Flipper "Ha Ha Ha" (1980 Live @ Berkeley Square)
                                          
In the two video clips, above and below, Flipper, one of the greatest bands of all time, play their timeless track "Ha Ha Ha," first in 1980 and then in 2009. The 1980 video clip shows the legendary and unique San Francisco punk band playing "Ha Ha Ha" along with the song "Oh Oh Ay Oh" at the long gone East Bay nightclub the Berkeley Square in July of 1980, about a year after the band had formed.

And below is a video of Flipper performing the song at a recent free in-store at Amoeba Berkeley in April 2009 with a line up that included Ted Falconi on guitar, Bruce Loose performing vocals, Steve DePace on drums, and Rachel Thoele on bass in only her second gig with the band. 

The in-store coincided with the group's classic albums being reissued on vinyl. A little over a year earlier, in February 2008, Flipper also did an Amoeba in-store when they played the San Francisco Amoeba Music store. For an interview with the band from their 2008 San Francisco Amoeba instore, click here.

It's been yet another eventful year here at Amoeba San Francisco, our 11th here on Haight Street! Below is a sort of best-of, a bunch of the highlights from the year for us, from instores to holiday events-- read on to celebrate the end of 2008 with us!

Going back to January 2008, we kicked off the new year with a groovy instore from Devendra Banhart.

There is just a week left to catch the recommended BAM/PFA (Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive) photo exhibit by Bruce Conner, who sadly passed three weeks ago In San Francisco, reportedly from a liver ailment. The exhibit focuses on the one year period in the late seventies (77-78) Conner spent taking photos of both punk bands and punk fans at the infamous West Coast punk palace the Mabuhay Gardens (aka "The Fab Mab" -- the dismal failing Filipino supper club that would be saved/immortalized by punk rock) on Broadway in San Francisco.

The fifty three Bruce Conner photos on display at the BAM/PFA, which act as an excellent historic overview of the early SF punk scene, include wonderful action shots of bands and artists including Frankie Fix of Crime, the Mutants, Penelope Houston of The Avengers, and Negative Trend's Will Shatter (who later went on to form Flipper).

Multi media artist Bruce Conner, who the curators at BAM/PFA aptly describe as  "a proto-punk provocateur who scavenged cultural waste to construct his assemblages," ended up doing the photo series by mere coincidence. In the late 70s, Conner was 44 years of age and an established avant-garde artist who created film mash-ups from a mixed bag of found sources and whose rich legacy dated back to the SF 1950's Beat scene. While attending Devo's first ever San Francisco show in 1977, Conner crossed paths with V. Vale, now the publisher of RE/Search magazine, who was about to launch the seminal punk zine Search & Destroy. 

The other day during the radio show I do on WFMU I realized that two of the records (yes, records -- an album and one side of a double 7" set) were both 1980's releases from legendary indie San Francisco label Subterranean Records. The artists were the Inflatable Boy Clams ("I'm Sorry") and Polkacide ("In Heaven There Is No Beer"), both of which hold a very dear place in my heart. And they got me thinking about how great this SF label was. (It is still around -- sort of -- and can be found online here.) And I thought about how, just for releasing Flipper's Generic Album alone, Subterranean deserves to go down in history (see video of live performance of "The Way Of The World" above), but then add in all these other amazing releases -- mainly San Francisco Bay Area artists that couldn't be just pigeon-holed into "punk" because they were all much more than that, from noise and industrial to experimental -- and you have a truly unique and impressive back catalog. Anyway, I started thinking about all of the records by amazing artists that this SF label had put out. Subterranean was formed by Steve Tupper in 1979 and it tapped into a whole musical movement. I still treasure many of its releases in my collection and many of them are still available at Amoeba Music.


These artists and releases include the Pop O Pies, Minimal Man, Frighwig, Chrome, Helios Creed, Wilma, The Lewd, Longshoremen, The Muskrats, No Alternative, Housecoat Project, and Code of Honor. Flipper had four releases on the label. Penelope Houston and the Dead Kennedys even released stuff on Subterranean. And, besides the Dry Lungs compilations, one of my favorites (still in print) is the Red Dot compilation LP on white vinyl which served up a great mix of 1981 San Francisco avant-garde/experimental/noise groups including the Wounds, Minimal Man, the Fried Abortions, and Animal Things. Classic fucking stuff indeed!