Posts Tagged ‘Cometbus’

Multimedia Disorder, Episode 15

Friday, August 14th, 2009

1. SMOKEHOUSE ROUND MIDNIGHT – Intro
2. LOS CUNOS ELECTRICAS (UK) – Lunacy InL’Orcy
3. SMD (Pico Rivera, CA) – Patience
4. MELEE (Allston, MA) – Life Is What You Make Of It
5. ZERO CONTENT (New York City, NY) – Head Skin
6. ASTRID OTO (Asheville, NC) – El Sob
7. SHITLOADSOFFUCKALL (Canada) – Your God
8. SLOWDEATH (San Diego, CA) – You’d Look Good In A Coffin
9. URKO (UK) – You’re A Cunt
10. SOCIAL INFESTATION (Georgia) – Helpless Hopeless
11. MEDICATION TIME (Oakland, CA) – Sorely Resentful
12. GRIMPLE (Oakland, CA) – System Fuckers
13. ZERO CONTENT (New York City, NY) – Viva Zapatos
14. LOS CUNOS ELECTRICAS (UK) – Piss Stain
15. LEMUR MUTATION (Castro Valley, CA)
16. HEAD HITS CONCRETE (Canada) – You Came Searching
17. CATHETER (Denver, CO) – Sit Back And Look
18. CRUDE (Japan) – Stand And Fight Again
19. FRACAS (Alameda / Oakland, CA) -Rats
20. LEMUR MUTATION (Castro Valley, CA)
21. EXITWOUND (Oakland, CA) – Friend Indeed
22. BEWARE (El Monte, CA) – Five-O
23. ANTIWORLD (Portland, OR) – The Day It All Went Wrong
24. DISCORDIA (Mexico) – Vida en Cadenas
25. LANA DAGALES (Oakland, CA) – Fish And Game
26. BRAINBLOODVOLUME (Oakland, CA) – Destroy Fear
27. LAST SUPPER AT RICH’S POTSTICKER HOUSE – Outro

Multimedia Disorder, Episode 15 (download)

This episode of Multimedia Disorder features the first UGZ aka Urban Guerrilla Zine compilation ever released. We put this out back in 2000 as a companion piece to issue ten of Urban Guerrilla Zine. There was also a photocopied booklet that we called Urban Guerrilla Zine ten point five, a half issue that was mainly included as an extra through mailorder. The front cover of Urban Guerrilla Zine number ten featured artwork by Judd Hawk back before anyone other than REINA AVEJA (his wife’s band) was using it, and on the back cover we had a skate photo of Dave Chavez, who we profiled in the zine. An interesting side note to that front cover is that the band COACCION used that same artwork for the cover of one of their CDs, and I’m pretty sure they took it directly from the zine. I always meant to ask Manuel about that.

Urban Guerrilla Zine compilation number one was originally comprised of bands whose members had contributed to the zine, no matter how small that contribution might have been. Aaron from ASTRID OTO had written column, Pat from GRIMPLE contributed poetry, Jake from EXITWOUND wrote reviews, and later Ruben (Exitwound, Cruevo) became a UGZ columnist as well. Paul from MEDICATION TIME and CRUEVO contributed an article or two as the “Unknown Controller”, and so did Joe from FRACAS. Greg from LANA DAGALES, and later BRAINOIL, did all the mastering for the CD. LANA DAGALES has one track on the compilation, but Greg is also responsible for the LEMUR MUTATION tracks. The list goes on and on. Some of the other bands that didn’t have direct links to UGZ until the compilation came out were BRAINBLOODVOLUME, who kind of evolved into LAUDANUM. I ended up booking a majority of LAUDANUM’s shows for the next several years after that, especially their non-bar shows. Another band along those lines was DISCORDIA who I didn’t really know at the time we (Jake, Greg from Lana Dagales, and myself) were compiling the comp, but soon after it came out I began to bring all the bands that featured ex-members of DISCORDIA (who had already broken up by then) up to the Bay Area for shows, bands like BUMBKLAATT, COACCION, and MASSAKRO. Jake introduced me to SMD, BEWARE, and SHITLOADSOFFUCKALL. Those were bands that he met back when he was in OPPRESSED LOGIC. I eventually convinced BEWARE to make the drive north a couple of times, and I booked a bunch of big shows for SMD after the comp came out. CRUDE from Japan appear on the compilation because I was a big fan at that time, and recently I was finally able to book a show for CRUDE at Gilman, so it was like things had come full circle. In the case of the CRUDE anyway. Jas (R.I.P.) from URKO was a contributor to the zine, and he appears on the comp as a member of URKO and LOS CUNOS ELECTRONICAS (it’s supposed to mean The Electric Cunts).

So on and so on, etc., etc., cheers!

-Jay Unidos

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UGZ Presents, Part One

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009

UGZ Presents began to take shape in the late 1990s as an offshoot of my zine UGZ aka Urban Guerrilla Zine. Urban Guerrilla Zine came into existence in 1997 as a local punk rock fanzine with equal space given to both music and political causes, like prisoner’s rights. The main thing we tried to avoid early on was becoming  just another clone of Cometbus or Absolutely Zippo, even though I always loved Cometbus, and was inspired by early Zippo. Early Zippo was totally immersed in an active, energetic scene, and it was so helter skelter in it’s layout that it seemed like it was thrown together spontaneously in the copy shop, then printed the same day. That’s what I thought anyway, so we (Karen, Adam, and myself) proceeded to do just that with Urban Guerrilla Zine. It was kind of a waste since Karen had gone to school for layout and graphic design. Did anyone notice that the pages were often out of order, and cropped in a way that made entire articles unreadable?

Even though you wouldn’t have associated Urban Guerrilla Zine with any one individual at that time, it definitely had an identity of it’s own. We began to get letters from all over the country, mainly from crusty traveler punks. Punks would write us and let us know when they’d be arriving in the Bay Area, so we could kick it and drink some forties, dumpster dive, and maybe spange on the Ave (?). Most of these folks were under the impression that we lived in a squat for some reason, which was never mentioned in the zine.  I lived in a two bedroom apartment in North Oakland with roomates, and while it was partied out and often filthy, it was not even close to being a squat.  Many of our readers tried to keep in touch over the years, but even though the zine had a po box and an email, punks would leave messages for us at local spots we had mentioned in the zine, like Urban Ore, Aquatic Park, Gilman, Epicenter, and so on. It seemed a little ridiculous at first, but since we always got the messages (eventually), there was definitely a method to their madness.

That’s the early history in a nutshell, but I also wanted to mention that we sold almost every copy of Urban Guerrila Zine we ever printed (photocopied) in the 1990s, and this is when we were making between 500-1000 copies per issue. Finally, I decided to go the offset printing route, after some encouragement from Aaron Cometbus.

There was a big turnover in contributors when Urban Guerrilla Zine made the move to offset printing, but not because of it. Most of our newer contributors were not only our neighbors in Oakland, but also members of bands whose shows we went to, like Exitwound, Cruevo, Lana Dagales, Grimple, and then a little later Blown To Bits, Brainoil, and BrainBloodVolume (pre-Laudanum). We still had some better known contributors and supporters, like Aaron Cometbus and Fly (Zero Content). UGZ Presents was mainly about promotion and less about actual booking in the beginning. I was still primarily focused on publishing the zine, and going to as many shows as I possibly could.  The move towards actually booking probably started when we pressed Urban Guerrilla Zine Compilation #1, which featured many of the bands already mentioned, as well as other bands who had members that contributed to the zine.  Those were the bands that we believed in at the time, and the plan was always to have a record release show/party for the CD, which came with a new issue of Urban Guerrilla Zine.

End of Part One

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