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by
Jerry Drawhorn |
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"non-confrontational" President, Gerald Ford, and the mind-numbing crawl of the Arab Oil-Crisis gasoline queues. Jazz had turned to saccharine, commercialized Maggione and Corea (the progenitors of Kenny G), while Rock was exemplified by bands like Journey, Fleetwood Mac and Tower of Power (all who played in Freeborn). The UCD Davis Coffee House, once the site of regular jazz, blues, rock and folk concerts by Phil Ochs, Spencer Davis, John Handy, Mose Allison, Commander Cody, and Mimi Farina (accompanied by her Davis English grad lover, Tom Jans) stopped having regular concerts. For the salvation of Davis, that was about to change!
The first glimmerings of anything resembling "punk" in Davis may have been a UCD Coffeehouse show with the Tubes spin-off group, Leila & the Snakes on Nov. 5 1976. Members of Snakes would later form the core of Pearl Harbor & the Explosions. The Snakes were an unheralded pre-Goth ensemble of hyper-sexualized vamps that would not have been out-of place in the London clubs of that era. They appeared as the dancers in the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" in the infamous "Time Warp" sequence. Jane Dornacker (Leila) previewed her Coffee House show by going on the air with a lurid, ribald interview on KDVS before the Tubes show on October 29th. Leila and the Snakes were a bit more challenging than the campy Tubes, and perhaps acceptable to Davis audiences because it was, after all, Halloween season. So it was all in good fun.
Another band, Li'l Roger and the Goosebumps was performing in the area earlier, often with Berzerkly label's The Rubinoos, and both certainly had the independent ethos of bands that were emerge later. Still these were bands firmly nested in the pop genre. The Ramone's had tilted at the windmill of Sacramento's turgid rock scene at Slick Willy's in 1976. Sacramento bands like the Twinkeyz, Ozzie and Permanent Wave appeared on the scene the following year.
Soon thereafter, two LA exiles who attended UC Davis began reviewing punk/new wave bands/shows/LP's for The California Aggie. Tom Gracyk started in the Summer of 1977 reviewing the releases of then obscure artists like Iggy Pop and the Stranglers. That Fall, Steve Wynn joined Gracyk to make a team that would promote, in text and on the airwaves, the new sounds and culture that was coming into being outside of Davis. Wynn originally joined The California Aggie as a Sports Reporter, but soon migrated to covering Music.
In quick succession Gracyk first wrote an article "Is Punk Rock Art? Is it Even Music?" for the Aggie in the "Profile" Section on October 12, 1977 that reviewed LP's by the Dead Boys, The Saints, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Talking Heads '77. Then Gracyk introduced a one hour "punk/new wave" KDVS special "Cry Tougher" on Tuesday Nov. 23rd 1977. By January 1978 this show had become a regular onslaught of New Music, and used the Flamin' Groovies song "Shake Some Action" as the theme. Steve Wynn helped him out and eventually created his own show called "Three Minute Rock & Roll", which was restricted to material that was under that length. That month Gracyk and Wynn traveled down to the Winterland to see what was to be the Sex Pistols swansong. Both wrote reviews in the Aggie Jan 18, 1978 and Wynn composed a Sex Pistols obituary (1/25/78) when the tour folded.
There was a third important figure
yet to mentioned in this picture. venue, and was tasked by the Entertainment Council to book acts there. Afterman threw off the modus operandi of previous EC bookers, who simply waited for promoters who had acts on the "college rounds" contact them. Ironically the fact that the venue had lapsed into disuse as a concert venue may have benefited his method to some degree. The schedule was cleared, and he had to seek performers on his own. Rather than simply booking local strum and bang acts, Afterman pored over music magazines seeking emerging groups on tour that might have an "off night" before playing in the SF Bay Area. Davis was, amazingly, just outside the standard 50 mile contractual limit that was placed on performers by Bay Area bookers, so Afterman was able to snag a wide range of performers on the first tours across America, or on their initial foray from the abroad. His initial shows in the Fall of 1977, besides the aforementioned Leila and the Snakes, included touring Australian rockers The Dingoes (accompanied by New Wavers - Taxxi, who fielded two UC Davis alumni, Dan Collins and Roberta Burger), The Dave Grisman Quintet, Brand-X, Jorma Kaukonen, the Art Ensemble of Chicago. That semester indicated the eclecticism of Afterman's tastes.
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