The Offs @ San Francisco, CA 1980-08-29

 


LIMITED TIME / LAST TIME

https://pixeldrain.com/u/CHqZs8Sk

The Offs
Mabuhay Gardens
San Francisco, CA
1980-08-29 (Friday)

THTP Release 95

Recording chain: 
Stage mics > splitter (split to house snake/SBD and TH snake) > TH dedicated snake >
Peavy MkII 12 channel mixing board (11 channels snake, 1 channel audience mic) > 
AKAI GXC-570D Cassette Deck (Dolby B on) > TDK SA-90 tape

Archival Process: 
1999: Sony TC-KA3ES > TDK SA-90 tapes playback (NO Dolby) > BBE 462 Sonic Maximizer (to clean up tapes) >
Tascam DA-30 DAT > HHb DAT-125 DAT tape
2002: HHb CDR-850 Professional CD Recorder (In real time) > HHb CDR74 Gold 100 year archival grade CDRs
2005: Transfered to HDD in AIFF file format

Dime release processing: AIFF Master Files > FFMPEG > 16 bit FLAC 8 > tagging, cover artwork, checksums.

Recorded, preserved, and master AIFF files provided by: Terry Hammer

Setlist:
01. Dirk intro > Zero Degrees
02. The Pusher
03. Hundred Dollar Limo
04. I Got The Handle
05. Bye,Bye Baby
06. My World
07. You Fascinate Me
08. One More Shot
09. Things Are Different Now
10. Think
11. Everyone's A Bigot > Dirk encore
Encore:
12. What'd I Say
13. Dirk outro

Length: 43:10

Band:
Don Vinil - vocals
Billy Hawk - guitar
Eric Petersen - bass
Bob Steeler - drums
Bob Roberts - saxophone

Notes:
* Don Vinil left us far too young, RIP 1983.

* About the band: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Offs
"The Offs are a punk/ska band from San Francisco, started by guitarist Billy Hawk and singer Don Vinil, and later joined by former Hot Tuna drummer Bob Steeler and a rotation of horn players including Bob Roberts, Richard Edson and Roland Young. The Offs were major players in the early days of the San Francisco punk rock scene. "
You really have to pause for a minute here, and realize the drummer for probably the best touring band in the world in the mid 70s, Hot Tuna, is playing in this band!! If that doesn't tell you everything you need to know, I doubt anything else I tell you will resonate.
.
* On "Everyone's a Bigot", the 22 bus you hear Don Vinil mention is the bus that went up Fillmore street, which used to be a mostly black area, quite dangerous back in thee day, that's where the Temple Beautiful, the Fillmore, and the Jim Jones Temple were located, at Geary and Fillmore. That area used to be home to a thriving jazz and blues scene back in the day, by the way. Hard to even find a hint of that in modern high priced techie San Francisco, but SF used to actually have really great unique neighborhoods, where diversity did not mean the neighborhoods had people who work at dropbox, google, twitter, or uber, living there...
* The 'punk is 90% attitude' crowd will have to skip this band, since these guys, like many punk musicians, are great musicians. Don't be fooled by the cliches, real punk bands often had extremely good to great musicians in them. Great musicians have this thing for being attracted to the most living and active scene around them, whether it's modern underground metal, 60s psychdelia, Fillmore blues, South of Market Jazz (immortalized by Jack Kerouac in either Dharma Bums or On the Road, forget which). It's not a coincidence that so many really good musicians were found in so called 'punk' bands. Max Volume, when not in public, of Naked Lady Wrestlers/False Idols, used to sit at home playing note perfect Mahavishnu Orquestra licks to keep himself, and those who were hanging out with him, entertained, as just one small example. I've met some of the SoCal guys in later years, and some of those guys were absolute musical monsters, amazing chops.

* There's really not much more to say. The Offs are another band that it's simply astounding that they did not gain national fame, it's basically inexplicable, they had the best musicians anywhere, their songs were great, Don Vinil was a fanstastic and electric performer, it simply makes no sense at all. Unless being just too good for their own good was the problem, hard to say.

* Hugh 'Johnny Genocide' Patterson, of No Alternative (THTP 9)/KGB renown, was originally in the Offs, and played guitar/sang at recent Offs shows.

* Olga de Volga, of VS. (THTP 92), also was in the Offs early on.

* Includes photos.

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No distribution in lossy formats!!
No selling!!
No bootlegging!!
No remastering!!
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 THTP releases and keep it seeded for as long as you can, particularly the lesser known groups. That will really help out long term.

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About Terry Hammer and the THTP:

Someone put my feelings very well about these recordings in the following quote. I can't really improve on their words beyond noting that these recordings sound absolutely and utterly stunning, and I consider myself incredibly lucky to be able to present these to you here in their original, first generation, lossless hi-fidelity versions, for the first time ever.

"[These recordings were] recorded and preserved by collector/engineer Terry Hammer, for broadcast over the UC Berkeley station KALX and several others from the 1979 -1981 period. Anyone who spent a night at one of these clubs knows how chaotic the atmosphere was. That he was able to, not only get a decent feed from the sound mixing board, but was also able to get clean recordings was something of a miracle. And the fact this guy did it over and over again is pure dedication to the cause of preserving history for decades to come. Fortunately for everyone, he’s been making these gems of history available and their value as historic documents is inestimable. This is really exciting stuff and I am grateful for Terry’s foresight and deft skill."
src: https://pastdaily.com/2014/06/25/gang-four-live-american-indian-center-san-francisco-1980-nights-roundtable-concert-edition/ 

The First Taping of what was then to be called"The Fab Mab Live", was the Readymades on December 8 ,1979. The Fab Mab Live broadcasts would go on until June of 1981 [but KUSF took the broadcasts over from KALX and Terry January 1981]. Some of these performances were given to the Maximum Rock'N'Roll magazine run by Tim Yohannan, and were distributed to the PBS network for broadcast across the country on various PBS stations that carried the Maximum Rock'N'Roll radio program of interviews and some of [Terry's] live songs of the artists being featured. 

As Terry notes about the process of recording these shows: "Like all of my live recordings this was mixed direct to 2-Track Reel To Reel (and Cassette deck for backup and personal use) using headphones. Sitting in the club with the loud P.A. sound trying to drive the amp in my mixing board loud enough to hear what I was mixing.If you've ever been to a live concert,then,you know how loud it can be."

If you've ever been looking for an excuse to upgrade your sound system, these recordings certainly should provide you with some motivation, because they have incredible sound. And if you already have a quality sound system, you are in for a treat!! The audio goes straight to 20k hz, no losses I can detect. Due to the reality of tapes, even high end as used here, the low end starts at 47 hz.

And if you want to learn more about this incredible musical era, listen to the stuff you haven't heard, there are amazing gems in there.

Do we call these soundboards? Technically not precisely because this is not the house mix, these shows were mixed using a dedicated mixing board, with an additional 1 to 2 audience mics (1 for Mab because he needed 11 snake inputs), 2 at other clubs) in the mix. But I call it the Terry Hammer Tape Project (THTP) to make sure there is no doubt about the project's creator.

TECH:
Note that Terry made 2 master recordings (recording at the same time) when he mixed these shows live:
1: Reel to reel, for the radio stations: 
Technics RS-1500 Reel To Reel (mostly TDK Audua L-1800 & LB-1800 tape with back coating or Scotch 206 / 207 with back coating. Maybe a few Maxell UD-XL). Terry made Dirk buy the tape for the Mab so Terry had him keep them in his warehouse. Those were destroyed in the fire.

2: For his own use, and as backup in case something happened to the reels: 
AKAI GXC-570D Cassette Deck (Dolby B on) > TDK SA-90 tape

3. Terry stopped doing the Fab Mab Live recordings for KALX in January 1981. He turned it over to KUSF then and they actually installed a phone line and broadcasted live from there. So all Fab Mab shows after January 1 were Terry at the soundboard, recording straight into his cassette deck.

Terry isn't sure, but thinks the audience mics he used maybe were Electro Voice EV-DS35's.

Info: http://www.bbesound.com/products/sonic-maximizers/482i.aspx

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About Dirk Dirksen and the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway:

Dirk Dirksen (RIP 2006), aka 'The Pope of Punk', was the music promotor and MC (but really more accurately, the impresario) of the Mabuhay Gardens/On Broadway punk clubs. Dirk was an incredibly interesting, sharp-witted, biting, cutting element of the original San Francisco punk scene. His legendary introductions and post set commentaries are preserved in many of these recordings. Dirk was a nephew of United States Senator Everett Dirksen. 

Shows at the Mabuhay started probably in 1977. The On Broadway was an upstairs night club right next to the Mabuhay that opened in summer 1981 and closed 1984. Terry recorded / broadcast Mabuhay gardens shows weekly. He was also the first soundman at the On Broadway when it opened in 1981 (they initially only did Friday/Saturday night shows).

The Mabuhay Gardens was originally a Filipino night club/restaurant run by Ness Aquino (RIP). One fateful day he was approached by Jerry Paulsen, who offered to try to fill the club on slow nights (Monday/Tuesday) with punk shows. Dirk took the booking and MC duties over from Jerry, and the rest, as they say, is history.

"...deliberately baiting and trading insults with audience and band members, which had the effect of raising the energy of audience and performers alike. In order to maintain the show's fast pace, he would move past an encore to get to the next band and tell the audience, "Eat it." Dirksen's abrasive persona (which was largely a performance) was a central part of the atmosphere of the Mabuhay.
...
Dirksen was the sole person responsible for connecting the English punk rockers with those in the United States. By creating an exchange program, punk bands for England and NY came to the Mabuhay and vice versa, staying in each city performing a few nights at a time."

Terry remembers him like this:
"He believed in theatre and group participation that's why he was sarcastic. He wanted to get a rise in people and get them to participate. He was a really nice person if you got to know him."

Dirk was also active with the organization H.E.A.R. (Hearing Education and Awareness for Rockers), the organization started by Kathy Peck of the Contractions (also part of this THTP series).

It was hard to really know how diverse his interests were until I went to his memorial service in San Francisco, where his punk friends and connections were only a fraction of the people who spoke in his memory. He was involved in various charities, the Mission Recreation Center, the list was quite large.

Apparently a book about Dirk Dirksen will be coming out Summer 2020.

Wikepedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabuhay_Gardens
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirk_Dirksen
SF Gate obituary: https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Dirk-Dirksen-pope-of-punk-amused-insulted-2466523.php

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 - teetering