ONE SHOE IN THE ROAD - "Struck Cyclists And Their Stories" - CD - 2005

   I ride a bike almost daily in the city of San Francisco and most of the time, it feels like I have to be on my guard as soon as I mount the bike. People zip around the streets here with (seemingly) little to no regard of anyone around them, even though they could kill someone with two tons of steel (or plastic) with one simple thrust of the gas pedal. On the other side of that coin, there are tons of bicyclists who cut off people in crosswalks, yell "I have the right of way" indignantly at cars when they don't and ride full speed down sidewalks crowded with people. Is there a way that we can just all live together and use the same streets without trying to kill each other? That is just a glimpse into what this recording is trying to shed some light on.
   In "One Shoe in the Road", the interviewers and editors (Don Godwin and Erin Yanke) talk with people who have been hit by cars while biking; people who are lucky enough to have made it through. The stories are graphic, difficult and traumatic (there is your trigger warning). They bring up questions and provide some answers about how we can all learn to share space in our growing cities and the things that we can do to minimize injuries (or death) to people who are just trying to get where they are going without supporting the capitalist oil industry. (p.s. I'm not actually trying to politicize every person who rides a bike. I just wanted to slip that in there.)

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And since we are punks, this includes interviews and work by people from IMPRACTICAL COCKPIT, CHASED AND SMASHED, SWORD OF THE ANCIENT, BEASTHEAD, ANCESTRAL DIET, LIGHT BRIGADE and more!

ALIEN BOY - "A Zine About the Life of James Chasse" - By Erin Yanke and Icky A. - 2006

   Two of my friends, Erin and Icky, put this zine out years ago but it somehow eluded me until very recently. Erin gave me her last copy and I promised her that I would archive it digitally, somehow. So, here it is.
   James Chasse was a staple of the early Portland, OR punk scene back in the late 70's / early 80's. By all accounts, he was at every show, he made zines, played in a band called THE COMBOS and always had a kind word for all of his friends. He suffered from schizophrenia for most of his life and his parents even shipped him off to a mental institution when he was still a teenager. James (or Jim-Jim as many of his friends knew him back then) was a big inspiration to Greg Sage and provided lyrical ideas for some of the songs on the LP "Is This Real?" In 2004, James (who had no criminal record and was not suspected of any crime) was beaten to death by Portland police officers in front of a dozen witnesses. They tasered him repeatedly and broke 17 of his ribs. The death was ruled to be "accidental" and the officers involved were cleared of criminal wrong-doing and placed back on active duty.
   If any good can come out of this, the court case ruled that officers are now required to undergo a 40 hour training that prepares them to work with mentally ill people in crisis. I work with mentally ill people every day at my job and I wish this training was mandatory for all officers. I've seen people get thrown on the street and hog-tied just because they yelled at a cop. I barged between a client and 5 cops once because the cops were about to attack him for simply muttering "fuck you guys." (miraculously, that worked...I think only because we were in a house where I worked and not on the street). Police shot and killed a mentally ill man at a BART station simply because he was waving a knife around...and people were on the platform waiting for trains. This kind of training definitely needs to happen more often because cops are acutely aware that they can kill people and get away with it, especially if the person is "crazed", "homeless" or "aggressive". (also, "gang member" or "illegal immigrant" works as well).
    This download contains a PDF document of the entire zine (Thanks for the help, Kyle) along with an audio interview by Erin Yanke and a radio show about James' life that appeared on Circle A Radio. The zine contains stories and quotes by Greg Sage (of The WIPERS), KT Kincaid (of the NEO-BOYS), Jason Renault (of the Mental Health Association of Portland) and many others. There's also snippets of James' old zines as well as amazing pictures from the early days of Portland's punk scene. Thanks to Erin Yanke for giving me permission to put this all online.

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For a lot more info on this whole court case and the aftermath, please check out Jameschasse.blogspot.com

EDIT: 2/18/13: There is now a movie about the life and death of James Chasse which just premiered last weekend in Portland. You can find more info about it at AlienBoy.org

LIFE DURING WARTIME #9 - CD-R - 2010

   I'm a big fan of used record stores, street sales, yard sales and just plain looking through the trash for treasures. Some of the records I've found while digging though collections in the past have blown my mind, like the time I found the FRED LANE LP for $8. Or the time I came across the first MELVINS LP on Alchemy Records in a used bin for $2. I can't even begin to describe how happy I was when I stumbled upon a yard sale where every record was $1 and I walked away with first pressings by THE DEAD BOYS, THE 101er's, GANG OF FOUR and 27 others. It was mindblowing. I actually checked in with the guy selling the stuff to make sure he wasn't about to commit suicide. (He said he was moving and couldn't afford to ship it.)
    A guy named Warren Hill also likes to dig through record collections, but he found a real one of a kind. While searching through records at a yard sale, he found a lost acetate of the VELVET UNDERGROUND and bought it for 75 cents. It contained alternate versions of VU songs that possibly had never been heard by the public. What follows on this download is the story of finding that record and figuring out what to do with it. The interview is conducted by Erin Yanke in her long-running audiozine, Life During Wartime and the story is interspersed with audio from the acetate. I'm not gonna tell you anymore because it would just ruin the whole thing for you.

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If you would like to hear more episodes of Life During Wartime, be sure to click on the "Audio Zine" tag below.

LIFE DURING WARTIME #6 - "The Troubles" - Tape - 2003

    I'm going to take a wild guess and assume that you read this blog because you are into punk music. I'm also going to assume that you have been to see punk bands in a house during your lifetime. Maybe you went to a dance party afterwards, full of boozy punks swaying along to shit they would never listen to while hanging out in their own rooms sober...like MILLI VANILLI. Now, what if you were hanging out on the porch at that party and suddenly you were surrounded by cops who were part of a terrorism task force that had been assembled to bust this suspicious Anarchist meeting that you all had organized? "But I'm just at a dance party!", you might exclaim. Exactly, but in this police state that we have come to live in, the cops can now find a myriad of reasons to get you convicted of a felony for simply drinking cheap beer and listening to crappy dance music (or even crappy [or good] punk music). Some readers may be acclimated to this kind of police harassment living in the post-9/11 world that we inhabit, but this story takes place 6 months before the World Trade Center attacks...and just because police repression is infinitely more prevalent than it was 11 years ago, that still doesn't make it acceptable.

   In this installment of LIFE DURING WARTIME audio zine (for the uninitiated, think of it as a book on tape), Erin Yanke and Moe Bowstern interview punks that were held on trumped up felony charges after simply being radicals at a party in Portland in 2001. They tell the stories of the paranoia and harassment on the part of the cops and how they (the cops) organized a joint terrorism task force that portrayed fun-loving, harmless punks as bomb-throwing, bloodthirsty anarchists. These incidents helped to organize and politicize the Portland punk scene while also increasing paranoia and distrust within the activist community. It is a great listen and the download also includes the written introduction included in the liner notes penned by Iggy Scam.

   I think this audio document is still important and relevant in light of the ongoing Occupy movements around the world. I also think it is important to remind ourselves of the perceived authority and power that police think they have over us and the ways that they fuck up our lives for no real reason. This could happen to any of us and it's helpful to try and be informed about our rights.

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IGGY SCAM - "79th Street Radio" - Tape - 1998

    Iggy Scam has been self-publishing his zine, SCAM since 1991. It tends to focus on the underbelly of society: the underprivileged, the downtrodden, the folks sleeping in the doorways, the freaks and the punks...and it treats them with dignity and respect. It has consistently been one of my favorite zines since I first encountered SCAM #2, which was bigger than the telephone directory of the town where I grew up.
    Iggy appeared on NPR's "This American Life" on Lil' Bobby Hutton Day in 1998, reading his story "79th Street Radio". It chronicles the mystery and wonder of stumbling across a pirate radio station in North Miami and trying to figure out its origins; trying to find the story behind the story. It conjures up images of lonely boulevards at 3am, old rusting cars, and a time in Miami that may be nonexistent in the near future. It's good listening and helps me to remember why I love radio...not the pop stations, but the crackly AM country, the Coast To Coast weirdness, the things you stumble across in the middle of Wyoming and of course, pirate radio.

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   In the mid-00's, Iggy Scam changed his name back to Erick Lyle and continues to write SCAM. In addition to this, he has contributed articles to SF's Bay Guardian, written articles for many zines and authored the book On The Lower Frequencies, which chronicles years of activism and struggle in SF during the dot-com boom and the ensuing era of living in a world that does not want poor people to exist. He is currently working on a new book and a collaborative art show in SF that is sure to blow some minds.

LIFE DURING WARTIME #7 - "Punks Against War" - Tape - 2003

   George Bush ordered the invasion of Iraq in early 2003 and activists in San Francisco organized a protest to shut down the city. I wasn't there, unfortunately, so it's hard for me to write about this and give an accurate description of what happened. Luckily, my good friend Erin Yanke was there and documented the protest as it happened. Her interviews take place in a squatted building near Market and Van Ness in downtown SF. The vacant former pot club was taken over during the protest to act as a place to organize, relax, eat free food, get away from cops and plot your next move in the shutdown of the city. They even had door people to watch the front so that when the cops inevitably raided the building, they could be stalled and most everyone got out the back door without harm or arrest.

                             photo courtesy of Anandi
   On side two, Paul Curran interviews people in the streets about their motivation behind getting involved with this protest and about how being punk has influenced their political ideologies. I think it's important to hear these stories of past struggles and learn from them to influence how we can do things better in the future. This protest brought out thousands of people and shut down the entire city for the day. It's really inspiring to me.

                 Photo taken from Basetree of protesters on Powell St.

                                 Handiwork by Lee Wonder

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Updated 2014

                       

   Erin Yanke still occasionally does zines (audio and written) and is sitll hard at work with her weekly radio show on KBOO in Portland, OR.