Jennifer "Miro" Anderson, singer of San Francisco's early punk band The Nuns, passed away at the age of 54 on December 16th in New York City as a result of complications from cancer. 

Getting their start in Marin, The Nuns began performing in the San Francisco in 1976 when they made their debut at the Mabuhay Gardens. By 1978, they had a show at Winterland Ballroom with The Avengers and Sex Pistols. The band split just a year later, but reunited in 1986 and again in 1997 with a more goth rock sheen. By this point, Jennifer Miro had become a popular fetish model and an aspiring screenwriter. Eventually, she went to work for a law office.

Despite suffering from both liver and lung cancer, Miro denied conventional treatment and painkillers, opting for exercise and homeopathic paths. 

Here is a clip from The Nun’s show at Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco in 1978.

The recently published Keep On Pushing (Black Power Music - From Blues To Hip-Hop) (Lawrence Hill Books/IPG) is the latest book from longtime California music journalist/author Denise Sullivan whose last book was 2004's The White Stripes: Sweethearts of the Blues. This ever-engaging book by the Crawdaddy columnist and self-described "record geek" could as easily be filed under American political history or American music history (she thinks the latter to be more fitting) as it explores how American history of the past numerous decades is so closely intertwined with protest/revolutionary music (from the early blues, through the musical soundtrack of the civil rights movement, up to the role of contemporary hip-hop as voice of protest).

In Keep On Pushing, the "Nor Cal through and through" music writer examines the cultural interchanges of black and white musicians (many Bay Area artists included) and, along the way, takes numerous enlightening tangents uncovering tidbits of musical history not normally unearthed.
This week I caught up with the author, who tomorrow (Sunday, September 18th) will be at  Stories Books & Cafe on 1716 Sunset Blvd from 4pm to 7pm  and next month at both D.G. Wills Books in San Diego and at San Francisco's literary festival LitQuake, for an in-depth discussion on Keep On Pushing and many of the areas it explores.


Amoeblog: Following a book on the White Stripes, how did you decide on the theme of this book next? How long did you work on this book for?
 
Denise Sullivan: It's complicated, which is the exact thing I noted in the White Stripes book when I was writing about them covering "Your Southern Can is Mine" by Blind Willie McTell. Matters of race and the sexes, the Great Migration, what was once called the "American Dream," industry, ingenuity, and the entire great American songbook are of deep interest to me and all are tied up in the White Stripes story. Keep on Pushing is a similar story, only it has a lot more people (many of them black, others are Native American, women, or economically strapped, most all of them are trying to survive America), and music is big part of their toolkit. Specifically though, in the case of both books, it was fine art photography that initially inspired me to launch my investigations: American Ruins by Camilo Jose Vergara, and The Black Panthers by Stephen Shames.

Jon Ginoli
Returns
Nearly 8 Years Employment

ME: Hi Jon. So what music was playing in your house when you were a kid?

JG: My parents didn't really have records but they always had the radio on. 

To pop stations?

Yeah, and when I turned 6 my parents moved to a new house out in the suburbs in a new development where there weren't any other kids around, so I made friends with the radio. So from the time I was 5 until I was 10, which is roughly 1965-1970, I absorbed Top 40 radio like a sponge. Pretty good timing, huh?

Totally, you lucked out. What was the first song/record that really got you into music? 

Um I remember being really blown away by "Reflections" by the Supremes and "Monday Monday" by the Mamas and the Papas. Oh and "Windy" by the Association.

What's the first show you went to?

The first real concert I went to was one of the worst concerts I have ever been to because when I was 14 I went to see Jimmy Buffett in Peoria.

Gross.

Peoria got very few concerts back then.

Who took you?

I went by myself. He had a song on the radio that I liked. When I heard other songs I thought, "Oh, this isn't very good."

Smart kid.

But the second concert was Bob Seger and that was a big step up.