PART TIME PUNKS MINI-FEST

Friday, October 9, 2009

At THE MEZZANINE, San Francisco, CA

The kindly folks who put together the PART TIME PUNKS FESTIVAL in Los Angeles last November  (the world's first-ever Post-Punk festival - with A Certain Ratio, Pylon, Love Is All, Vivian Girls, Medium Medium Nervous Gender, Savage Republic, David J. and a dozen others) are putting their show on the road this year.

Which means...

San Francisco will be the location of the first-ever PART TIME PUNKS MINI-FEST, at The Mezzanine on Friday October 11 from 8pm - 3am.

The confirmed line-up: THE RAINCOATS, SECTION 25 (Factory Records), GANG OF FOUR (guest DJs Hugo Burnham & Dave Allen), SAVAGE REPUBLIC, FOR AGAINST, VIV ALBERTINE (of The Slits), WEAVE, MAGIC BULLETS, NODZZZ, DEATH SENTENCE: PANDA, GRASS WIDOW and, of course, PART TIME PUNKS DJ & founder Michael Stock 

The Part Time Punks Mini-Fest will mark the first-ever West Coast appearance of THE RAINCOATS.  Formed in 1977, The Raincoats were the world's second all-girl punk band.  Only, by the time Rough Trade released their debut album in 1979, they weren't making punk music any more, but post-punk, and more akin to The Velvet Underground's first LP or the records it shared the racks with: The Slits' "Cut," Young Marble Giants "Colossal Youth" and The Cure's first LP.  The only reason the band remains lesser known is that their three albums remained out of print for more than a decade before Kurt Cobain tracked them down during a pilgrimage to London in the early 90s. Cobain was also responsible for "convincing" his label, Geffen, to reissue The Raincoats three albums in 1993 (co-writing the liner notes with Kim Gordon), which paved the way for the Riot Grrrl movement.  It seems only fitting, then, that Kill Rock Stars will be reissuing the first Raincoats LP the week before the Fest

"If it weren't for the luxury of putting on that scratchy copy of The Raincoats' first record, I would have had very few moments of peace.

                                                                                                -- Kurt Cobain

The PTP Mini-Fest will also mark the first-S.F. appearance of Factory Records' own SECTION 25 since 1985.  Dismissed by many journalists in the post-punk era as clones of their labelmates, Joy Division, the band has since been recognized in the highest echelon of Post-Punk innovation, alongside Public Image Limited, Wire and...well...Joy Division, for fusing punk with psychedelia and the surging motorik rhythms of Krautrock bands like Can, Faust and Neu.  This credit is certainly largely due to James Nice, whose LTM label has re-issued the band's entire back catalogue (along with most of the rest of the Factory Records back catalogue) as well as their last two albums, "Nature and Degree" (2009) and "Part Primitiv" (2007) - both of which were released to universal critical acclaim.

GANG OF FOUR need no introduction.  Though perhaps their involvement in the Fest does...  Last year, just before the Part Time Punks Festival, the band's drummer Hugo Burnham sent Part Time Punks' founder/booker/DJ/artmaker Michael Stock an email, raving about the Festival line-up and how he wished he could be there.  Michael suggested that perhaps next time, he could be.  And now, eleven months later, he will be-along with bassist, Dave Allen-and behind the decks, marking these chaps' West Coast DJ-debut.

Also making their first West Coast appearance this decade are Lincoln, Nebraska's FOR AGAINST. Fusing Chronic Town-era R.E.M. with Martin Hannett produced soundscapes of Factory Records bands like Joy Division and...well, Section 25... the origins of Dreampop can clearly be charted back to the band's Grammy-nominated 1986 debut LP, "Echelons" released on LA's Independent Project Records.  Oh.  And lead singer Jeff Runnings was responsible for introducing a teenage version of Part Time Punks founder/DJ Michael Stock to Factory Records, 4ad and maybe even The Smiths.  So, this somehow explains a lot of things, actually.

SAVAGE REPUBLIC are probably the defining band of the Los Angeles post-punk scene (and the first), fusing industrial chaos with with chopping guitars with tribal rhythms beat out on massive oil drums (that more than occasionally are set afire).

VIV ALBERTINE, founding member of THE SLITS, will also be performing a solo set, featuring original Slits cuts and tracks from her forthcoming full-length album on Manimal Vinyl.

The rest of the bands on the roster feature the future of post-punk.  Which is to say, a handful of some of the very best new bands around-all of whom were inspired by Post-Punk sounds. 

WEAVE laces the punky reggae rhythms of The Slits with Banshee-style guitar chops and tribal whoops worthy of The Raincoats, Liliput or Malaria.

MAGIC BULLETS are the grand inheritors of the Postcard mantle of pop.  Orange Juice, The Go-Betweens and the early Creation Records all make worthy namechecks here.  Keep yer eyes Peel-ed.

NODZZZ mix equal parts Swell Maps and Pavement and end up with Minutemen sounds and song-lengths.  Lo-fi, DIY songs to hum home to.

DEATH SENTENCE PANDA are the true future of the Left - fusing skronky No Wave blurts ala'  Contortions and DNA with the darker dance waves of The Birthday Party and Xmal Deutschland.

GRASS WIDOW are part of the burgeoning nationwide indiepop scene.  Pains Of Being Pure At Heart, Vivian Girls, Dum Dum Girls, Brilliant Colors...and Grass Widow.  October 10th you can say you told them so.

Two days later, THE 2ND ANNUAL PART TIME PUNKS FESTIVAL will be held in Los Angeles on Sunday, October 11, 2009 at the conjoined venues The Echo/Echoplex with THE RAINCOATS, SECTION 25, GANG OF FOUR (Guest DJs), THE JAZZ BUTCHER, MEDIUM MEDIUM, KID CONGO POWERS, CRYSTAL STILTS, ABE VIGODA, SAVAGE REPUBLIC, FOR AGAINST, VIV ALBERTINES (of THE SLITS), WEAVE, RAINBOW ARABIA, THE INTELLIGENCE, SHARK TOYS and GRASS WIDOW. 

But that's a different press release altogether.

So what the hell is PART TIME PUNKS?

Originally, it was but one track (of four) on the 1978 debut DIY 7" platter by The Television Personalities.  A track about all the punters and trainspotters (poseurs to you non-Anglo-obsessives) who worked their mind-numbing shit jobs all week long only to go out on the weekends dressed up like punks.

Since 2005, PART TIME PUNKS has been the name of a club that happens every Sunday night at The Echo in Los Angeles.  Started by Michael Stock and Benjamin White, the club both celebrates and investigates the Post-Punk period and its sub-categories (DIY, synthpunk, minimal synth, punkfunk, punky reggae, new wave/no wave, industrial and so on and so forth thru the history of rock journalese descriptors) as well as occasional excursions into Indiepop and Shoegaze.  Not only in the form of the music being played for the dance floor, but also the bands that are booked to play. Mostly up-and-coming and unsigned (from LA and NYC); all of whom are draw their influences from the creative pool.

While the last two hours (or so) of every Sunday are devoted to a freaky dance party (spun entirely on vinyl), the first two hours every week are devoted to the live bands that Michael books -- featuring a mix of classic Post-Punk bands  (A Certain Ratio, Pylon, The Chameleons, The Slits, ESG, Medium Medium, Nikki Sudden, Chrome, Nervous Gender, Savage Republic, Kid Congo Powers, The Homosexuals, The Silver Apples, The Nightingales, Spectrum, St. Christopher, Phil Wilson) and the best up-and-coming bands who are mining the Post-Punk world of obscurities for their inspiration (Vivian Girls, Crystal Stilts, Cause Co-Motion, Blank Dogs, No Age, Mika Miko, Abe Vigoda, Ariel Pink, Love Is All, Tokyo Police Club, Tussle, Glass Candy, Chromatics, Indian Jewelry, Psychic Ills, New Bloods, The Strange Boys, Times New Viking, The Tough Alliance, The Go Team).  Not to mention an impressive array of Guest DJs: David J., Buzzcocks, !!! (Chk Chk Chk), Alan McGee, Calvin Johnson, Ian Svenonious, Juan MacLean, Cut Chemist and Doug Martch from Built To Spill.

In short, PART TIME PUNKS has always sort of been ahead of the curve in looking back.    While punk is now retro and retro is standard fit, Post-Punk is just on the slender margin between history and pop-culture.  It falls between the cracks - in the music world, in the film world, even in academia.   While the word has definitely entered the vocabulary of most musically-minded kids and adults alike, most folks think it means "DFA" or, best case scenario, "Gang Of Four" or maybe "Joy Division," when what it really means was the period of 1978-1984, and the most musically-diverse time in popular history.    Of course Part Time Punks has always been about the mix of that period and those records AND the very bestest, newest bands who are basically mining those tracks for their influences--as opposed to yet another Gang Of Four or Joy Division rehash.  For this reason, Michael also pursues his mission of educating the ears and eyes of readers and listeners alike - via his radio show every Thursday 2-6pm P.S.T. on KXLU (88.9FM in LA; www.kxlu.com everywhere else) and the monthly column he writes on vinyl records for FLAUNT MAGAZINE called "The Bins".

Oh yeah, and he's a Part Time Professor, teaching University courses on things like Punk and Post-Punk (Music and Film) and the History Of Comic Books and Creative Writing at places like CalArts, Loyola Marymount, UC-Irvine and UCLA.

Any questions, feel free to email Michael and he promises to stop talking in the third person:  michael@parttimepunks.com)

And/or see  www.parttimepunks.com for related sounds and vision.