THE AVENGERS

Snagged w/out permission from Alibi.com - article by Marisa DeMarco

Penelope Houston, frontwoman of the punk ’77 band The Avengers, says in the early days, there were plenty of women on the scene. "A lot of the bands around Los Angeles and San Francisco had female performers, female musicians and singers. I wasn't the only one around." Still, she says, she would like The Avengers to be compared to other punk rock bands without any reference to gender—period. Houston can't escape an awareness of her sex, but it's not without payoff. "Women starting bands and performing because of The Avengers is always really gratifying to me."

Punk ’77 is a term that houses bands from around the year punk first blew up. That was back when no one had much of an idea of what they were doing, before a template took over. But there were only a few years before punk became subject to its own laws. "There are some sounds and behaviors that got codified," Houston says. "You see that in 1980 when hardcore came along."

The first few years, there weren't any regulations, and the bands from that period were vastly unlike each other. Nuns, Crime, The Mutants, The Dils—all very diverse San Francisco bands, different looks, different sounds. "When hardcore came along, it just turned into a homogenous thing. The rules started being made and they're still being followed to this day."

But don't idealize the early days of punk too much. "We didn't have the radio. There were very few clubs for punk. We never actually played off the West Coast back in the day. It wasn't possible. We didn't take it for granted that we would be able to go anywhere or get played anywhere or have a record made." Punk bands had to create their own clubs and sleep on each others’ floors after playing those limited venues. Actually, not much has changed there. The Avengers will still be couch-surfing for at least half of their 2007 tour.
The Avengers’ music has endured for 30 years, though the band was only around for two. The original group formed in June 1977 and played until June 1979. The band's last show was with the Sex Pistols at Winterland, having headlined dates with X, The Go-Go's and the Dead Kennedys. In those two years, The Avengers released one three-song EP on Dangerhouse Records. After the band split up, White Noise Records put out another four-song record. A full-length self-titled LP, a collection of previous recordings, came out in 1983.

An assemblage of live and studio material, Died for Your Sins, was released in 1999. Another official release, American in Me, hit the streets in 2004 and a revitalized Avengers (Houston and original guitarist Greg Ingraham atop a new rhythm section) performed a couple shows to support it. "Then suddenly we were getting invited to Europe and London," she says. "It's snowballed. The interest in having us play live just continued." The Avengers are playing all the classic material on this tour, and Houston says she hasn't felt comfortable writing any new Avengers songs. "Singing these songs is cathartic. It feels good to me now. We're in a political situation where being righteous is the right thing to do," says Houston, who raked politics and religion over the coals in her youth.

After the band's breakup in 1979, Houston performed as a folk artist, because the idea of singing in a really quiet situation was frightening and exciting, she says. "Back then, I sometimes felt like I was just screaming and screaming and screaming and people were hearing only every fifth word or something." Before The Avengers ended its run, Houston remembers telling people they were a folk band. "What I meant by that was folk as music belonging to the people, music made by everyday people. That was one of the defining things about punk—it brought rock music back to the users. It brought it down to this level where everyone could participate."

Essential Listening

Avengers -the album pictured at right, contains the cream of their crop, and more.  All the essential tracks are here. You can get it direct from Penelope Houston's website.

Died For Your Sins has some alt takes and live material, and some worthwhile rarities. Also available at Penelope's website.









Essential Reading:

Punk '77: An Inside Look at the San Francisco Rock n' Roll Scene, 1977
Gimme Something Better: The Profound, Progressive, and Occasionally Pointless History of Bay Area Punk from Dead Kennedys to Green Day


Penelope Houston's Website
Avengers Wiki
Avengers Allmusic

JEFFERSON AIRPLANE

(Excerpted from an SFGate review of Jeff Tamarkin's "Got A Revolution" - without permission)

One day in 1965, Marty Balin, an up-and-coming local singer who'd recently co-founded a band called Jefferson Airplane (and who would later become famous for leaping off the stage at Altamont, attacking a Hells Angel who was beating a fan, and being immediately knocked out himself), took acid for the first time. He and roommate Bill Thompson, who would go on to become the Airplane's manager, decided to go for a stroll in the Haight, whereupon, Thompson says in "Got a Revolution!": "A guy comes up and takes a knife out and goes 'Hey, man, give me your money.' Marty looks at me and goes, 'Is this part of the trip?' "
Balin recalls, "I'm looking at this guy and he's sparkling. I'm going, 'Man, you are beautiful.' And then I put my arm around the guy. Finally the guy gave up and said to Thompson, 'Hey, man, you better take this guy to a hospital.' "

The combination of shining innocence, glorious vision and potentially catastrophic cluelessness encapsulated in this moment propagates fractal-like through "Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane," in which author Jeff Tamarkin traces the band's history from the childhood of its members to the present.

Born from the explosive convergence of youth culture, psychedelics, rock 'n' roll and outrage over the Vietnam War, the Airplane was, for the late '60s and early '70s, at the forefront not only of "The San Francisco Sound" but also of a movement that saw saving the world from government intrusion and societal repression as not merely possible but mandatory. "Now it's time for you and me/ Got a revolution!" Balin would exhort the crowd in his extraordinary voice.

When band members Paul Kantner and Grace Slick were expecting their baby, Kantner's song "A Child Is Coming" suggested not registering births to keep one's children free of authoritarian clutches. (The baby in question, Tamarkin reports, is now a sober Christian living in Southern California.)

The Airplane sold millions of records, influenced hordes of bands and galvanized audiences around the world. Meanwhile, their music was often eclipsed by their offstage antics. They embraced their role as poster children for the transformative properties of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll, and rarely lost an opportunity to outrage conventional sensibilities -- as Kantner wrote in one lyric: "We are forces of chaos and anarchy/ Everything they say we are, we are/ And we are very/ Proud of ourselves."

(Sadly, the Airplane morphed into the less-interesting Jefferson Starship - who then morphed into the gawdawful Starship with Mickey Thomas and Craig Chaquico, who once unabashedly admitted that Journey and Styx were his favorite bands)

Official Site
Allmusic: Jefferson Airplane
Jefferson Airplaine Wiki

Essential Listening

2400 Fulton Street

Essential Reading

Got A Revolution by Jeff Tamarkin

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