Fall in San Francisco is beautiful. It was September 1990, and the sun was shining through the fog that shrouds the city most of the year. The little house I was moving into overlooked the ocean, so more often than not, heavy fog, gray skies and wind was the order of the day. But in September, it was as if the heavens opened up, and smiled on the city. I was so happy to be away from the chaos of the inner Mission District. The salt air coupled with the sunshine was soothing and I soon settled into my new living situation.
There were two bedrooms upstairs and a third bedroom downstairs. We called it Brian's lair, since it was tucked away with its own bathroom in the back of the house. We rarely knew if he was home or not since he would creep in and out with hardly making any noise at all.
Harry and I each had our own room, but I slept in his room overlooking the weedy overgrown back yard. The kitchen was bright, also with a view of the ocean, and we would have coffee together in the morning before each of us heading off to our respective jobs. Getting into Haight Street from 40th Ave. was super easy. I could catch the Taraval street car at the end of the block, and take it all the way in to a stop right above Haight Street.
Working at the record store was a blast. I was slowly getting to know my co-workers, Michael, Sue, Jeff, Dave, Heiko and David, and we would each take turns playing records. I would often put on music I could sing too, especially old country records by Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. One day a copy of Gram Parsons' "Grievous Angel" came in, and I happily played it when it was my turn. It was one of my favorite records; the painful cracks in Gram's voice, the aching, bare emotion that filled the melodies spoke to my soul. I got alot of shit for playing country records in a store known for carrying cutting edge indie imports and rock records, but I didn't care. The music spoke to me, and that was enough.
During my days off, I was writing for Maximum Rock n' Roll, and had even been offered a spot doing the radio show. Tim had backed off harrassing me a bit since Harry moved out, and had started assigning me some really good records to review. I would sit in the basement surrounded by the MRR library, listening to the records taking notes and putting my reviews together. Then I would go upstairs and turn on one of the Macs that were available to work on, and type up my reviews, formated the way Tim wanted them.
When I was in college, personal computers didn't exist, so I did all my work on a type writer. Tim patiently showed me how to open a word document and save and print my work. I learned all my basic computer skills from Tim. When it was just us, he was kind and patient and funny. But when I was there with Harry, it was a totally different story. He would then become very brusque, critical and controlling, and it made me very uncomfortable. I was pretty confused by the ebb and flow of his attitude towards me.
Despite the strange behavior, he gave me some great opportunities, one of them being broadcasting live on the Berkeley station KPFA. MRR had been hosting a punk show since the late 70s on this massive public station, and maintained a very good time slot. The station broadcast at 40 thousand watts, strong enough to be heard down to Mexico and up to Alaska.
I was shaking when I took over the airwaves that first night. I don't remember what I played, and I don't even think I kept a tape of the show, but I remember being absolutely overwhelmed and excited knowing I could be heard by so many different people. Alas, shortly after my exciting debut, the station managers decided it was time for some changes (not because of me!) and terminated the show that MRR had aired for so many years.
Adjustments were made and a deal was struck with the Berkeley college station KALX to broadcast pre-recorded shows through them, so Tim set up a studio in the basement library of the MRR house and I continued to record shows to tape for broadcast at a later date on KALX.
It was a fun, but confusing time. Harry was still a "shitworker", helping lay out and format the magazine for print, and occasionally we would to to the MRR house together. I was being given opportunities to expand my visibility at the magazine, such as being given a "Top 10" slot on the front page, where select workers were allowed to list their top 10 favorite records for the month. I was still one of the only girls there, and the strangeenss of Tim's behavior t o me started to make sense when a beautiful girl named Suzanne came to work there.
All of the sudden, his attention was off me and on Suzanne, and I realized that Tim had been hitting on me that whole time, right under Harry's nose. I was totally unaware and so had not responded at all to him, which apparently was starting to piss him off. He had started doing weird things, like not leaving me tapes to record my show on, altering the amount of records he was letting me review and leaving me strange notes.
But when Suzanne arrived and the behavior just stopped, I instantly knew what was going on, and had to laugh. Here was a man some considered the "voice" of the punk world hitting on me, and I hadn't responded at all. I should have been totally flattered by his attention, but I was so naive that I hadn't even realized that's what was going on, and it was pissing him off.
I felt sorry for Suzanne, and we bonded instantly over the whole situation. She also was from Corvallis, and had been one of the punk kids hanging out around the coffee shop I had been managing. It was fun to get to know her in this new environment and we started going to shows together and hanging out at the MRR house. Suzanne handled herself so beautifully though, completely undeterred by Tim's advances, and using them to her advantage to get some leverage on the magazine. I was totally in awe of her and watched her hoping I could learn some of that poise that she possessed so effortlessly.
0 comments:
Post a Comment