Lest We Turn Into The Wall of Death...Bryan Gregory Remembered

On this day in 2001, Bryan Gregory passed away from multiple systems failure.

Jennifer Miro of The Nuns - RIP

Always an iconoclast, the beautiful, talented pioneering artist, Jennifer Miro of San Francisco punk rockers, The Nuns passed away in December. The news just started circulating yesterday as a result of the obituary/post in SF Weekly. SF Weekly's blog post tells most of Jennifer's story.

For Punk Turns 30's memories of Jennifer and The Nuns, visit these posts:


January 2009 Punk Turns 30

Search Punk Turns 30 for The Nuns

What Does Stevie Nicks Have to Do With Punk Rock?

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What does Stevie Nicks have to do with punk rock? Well, nothing, really. But she's totally gonna help me raise money to put together my coffee table book of images from my traveling photo exhibit, Unguarded Moments: Backstage and Beyond.

Stevie and the rest of the Rumours line up of Fleetwood Mac (I was rather fond of the original Peter Green and Jeremy Spencer line-up myself), aside from being world renown hitmakers, are among the musicians I have photographed in my lifetime and the photos of the first Buckingham-Nicks performances with Fleetwood Mac are an intrinsic part of my life in the Central Coast beach suburb that informed my perspective.

You will see these photos of Fleetwood Mac in my book's intro.

So, I have decided to offer select images from the 1976 line-up of Fleetwood Mac, featuring the earliest appearances of Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham. They'll make a great Christmas Gift for the classic rock fan on your gift list.

These photos were taken at the UCSB stadium where Fleetwood Mac performed on May 2, 1976 - or that's the date on my envelope that contained these negatives. I also saw them open for the Faces in August of 1975 and was a bit confused by the presence of new members, Buckingham and Nicks. Confusion was negated by a decent version of "Oh Well," and once the Faces hit the stage, nothing that preceded them mattered.

As time passed, however, in the very few months between the Faces last gig as The Faces until their 21st Century reunion (without Rod the Mod), all that classic rock seemed to matter less and less for my closest friends and me.








We were rocking something new that resonated for us in a way that The Beatles resonated for kids like us back in the earliest days of the 60s. Girls screamed for the Fab Four; we had our own Fab Four, too... The Ramones. Not that the rock n roll that went before was all for naught; we took lots from the Beatles and the Stones. But we took from their periods of urgent relevance, and from there, we launched our own period of urgent relevance, and kept it more urgent and quite simply kept it urgent all the time.


In 2011, every single one of these bands mentioned on this page and most of them visually referenced, are in the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame.

It is enduring. And a picture is worth a thousand words.

Stay tuned for more info on the Vintage Classic Rock Photos by me, Theresa K. They won't be available for very long, and buying them means you get a fairly limited edition piece of art and you're helping me create the coffee table book for Unguarded Moments: Backstage and Beyond. Help punk rock endure! Spread the word!



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Target Video's Solo Gallery Exhibit in Los Angeles - NOW!

The Cramps, Whisky A Go Go, 1978
The Cramps are one of the highlights of the Target Video body of work - their performance at the Napa State Hospital is infamous and fortunately, because of Target, the (moving) pictures can prove it.

I've often said it (and the Target principals think I exaggerate BUT, I think its true): San Francisco's Target Video was the punk rock version of Andy Warhol's Factory. Their solo gallery exhibit opens in Los Angeles tomorrow, November 17. The text below is directly from the press release for the over-arching project Pacific Standard Time, a collaboration of art/culture centers celebrating Art in Los Angeles, 1945-1980 (or as I call it from Post War to the beginning of Post Punk):

targetvideo77: Cal Punk & Performance



As a participant in Pacific Standard Time, Annie Wharton Los Angeles is pleased to present “Cal Punk & Performance,” the first solo gallery exhibition in Los Angeles by targetvideo77. In 1977, artist Joe Rees started targetvideo77, capturing some of the edgiest performances of the era. Rees (in collaboration with Jackie Sharp, Jill Hoffman, Sam Edwards and others) archived early performance art, punk, and hardcore bands on video and film, with the artists sometimes risking their own safety by shooting from precariously tall places, inside of an insane asylum, or within the confines of a prison.



“Cal Punk & Performance” will feature original works of music and performance art from targetvideo77’s rich archive, many of which have never been seen in a fine art context. A single channel installation of Black Flag videos will also be on view, featuring epic concert footage and their first video for MTV, “TV Party.” Included in the raw and compelling videos to be shown at AWLA is one of music's most infamous performances at Napa State Mental Hospital in 1978. The show was headlined by the Mutants and opening on the bill were the Cramps. This, along with performances and artists as diverse the Crime, Dead Kennedys, The Dils, Flipper, Mutants, and Noh Mercy that were recorded by targetvideo77 in California in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Photographic stills from the videos will also be shown in the exhibition, along with ephemera and posters from the original shows.


The Dils, San Francisco, 1978
The Dils were and are a perennial fave band of mine and one close to the true meaning of the punk rock movement - their music is a hybrid of the emotional launch pad for British punk, combined with the furious and frenetic pace of The Ramones


targetvideo77’s punk rock videos were featured in The Getty’s “California Video” exhibition in 2008, and has been exhibited in the Coliseum (Rome), Museum of Contemporary Art (Los Angeles), Steven Wolf Fine Arts (San Francisco and Chicago), The Fillmore (San Francisco), The Pacific Film Archive (San Francisco), Cinefamily Theater (Los Angeles), the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco), and the San Francisco Public Library. Their work is currently featured in the MOCA/Pacific Standard Time exhibition curated by Paul Schimmel entitled “Under the Big Black Sun: California Art 1974-1981.”



The exhibitions open in conjunction with Pacific Design Center’s Design Loves Art programming from 5:30-8:30pm on November 17 and runs through January 4, 2012. AWLA gallery hours are from 12-5pm, Monday – Friday. Please call for holiday hours.



More on Pacific Standard Time can be found here:

www.pacificstandardtime.org/galleries.


Darby Crash, Whisky A Go Go, 1977
Target Video captured some of the best and earliest performances of The Germs ever, full stop.

Kid Congo 2011 European Tour

Pleasant Gehman and Kid Congo Powers, above, in the days before they were punk icons. Well - they were icons in our scene... each of them drafted by our mutual friend, Jeffrey Lee Pierce to make music (with him and on their own), and as they saying goes... the rest is history.

Kid and Jeffrey were in the earliest version of Jeffrey's vision of The Gun Club and before he could play on a Gun Club record, Kid was drafted into The Cramps where he transformed from Brian into the Kid we know today.

That primitive music has never left Kid and on his recent records, it has come back to the forefront... and for more info on that...I lift directly from the Kid Congo and Pink Monkey Birds own notice for their upcoming tour....


Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds hit round 2 of another European tour in support of their critically acclaimed LP "Gorilla Rose" on IN THE RED Records.

The much acclaimed 2009 LP "Dracula Boots" was heralded by many as a "return to form." Co-Produced by Jason Ward and recorded in a High School gymnasium in Harveyville, Kansas, now an artists retreat known as The Harveyville Project, Dracula Boots uses southern soul, 60's Chicano rock, and psychedelic imagery. British magazine N.M.E. said " In short, on ‘Dracula Boots’ Kid Congo Powers has once again found the juicy jugular of soul-fired, funked-up rock’n’roll. You’d be foolish not to take a bite."

In 2011 Kid Congo and The Pink Monkey Birds released their follow up album, "Gorilla Rose" also on In The Red Records. Eamon Carr of The Dublin Evening Herald said of "Gorilla Rose" "Having a working band is paying off. Gorilla Rose elevates seedy go-go weirdness to the level of high art."

November 16 France Bourg en Bresse La Tannerie
November 17 Holland Eindhoven Cafe Altstadt
November 19 Norway Oslo Le Revolver
November 20 Denmark Copenhagen Huset
November 21 Travel
November 22 BBC6 session with Marc Riley
November 23 London Corsica Studios
November 26 Holland Amsterdam Paradiso
November 27 Holland Groningen Vera Club basement
November 28 Travel
November 29 Germany TBD
November 30 Belgium Brusselles Les Ateliers Claus
December 1 Germany Berlin Festaal Kreuzberg
December 2 Germany Frankfurt Pony Hoff
December 3 Switzerland Zurich Stall 6
December 4 OFF
December 5 Austria Vienna Chelsea
December 7 France Roubaix La Caves aux Poétes
December 8 Belgium Charleroi Le Vecteur
December 9 France Paris La Boule Noire
December 10 France La Roche/Yon Fuzz Yon
December 11 France Lorient Le Galion
December 13 France Bordeaux L'Heretic
December 14 France Nimes Industrie
December 15 Spain Madrid TBA
December 16 Portugal Porto Armazem Do Cha
December 17 Spain Vitoria Helldorado