 The question I have for you and for Brendan and the mutants is how did you guys get to play a San Quentin and be school for the deaf children in Oakland? I mean it just seems like nowadays people would just be like, well first of all you couldn't get in San Quentin with all that equipment. And then how did Joe get all his stuff in there too? Were you guys, how did it get set up? Well let's start with San Quentin, because that seems... Okay, how did that get set up? There was a series called Museums Without Walls and it was about putting art in unexpected places and Lynn Hirschman, who now Lynn Hirschman-Leeson was spearheading this effort and asked crime if we wanted to play San Quentin. That was kind of a no-brainer. So we agreed and somehow we were able to get Joe in and we just kind of, you know, tried to make it as much of a thing as we could. The greatest thing to come out of that was that we actually got in the weekly world news with that. That's kind of my favorite piece of personal press that I've ever received. So that's how it happened. That is just amazing, so amazing. Brenda, what about school? Well the deaf school was in the East Bay and so I assumed that it was the guys from the East Bay in our band, John and Dave, and Joe had probably wangled that. It wasn't like San Quentin, it wasn't that hard to get in. Oh no, no that would not be it. But it was a fun gig, it was, you know, did I see Sue crossing the stage in the background? I saw her. Yeah, I didn't realize that they didn't sing. I think they came out later, it must have been. Must have. Yeah. The thing I remember about that show the most was that must have been early footage because at the end all those kids were in front of the bass and the drums and they were by the stage just catching it, you know, like each of them around the drums, you know, and the bass and ignoring the guitar, I felt a little, I felt a little out, you know. Well at least we get to hear it now and you sounded great. Thank you. As where were the parts that were shot of you, what club was that? Was that in? I have no idea of Penelope. I never knew where I was. Oh, really? Did you guys play in New York? No, we couldn't get out of town. We actually got to Madame Wong's in LA once and she didn't like Caucasian guilt. And she kicked us out. But Winston Tong, who was a Tong, made it all better because he was with us with Tuxedo Moon. Wow. That sounds like quite a night. It was a wild night in Chinatown. I bet there's some people who have some questions out here. Stephanie is going to walk around and find you if you have a question. The closest one. Hey, what's up? I just had kind of like two questions for anyone that wants to tackle it. One, what was the difference or when did things change from punk to hardcore? Maybe more stuff that was older people, clubs involved, and then teenagers and dancing and spilling your drink and getting hit in the head. Two, why does the pit go clockwise? I would say that everybody up here on this stage belong to their original punk group and they can't answer your second question. In the Southern Hemisphere, it goes counterclockwise. I didn't even understand the question. It has something to do with the spin in the air, so I believe. I think the first question is about when did punk turn from punk to hardcore? I don't know, around 1980? It was pretty fucking hardcore if you ask me. I think it was heroin, right? I don't think it was heroin. I went to LA and we did a show at the Roxy maybe or one of those places. And I saw these guys with no shirts on and their plaid shirts tied around their waist beating the shit out of people. And that might have been 80, 81, 81 maybe. And they called him the Huntington Beach crowd. And that was the first inkling that I ever had of that. The worst pit I ever saw was in Berkeley at that dormitory that put on shows, Barrington Hall. When the football team came in and just laid people out, right and left. They thought it was a great fun thing. But that was earlier. That was probably 79, 80. We had some kids come from the suburbs to an Avenger show and start fights. And I remember just stopping the music, stopping the band and saying, you know, all you people that came here to fight can just leave right now. And we're just going to wait for you to go. There was a clip of the Avengers in the Target video. And I think that you can see a little pit there. I'm pretty sure that Joe just dumped that in from some other show. I'm pretty sure that was not. Because that was Grove Street. I'm pretty sure that didn't happen at Grove Street. It's a little hard to tell. But things got slippery, you know, when you get editing. But there was, yeah, it was basically, the reason I say heroin is because the San Francisco scene and the L.A. scene, both heroin did come into both scenes and did kind of suppress the creativity of a lot of the original bands. And I think that Hardcore kind of took over from there. And I think Hardcore in the Bay Area is probably different than Hardcore in L.A. to some extent. And if you're interested in it, you should come on January 6. We're going to have the East Bay documentary. And that really kind of goes into that whole thing and the Gilman scene and Maximum Rock and Roll. But yeah, it's a little hard to speak to it because my band broke up in 79. I left town, so I wasn't really around for the change, the downward spiral. I went to L.A. and I did see a little bit of that in L.A. But then I moved to England and I was gone from there. I think it's important to remember that our mayor got assassinated. That's why Dianne Feinstein was even mayor. And our first gay supervisor, Harvey Milk, who used to, he used to DJ. I mean, one of the first punk clubs I ever played in was the Gay Community Center at 330 Grove. And the blend of the gay community with the punk community, it was like, to me, the line of delineation. Also, the mayor was assassinated the same week within that same period as the Jim Jones massacre. I mean, it was just like, you can tell we were really upset. I mean, it was kind of nonstop during that period. And the Shah of Iran, who we put in, was disposed by the Ayatollah. And they brought in all the heroin, the pure heroin. And personally, I was finding people, girls in the girls' bathroom. People were out deeing left and right because it was pure heroin. It wasn't stepped on at all. And so people were dying from the heroin. It was really intense, nonstop intense. Right, version. All right, let's have another question from this woman in the, what? That's your question? Yeah, yeah. Another question. My question seems very lighthearted compared to that subject, but I'm really, really curious what were the lyrics being translated to the kids in the deaf school of death? You know, it's a song called Odd Man Out. And I guess Joe picked it because nobody can see you, nobody can hear you was one of the lyrics in that. And maybe, you know, he sent it down. Did you ask for that? I mean, because there was other songs. I have to say, even though Joe put a note in there about things being, clips being requested, I requested bands. I did not request songs. And I probably would have chosen quite a few different songs than what Joe included in there. But he just got that all together and sent it to me. And I got it yesterday on my porch. So I had no real say in what was I was bringing here today. So some of it was a little bit of a surprise to me, but I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed, especially seeing things like the zeros at 15 years old or something like that, little babies. The clips outside of the normal clubs, that's amazing, snooky snooky was great. You never see snooky. You never even saw snooky that much, even if you were here. Right. It's kind of great. He moved to New York. He moved to New York, and he died of some natural causes. It wasn't drugs. It was something I had heard like a, you know, yeah, one of those things. Oh, really? I've never heard that. Oh, a different snooky. I'm glad we got that cleared up. I'm glad we got that cleared up. I am glad we cleared that up tonight. Really? Okay. Okay, do we have another question, a focused question, maybe down here? I actually don't have a question. I have a statement, because the target damage compound was a home away from home for me. I spent quite a lot of time there, and Joe Reese might have been a centrifugal force in a lot of this stuff, but he really couldn't have done any of it without such an amazing team of people around him. And I in particular have always absolutely loved Sam Edwards. And I know Sam and Jill were just so exceedingly important, and it's good to see their names up there, and I'm glad that he bothered to do that. And I don't think he did that back in the day, and I'm really glad that he's doing it now. Yeah, there was a big team around Joe, and it's kind of mind-boggling how many recordings, videos that he actually made of how many different bands. It's really remarkable. And I asked him for early stuff, because I wanted to represent the early SF scene, but he also has a lot of hardcore, a lot of bands going on from that in the Bay Area that I'm sure he's going to put together and get out one of these days. Oh, we have a question here? Yeah, for crime, the first single hot wire in my heart, 1976. Correct. Maybe five punk singles that even came out in that year. You guys got a little bit of press release for that, I know, but did you tour for that? Did you guys go to LA? Because I mean, everybody talks about the germs forming as being the first single from the West Coast, and then I found out you guys put out that, and I was so impressed by that, and it was like amazing to me that you guys were just, you know, ahead of the curve before. I mean, for me, that's not even punk rock, it's just stupid compared to what you guys were doing. The hot wire in my heart, and baby you're so repulsive, is generally regarded as the first independently produced punk single on the West Coast. So yes, we did tour a little bit. We did tour to LA a couple of times. The famous crime fund bus tour occurred down there. We did do the Pacific Northwest, but we never got off the West Coast. Sorry to say. And it was heroin that broke up the band. Another one for the mutants. I noticed you guys have a lot of different lineup changes that seem like in a short period of time, it was like... Bass players, man. A lot of different singers, too, lots of different singers, too. And one more statement. The first hardcore single is by the Avengers, the first single. We are the one. To me, that's the first hardcore single ever made. That's my opinion. Thank you. Well, I can't argue with you. You were responsible. No. The Avengers are not responsible for hardcore. I wouldn't have to say it's LA, but if we're blaming anybody in San Francisco, we'll just blame the dead Kennedys. There you go. Let's see. We have time for a couple more questions. We've got a gentleman here. So to everybody, who did y'all's flyers for the shows? Did you guys have some friends? You did? Oh, we were art schools. I mean, everybody except for me in the band was art school. John Gullick did a lot of them, who's here, should have been up here, but... We are short of chair. Yeah. A lot of this was art institute inspired. A lot of people came out of that and did their own silk screening, did their own visuals. Press type. Oh, yeah. Hours of press type. Right. Right. Oh. Oh, we've got a couple people here. We'll go for the closer ones. Thanks for this. This is fantastic. I'm curious about, obviously, you guys were having a blast playing the shows for your friends. What was the sort of level of career ambition or were bands moving to New York or moving to any other places or were you not thinking about it and just sort of thinking about doing the show and what was happening next weekend? We thought about money a lot. I mean, because we didn't have any. A lot of them were free shows like the Deaf School and benefits, a lot of benefits we were playing. We would open for people like the Ramones or the Talking Heads and get paid pennies. But we wanted to make a living. I did. Let me just speak for myself. I did. I'm sure Fritz did. At one point we went through a phase where we would count up royalties if we sold 10,000 and say, oh, the royalties would be. I swear to God. Would be. Yeah, would be. If. And business was just out of my knowledge, really. So I would have loved to not have to quit a job to go on tour, which is what I would do all the time. Just quit a job and go on tour and come back two or three weeks later. I think we, the Avengers were at that point only around from mid-77 to mid-79. And I don't think we ever thought that it was going to be a career. We did kind of, we did have a single out during that time when a three song single on Danger House. And we, I don't think we expected to make any money from that. But our shows actually did pay our rent because we all lived in the same apartment and I think it was like 320 bucks for a two bedroom apartment down on Folsom Street across from US Steel. Those were the days, huh? Yeah, really. I mean, we all probably had rents that would blow your mind right now. But, you know, we ate top ramen, literally. We stole bread from the Kilpatrick bakery racks that we could reach through the bars and grab, you know, which was down the street from us. I don't think that we really thought about the possibility of a career. Nobody had put out, by the time we broke up, I don't think anybody had put out an album in San Francisco. What was the first album? Was it the Decays? Might have been. Fresh Fruit is probably the first. But bands we knew in LA were getting signed, but not very many of them. The Dickies. And then there was Slash Records signing a few people. But it was at that point, you know. There was no million sellers. There was no Green Day. There was no. Not at all. It was kind of anti-commerce. That's right. There was a whole... It wasn't kind of cool to make money. I mean, it was still coming out of the hippie world. It was five minutes before the punk world. And we lived in a... We lived at what's now ATA Gallery. No mercy lived. And we shared a manager with Tuxedo Moon, who immediately left. They left at the end of 79 and moved to Belgium, where they still all live. Whoever's left of them still live in Europe. They've lived there ever since. They've been expats. And that was very inspiring to me that you could go to Europe and do this and make a living. But I never thought of making a living here. My brother had called me in maybe 1980, after we put out that single with Howie. And he's in Europe, so he's like, you're in a band called The Mutants, right? Like, yeah. San Francisco, right? I'm hearing your song everywhere I go around here. You know, and this was... You know, we were local here, but when he told me that, that sort of was an inkling that we could travel, and I really wanted to go to Europe, you know, at least to see the place and to do it for free, or almost free, you know. Quit another job, of course, but it would have been worth it. Oh, somebody's got the mic. Maybe this is something related, but what was the thinking of videotaping a lot of these concerts? I know that music videos were just sort of starting. Was it? No. I don't think they had music videos yet. There was no technology. I thought I saw some... There was Super 8 film. Oh, was that? I think film was prohibitively expensive. So you see very, very little film from back in that time. And... Yeah. Sort of... Oh, I'm sorry, it sort of looked like candy pack kind of stuff, but no, okay. But anyway, what was the... Was it viewed as part, eventually, a commercial thing or just purely documentation? I wish Joe was here. Yeah. Because Joe would answer that. You know, he was documenting. That's where he came out. And do you have any inkling of... Well, you can see the progress in the clips we saw, in the improvement in his equipment, even in the brief period that we saw covered, went from the very distorted, oversaturated black and white early stuff. He wasn't shooting a Sony Portapac, which was the first portable consumer video camera. But he was shooting something not many generations after that. I think the Portapac came out in 73. So we're talking about five years later. But the equipment was very primitive. But Joe was really one of the only people who had it. And his interest in the scene, he ended up being the preeminent documentarian. Dirk... Dirkson was slow to realize that what was going on in his establishment was worthy of documentation. When he realized that, sort of in the later years and the on-broadway years, he employed a group of people and invested in technology to try to record everything that went on. But that created a large archive, but I don't think anything of much quality or ever really came out of that. And not much of it has been seen. Did you do something with Dirk that ended up happening? Dirkson put out something with the mutants. It was... I mean, my review of it would be mixed. He included footage that I was like, why that? But he couldn't get any of the old stuff, because Joe had it and was not sharing at that point. So it would have been better with something a little bit more energetic than 1983. Because we hung on... I mean, the thing he showed was without several original members of the band, I think that maybe what you're talking about, 83 I left, which was five years I'd put in, and I think the end of 83. And then they went on for two more years. So... And he included that footage, which was not really the mutants anymore. Of course not. You were... No, not in it. So... Well... Yeah, that's something that I should, as a punk rock archivist, I should probably start trying to find where all that went and what's happening to it. It's really frightening when you see things like video, which can kind of fall apart and deteriorate, just like it's all almost 40 years old, moldering away somewhere. And not that the library has the money to do anything with that. But there are a lot of institutions that are interested in it and would be interested in getting it into good shape. Well Joe is capitalized on this material quite a bit. He had a major retrospective at the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and he's taken it all over the world and toured with it, and I don't know what restoration he's done on this, but it all looked and sounded pretty good to me today. Yeah. And I want to thank him for being open to the idea of giving us clips that were live, because a lot of the stuff that Joe has released has been clips that are either recorded in his studio where he could get a good live sound or else he just took tracks from people's records and then he cut the live footage to the track, which in a way you lose a lot of the feeling and expression from that. So I'm glad that he was willing to give us real live clips, even if they sounded rough. One camera. There was one camera shooting the entire thing. It's great. Those were done in his studio. Yeah. Yeah, the Target studio. I'm afraid the library is closing in 25 minutes, so we're probably not going to have time for any more questions. But I would like to thank Henry and Esmeralda and Brandon. Thank you Penelope. And Penelope. Thank you all for coming out, and I'd like to thank the library for supporting this work. Yeah. Happy New Year.