FLIPPER<\/strong> \u2013 Falling \/ Lowrider \/ End The Game<\/a><\/p>\nSomething a little different uploaded tonight, the infamous \u2018Live At Target\u2019 LP, the debut LP\u00a0released in 1980 by Subterranean Records featuring Nervous Gender, Flipper, Zev\u2019s Uns and Monte Cazzaza\u2019s Factrix.<\/p>\n
This record is certainly not\u00a0the\u00a0musical equivalent of a gentle stroll in the woods\u2026<\/p>\n
Text below written by the late great Tim Yohannan from Maximum Rock And Roll. A wonderful man, who let me stay in his record basement for a couple of weeks a long long time ago. All his records*\u00a0had green gaffer tape around the edges of the sleeves. I assume this desecration was done\u00a0so that the records could\u00a0easily be\u00a0picked out as his property if any light fingered guests took the piss and tried to punt the stolen goods to record shops in the area.<\/p>\n
* Seemingly just about every LP, 12\u2033 and 7\u2033 that was ever released from the beginning of the S.F. \/ U.S. counterculture in 1965 all through to the post punk days world wide were represented in\u00a0Tim\u2019s collection. Awe inspiring if you like that kind of thing, which I did in those days and still do today to a certain extent. Quite surprising I even got out of that basement in S.F. with so many original pressings of Cramps, MC5, V.U, Misfits records to stare at and hold!<\/p>\n
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SUBTERRANEAN<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\nby Tim Yohannan<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n(Maximum Rocknroll #122 July 1993)<\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSteve Tupper has been running for a long time. I first met him in 1978 when we were working together in forming an East Bay chapter of Rock Against Racism. Shortly thereafter he began issuing some of the earliest Bay Area punk\/hardcore releases. He\u2019s pretty quiet, moves at a slow but deliberate pace\u2026 but like the turtle he\u2019s lasted a lot longer than many punk rock hares. Long overdue, here\u2019s a bit of his history as well as some of the upcoming bullshit he\u2019s being forced to slog through. Interview by Tim.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: When did Subterranean first start?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: 1979, in the summer, in Mike Fox\u2019s living room.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Mike Fox of The Tools, at that time, and later to be in Sick Pleasure and Code Of Honor. You were partners in it. What prompted its birth?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: We were talking about how most of our favorite bands didn\u2019t have any records out, and he had this 4-track thing in his garage where he recorded The Tools first single. So, we were tossing things back and forth and thought \u201cGee, why don\u2019t we use it to put out some records?\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: What was the first Subterranean release?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: It was this little 7\u2033 with 4 local bands on it: The Tools, of course, No Alternative, The Vktms, and Flipper.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: \u201cS.F. Underground Volume 1.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: (laughs) It didn\u2019t have a \u201cvolume\u201d number on it; we were taking it one thing at a time then.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: How did you finance the label?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: I had a full time job as a machinist at that point, making OK money.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Was there a flurry of releases back then?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: It took a while to really get it going, a few months to get the first one together. After that, we didn\u2019t get anything out till the next spring, the first Society Dog single out. In the mean time, we had tried doing another 7\u2033 comp, but it never worked out. The two bands were going to be The Zeros and Negative Trend, but it ran afoul of their manager.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Peter Urban.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: He wanted to use these old tapes and we wanted to record new tapes, so the whole thing sunk when we couldn\u2019t agree on it. But meanwhile we started to work on an LP, \u201cLive At Target.\u201d We wanted to produce a show with a bunch of really \u201cout there\u201d people and stay away from the more mainstream punk stuff. We ended up with people like Nervous Gender, Z\u2019ev and his Uns project, Factrix, and Flipper. So we put on a show at the Target Video warehouse, invited a bunch of our friends, and by that time we had an 8-track set up there. That was February of 1980, and it came off pretty well. That was our first album. At the same time we were working on singles by The Tools, The Jars, and Bay Of Pigs.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Then you did the split LP with Sick Pleasure\/Code Of Honor, Code Of Honor\u2019s LP\u2026 and more experimental types of stuff, no?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: We started doing that right away. The \u201cLive At Target\u201d was pretty out there for that time. And the \u201cClubfoot\u201d compilation LP was started in 1980 and took a year to get out. Mike, and the main Clubfoot guy, Richard Kelly, just went totally apeshit on the production; totally amazing at what they could squeeze out of an 8-track.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: What\u2019s the name of the guy who\u2019s on the cover of that LP?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Richard Edson.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: I think he was in the Alterboys, and then he went on to be in movies like \u201cStranger Than Paradise.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: In the meantime we were also doing singles by No Alternative, Flipper, another Society Dog 7\u2033\u2026 and \u201cS.F. Underground 2,\u201d which was basically 4 more really way underground punk bands in 1981.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Besides putting out records, at a certain point you got into distribution and mailorder\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: We started doing mailorder fairly quickly. I had always liked that kind of direct contact with people that were getting our records, and always made sure to include a mailorder catalog in all our LP releases. And all of our friends that had bands wanted to have their records on there, too. It grew over time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: But at one point you had a storefront.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: At first, Subterranean was in my living room in Berkeley, and then we moved into a room off of John Boshard\u2019s woodshop in El Cerrito. He was doing Thermidor Records then. Everything was coated in sawdust, we were running out of room, John was freaking out, so we decided we had to move again. We had about 20 releases at the time, stacks and stacks of records. Patrick Miller of Minimal Man said he saw an empty storefront down the street from where he lived, on Valencia St. in San Francisco. (Across the street from the infamous Deaf Club, and a block from where Epicenter now stands). We were mainly doing mailorder then, and just a little distribution. And we didn\u2019t do retail either for the first two years. By \u201984 I decided to section off the front portion, put in some bins, and see if we could sell some records out of there.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: When I\u2019d go in there I\u2019d always see a good selection of obscure European records. You must have been trading records with other labels.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Oh yeah. We did that all along and are still doing it. Again, it\u2019s a real direct, more underground kind of way of going about getting your stuff around. Generally, a lot of labels have a good idea of what\u2019s going on in their area, and doing a network thing is always preferable to dealing with businesses.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: What happened with that storefront ultimately?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: New landlords wanted to yuppify the place, jack up tho rents, and out we went. Rents in S.F. were getting too atrocious for retail space in the city, and I was getting tired of dealing with burnouts and winos coming in off the streets and pissing on the floor. It got to be too much, and I decided that a warehouse was the way to go. But that was by \u201988, and we had been there 6 years.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Where did you relocate to at that point?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: I found a really cheap and really funky warehouse down near Potrero and Army streets, back behind where The Farm used to be.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Nowadays, you\u2019re more of a distribution than an active label, right?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Yeah. It evolved slowly. Three or four years ago, I got so sick and tired of being ripped off by distributors\u2026 all the companies who had crashed over the years, owing a lot of us a lot of money. It got very difficult to depend on them. All along we had been dealing with some stores\u2026 not in a terribly organized way\u2026 but it seemed that the time was right to do that. So, I just started talking to everybody around here who was putting out records, adding them to our wholesale catalog, sending them around to stores. It gradually built up, and I started getting in people to help do that.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Is the distribution still going OK?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Yes, relative to what the label used to do. The label never did make any money, but the distribution at least breaks even. We hope to be able to start paying ourselves cuz right now we all depend on other sources of income to survive. But things are moving in a positive direction, we\u2019re getting more accounts, selling more stuff.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Tell us about the cast of characters that are working there now.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Let\u2019s see. The guy who\u2019s been there the longest has been Phil. He started doing mailorder when we were back on Valencia St., and still does mailorder. He\u2019s also gotten really into books, and started connecting us up with book publishers. All along we had been selling certain books, like the Re\/Search books because of knowing Vale from the way old punk days at The Mab. But Phil started bringing in other publishers like Amok, Feral House, Autonomedia,\u2026<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Should we give Martin a plug? (laughter)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Oh yeah, definitely Pressure Drop.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: So who else works there?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Peter Galinek. He used to work at Mordam, then moved to Italy to work at Wide Records, then moved back here and kind of wandered in the door a few months ago. He\u2019s bringing in a lot of the people he had dealt with at Wide, European distributors and stores.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Where are most of your stores located?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Up to a few months ago I would have said primarily in the western US, but now Peter\u2019s changed that somewhat in bringing in more east coast stores. The center of gravity may have shifted eastward a little bit. A few years ago 70% of our sales were Subterranean label stuff to distributors and about 30% was mailorder of everybody\u2019s stuff. In the last few years it\u2019s changed so that the overwhelming amount of it is non-Subterranean stuff being sold to domestic shops. It\u2019s working out financially better.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: And who else works there?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: There\u2019s Elden, who was the first guy brought in to call stores, in \u201989. And there\u2019s Lexa, who used to book the Heinz Club until it got closed down recently, and she\u2019s looking for another space to book shows. And Gary, who used to work at Alternative Tentacles, went off to do other things and now shows up once or twice a week.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: That\u2019s a lot of people to employ. I don\u2019t know how you can do it. I realized at one point that you were buying M.R.R. mags from Mordam and were able to sell them cheaper to shops than Mordam did. What is your philosophy on pricing? How do you stay in business?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: I\u2019ve always tried to keep things reasonable. We started off with a 10% mark-up, but raised it to 15% a few years ago.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: Any plans for changes on the horizon?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: I\u2019ve never really been one for plans, just take things one at a time, whatever seems right. I want to keep doing what we\u2019re doing, only better. But it changes all the time.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nMRR: But the label has languished some, right?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nS: Oh yes. A whole lot, which bothers me. But it takes so much work to do the distribution, and is really time consuming and labor intensive and I still end up doing most of the work around there. So there really hasn\u2019t been a whole lot of time for the label, and besides which, the whole crisis of distribution has gotten even worse over the last few years\u2026 there\u2019s basically nobody left worth dealing with out there. So, if we put something out, we have to figure on selling it all ourselves, and we don\u2019t really have enough stores to do that very effectively at this point. Being a small distributor, we don\u2019t have access to the chain stores, except for Tower Records. And the \u201cmom & pop\u201d stores are being squeezed, too.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
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