We went to the "Fab Mab Reunion" at the Fillmore Auditorium the Saturday before last, and hype or no hype, it was a total blast. Having spent my formative years at the Mabuhay Gardens, I was interested in this show, but tickets sold out so quickly that I wrote off the very idea (while secretly wishing I had been on the ball quickly enough). Luckily, Davis was not nearly so sanguine, and we ended up sending some of our video footage to various bandmembers in hopes that we could sell them on the idea of taping the show. Well, as it is Bill Graham Presents, the video privileges had already been spoken for, but Penelope Houston came through for us and got us some will-call tickets, so that we could get in. Nice surprise. A representative of the Mutants tried to help us out on the video front, but it seems Steve DePace of Flipper was the guy in charge of the whole gig, and he didn´t get back to us. So in we went with a 27-shot disposable drugstore camera (the door people didn´t stop me from taking THAT in).

Got to see a few old acquaintances like David Rapoport, former JJ 180/Realtors drummer, who I didn´t recognize at first! Sorry David, you´re looking a little different these days. Good to see him out and about, nonetheless. David recorded an album with his ex-bandmate Wally Sound a couple years ago, and I had a catchy tune from it, "Grazia Admired", on the Ear Candle Radio playlist last year; I think it may have even made the charts once. He´s now teaching in San Jose and doing well. Also ran into the ebullient Carl Snarl, frontman/racounteur of Standard American Diet, and his cohort Stan aka My Sin. Paula Keyth also came down from Portland.

One person we were planning to meet was Jack Rabid, editor of The Big Takeover. We have an ad for the X-tal compilation in the next issue, and we thought it´d be cool to deliver it to him at the show. I had never met the guy before, but I´ve seen enough pictures that I immediately spotted him up front during the Mutants set. Jack´s cool; we hung out with him during most of the show, and it must be said, he is just like his magazine. Though he´s now in his forties, he still seems like the same enthusiastic teenager that long ago jumped on trains to catch the Heartbreakers, Bad Brains, etc. in Manhattan. Jack gets flack from some quarters for his style and his tastes, but he doesn´t cater to any preconceived images of what a hipster or a cynical zine writer/rock critic is supposed to be. He is a fan, pure and simple, but one with a huge catalog of musical knowledge in his head and a passion for music that communicates. Glad to have met and spent time with him.

It was SO good to see the Mutants again. They don´t really get a lot of recognition for their role in the early SF scene, and what recognition they do get is for their three oddball lead singers. But their set impressed on me what a great band they also were, and how many classic songs they cranked out in their brief time. The Fun Terminal album didn´t really do them justice, but it is essential nonetheless. I´m waiting for my promised copy. Throughout their set, the stage and audience was periodically bathed in huge showers of confetti shot out from either corner of the stage. That´s the kind of band they are. Joyously silly, with one eye on the dark side of life.

The reconsituted Avengers play semi-regularly around here these days, so their set was no surprise. It was great, though. They were on. New drummer Luis is simply amazing, and Penelope was clearly having a blast. She also made a point of mentioning Jello Biafra, the one character Dirk Dirksen (the Mab´s Don Rickles-like host, back from limbo and snotty as ever) made a point of NOT mentioning.

The real revelation, though, was Flipper. I made a point of avoiding the whole sordid post-Shatter 90s/Rick Rubin catastrophe phase of the band, because I did not want my memories to be fucked with. But I also wanted to see with my middle-aged drug-free eyes whether these guys were still capable of hitting that spot in me that no other band has before or since. A half-assed "Ha Ha Ha" made me think "ehhhhh" (even as I was uncontrollably "hahaha"-ing like everybody else in the crowd), but when the band stumbled into the slow grind of "The Lights, The Sound, The Rhythm And The Noise" I was swept away, shouting in Davis´ ear, "THIS is what I paid for tonight." Bruce was dementedly inspired; it took me a minute to recognize him with his hair sticking out in all directions, but he was in fine form, caustic, mock-apathetic and world-weary. Ted Falconi was actually beaming as he poured out that unique guitar mess that no one else could ever duplicate, and DePace and DeMartis nailed that heart-pulling falling-all-over-itself-but-inexorably-lurching-forward rhythm. The big surprise was seeing Bruce switch to bass for some songs; I´d heard that his painful chronic back problems had made that impossible, but whatever those patches and wires all over his back were, they were working. DeMartis is no Will, and hams it up a bit on the mike, but "I Saw You Shine" was still pulled off credibly. Bruce was always my favorite Flipper bassist and Will my favorite singer, so it was good to see them at least acknowledge that important side of the band. At one point they actually switched places during "Sex Bomb" while the song was still playing. I know "The Wheel" or "Survivors Of The Plague" would have been too much to ask, but I was happy anyway.

It wouldn´t have been a Flipper set without something really insane and a little stupid occurring. Jimmy Crucifix of Shotwell tried to speak while Dirksen was introducing Flipper and got brushed off, which may have inspired what happened later: there was a big barrier between the audience and the stage, with a makeshift aisle in between where all the professional photographers and videographers were roaming. Suddenly and unexpectedly, Jimmy appeared on the stage again with a deranged look in his eye and hurled himself off stage, perhaps intending to hit the audience, but instead slamming down on the bare floor in between, right next to a guy with a camera. For a tense couple of minutes, he was down there, out of sight, and not getting up. Oh shit, we thought, is that poor fool all right? Instantly, some beefy BGP staff surrounded him and eventually escorted him out. He seemed to walking OK at that point. There are some aspects of one´s youth that are better not relived.

VERY important correction, courtesy of Carol Lennon by way of Carl "Snarl" Campbell: the jumper was NOT JIMMY CRUCIFIX, but a foolhardy fellow by the name of "Roy Wonder". Regrets if anyone was inadvertently slandered in this account.

The Dead Kennedys I did not watch much. I wasn´t much of a fan of them then really, but much as I tire of Biafra sometimes, this reincarnation as a cash cow for the musicians of the band is tacky to say the least. Brandon "Eddie" Cruz (if that was him, or do they have another stand-in singer now?) seemed to be doing the best he could in a bad situation, ranting about the still-alive-and-annoying Phyllis Schlafly and so on, but he was way out of his league, really. It was a good opportunity to hang out and socialize. We ended up taking Jack back to the place where he was staying, which turned out to be around the corner from us. Funny.

Postscript: We had to re-do the ad art because of technical problems, so we handed the correct version to Jack at the last minute during the following week and decided to do something else together before he went back to New York. We wound up going to the Hemlock Tavern to see Whysall Lane, the new band of Richard Baluyut from Versus. They´re pretty good, but for me the highlight of the evening was when, on the first song, Richard passed his guitar to willing members of the audience to "play a solo". I sometimes get shy about these things, but this time my hand shot up in the air and I was handed a loud, feeding-back instrument and I had to do something. There was a capo on it, and I had absolutely no clue what key the song was in, so I just twanged and strummed wildly until it seemed to fit. Then I passed it back up to Baluyut, who seemed to be nodding in approval. That was a rush. Davis said it sounded good, but she loves me of course. Well actually, I think it probably did sound good at that. Undoubtedly seeing Ted Falconi the weekend before inspired me to produce the results.