SCRAP) that co-constitute late capitalist circulation of money and commodities (Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014). (Personal communication, 29 December, 2010; see Figure 2), House shows are better. This can include anything from the production, distribution, and promotion of music and arts, and self-organisation of spaces and concerts, to other social and daily activities such as making food and clothing, repairing or remodelling vehicles, and social and political self-organising (Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Metre Citation2007; Wehr Citation2012; Debies-Carl Citation2014). (Oakes Citation2009: 51; emphasis added)Footnote10. "[4] Live music performances and music records/cassettes as standardised commodities are in this way diverted from their regular paths in the market economy to an alternative economic regime of value, often through the incorporation of alternative exchange systems (cf. Examples include the Sir Douglas Quintet, whose music took on more of the character of the San Francisco sound, while yet retaining some of its original Texas flavor, Mother Earth, fronted by female lead singer Tracy Nelson, who relocated to the Bay Area from Nashville, and the Electric Flag, bringing Chicago blues to the Bay Area care of former Paul Butterfield Blues Band guitarist Mike Bloomfield. DIY reciprocal economic relations described above not only materially support DIY communities and scenes, but also inform alternative types of culture, music, and aesthetics (Rice Citation1994). 4 See Oakes Citation2009: 45; Threadgold Citation2017: 7, 8; Farrow Citation2020: 11; Haddon Citation2020; Pearson Citation2020: 7; Rogers and Whiting Citation2020: 6; Verbu Citation2021; cf. People from various N and NE Portland houses are folding cassette cases for the Goof Punx festival compilation, while a music jam session is happening at the same time. To learn about our use of cookies and how you can manage your cookie settings, please see our Cookie Policy. Furthermore, alternative DIY socio-economic systems succeed in generating considerable symbolic, affective, material, and political value for DIY participants and scenes. They wouldnt be anything without the punk rock network of independent distributors, independent promoters, independent fanzines, all operating for mutual benefit, usually with little hope (or desire) for personal gain [] [Bands, y]ou owe punk rock something, so start paying up. Collective reciprocity is also manifested in the structure of shows, where DIY organisers and performers often reject the hierarchical notion of openers and headliners (Verbu Citation2021: 219). He has lived in San Francisco for over 9 years and has worked in Travel & Tourism for over 7 of those. In Jennings account and Figure 5 we see how commodities such as records are diverted from the path of capitalist exchange and voided of market value during DIY shows to be transformed into objects of personal and collective use value (cf. participation]. Jai Milx performing at her house, Glitterdome, in Portland, 4 February 2012. At San Francisco's music venues, new-age artists share the same stages as some of music's most legendary black artists. Beyond preserving the history of this musical form so tied to the African-American experience, SFJAZZ now blazes a trail for the artists of the future in its permanent home on Franklin St. Few performance venues in the city have the sound quality of the SFJAZZ Center. Baumgarten Citation2012: v, 137). (Personal communication, 28 February 2012; see Figure 6; emphasis in original). Permission is granted subject to the terms of the License under which the work was published. Culton and Holtzman Citation2010; Hannerz Citation2015: 128). This kind of diversion from the capitalist market economy and experience is vividly expressed by DIY participant James from Davis, California: [at DIY house shows] we are experiencing music outside of the [dominant] modes of exchange that we are used to, even if we still pay donation money [] For me, something that exists outside the normal form of exchange you go to a venue, bar making money, going buying drinks; this [DIY show] is much more visceral, conducive to real interchange between people. By 1967, fresh and adventurous improvisation during live performance (which many heard as being epitomized by the Grateful Dead and by the "cross-talk" guitar work of Moby Grape) was one characteristic of the San Francisco sound. Performances of an international super group like the Beatles were hosted in a huge venue like the Cow Palace. Great American Music Hall opened in 1907 as a symbol of San Francisco's rebirth after the devastating 1906 earthquake. When you see the Tony Bennett statue outside of theFairmont Hotel on Nob Hill, you will gain a better understanding of how San Francisco has embraced its jazz history. But well known stars of rock & roll "were being called fifties primitives" by this time. Each San Francisco band had its characteristic sound, but enough commonalities existed that there was a regional identity. [1] San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or spread out like Los Angeles. Free box at the show at Grandmaz house, Olympia, 7 August 2012. Learn the dynamic history of San Francisco's Angel Island, the gateway for approximately 175,000 Chinese immigrants in the 1900s. In addition, factors that shape more egalitarian music practices and sounds can be diverse. This is not only when they refer to the practices of DIY local participants helping touring bands with venues, accommodation, company, and food, or to the system of donations for music performances at DIY shows, but also in relation to everyday musical and non-musical collaborations among the DIY participants. Booking shows for this tour was greatly facilitated by the established DIY friendships of one band member who had previously made eight tours of the US. (David, in Maximum Rockandroll Citation1987; emphases added). The tactics that shape this alternative economic model (reciprocity, collective action, DIY methods) permeate DIY scenes on all levels: cultural, economic, and political; from music organisation, music performance, and sound aesthetics, to everyday social practices and interaction. [12] Among these British acts, according to music journalist Chris Smith, writing in his book on the most influential albums in American popular music, the Beatles inspired the emergence of the San Francisco psychedelic scene following their incorporation of folk rock on the 1965 album Rubber Soul, which reflected the reciprocal influences shared between the group and Bob Dylan. It would be make-shift [spaces]like, divide room in half, [] cubbies that people are living in, and so this house it supposed to be for a couple, like a small studio apartment, [but] divided into like eight or nine [liveable] spacesand just insane things like that. Figure 1. By contrast, some groups only organise DIY house shows, and not much more (cf. All these different kinds and degrees of reciprocity, as the examples above evidence, are interwoven areas of social, cultural, and economic activity that mutually engender each other, and thus also provide a material basis for the local and translocal DIY scenes across the US and internationally. Examples from the US, from the years of my fieldwork research (20104), include: Yellingham festival in Bellingham, House by House West festival in Denton, Texas, Word of Mouth festival in Portland, West side arts walk in Olympia, Bitchpork festival in Chicago, and The Gathering of Goof Punx in Portland. 1 Free boxes are often found in DIY and punk houses, or on the sidewalks next to them. 3 The research included several years of fieldwork in Davis, CA; nine months in Portland, OR; five days in Washington, DC; and 14 days each in Olympia, WA, Los Angeles, and Oakland, CA. However, while capitalist commodities are seemingly transformed into non-market or DIY commodities, in a more tacit way they may be seen to co-constitute the capitalist economy. underground market, co-op exchange, barter, informal economy (for alternative economies), and gift giving, state appropriations, gleaning, and poaching (for non-market economies). (Personal communication, 23 January 2011). People also read lists articles that other readers of this article have read. In turn, these decomoditized objects come to symbolise values of DIY creativity, independence, and community, whilst constructing boundaries of cultural (DIY) distinction and authenticity. He is usually exploring the Bay Area hunting for that new and unique experience and good food too! You dont feel that communion. For example, in her manual for booking DIY shows, Beck Levy (2013) an artist and musician who used to organise DIY shows in Washington, DC notes that among the bad reasons for organising shows is so that other bands will feel obligated to book your band in their cities. there is a diversity of possible cultural and aesthetic effects existing within DIY scenes, which are not necessarily derived from DIY material relations) while not all bad, weird, and different sounds necessarily result from DIY practices of reciprocity (i.e. And so I understood the difference between supporting something and liking it. Thats what really contributes to that communal feeling you get at shows. 17 See also Ryan Citation1992: 53; Holtzman, Hughes, and Van Meter Citation2007; Taylor Citation2016: 155, 173. Every discussion of the San Francisco music scene eventually turns to The Fillmore, which has hosted such legends as James Brown, Ike and Tina Turner, and Otis Redding. For example, multiple north (N) and northeast (NE) Portland DIY houses joined together as a local DIY community to co-organise the second Gathering of Goof Punx festival in April 2012. (Josh Taylor from a band Friends Forever, personal communication, 27 September 2012; see also Chippendale Citation2016). Reciprocally, these local participants (i.e. Founded by the Ambassador of the American Songbook, Michael Feinstein, Feinsteins at the Nikko presents top Broadway artists, cabaret singers, and todays best interpreters of the Great American Songbook. The downstairs music space features live music nightly from a wide variety of local and touring artists. 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG. Among the oldest venues in San Francisco, The Warfield has hosted a number of great black artists, including Louis Armstrong and Prince. Really thats just a fraction of why theyve been noticed. For several years now, Teague and his wife Melissa have run a small grassroots local urban farm business from their house, named Winslow Food Forest. Because San Francisco had an especially vibrant and attractive countercultural scene in the latter half of the 1960s, musicians from elsewhere (along with the famous hip multitude) came there. In other words, Levy rejects approaches to collective organising that employ balanced reciprocity, with its obligation to reciprocate, as individualistic and selfish. For example, as explained by their bass player, Mike Watt, South Californian 1980s punk/DIY band Minutemen in this way adapted the ideas of collaborative equality to their music practice and sound: D. Boon [Minutemen guitarist] played really heavily with trebly new power chords and left all this room for the bass guitar [], and then worked with Georgie [the drummer] to make sure he had all these fills and parts to jam to and add movement to the songs. Donations of money for live performances at DIY shows (a form of balanced gift economy) might be seen to function in a similar way, where a marketable exchange commodity (the live performance) is transformed into a DIY commodity with symbolic and material use value through a process of diversion and enclaving. [2] According to journalist Ed Vulliamy, "A core of Haight Ashbury bands played with each other, for each other"[3]. DIY participant Ben Wiesel, for example, observes that the DIY approach to the show/touring economy, where anything above gas money [as a payment to performers] is immoral, constitutes a twisted DIY ethics (Wiesel, in Makagon Citation2015: 56). For example, in the Glitterdome house in NE Portland, these included sharing, borrowing, and exchanging items, goods and even spaces between houses and participants, be it food, free box items (clothes, shoes, books), tapes, or music equipment. Learn about San Francisco's Jazz and Blues history and check out all the best places to see it performed live today. Here, Scott describes the basic theory of reciprocity, as outlined by anthropologist Marcel Mauss in his classic study The Gift ([Citation1925] Citation1990). No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. These socio-economic relations, I argue, also shape DIY sounds and aesthetics, as well as contribute to distinct musical values, discourses and practices. The DIY scenes I studied were constituted materially through alternative economies of DIY practice, collective participation, and reciprocity. On similar lines, Marshall Sahlins differentiates between balanced reciprocity, defined by a tacit obligation to reciprocate, and general reciprocity or sharing, usually practiced among closer family members, where the reciprocation is non-obligatory (1972: 1939). Moreover, while there is a tangible tendency within American DIY communities toward reciprocal interaction in multiple social and economic aspects of DIY sociability, it is also acknowledged within the DIY scenes that this kind of alternative economy has its own limits. [13] San Francisco historian Charles Perry recalled that in Haight-Ashbury, "You could party hop all night and hear nothing but Rubber Soul",[14] and that "More than ever the Beatles were the soundtrack of the Haight-Ashbury, Berkeley and the whole circuit. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. DIY ethics entail making things oneself, and thus obviating the need for commercial and institutional channels of production. Specialties: About the San Francisco Symphony: The San Francisco Symphony and Michael Tilson Thomas present more than 220 concerts each year from September through July in a variety of genres, with SFS musicians performing classical concerts, holiday favorites, summer pops events, free outdoor concerts, special series for families and children, plus presentations of visiting guest artists and . We use cookies to improve your website experience. They also reuse derelict and discarded capitalist products and in this way participate in transferring them from market to non-market value, consequently enabling their diversion from capitalist circulation. Reviews on 80'S Music Clubs in San Francisco, CA - Barracuda '80's Decade Dance Party, Cat Club, Monroe, Bootie Mashup: SF, Butter, New Wave City, Bimbo's 365 Club, Club Gossip, Raven Bar, Oasis Ralph Gleason became one of the founders of what would become the rock-scene fan journal, Rolling Stone. Secondly, I discuss the cultural and aesthetic levels of this phenomenon, before finally focusing on the complexities and contradictions surrounding the coexistence of both alternative and dominant economic systems within American DIY scenes (highlighting some of the co-dependencies involved with italics, for greater conceptual clarity). Monterey, California is about 120 road miles south of San Francisco. He refers to the circulation of commodities in the dominant regime as paths, and to divergences from such paths to the alternative regimes of value as diversions. DIY performers therefore usually approach and sustain the DIY scenes through the practice of communal reciprocity, by playing for their own fun, and for the interests of the DIY community (horizontal approach), and not for their own individual interests in financial gain and mainstream success (vertical approach). It is important to note here that any act of gift-giving (for instance, organising shows) is always also an act that ties individuals to community. Thats what they think. In the summer of 2012, I toured with a band from Portland called 3 Moons, playing shows around the West Coast and the Midwest. Accordingly, in order to avoid foreclosing the discursive and material space from alternative openings and possibilities, some authors emphasise a need for the ontological reframing and creative re-reading of these alternative economic practices in their relations with capitalism and neoliberalism (Gibson-Graham Citation2008). [18] Donahue was uniquely qualified, being savvy and enthusiastic about jazz, R&B, Soul, and ethnic music, besides the then-current rock music. 2 See for example Gibson-Graham Citation2008; Eriksen Citation2010: 160, 161, 201, 202, 216; Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014; Tausig Citation2014; Dean Citation2015; Otten Citation2015; Graham Citation2016; Kirsch Citation2017. In early 1967, Tom Donahuea veteran disc jockey, rock concert producer, songwriter, and music-act managerwas inspired to revive a moribund radio station, KMPX, and inaugurate the first FM-radio rock station, in San Francisco, in order to showcase this type of music. Numerous scholars have discussed the coexistence of different economic systems within particular cultures and societies, mainly juxtaposing capitalism against alternative economic systems, such as a sustenance economy or gift-economy.Footnote16 While these latter systems may emerge as alternatives or in opposition to the dominant capitalist mode, many analysts also highlight the co-dependent and co-constitutive dimensions of this relationship.
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