I wasn’t actually going to do a Part IV, but then Mike said he was looking forward to it. So here we go…the music! And some other stuff.
I feel really lucky to have been a teenager in the 80s. I was talking about this once to a guy who was a teenager in the 90s. He thought the 90s was a pretty good time to be a teenager. I could only think, “pffft.”
And Nathaniel’s friend Dillon is always complaining to me about how all the great bands and music scenes existed in the past. As in, the 80s. It’s true. I mean, look at it: we had early grunge, ska, Bad Brains, Husker Du, Dead Kennedys, Big Black, crazy industrial stuff…so much awesome music happened in the 80s.
My high school really was straight out of a John Hughes teen movie. The cliques were few and they were rigid: preppies/jocks, skaters/punks, geeks, stoners/metalheads. Although the metalheads seemed to get along ok with the punks. Must’ve been the mutual love of underappreciated music.
These days you get all kinds of groups of kids. And I’ll tell you, nothing ticks Daniel off more than seeing guys who in the 80s would’ve been a jock beating him up for being a skater punk that nowadays think it’s cool to have tattoos and look all punk. (I know that sentence was really convoluted but hopefully you know what I mean.)
Here he is, suburban skater punk:
Back in those days there weren’t skate parks on every corner. You had to build your own (wooden) ramps. We had a friend whose parents let him build a big vert ramp in their yard. It was cool. When Daniel and I finally started dating, we’d often drive up to Vancouver, Canada, because they had a skate park there—North Van. And once or twice we went down to Burnside in Portland. Daniel also knew these guys who built their own bowl to skate in their backyard in West Seattle. Those guys eventually started a business building concrete skate parks, Grindline. The parks they build are insane.
There were a lot of Seattle bands back then that weren’t grunge. I don’t think most people realize that while there was the heavy stuff going on, there was also a poppier indie scene in Seattle in the 80s. One of my favorites was a band called Room Nine. They broke up and the singer later formed Love Battery. I believe this is a picture of Room Nine performing one year at Bumbershoot:
Here they are when we interviewed them for my friend’s ‘zine:
L-R: My friend Jennifer, a guy from Room Nine, Daniel (flipping me off Young Ones-style, again), guy from Room Nine, my brother Willy.
Another band we saw at Bumbershoot was this one:
I think they were called Danger Bunny. If not, they were Danger Mouse. I always got those two bands confused. This was taken at Bumbershoot. They played right before Robyn Hitchcock.
This is a band called Pure Joy:
Great name, huh. I saw those guys a bunch of times. The singer, Rusty, is now in a band called Llama.
One of my greatest experiences as a teenager was my 16th birthday. I had a penpal, Laura, who lived in San Francisco. She was as into music as I was. We both loved U2. She lived right downtown and knew where to go to meet bands when they were in town. She met all kinds of bands—the Cure, the Alarm, she met John Lennon when she was 4. Well, U2 were playing a show there on June 4, 1986, my 16th birthday, and she got two tickets. My parents let me fly down and stay with her for a week.
She heard U2 might go check out a show by a local band, Camper Van Beethoven, and the club was 21+, so we waited outside on the sidewalk, hoping to catch them on their way in.
They didn’t show. The next day, the day before the concert, we hung out on the curb outside the hotel Laura was sure they’d be staying in—the Four Seasons. While we were sitting there, a van pulled up, and Bono and Sting got out. I took a picture of Bono with Laura and Laura’s friend, Sherry. (I’m sure I’ve posted this before.)
Bono was really nice to us that day, even though he was obviously very tired. And at the show the next night, when he pulled a girl out of the audience during “Bad,” Sherry was the girl he chose.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:25 am
Dude, Bono looks smokin’ in that pic.
October 23rd, 2008 at 10:02 am
Yep, way hot. You have posted it before. I hope you’ll post it again. It’s a great picture.
I love Camper Van Beethoven. Love.them.
We had one skater in my high school (you had the teen years I longed for…). I was insanely in love with him. I used to go to Safeway every day to buy gum because he worked there. He would put it in a bag and carry it to my car for me.
When he was a senior and I was a junior he carried around a can collecting money so he could build a ramp. I’m pretty sure I personally funded at least half of it.
These are great stories Susan. You should print and bind them (I mean your stories, not the one I just told…)
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:30 am
Cool pics, as usual.
I love that it was enough for you to take the picture of Bono and that you didn’t have to be in it.
Shazbraz, I like you.
October 23rd, 2008 at 11:32 am
I built a quarter pipe with my friends in 91 or so when I was 13, it was on its way to a half pipe until rival skate gang tore it down.
Nice pics and memories, Im digging these.
October 23rd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
We had a couple of more skaters when I got to high school than shaz had! I feel so lucky…
Hot picture of Bono. Thanks to shaz I also love Camper Van Beethoven. I’m pretty sure they were playing Pictures of Matchstick Men on the radio on the way to have my son during a retro weekend…
Remind me, shaz, to ask you who the skater was that worked at safeway!
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:39 pm
The only better time to be a teenager was in the early sixties I think. I was a teen in the 70s and it wasn’t too bad either. We met (my sisters and I, and then my boyfriend now husband, too) so many different bands driving all over SoCal. You were in the best place for the eighties.
What great stories. I am loving this series. Encore!
October 23rd, 2008 at 5:40 pm
that’s robyn not robynq!
October 23rd, 2008 at 6:49 pm
I remember it used to be a big deal to be into indie/punk/”alternative”/thrash when I was in junior high. People thought you were weird. Nowadays it’s no big deal, kids listen to any and everything. Back then it gave you such a feeling of tribal identity. You’d see someone w/ a Ramones or Bad Brains t-shirt and immediately knew you had some common ground w/ them. You used to get beat up for skating, but ever since Nirvana and the X-Games the counter-cultural aspect of the scene was strangled to death. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing.
October 24th, 2008 at 7:40 am
Yeah. Now the only underground/counter-cultural scene is like, black metal. And that’s just a joke.
October 24th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
I think for the first half of the 90’s the mainstream music was better than now or the 80’s but that was only because it came from the 80’s underground. Not to dis 80’s mainstream music, but I can only think of U2 and a few others that I like.
October 26th, 2008 at 9:01 am
a friend of mine said he was proud to be born in the 80s. he said it was much better than being born in the 90s..today it’s all just regurgitated fashion, so many people seem to have forgotten or never realized that you could get beat up over a simple hairstyle or fashion choice.
i’m 99% certain that’s danger bunny and not danger mouse. they aren’t opening for robyn hitchcock though. this was a friday night show back when the first night of bumpershoot was free and mainly local bands played. camper van beethoven opened for robyn hitchcock.
i believe rusty was also in flop that were somewhat successful.
there’s an interview i read with siouxsie where she was talking about punk, and she said how it wasn’t just one thing, that it was a lot of different musical styles in there and it’s something a lot of people forget. there was so much musical experimentation in the 80s, i don’t know if we’ll ever see such a thing again. now half of what goes under the guise of experimentation is just a rehasing of what’s gone before.
October 26th, 2008 at 4:42 pm
Did we see Camper Van then? I don’t remember that at all. I remember Robyn Hitchcock. He told stories between songs, right?
Rusty was in Flop.
October 26th, 2008 at 10:21 pm
yes, we saw them open for robyn hitchcock(he did tell funny stories between songs). carole was with us too i think. i suspect camper van were responsible for the hippie element at that show.
October 26th, 2008 at 11:22 pm
i just noticed that picture of rusty is backwards. look at the kjet banner behind him.
October 27th, 2008 at 7:10 am
Ha, yeah. Scanned from the negative. Must’ve done it backwards.