Image by Caz Hayek.

I was never a huge fan of hardcore punk music. That being said, I have seen dozens if not hundreds of punk shows. From Vancouver, BC’s DOA to Washington, DC’s Bad Brains, I long ago lost count of the number of hours I underwent aural assaults in venues the size of a bedroom to outdoor amphitheaters. If someone were to ask why, the answer is simple. Punk was the cheapest and most common live music around during the years I am writing about: 1977-1986. This was especially true in the San Francisco Bay Area. Furthermore, it was usually the most overtly political of the music around. Of course, that was left and anarchist politics. Elsewhere in the nation there were several other bands making a mark and gaining a following in the cities and towns from which they sprang.

Given that I was living in the streets, renting in apartments and crashing on couches in Berkeley, Oakland and San Francisco, the bands I ran into the most were local bands. The Dead Kennedys were foremost among them. I was friends with a guy who did sound for the band for a couple years. He was a yippie I met at a giant Grateful Dead concert in 1977 in New Jersey. We both split the east coast around the same time, ran into each other at the White Panther/Earth Peoples Park house in west Berkeley in January 1978 where a friend and I were crashing. I would see him at shows, festivals, street fairs, parties and on the street; we both watched and conversed about the scene as it slowly transitioned from a hippie freak culture to punk. We always had a good time sharing ideas, various chemicals and tall tales. Anyhow, he always got me into the Dead Kennedys shows and pretty much any other show I wanted to see at the North Beach punk palace Mabuhay Gardens. Another venue that hosted a lot of punk bands was up the street........

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