I’ve begun to rethink my research’s focus.

Growing up in San José, I was often upset by how hard local music seemed to be so difficult to come by. Most people listened to rock, pop, hip hop, and country–the kind of top-50 music you stuff you could not avoid on the radio if you tried, and no one I knew could be bothered to branch out. For those middle and high school kids who were interested, the big thing was to see bands play in the party room in the back of the Nickel City arcade. Of course, by the time I finally got in on it, it was already getting shut down (dancing was not allowed at my first show). My brother and I once drove as far as Cupertino just to see a band from our own school.

I always figured that this impression of scarcity was a result of my own inexperience, but since I have come back to town, sat down, and directly applied myself to seek out music in the city, I have come to rethink that. Through four weeks in San José, and I have only been to one show in the city. On top of that, in the entirety of Gimme Something Better, a book by Jack Boulware and Silke Tudor on the history of punk rock in the Bay Area, San José is not mentioned a single time while the south bay is only referred to twice, essentially to say that nothing was happening there.

This seems to remain the case; I’ve been able to find two shows in town (one of them 21+), and most of those musicians I have managed to see have been playing in San Francisco and Santa Cruz. The independent music and art festival, SADFEST 2KX5, coming up towards the end of May will take place over one night in Dublin, CA, and two in San José, yet only three of the twenty-eight bands announced are actually from the city. Compare this to any given night in Olympia, where there’s likely to be a handful of shows featuring plenty of locals. San José is the tenth largest city in the United States, with a population of just under a million, yet San Francisco (pop. 837K), Seattle (652K), Portland (609K), Oakland (406K), Berkeley (117K), Santa Cruz (63K), and Olympia (48K) all have much more impressive music scenes and musical histories. The question I inevitably have to ask is why is there so little music in San José, especially for a city its size.

I‘ve been considering and researching a number of factors that might contribute to this. For one thing, San José is a very big city (the tenth largest in the country), which may have a suffocating effect for would-be artists. For another, the layout and architecture of the city can feel very homogenous and uncompelling, which may impact its artistic psyche. Some of the people I have interviewed so far have pegged the lack of venues in recent years, which may be linked to a shift in population as the computer industry continues to draw in wealthy tech-types who’s interests–and money–may be oriented towards night club types of places. Wealth in general may be a factor, considering that San José has the most disposable income per household among large cities (population>500K) in the United States. Then again, some of these characteristics are recent developments. San Francisco has historically dominated San José, and with their renowned artistic and liberal reputations, San Francisco and Berkeley may act as vacuums or magnets that draw all the artistic people away from the south bay.

I will be addressing each of these ideas in more detail in upcoming posts. I regret that I have not been keeping up with my website. Between my car getting wrecked and an extensive series of complications and let-downs associated with that; trying to make sure that I don’t end up homeless again this Summer from two states away and a series of complication and let-downs associated with that; trying to actually get out and see music and a series of complications and let-downs associated with that; coming back to live with my parents and series of frustrations and complications associated with that; nursing and running errands for my dad, losing both of my cameras; and getting banged up a bunch since skateboarding has been my soul mode of transportation, my board is falling to pieces and the sidewalks in San José are trash… I have been feeling very overwhelmed and very disappointed. I’m out of my funk now though. I’ve got a car and a camera to use and a list of upcoming shows and festivals, and I’m going to be recording interviews and music. I’m back in it!

Andrew Jackson Jihad, a satirical Arizona folk punk band turned emo-skate punk, is on tour with New York’s Jeff Rosenstock, former lead of The Arrogant Sons of Bitches and Bomb the Music Industry!. Both have long-lasting ties to San José through Asian Man Records, a staple ska/punk label run by Mike “Bruce Lee” Park that started in his parents’ garage in Santa Cruz and has since upgraded to his parents’ garage in Los Gatos (a wealthy suburb to the southwest of San José). Asian Man has released the greater deal of AJJ and BtMI!’s music, and both bands have made good friends in-town as well as with each other, resulting in frequent collaboration.

This collaboration is plainly visible in Jeff Rosenstock’s backup band: Mike Huegenor is singer and guitarist for such San José bands as Shinobu, Hard Girls, and Classics of Love. Kevin Higuchi has taught drums at San Jose State University and San Jose Pro Drum and played in the bands Insolence and Whiskey Avengers. John DeDomenici, also formerly of Bomb the Music Industry! and The Arrogant Sons of Bitches.These four musicians (including Jeff) also form Mike Park’s backup band under The Bruce Lee Band (though they played together as Jeff Rosenstock Internet Posers before that).

I saw these bands twice over the last week, once in Seattle with friends and once in Portland on my own, and I got to talk briefly with Huegenor, DeDomenici, and Higuchi. However, as Huegenor said when I contacted him ahead of time about an interview, there was no good time or place before, during, or after the show to have a real discussion. I am hoping to see them return to the bay after the tour.

The particularly interesting thing about seeing the bands twice was to examine the differences between the crowds from the different cities. First off, the general air before the show in Portland was much brighter. People showed up in more colorful clothing and there were more kids (by which I mean teens) joking around and making noise, whereas in Seattle, everyone was in the typical all-black getups and there more of an air of everyone trying to act cool. This might be related to the nature and locations of the venues. Neumos in Seattle was a dark club in what felt like the middle of downtown. Walking around, I saw dozens of different posters for upcoming shows there from well known artists (including Questlove), indicating that it might be a major stage, both musically and socially. On the other hand, WonderBallroom in Portland felt more set in suburbia and had a much more open and colorful interior. Additionally, the ceiling lights in Portland came on between acts, which took away some of the edge but made it feel like a safer place, possibly attracting a younger and more relaxed crowd.

Despite this, the Portland show turned out a lot rougher, both for the bands and the audience. Both cities’ crowds had enormous energy and seemed very invested in the bands (I saw a several people lost in their own worlds for Chumped (NY) and The Smith Street Band’s (AUS) sets) and the singer from the Smith Street Band mentioned that Seattle and Portland had been the best shows of the tour so far (not to brag here). Yet the experiences in the mosh/dance pits were very different. The pit in Seattle flowed a lot more, like people understood the rhythms and knew how to move in concert with them. Such was the fluidity of the crowd that I would repeatedly find myself on the other side of the room from my friends, but could I easily dance my way back. In Portland however, there were a lot more hard elbows, the crowd rarely seemed to get into a unified rhythm, and people were generally more violent. This notably progressed over the course of the night, likely as people drank more or as a different group of people joined for the later bands.

The bands themselves ended up in some conflict with the audience at several points while in Portland. During Jeff Rosenstock’s set, he made a joke that they were Andrew Jackson Jihad, and that the audience should give them all their money, for which he caught a few coins to the face, as well as a few bills. During Hajj’s actual set, singer/guitarist Sean Bonnette was also hit in the face with something that looked like a bandana, to which he disappointedly frowned and said “Same to you.” I saw nothing like this while in Seattle.

The other major issue was that people refused to stop crowd-surfing, even after the band had taken time to ask people not to and after security had come in and told everyone, “When you start tryingto get on top of people, it’s time for you to leave.” Particularly, members of AJJ showed concern for those in the front, who were repeatedly smashed up against the stage and would get caught up in crowd-surfers’ legs. For the most part however, people were considerate in stopping and helping people who had lost shoes or glasses or phones, or who needed help getting up, though this did not prevent a bizarre series of vortex-like situations, where half of the crowd ended up getting dragged down under each other.

In Portland I even overheard that someone had found a knife on the floor, which may have been some kind of grizzly allusion to Jeff Rosenstock’s recent music video Nausea, where knives are passed out at the door to a show, and someone jumps on stage to stab Jeff and pull confetti and tacos out of his chest cavity (definitely worth a watch).

I had planned to attend a third show by these bands in San Francisco to try to compare the experience in the Bay Area as opposed to the Pacific Northwest, but as I have detailed in my last post, there were complications, and that did not end up happening. Hopefully, I will get the chance to interview some of the band members as/if they return from the tour and get their fresh perspectives on performing in different cities across the country.

P.S. I had also planned to take photos, but apparently my camera and several other items went missing somewhere in the midst of repeatedly packing and unpacking my life in the past few weeks.

It’s high-time that I resume my updates. For the past two weeks I have failed to meet posting deadlines because I have been putting out fires left and right.

Last Monday night (April 6) I was driving through northern California to my brother’s house on Route 101–in heavy rain. On a notoriously sharp turn, another car came screaming around on the inside, halfway into my lane, and I had to swerve hard to miss them, sending me fishtailing and ultimately putting the front of my car into an embankment. I was fine, but my radiator and frontal structure took a very serious hit. The other car did not stop, which leaves me with no insurance.

My car was pretty banged up (I couldn’t get the driver-side door open for a while). But it seemed to drive alright, so I pushed on to my brother’s house, and in the morning I set off to try to catch my show in San Francisco.

I made it to Santa Rosa. At that point, my car started making horrible noises and throwing up warning lights, evidently because the inverter coolant had all leaked out. I got towed to a dealership that gave me an estimate of $10,000. I had $15 total. I spent Tuesday night in Santa Rosa, sleeping in the back of my car, missing my show and consequentially causing my friend to miss it as well (I was her only way to get back to Davis). I convinced my mom to upgrade our shared AAA membership, so that we could get 100 miles of towing, just about enough to get it to San José, however it did not take effect for two days.

On Wednesday, I caught a bus to San José–leaving my car behind–and spent the night at my dad’s. I spent a lot of Thursday resting and figuring out what to do about my car (I’m still not sure), and on Friday I bussed back to Santa Rosa and got towed to a collision center in San José, where I got a lowball estimate of $12,000. Right now, the best plan seems to be to sell it for scrap, and put that money towards buying a used car.

As for my actual project, it’s starting off pretty well. Before getting to California, I attended two shows by a group of touring bands (Chumped (NY), Jeff Rosenstock (NY and CA), The Smith Street Band (AUS), and Andrew Jackson Jihad (AZ)), which I will detail in a following post. I came just $1.10 of the bus/train fare I needed to make it to a ska show in San Francisco, but I managed to catch two of the bands at a small Santa Cruz show the next night. San José so far looks to be in as much of a music drought as it is in a water drought, but there are a few upcoming shows of interest in San Francisco and Santa Cruz, as well as Sadfest 2KX5, a small punk art/music festival in Dublin and San José at the end of May, which will coincide with Fanimecon, San José’s anime convention.

I have a number of friends and contacts, who I’ll be talking to in order to find out about shows and to arrange interviews with musicians and others involved with the music business/scene. In between these, I mean to visit record shops, music stores, recording studios, venues, and record labels to conduct interviews with the employees, managers, and patrons, as well as to learn of other music stores, record labels, shows, &c. and start flushing out my network. I mean to visualize this network both digitally and physically, though I’m still working out the cork board for my wall. As part of my interview process, I will be asking people about which parts of the Bay and San José they have particular relationships with, whether those be neighborhoods, houses, schools, or whatever else, and I mean to express this as part of my network, which will be overlaid on maps of San José and the greater area.

I will also intend to explore the whole of San José via skateboard and public transit. While trying to find the Greyhound station downtown on Friday, it became painfully clear to me that I don’t really know the town at all, so I mean to go all around, sketching, filming, and photographing. Then if I can manage it, I’ll pull it all into a multimedia piece (every week if I can manage) featuring either original or local music. That’d be cool! That’d be difficult!

Here’s a sketch of the view out the window of my trailer. The park is right on the sound in a place called Young Cove and there are quite a few pine, cedar, and madrone trees around, which is the only redeeming quality of the situation. Most of the houses on the waterfront are super fancy (a flag can be seen towards the right side). It’s an interesting contrast between the handful of trailers and the neighboring affluence.

Housing update: I’ve found someone else to look for a place with. Hopefully we can find some other people who want to find a house at the beginning of Summer.

Below is a sketch of the home I will be leaving when I head to San José. Since the end of September I’ve been living in a trailer on Young Cove, part of Steamboat Island directly across Eld Inlet from the college. I ended up moving here because over the summer I had endured a debilitating series of events that left me homeless for a few weeks and living in a garage for a month. The trailer itself is not much more pleasant. It leaks. It has ants. It has rats. It’s far from the college and very far from the rest of town. It has quite a nice view out the window, which I will try to sketch and post before I leave. The neighbors aren’t fond of music either, which has made it very difficult to practice.

Anyways, I’m moving out when I go south, and hopefully I’ll be able to arrange something by the time I’m back (the guy who I was going to get a place with bailed out). While in San José, I’ll be staying partly with my dad in the suburban neighborhood of Willow Glen, and partly with my mom in the Santa Cruz Mountains between the south bay and the coast (sketches to come).

Shinobu: “Hamilton Avenue Manic” from Tangram Sailors/Ashtray Sea

Shinobu stared in 2002 and have conspired with some of the greatest underground punk bands of the 2000′s including Bomb the Music Industry! (with whom they’ve shared guitar/trombone/keyboard player, Matt Keegan), Andrew Jackson Jihad, and 銀杏BOYZ (pronounced “Ging Nang Boys”). Though championed and celebrated by their fans, Shinobu have stayed pretty underground since its inception, though they’ve been getting a good bit of press for their recent LP, 10 Thermidor.

Hamilton Avenue is a street in western San José, which serves a brief stint as a major street. In the 5 miles that make it up, it outsets from a complex near a mall, curves this way and that, adds and drops lanes, crosses railroad tracks and rivers, intersects major streets, offers exits and entrances to Highway 17, passes the eBay headquarters, and then suddenly changes names to Pine St before petering out. From personal experience, I can vouch that it can be a crowded, pushy, and anxious experience, all coded into one of tens of thousands of suburban streets, outwardly unassuming but inwardly deranged.

(Arguably, Hamilton Avenue is more in Campbell than San Jose, but we’ll get to that mess at a later date.)

Before arriving in San José, I need to figure out how I want to go about my research, keeping in mind that I am both an observer and a participant in the scene.

“San Jo” is my hometown, and both prior and since moving to Olympia, I’ve been loosely involved with the punk and ska scenes. I have something of a foot in the door already with a history, developed perspective, and some ready contacts. That means I also have a bias towards certain veins and circles of music, which I will have to keep in mind and counteract. Still, I mean to use what I’ve got to my advantage and to focus on what I’m most interested in, so I’ll be mainly focusing on the punk and alternative scenes in my research, with forays into other genres where they present themselves or where I feel compelled to seek them out.

I’m starting with what I know: a medley of bands, both well established and fringe-clinging; a handful of record labels, music shops, and venues (including a couple big-hitters); some venues (both coliseums and dives), and a network of friends and acquaintances. I am using these  to seek out others and thus compiling both a shortlist of interest interview candidates and getting a preliminary sense for the layout of the scene.

Next, I plan to consider the city of San José by examining its history (from Native American habitation to recent events), ethnography  and class structure (with an eye on distribution), geography (with relations to nearby elements), industry, civic structure, and city design.

I intend to interview professionals in both musical and civic areas to guide my own observations and lay person interviews about them, while taking care not to get so stuck on the professional concept or viewpoint that I lose the common perspective.

I intend to attend as many performances as I can, mainly in San José proper, but all around the South Bay where reasonable. I also mean to keep an eye out for special events and celebrations (for instance, Japantown’s 125th anniversary). At all events, I mean to immerse myself and learn as much as possible within proper bounds, while also taking other patrons aside when appropriate to pick their brains about the event and the city in general.

I shall also draft a plan to examine the different Lynchian elements and civic aspects of the city in focus, devoting days to particular areas. With an ambient and analytic impression (and professional input), I will conduct random interviews in these areas on general and emergent topics.

All of this, I mean to record by a combination of photography, video, audio, and a journal (I should look into what materials I would need for this). The interviews I will cross-examine for overlapping or outstanding threads, which will further guide my research.

There is a personal aspect to this project, which will likely evolve over its course. My current idea is that by reexamining my hometown with some distance introduced, I might learn a new appreciation for it, come to see what I could not or would not before because it was too close too home, and maybe even give a little back to it from what I’ve learned or will learn in my research. This last point is critical to me. I do not want to trounce into these cultures and pick them apart from the inside without anything to give back to them (member though I might be). Examining and interacting with a wide range of cultures might give me the ability to act as an agent of networking for people of similar interests. Alternatively, I could learn about the city’s civil services, and offer that.

I’m not sure what I was expected to put in these initial posts.

Wooo!