well known touring improvisers from NY would play such as Elliott Sharp and Fred Frith. Probably my biggest show publicity-wise was having Buckethead as a headliner. But by far my favorite show, and the one I and many others put the most effort into, was “The Battle of the Improv Bands: Splatter vs Scatter”. We hyped this up at radio station interviews like a heavy weight boxing match. I got a well known improv/new music impresario to act at referee, complete with a zebra striped jersey, and several new music press writers acted as the judges. The whole thing is on tape that I hope to digitize and add to the archive project I’m working on.
After almost 2 years the series was finally getting some traction and I was able to pay the bands and generally break even on the money side. The hardest shows for me were the ones with a small crowd when I had to face the bands at the end of the night and give them their pitance. The bands were usually very cool about it, but it killed me over and over. I had failed them and a few others with just another week to go before the same thing might happen again. But after 2 years things were starting to look up and I thought their might be a real chance for this Knitting Factory SF thing at Olive Oil’s. Then the shit hit the fan.
My wonderful, understanding and patient manager was about to take on a better opportunity at a venue closer to the heart of SF night life. I was happy for him. He would remain a good contact for me and we would still do a few shows together at his new place. But my series was at Olive’s and I knew after 2 years of building up that venue, trying to move it would be nearly impossible. I had no desire to start all over again. So who would my new manager be? Apparently she was the owner of Olive Oil’s and she had little understanding of what we were doing, and even a lesser amount of patience. She immediately seized on the handful of well attended shows that I did and started demanding a cut of the door. My previous arrangement was always that I got the door and the house got the bar. Now she was making it impossible for me to pay the bands anything. I was about to be killed over and over every week with no end in sight. Needless to say I walked away from that in a hurry. Maybe I ran.
For awhile I did some gigs at other venues, including one of the bigger venues in SF, but none were successful enough to keep it going. I gradually stopped doing gigs and at around the same time, others, some of which were regulars at Olive’s, started their own series in the East Bay. One was at a venue with a bar called the Heinz Club in Oakland where they booked a combo of alt-rock and improv. The other was more like the gallery series that had been going on prior to Olive’s. This one was in Berkeley and would move to a coupe of different store-front/gallery settings under the name Beanbenders.
I was reminded of all this from that 3 boxes of material I’ve been going through and trying to organize. That was given to me by the other person in the Sound Affects team … the series that influenced me so much. I have managed to stay in touch with him all these years.
And that’s how communities survive … by passing the torch and sharing their history. I think it’s called culture. If there is a culture of improvised music it’s certainly worldwide, yet remains very tribal. If you feel any connection to the SF Bay Area tribe then please contact me and I’ll send you a link to the archive. Take a look at this material and give me your thoughts on how to share it. If you have material of your own to share let me know.