more from
Collective Jyrk
We’ve updated our Terms of Use to reflect our new entity name and address. You can review the changes here.
We’ve updated our Terms of Use. You can review the changes here.

Live At Kimo's

by Die Yellow Swans

/
  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $3 USD  or more

     

1.
Untitled 06:38
2.
3.
Untitled 05:49

about

Every scene has its CBGB's and without a doubt the San Francisco freak scene's home at the turn of the millennium was Kimo's, a glorious dive bar and night club at the corner of Polk and Pine adjacent to the Tenderloin. The ground floor was home to hard drinking locals, but upstairs was the domain of Matt Shapiro, now co-owner of the Elbow Room. Chaos ruled under Matt's loving supervision. On a good night the overflow, over-legal-capacity crowd could barely fit within the long cramped room, a showroom totally unsuitable for the metal, no-wave, punk and dirt rock that regularly blew waves of noise down Polk Gulch. A normal night meant an unruly crowd of deeply unsober maniacs wearing costumes, or running around naked, with copious makeup and big hair while Matt charged in high-heels first through the sweaty crowd to check a cable or repair a broken microphone, of which there were many. A typical flier offered reduced entry (from $5 to $3) to people in drag, with "trannies" getting in free, and bands were required to perform in drag, a policy that sadly vanished over time.

Yellow Swans played at Kimo's on our first trip down, a strange homecoming for me a year and a half after moving up to Portland. I thought our mix of crust-glam punk electronics would connect with SF's typically Aquarian embrace of all things flamboyant and messy, a scene that was one-half Total Shutdown deconstructed punk, one-half Kid 606 glitch rave, but I don't think it really landed. Oh well. The recorded set is better than I remember, a more than decent document of our earliest phase as a band trying to write songs built around drum machine and guitar "riffs" with actual lyrics and some spaces for improv. A little industrial (again... San Francisco... what was not to love?) and a little art punk, and a little half-baked. Still, we were fully committed.

Kimo's is closed now (1977-2011, RIP), another victim of the long war of gentrification that terraformed the City, but its facebook page lives on, a welcome archive of the mess. I was proud to have a live record that name checked that place, following in the footsteps of Glass Candy and the Shattered Theater's incredible EP capturing their live set from a few years before. If you dig into the deep dregs of the internet you'll find the Burn My Eye video series, one of the only documents I know of that can give you a POV simulacra of the sweat, beer and glitter.

- GMS

credits

released February 12, 2003

"Die Yellow Swans
live at Kimo's
SFCAUSA
2-12-02
featuring
PASwans
&
Gnl. Motor
Skillz
contact
p____ @pacifier.mail.ca"

license

all rights reserved

tags

about

Yellow Swans Portland, Oregon

From their 2001 founding to the duo’s final shows (and subsequent hiatus) in 2008, Gabriel Mindel Saloman and Pete Swanson aka Yellow Swans carved an influential path through America’s experimental music underground, at the axis of noise, psychedelia, industrial, drone, and hardcore. Their music is restless, ragged, and forever in flux, untethered and unresolved. ... more

contact / help

Contact Yellow Swans

Streaming and
Download help

Redeem code

Report this album or account

If you like Live At Kimo's, you may also like: