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San Francisco is a westward-looking port city, a city that at the time was 'big enough' but not manic like New York City or . Accordingly, my central question in this article is: how do American DIY participants manage the tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist systems and worlds? San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. Music City San Francisco, home of the Music City Hotel and SF Music Hall of Fame, creates a guide of all guides of local music venues in SF. However, while the link between DIY practice and lo-fi sound exists, it is also important to recognise that lo-fi aesthetics can reflect other causal factors, such as advanced studio manipulation, market calculation, and/or nostalgia for pre-modern simplicity (Hesmondhalgh Citation1999: 56; Oakes Citation2009; Sanden Citation2013: chapter 4). For several years now, Teague and his wife Melissa have run a small grassroots local urban farm business from their house, named Winslow Food Forest. In the above account he notes how he was inspired by the alternative economic systems of various communal DIY houses, which he visited on his early music tours around the US. American DIY participants often talk about their own economic system, support-system, or self-sustaining trade and barter economy (Cometbus Citation2002; Danielson Citation2004; Debies-Carl Citation2014: 81, 14461; Hannerz Citation2015: 127, 128; Farrow Citation2020: 246). Learn about our history and where to find it now, from festivals to clubs and bars. Furthermore, there exists a tension between these diverse activities within the DIY sphere, since more ideologically oriented DIY participants often foster a resentment towards more pragmatic and market-oriented DIY musicians. 12 I am referring here to Raymond Williamss theories of residual, emergent, and dominant practices (Citation1977: 1217). At first, the local Bay Area bands played in smaller ones. Drawing on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (1986), alongside other authors who examine the co-existence of different economic systems, I chart how DIY practitioners tactically navigate the boundaries between these reciprocal and capitalist economic systems and worlds. You agree to our use of cookies by continuing to use our site. The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco-based rock groups of the mid-1960s to early 1970s. The people who opened their homes to me, honestly, I guarantee, some people [] didnt like the music we played, [] I mean it helps [], if they like the music you play, but [thats not the main reason]. However, while capitalist commodities are seemingly transformed into non-market or DIY commodities, in a more tacit way they may be seen to co-constitute the capitalist economy. Baumgarten Citation2012: v, 137). The long-term ethnographic research on which this article is based was conducted between 2010 and 2014, mainly on the West coast of the USA. People would also in return help us out with things that we need. February is Black History Month that celebrates the contributions and present-day existence of a community that remain unapparelled in the collective victory of humankind. This preference for musical collaboration, collective decision-making, and collective musical interplay is also evident in more recent musical endeavours (Verbu Citation2021: 325, 189). "[8] The Beats tended to be cagey, keeping their lives discreet (save for the few who published, in literary bursts, about their perceptions, enthusiasms, and activities); in a word, they generally kept cool. The young hippies were far more numerous, less wary, and had scarcely any inclination to keep their lifestyles concealed. However, on the other, various DIY participants also often advocate for a more balanced strategy that acknowledges the impossibility of completely rejecting capitalist logic within American DIY scenes: The whole world runs on business, exchanging money for goods and services and a lot of people are going to try to sell and buy a lot of everything. Really thats just a fraction of why theyve been noticed. However, the above examples demonstrate that at least some DIY participants in the US do not so much contradict themselves as consciously embrace their material condition, often working or negotiating with it creatively, in order to achieve and optimise their ideological and political goals. (Josh Taylor from a band Friends Forever, personal communication, 27 September 2012; see also Chippendale Citation2016). In early 1967, Tom Donahuea veteran disc jockey, rock concert producer, songwriter, and music-act managerwas inspired to revive a moribund radio station, KMPX, and inaugurate the first FM-radio rock station, in San Francisco, in order to showcase this type of music. KAOS [from Olympia] was a community radio station; it wasnt saying, Heres a lot of really good music; it was saying Heres a lot of different kinds of music, independent music. Among the oldest venues in San Francisco, The Warfield has hosted a number of great black artists, including Louis Armstrong and Prince. Their performances contrasted with the "standard three-minute track" that had become a clich of the pop-music industry, due to the requirements of AM radio, to the sound capacity of the 45 RPM record, and to the limited potentials of many pop songs and song treatments. 19 See also Jennings Citation1998; Chrysagis Citation2017; Threadgold Citation2017; Bennett Citation2018; Garland Citation2019; Seman Citation2019; Holt Citation2020: chapters 4 and 5; Pearson Citation2020: 183, 185. A whole society, with its own economic . DIY economics of reciprocity, collective participation, and DIY practice, DIY tensions and transitions between reciprocal and capitalist economic systems, https://doi.org/10.1080/17411912.2023.2180050, https://thecreativeindependent.com/people/the-paradox-of-life-affirming-death-traps/, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3gBcxR8NPUw, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Capital-Volume-I.pdf, Medicine, Dentistry, Nursing & Allied Health. Thornton Citation1996). [19] An important departure in this new era of "album oriented radio" (AOR) was that show hosts felt free to play lengthy tracks or two or more tracks at a stretch from a good record album. (Richard the Roadie, in Biel Citation2012: 28, 29), Thus, many DIY participants accept the limits of DIY reciprocity and espouse a more independent and autonomous, small-time or ethical capitalism (Biel Citation2012: 28, 29). They contain freely available discarded items that DIY participants desire to redirect into reuse by other DIY participants, who visit or pass by their houses. On the one hand, American DIY participants embrace independence, collectivism, and reciprocity as constitutive parts of the DIY economy, and foster them as rituals of decomoditization that enhance the symbolic and affective value of DIY shows. Reviews on 80'S Music Clubs in San Francisco, CA - Barracuda '80's Decade Dance Party, Cat Club, Monroe, Bootie Mashup: SF, Butter, New Wave City, Bimbo's 365 Club, Club Gossip, Raven Bar, Oasis As audiences grew, and audience dancing became customary, performances moved into venues with more floor space, such as the Longshoreman's Hall, the Fillmore Auditorium, the Avalon Ballroom, Winterland, and the Carousel Ballroom (which was later renamed Fillmore West). This is how Teague from Waffle house in NE Portland explained DIY reciprocity and communal living: Its about applying that kind of attitude to your whole lifesome people dont, some people are just like yeah, we have shows here but we dont apply that attitude toward anything else in our lives [], and sometimes you will play somewhere and its like really far-out neo-hippy communitywe have lands, and we grow our own foods, and have a lot of other community projects going on in [our] housea lot of houses that we played at [with his band] were really inspiring [in that sense] [] There would be people canning and processing food, making kombucha, making their own alcohol, [and having] screen printing shops, photo labs, art studio spaces built in the houses[there] would just be a house in a neighbourhood but there would be like nine people living there, and people [living] in the backyardjust every inch of house is utilized in a productive waylike in New York, it was like just a community living to an extreme in a couple of places I went to. Donations of money for live performances at DIY shows (a form of balanced gift economy) might be seen to function in a similar way, where a marketable exchange commodity (the live performance) is transformed into a DIY commodity with symbolic and material use value through a process of diversion and enclaving. "[4] Located in the Fillmore District, Sheba Piano Lounge is an intimate bar and lounge where you can enjoy live music nightly to go with some of the areas best Ethiopian cuisine. Black History Month at the best music venues in San Francisco. Brinkley, Douglas 1999 "Introduction" in Hunter S. Thompson's, Learn how and when to remove this template message, book on the most influential albums in American popular music, List of bands from the San Francisco Bay Area, Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 19651970, "April 8, 1967: Ralph Gleason TV Interview", "Show 41 The Acid Test: Psychedelics and a sub-culture emerge in San Francisco", Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh 1967 Interview, Youtube, Discographies of San Francisco bands (1965-1973) at the Grateful Dead Family Discography, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=San_Francisco_sound&oldid=1109796155, Articles with dead external links from May 2018, Articles with permanently dead external links, Articles needing additional references from August 2016, All articles needing additional references, Articles needing additional references from September 2014, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, This page was last edited on 11 September 2022, at 22:37. DIY shows and records, bartering, borrowing, and DIY production of goods). Figure 3. San Francisco offers live jazz and blues each and every night of the week in various settings. (Jennings Citation1998; emphasis added). Thus, the music promoted or listened to in DIY spaces is often less about whether anybody likes it, as Scott put it earlier in this article, than about community-building, and mutual support. While this may not involve bonds of calculated economic exchange or one-for-one favours, it nonetheless creates a social bond (debt to the scene) and thus also sustains a community. Note the makeshift live-in spaces: one suspended from the ceiling on the left, and the small, pink mini-house on the right. These included sharing of food and equipment among DIY houses, local and translocal exchange of venues, the system of free boxes (see Figure 1),Footnote1 donations at shows, and participatory organiser-performer-audience interactions practices that enabled the creation of alternative cultural DIY worlds, and which in turn informed DIY sounds and aesthetics. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. [11] This was the period when "rock" was differentiating itself from rock & roll, partly due to the upshot of the British Invasion. Your guide to one of San Francisco's biggest LGBTQ community events outside of Pride. Since my research mostly covers years 20104, and therefore does not address any recent changes in the scene (e.g., due to COVID-19 or other factors), the ethnographic findings in this article will be discussed using the past tense. However, several problems, complexities, and contradictions also emerge. My argument draws on Arjun Appadurais theories of value and commodity (Citation1986), and other scholarship focused on the social implications of the co-existence of, and of contradictions between, different economic systems.Footnote2 Moreover, I ground my interpretations in the materialist, political-economy approach to the study of culture, which also seeks to understand the complexities within and between particular economic systems, and in their relation to the sphere of cultural production and aesthetics (Mige Citation1987; Ryan Citation1992; Hesmondhalgh Citation1997, Citation1999, Citation2018). And I feel the same about house shows. DIY participants in this regard often endeavour to reduce their contribution to the capitalist system by engaging in alternative economic models, some of them by dropping out of society, or at least partially diverting their consumption and exchange of commodities into alternative regimes of value (e.g. 10 For another example of DIY egalitarian approach to music-making, by the 1980s and 1990s US group Fugazi, see Azerrad Citation2001: 392, 386, 401, 402. A hideaway on Fell Street, Mr. Tipples presents live jazz nightly alongside inventive cocktails in a dark and sophisticated space. Therefore, in this article, I argue that on one level American DIY participants discursively reject capitalism and materially constitute alternative DIY economic systems of reciprocity, but on another they become entangled through their everyday lives with capitalist practices and worlds. In turn, this approach challenges the widespread assumption that DIY participants often contradict themselves in terms of what they do and what they say or, in other words, that their material realities contradict their ideological demands. To request a reprint or commercial or derivative permissions for this article, please click on the relevant link below. San Francisco is and always has been a city of music. There are evidently numerous innovative practices existing within American DIY scenes that work persistently and continuously, on a daily basis, and in multiple interconnected locales, toward demystification and destabilisation of capitalist processes, both on discursive and material levels, but which they also simultaneously sustain the capitalist system in different ways. Today, the music continues with a packed event calendar that combines new talent and seasoned performers. Booking shows for this tour was greatly facilitated by the established DIY friendships of one band member who had previously made eight tours of the US. Lesh had developed his style on the foundation of having studied classical, brass-band, jazz, and modernist music on the violin and later the trumpet.[10]. According to an announcer for a TV show that Ralph J. Gleason hosted: "In his syndicated newspaper column, Mr. Gleason has been the foremost interpreter of the sounds coming out of what he calls 'the Liverpool of the United States.' Did you know that with a free Taylor & Francis Online account you can gain access to the following benefits? Outdoor performances, often organized by the band members themselves and their friends, also played their part. SCRAP) that co-constitute late capitalist circulation of money and commodities (Whiteley Citation2011; Giles Citation2014). Whether you're in a seat on the balcony or dancing on the main floor, you'll have a great concert experience. To address this question, I first outline the contours of the alternative DIY economic system of reciprocity and some of its problems. Some scholars have identified how the obligation to reciprocate (balanced reciprocity), can be perceived to constrain artistic freedom and creativity (Joseph Citation2002: 10311), however, it is notable that participants in the DIY scenes I studied favoured a general approach to reciprocity. When I give you $5 for a record, I am exchanging something of value (my money/effort) for something else of value (your record). (Personal communication, 28 March 2012; see Figure 4 for an example of DIY make-shift spaces). To be able to tour, bands rely on the help of local participants (who organise shows for them, in their houses, or elsewhere). Moreover, it fosters reciprocal relations between the venue, bands, and audiences. In this article, I examine the alternative economics of reciprocity in American DIY (do-it-yourself) culture. 1511 Haight St. One of the city's live music gems, Club Deluxe, located at the famed corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets, presents a wide array of local jazz and blues bands, as well as monthly burlesque and comedy shows. "[15] In San Francisco, musical influences came in from not only London, Liverpool and Manchester, but also included the bi-coastal American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, the Chicago electric blues scene, the soul music scenes in Detroit, Memphis, and Muscle Shoals, jazz styles of various eras and regions. A louder, more prominent role for the electric basstypically with a melodic or semi-melodic approach, and using a plush, pervasive tonewas another feature. This research also reveals how American DIY participants engage in flexible and part time jobs, live in low-rent areas, and reuse derelict capitalist products and spaces, through which they materially co-constitute both DIY and capitalist worlds. 8 Dumpsterdiving is a practice of salvaging edible food from the garbage dumpsters of large stores and supermarkets.