WE GOT POWER! Hardcore Punk Scenes From 1980′s Southern California: by David Markey and Jordan Schwartz

This book is a lot more than just another "Punk Scene" book, this is as real as it gets by two guys, Dave Markey and Jordan Schwartz, the proprietors of We Got Power fanzine based in Los Angeles who were at ground zero in the early 80's. Their job as reporters covering the scene for the fanzine they started put them in many key places to document the scene from an unique prospective that gets you the straight scoop.


The book is laced with very candid and sometimes self effacing essays by some of the Punk scenes most noted luminaries that include, Henry Rollins, Pat Fear, Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Mike Watt, Tony Adolescents, Louiche Mayorga, Steve Human and more to give you a special insight into the Punk scene from their point of view. Along with the stories is about 400 photos of the people, the places and the environment that were the backdrop for this growing movement.

What makes the book so important is that it will give you a lesson in Los Angeles Punk rock and know what it was like for the kids of this era. This book will take you there with no agenda, no bullshit and without a pretentiousness as found in many other books on the period whose authors waste most of their book talking about how cool they were and how important they think they were. Thankfully authors Dave Markey and Jordan Schwartz open up their archives of photos that successfully document these moments in time which were common place for Punks of that era, while readers outside of the scene would find beyond belief. For the younger generation in today's Punk scene, this is one of the more definitive books you can get your hands on to teach you about your history as you turn each page.



A real treasure to this book is that all six issues of the We Got Power fanzine are included toward the end of this book.

This hardcover beefy book weighs in at a whopping 4 lbs and is 300+ pages of pure Punk rock fun.

The book can be found at better independent record stores everywhere as well as online here: www.wegotpowerbook.com -Make sure you pick up a copy of this book today.
 

-Chuck T.-
Big Wheel Magazine
 

 

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Circle Jerks: My Career As A Jerk – DVD Review

The explanation of spontaneous energy is how this movie can be best described. Prolific film maker Dave Markey assembled an excellent historical video document that informs and highly entertains you along the journey of this seminal band. The film starts out on how the original members got together from various prior bands to form Circle Jerks, as well as look into the early years of Punk scene they helped shape as it exploded with true rawness.

In the band members own words they detail how they put together the songs from various random musical pieces that each member had, totally devoid of a master planning and how the music came very organically. You also understand the music talents of each member and how that became a sound that no other band had, but wish they did. Lots of great factoids about the band including he origin of the band's name is revealed by merely looking through an American slang dictionary.

There are way too many highlights in this DVD to cite, yet here are just a few. How they got signed to Frontier Records after being seen by label founder Lisa Fancher at The Cuckoos Nest. The contract for the record was done on a paper bag filled with marijuana. The album was recorded on tape that was already recorded on and reused to record the Group Sex album. Guitarist Greg Hetson expresses how the band was worried that no one would buy it and how they added 4 to 5 records to every song to make the album appear longer, so instead of 57 seconds for the song Red Tape they made it 1 minute 4 seconds. Keith talks about the recording of this record and how it was done in small multiple sessions that he was very surprised that the album had any continuity to it when it was finished. In the bonus footage you will see the original artwork and layout of the Group Sex album -album artwork was produced a lot differently back then. As you watch the bonus footage you will finally learn the origin of the phone number given at the end of the song Group Sex, and the poor guy that got all the calls… you will get a good laugh out of it.

   My Career As A Jerk movie traier


It was very interesting to hear them speak about the 2nd album "Wild In The Streets" that was put out on Faulty Records and how they felt that they could not capture the same vibe of the first album. This is all funny to hear from them since most fans love this album to death, yet it is interesting to hear them be critical of it. You will develop a greater understanding of the band, how the line up evolved through the years with members of other noted bands, you will be blown away with who was apart of this band throughout it's history. Toward the end of the video things get really somber when they spoke about the overdose death of original member Roger Rogerson back in 1996 after he had called all the members of original line up to jam again like the old days and write some new songs.

You will see alot of raw footage of live shows mixed with interviews by the band as they take you through the history and events that made Circle Jerks one of the greatest Punk bands ever. Zander Schloss gives the film a magnum opus moment with this quote that really sums up their career: "Legends are not based on being active all the time, legends are based on their absence, so what a legend does is they do something great and then they disappear mysteriously for awhile, and then come back or die, but legends are based on their absence". The quote resonates so well and teaches that all music fans should never take a band's blood, sweat and tears for granted and see them live every chance we get.

The hour and half will go by so fast and is packed with info and footage that will make you glad that you own this DVD so you can watch it over and over, just like how you play your favorite Circle Jerks record over and over. Plus, the 30 minutes of deleted footage that you get as a bonus is a movie on it's own. If you love the Circle Jerks, this is a DVD you have to have. It will reinforce why you got that Circle Jerks tattoo, put that patch on your jacket or wear that t-shirt proudly.
     ***** This is a MUST GET !

Video is out on MVD Visual: www.mvdvisual.com
The video can be found at better independent record stores everywhere and as a last resort on Amazon.

Information on the film maker can be found here: We Got Power Films: www.wegotpowerfilms.com


-Payne-
Big Wheel Magazine
 

 

 

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Decry – Hollywood Hate – Neverland Ranch Hands – Vulgar Natives – and Purdy Spit – at The Shakedown – San Diego, CA

First up was Purdy Spit: This trio hails from Tacoma WA. They remind me of the Fuck-Up’s from San Francisco, very hard and humorous.

 

Next up was Vulgar Natives: This band features Chickenhead on vocals (Ex-D.I. before he was let go for having cancer) He makes a really great front man and they even did a version of  “Richard Hung Himself” which made for an interesting moment in the show. They did a short but memorable set.

          

Next were San Diego locals, Neverland Ranch Hands. With a mohawk sporting singer, they played a hard, very Punk set full of songs less than a minute long.                 

 

Hollywood Hate played next with Scotty on vocals (ex- Verbal Abuse) and Suzi Homewrecker on drums and vocals. These two are great musicians to see and always give it 110% they played a really good energetic tight set. One of the hardest working bands I’ve seen.  

           

Last up were DECRY: they opened up with “Sonic Reducer” an old Dead Boy classic. The band was “on it” tonight. They sounded really well and Farrell played a really good set. Lots of action in a small pit tonight.

 

                             More photos of the show can be seen HERE

-Pix Tracy-
Big Wheel Staff Photographer

 

 

 

 

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Amanda Palmer and the Grand Theft Orchestra – at The Fillmore Auditorium – San Francisco, CA

If there's one thing that's difficult to maintain in live music, it's unpredictability. A standard three- to six-piece rock band can bring all manner of stage acrobatics, dizzying musicianship and dazzling strobe lights to a performance and leave their audience screaming for more, but some fans will crave more. Interactivity, strangeness, uncomfortability, adventure-- the kind of concert that should be prefaced with a spoiler warning before one tells the tale. Bostonian underground-rock-star extraordinaire Amanda Palmer, recently attracting a fair bit of news and attention over a million-dollar Kickstarter campaign and a massive tour that incorporates groups of local musicians at each of its stops, has always been rather adept at offering the sorts of stunts, tricks and feats that merit this description, and her current lap through the US and Europe has her pulling out all the stops in a dynamite display of wild energy, marvelous musicianship and crowd interaction that is rarely seen today with the larger acts of the rock and roll world.

As in her days with the Dresden Dolls, the cleverly-categorized "Brechtian cabaret Punk" duo consisting of herself and drummer Brian Viglione, Palmer's shows are less a match of opening band to headliner and more of a collection of friends and acquaintances not afraid to fly their freak flags in the name of stunning performances and raucous celebrations. Jherek Bischoff, Seattle composer and bassist for Palmer's new band The Grand Theft Orchestra, opened the show with a few of his own songs, performed by himself and a small section of local San Francisco chamber group Classical Revolution. Bischoff's lush orchestration paired fantastically with his dark rhythms and furious swagger, with his songs running the gamut from soaring ballads to wicked waltzes from the beyond.

If the gentle beauty of the opening piece had quelled the audience's excitement at all, they were greeted by a loud, sharp contrast in the form of Chad Raines, the Grand Theft Orchestra's guitarist. All but abandoning his signature instrument in his own band, The Simple Pleasure, he followed Bischoff up with a zany, disco-fueled dance-and-rock-fest that saw the young Raines hurling himself from end to end of the stage, all the while shaking his hips and belting out his words.

The amusement from the assembled crowd had already begun to grow, especially when Palmer, who popped onto the stage between acts to introduce the next group and speak to her onlookers, announced that she and her husband, English author Neil Gaiman, were going to take a set of records that they had acquired earlier that day, sign them, and then hide them in the theater while the onstage circus continued to unfold. To that end, the next two acts were definitely on more of a novelty end of things, but brilliantly hilarious all the same. A vaudevillian duo known as the Daredevil Chicken Club leapt about while hurling (and spitting) bits of banana into each others mouths, eventually ending via an impromptu striptease that featured fake, attached genitals -- which, in turn, also ended up being discarded. The final cheers and peals of laughter before Palmer herself took the stage were culled by Ronald Reagan, self-described as "Boston's Premier 1980s Pop Saxophone Cover Band", who knocked out performances of "Don't Stop Believin'" and "Total Eclipse Of The Heart" that shook the walls of the Fillmore with the sound of the audience singing every word with gusto and joy.

Those who managed to catch Palmer and her band back in July for a small set of performances, including two stops at San Francisco's tiny art space known as Public Works, had been told that the fall lap of shows would be astronomically bigger than those of late summer, and the band was true to their word. With the members, equipment, and stage clad all in white, it offered a perfect platform for the opening number, "Smile (Pictures Or It Didn't Happen)", to utilize photographs that had been collected online from the audience before the show, and then flash them across the stage in a massive projection. Swaying lights and a shimmering orchestra, in the form of Classical Revolution, accented the thunderous onstage presence of Palmer, Bischoff, Raines, and drummer Michael McQuilken, who burst into the set with the aforementioned number and careened immediately into the stomping fist-pumper "The Killing Type". Before the audience could prepare for the rest of the songs from the band's 2012 album Theatre Is Evil, however, Palmer and her band switched gears and sauntered into a roaring, mind blowing performance of the Dresden Dolls' song "Missed Me", which saw all four members of the Grand Theft Orchestra switching their instruments for each verse and throwing each other about in their haste to do so.

Even though Palmer has, and always will be, the owner of her shows, with marvelous charisma and a dark gleam in her eyes that reveals her desire to excite and captivate those before her, she has found an excellent match for her show-womanship in the Grand Theft Orchestra. The precise, conductive movements of Bischoff, the manic whirling dervish that was Raines, and the primal fury of McQuilken on drums serve as excellent compliments to Palmer's emotion-wrought gesturing and hell-bent hammering on her keyboard, and though the frenzied nature of the music and show calls for a certain level of delightful chaos, the four play off of each other well and are all well recognized. Their renditions of Palmer's older songs, such as "Oasis" and "Astronaut", breathe new life and energy into the pieces, with the latter coming into existence only after a mesmerizing, abrasive cacophony of droning and snarling sounds, and all of the new pieces from Theatre Is Evil eschewed the studio wizardry in favor of stunning bombast and haunting orchestration with every passing minute.

More and more tricks, of course, were up the sleeves of the rock stars who dominated the stage at the Fillmore. Besides the instrument switcheroo early in the set, Gaiman returned to the stage for two more bits: "In My Room", where dark, anonymous confessions of the crowd were read aloud and then discarded, to be purged from memory and to lift the souls of their writers, and a ukulele cover of Leon Payne's "Psycho" with Gaiman providing vocals. Palmer dressed in a delicate gossamer gown and dove atop the crowd during "Bottomfeeder", a massive dress train spilling out behind her and nearly covering the crowd at the Fillmore as they passed her from end to end of the dancefloor, and for "Olly Olly Oxen Free", the audience was encouraged to pull out flashlights and light Palmer as she marched from side to side of the stage, armed with furious gestures and a powerful voice. The set closer, "Leeds United", brought the full orchestra and band onto the stage, along with a host of friends, crew, and traveling musicians who danced about and hurled themselves from the stage while the band raged on behind them, the explosive sound and peaking energy threatening to tear the roof from the Fillmore with so great an intensity. Palmer and her trio returned to the stage for one last Theatre Is Evil number, "Do It With A Rockstar", followed by a rip-roaring, dazzlingly violent performance of the Dresden Dolls' "Girl Anachronism" that saw Raines leaping across the stage as though set upon by rabid wolves as Palmer, Bischoff and McQuilken raced through the rest of the song at a breakneck pace that left their audience breathless by its glorious end.

The level of intrigue and crowd participation associated with Amanda Palmer's shows has always been an attractant to me and my primary reason for coming to see her play, but now she has embraced her spotlight and claws at it with all the unkempt fury that has driven her passionate, spellbinding performances, and her live shows have become that much stronger because of it. Her new band is made up of fascinating musicians, each a brilliant performer in their own right who offers a performance that could bring the house down at any place they choose to go. Adding to the onstage intensity and musicianship is the show itself, which calls upon the crowd to bring and display themselves in ways that are rarely welcomed by acts who are able to put on such a dynamite performance, and a sense of camaraderie and the abandonment of elitist is left in the joyous haze of endorphins that the crowd finds themselves in at the end of the night. With Theatre Is Evil leaping into the Billboard at number 10, we can expect more marvelous things from Amanda and her Grand Theft Orchestra -- this is only the beginning.

                             More photos of the show can be seen HERE

-Jonathan P.-
Big Wheel Bay Area Reporter

 

 

 

 

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Freak Fest with George The Giant and Master of Mayhem Robin Marks – at Riley’s Tavern – Bakersfield, CA

While most of Bakersfield was wasting their time shoving funnel cakes in their face, watching dated bands, and standing in line for overpriced beer at the Kern County Fair, some of us said "FUCK THAT!" and made our way to Riley's Tavern to check out some real circus side show freaks. 

7 foot 3 inch, George The Giant has been featured in several movies and shows. His part in Tim Burton's "Big Fish" as "Colossus" and appearance on "America's Got Talent" have earned him some fame. Aside from his mainstream success, he is a true performer and is actually one of Bakersfield's own.

The crowd sat on the floor surrounding the small stage with looks of horror, disgust, and laughter as George and Robin performed an array of tricks including, the human block head, where George took a nail and hammered it all the way into his nose and sword swallowing where Robin deep throated an at least two foot long sword. 

George The Giant and Master of Mayhem Robin Marks join forces to entertain the masses with a great set of side show tricks and cheesy humor. The two men put on an amazing show and vibe off of each other perfectly. You can tell that George is the peanut butter to Robin's Jelly. Their performance is Circus of Horrors meets Jack Ass, except a cleaner version of both that you could easily take your family to see. What ever the case, the flyer should have a disclaimer saying "Folks, don't try this shit at home!"

More tricks included a bed of nails, a bed of blades, drinking milk through a bendy straw (through his nose!), walking on glass, swinging a soda can from chains attached to eyelids, and many other visually stimulating acts. They engaged the crowd even more by pulling up people from the audience to participate. 

They ended the night in a blaze of glory with robin's fire breathing act and with a bang as George put his goggles on and lit a row of fire crackers on his chest.  

After the set was done, the two men invited the show goers to stand in line and staple dollars to their chests and backs. The big spenders with at least a 20 bux could staple their bill to the foreheads of either performer and even received a yellow George The Giant T-shirt as a souvenir.

After the show, DJ Josex did what he does best and kept the night rolling with a great mix of music.  What a great reason to come out on a Wednesday night.  It was a total blast!

If you plan on making it up to California's "Great America" in October, be sure to catch these awesome performers do their thing, they will be there all month!  For more info on show times click HERE

You can also keep up with George The Giant at http://www.georgethegiant.com

                             More photos of the show can be seen HERE

-J.Moncrief-
Big Wheel Staff Journalist

 

 

 

 

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Riot Fest 2012 Festival Recap – September 14 – 16, 2012 – Chicago, IL

Riot Fest has become an institution and over the years has grown into the not to miss music festival of the year. 2012 saw one of the most over the top line ups to date. Big Wheel was there to capture all the action and bring you the most coverage and photos of the whole 3 day event.


 

Riot Fest 2012 – Offspring – Neon Trees – Pegboys – Dead Sara – at Congress Theater – Chicago, IL

Summer was still going strong when I left LA on September 14th, but Autumn was in full force when I landed in Chicago later that afternoon. After a madcap rush from O'Hare, to the hotel, I arrived at The Congress Theatre just in time to catch Riot Fest 2012's openers Dead Sara. The quartet (hailing from our very own Los Angeles) opened the fest Read more

 

Riot Fest 2012 – Rise Against – Descendents – Dropkick Murphys – Gaslight Anthem – Hot Water Music – Frank Turner – The Adicts – and Many More – at Humboldt Park – Chicago, IL

Until 201­­­2, Riot Fest was held in a handful of clubs around Chicago, meaning you’d have to pick and choose who you really wanted to see on a given night. This year was a little bit different—the clubs still had after-party shows, but the main event was now contained to Humboldt Park. Read more

 

Riot Fest 2012 After Party – NOFX – The Adicts – The Casualties – and The Dickies – at The Congress Theater – Chicago, IL

The parking deities must’ve been with me on this trip, because after leaving Humboldt Park, we headed over to the Congress Theater for one of the many “after parties” and I scored some street parking almost directly across from the venue. This show would sport four great bands, each one of them headliners in their own right. That’s right, it was time for The Dickies, The Casualties, The Adicts, and NOFX.  Read more

 

Riot Fest 2012 – Iggy and The Stooges – Gogol Bordello – Alkaline Trio – Elvis Costello and the Imposters – Screaming Females – The Jesus and Mary Chain – Fishbone – NOFX – Less Than Jake – Reverend Horton Heat – and Many More – at Humboldt Park – Chicago, IL

The alarm clock rang way too early on Sunday, and if the line-up was any different than what it was, I probably would’ve hit snooze and said fuck it. Fortunately, the line-up was enough to get my jet-lagged ass out of bed. Read more

 

 

 

 

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