Vandals @ San Francisco, CA 1984-09-30

The Vandals
Mabuhay Gardens
San Francisco, CA
1984-09-30 (Sunday)

MYTP 19

Source: SBD > Sony D5M > Cassette Master > CD
Cassette > Digital Transfer: Mike Singal
Rerelease extraction: CD > rubyripper 0.8 (cdparanoia secure rip, cdrdoa TOC) > FLAC
Processing: Audacity (de-gapping, soft limit -0.1db to remove light clipping, splits) > FLAC 8 > acxi (tagging, checksums, FLAC data)

Recorded, preserved, shared by micgram
Release processing by teetering

FLAC: 16/44.1 (2 channels)
Quality: 4/4 (17khz, very good)
Time: 29:48.44
Size: 177.3 MiB
Average kb/s: 832
Tracks: 16

Setlist:
01. tuning >
02. Ladykiller
03. tuning >
04. Master Race (In Outer Space)
05. tuning, "where's jake?" >
06. H.B. Hotel (Heartbreak Hotel) >
07. Pirate's Life
08. tuning >
09. Bad Birthday Bash >
10. tuning >
11. Slap Of Love
12. Mohawk Town
13. banter, tuning >
14. Airstream >
15. Urban Struggle
16. improv > audience

Band:
Jan Nils Ackermann - guitar
Steven Ronald "Stevo" Jensen - vocals
Steve "Human" Pfauter - bass (??)
Chalmer Lumary - bass (??)
Joe Escalante - drums
Stevo (Steven Robert Jensen) - scratcher/dj

Recording notes:
* Except for those mystery gaps, that all remerged nicely, quite clean and good.

Processing notes:
* Removed those pesky micro-gaps, 10-12 of them, all merged completely cleanly.
* In 16 quiet audience part, dropped levels on 2 cable pops.

https://we.tl/t-ERxOZrRALR

Notes:
* This is one of those early 'curfew' shows the Mab was doing at this time, minors ok, 5pm start.
* It's somewhat hazy about who was the bass player at this late point in 1984. Steve "Human" Pfauter was the original bass player, another guy helped rehearse their record, Eric VonArab, and Brent Turner played on the record, but by 1985 Chalmer Lumary was the bass player of the band. I'm assuming the two guys who rehearsed and recorded the record did not join the touring band.
* Includes flyer
* H.B. Hotel (Heartbreak Hotel) is really more of a parody om the origal than a real cover. On the original album, it was called Heartbreak Hotel. The H.B. of course stands for Huntington Beach.
* Yes, they have a scratcher (turntablist)
* The original version of this appears to have had a incorrect track listing order.
* Set initially was listed as ending incomplete, but you can clearly hear the audience after his little improv ditty afterwards, so I think this is the whole show.
* Urban Struggle is referencing that well known situation where the Cuckoo's Nest (1976–1981) club was right across the street from a cowboy bar, Zubies, which led to constant fights between punk types and rednecks. Since Cuckoo's Nest was closed in 1981, this song is referencing something that happened when they were a bit younger, but everyone in that scene knew about that club.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckoo%27s_Nest_(nightclub)
"Cuckoo's Nest sat at the back within a shared parking lot of a liquor store, a transmission shop, a laundromat, as well as a bar and grill next door named Zubie's that had an "urban cowboy" motif, which attracted a mainly blue-collar crowd. The parking lot of The Nest was as popular a hangout as the club itself, and was usually filled with punks. There were almost nightly confrontations between the punks from the Cuckoo's Nest and the cowboys from Zubie's, being almost always started by the latter, who would usually hurl homophobic and ignorant remarks at the punks and were known to assault them without provocation, regardless of age or gender."
* Pirate's Life is about going to Disneyland (in Anaheim, just south of LA) on acid. Disneyland tries to spot that type of thing, but they obviously failed in the case of these chipper lads, lol.

* Band website: http://www.vandals.com/Vandals/The_Vandals.html
* Band Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheVandals
* Bandsintown: https://www.bandsintown.com/a/2034-the-vandals
* Songkick: https://www.songkick.com/artists/290507-vandals

* About band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Vandals
"The Vandals are an American punk rock band, established in 1980 in Orange County, California. They have released ten full-length studio albums, two live albums, and have toured the world extensively, including performances on the Vans Warped Tour. They are well known for their use of humor, preferring to use their music as a vehicle for comedy and sarcasm rather than as a platform for more serious issues.
...
In 1984 the band appeared in the film Suburbia by invitation of director Penelope Spheeris, who had also directed the influential The Decline of Western Civilization. They also played a benefit concert for the Cypress College Young Republicans, along with the Circle Jerks, The Dickies, D.I., and Plain Wrap, an action which prompted derision from the traditionally leftist and anarchist punk community. It would not be the last time the band's actions would draw criticism, with their music generally maintaining an apolitical position."
* About band (imdb.com): https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1508411/bio
"The Vandals are a wonderfully zany and dynamic tongue-in-cheek punk rock group from Orange County, California. The band was formed by guitarist Jan Nils Ackermann in Huntington Beach, California in 1980. The other original members were singer Steven 'Stevo' Jensen, bassist 'Steve Pfauter' and drummer Joe Escalante. The Vandals are well-known for their insanely catchy and energetic melodies, rousing live shows, and often cheerfully juvenile, yet still sidesplitting humorous lyrics. They released their debut EP "Peace Thru Vandalism" in 1982. This was followed by their first full-length album "When in Rome Do as the Vandals" in 1984.
...
The Vandals appear as themselves in the movies Suburbia (1983) and Dudes (1987), both of which were directed by Penelope Spheeris. Their songs have been featured on the soundtracks to such films as Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) (they do the hilarious ending credits theme song), Glory Daze (1995), SLC Punk! (1998), Saving Silverman (2001), That Darn Punk (2001) and Run Ronnie Run (2002). Despite several line-up changes throughout the years, the Vandals still continue to record the occasional album as well as tour and perform in concert on a regular basis."

* OC Register Vandals interview: https://www.ocregister.com/2020/08/19/25-years-later-the-vandals-explain-why-this-pure-punk-album-is-being-reissued/
"Bassist and original member Joe Escalante, who joined up when he was 18, says “Live Fast” still feels more purely punk than any other Vandals album.
Before it, they made EPs and albums for indie labels such as Epitaph and Enigma, the latter of which recorded 1990’s “Fear Of a Punk Planet” with producer Bob Casale of Devo, another band Freese later joined, too.
After “Live Fast,” the band signed “a blockbuster billion-dollar deal with Kung Fu Records,” Escalante jokes, as Kung Fu, of course, is the band’s own indie label.

“This time we made a record without any input from an outside record company and our outside producer,” he says. “So the only record that is like a pure punk rock DIY record is ‘Live Fast, Diarrhea.”"

* As a side note, if you have not yet seen Penelope Spheeris' movies "Suburbia" and "The Decline of Western Civilizations", these are probably two of the most accurate movies ever made about that era of punk rock in Southern California. It wasn't fiction, that is, and she did a great job capturing that slice of time/history.

* About the Mabuhay Gardens:
The Mabuhay Gardens (a.k.a. The Fab Mab or The Mab) was a San Francisco nightclub located at 443 Broadway (at Montgomery), on the Broadway strip of North Beach, an area best known for its striptease clubs.
...
Originally a Filipino restaurant and club owned by the late Ness Aquino, it featured many Filipino celebrities, including Amapola (a.k.a. Amapola Cabase). Aquino and Amapola also co-hosted a weekly television program, The Amapola Presents Show on KEMO TV Channel 20
...
During the late 1970s, Jerry Paulsen was the first promoter of bands to appear at the Mab on a regular basis. He booked them on Mondays and Tuesdays to begin with so he could showcase the bands that he featured in Psyclone magazine to existing record executives. The scene became so popular that he was soon booking two bands a night seven days a week. Bay Area punk and New Wave bands performed there, and it was an important touring stop for bands from beyond the San Francisco Bay Area. Among the local bands that performed regularly at the Mabuhay were The Adaptors, Avengers, Dead Kennedys, The Nuns, Crime, Dils, Pearl Harbor and the Explosions, The Mortals, new wave band Judy Garland, the Tubes and Wall of Voodoo, to name a few. After he left, Dirksen (the "pope of punk") booked The Dead Boys, Nico, The Runaways, Devo, X, The Police, SVT, The Go-Go's, Motörhead, Sun Ra and his Arkestra, Patti Smith, The Jim Carroll Band, REM and others. Comedians such as Whoopi Goldberg and Robin Williams also made early appearances at the venue."
* San Francisco renamed that small alley next to the On Broadway/Mabuhay "Dirk Dirksen Place" to honor Dirk's contributions to the cultural heritage of San Francisco. The alley next to City Lights Books (founded by Lawrence Ferlinghetti, at 261 Columbus, right by Broadway, a few blocks from the Mab... and somewhere the more literate people in the scene would have spent time) was similarly renamed Kerouac Alley to honor the famous beat writer. It was originally named Rowland Ave but Kathy Peck of the band Contractions and founder of H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education & Awareness for Rockers) spearheaded a movement to get the name changed to dirk dirksen Place.
* Dirk and his DMP production company stopped doing shows at the On Broadway, upstairs from the Mabuhay, 1984-06-16, and as far as I know, did not do more shows downstairs at the Mab after that, though other promoters, including Ness Aquino I believe, kept doing shows at both venues for a while longer.
* To give you an idea of how much times have changed since then, the 433 Broadway building was recently listed at around $10,000,000!!!

--------------------------------------------------------

No distribution in lossy formats!!
No selling!!
No bootlegging!!
Yes sharing. Definitely share.

Support the artists when or if they play, and buy their records/merchandise.

Please correct any errors or oversights in this information in the comments section so the information can be as accurate as possible.

If you can find related materials like flyers, posters, ticket stubs, even photos, etc, please add them in a comment and I will add them to the main release folder, so that can be included on the next re-seeding. Every bit is welcome, and as I am time constrained on this project due to the amount of material, I cannot spend as much time on each release doing research as I would like, so if we can add to and improve the information and release contents during this series, that would be great.

Please make an effort to pick at least one of these MYTP releases and keep it seeded for as long as you can, particularly the lesser known groups. That will really help out long term.

--------------------------------------------------------
About Michael Young and the MYTP:

Michael: "I lived in the bay area 1980-92. Being a Deadhead I had a lot of friends who recorded shows, so when I got a nice Sony D5M (in 83, I think it was) I would bring it with me to the Mabuhay Gardens and On Broadway and other places as well. I would ask the sound man if I could plug in and they usually said yes. I did this mostly in 1984 a few in 85. My first punk show was in my hometown of Philadelphia at a place called the Hot Club in 1978. I was hooked on the high energy and the fun of slamming around... I think my first SF hardcore punk show was Flipper at Kezar Pavilion in May of '81. I might have seen some other bands around town before that but that one sticks out for sure."
[teetering: I was also at that Kezar TG/Flipper show. Flipper was great that night.]

TECH:
Michael used a Sony D5M portable cassette recorder, plugged into the soundboard outs, to record most of these shows. This was for the time a very expensive unit, with some advanced features, which probably accounts for why these recordings are so good in general.

* D5M manual: https://transom.org/wp-content/uploads/2005/02/om.tcd5m.pdf
* About D5M: https://transom.org/2005/sony-tc-d5m/
All metal, reliable, simple, and fixable, it runs on two D-cells

* More on the D5M: https://www.cassettedeck.org/sony/tc-d5m
This Sony TC-D5M is a stereo cassette deck with Dolby B noise reduction, it was first sold by Sony in 1979 with a recommended retail price of USD $680 [about $2500 in today's dollars] and discontinued a year later.
The main features of the Sony TC-D5M are: 2 heads, mechanical 3 digit tape counter, manual tape type selection and capable of handling normal, chrome, ferro-chrome and metal tapes, belt driven single-capstan transport.
Typical of this deck is the 70's top loading layout with the cassette compartiment located on the left side of the deck. Tape eject is operated mechanically and the cassette needs to be placed with the side to be played facing forward in the cassette well.
Level meters used on the TC-D5M are analog needle VU reading meters. Mechanical transport controls for reliable TC-D5M transport function selection.
The Dolby-B system reduces tape hiss on tapes recorded on the TC-D5M by as much as 10 dB at the highest frequencies. The 19kHz multiplex pilot slgnal present in FM stereo broadcasts can cause false triggering of the noise reduction system. The switchable MPX filter of the TC-D5M filters out the pilot signal, and assuring proper Dolby processing of FM stereo programs.
To make live recordings this deck has 2 microphone inputs to connect microphones with a jack connector.

--------------------------------------------------------
 - teetering