Deep Throats

Deep Throats

Good Bad Pretty

Castle Face

“I was a kid, I took mushrooms to help me ‘ease into things.’ It was a perfect SF night [circa 1999]—warm and dimly lit, shit-and-piss-smelling Clarion Alley. A band took the eye-level built-that-afternoon stage. I had peeked up gender-bent punk’s chicken-leather skirt and into eternity. How old were they? Who were they? How were they so fascinating? “They were blowing my young mind. I remember a show where, for some reason I can’t recall, but probably the cops had shut a party down, they got moved to a friend’s backyard down on 3rd Street. They played in front of a halogen work light on cement and somebody threw a bucket of yellow latex paint into the sky. The show was incredible and unstoppable (until the bikers next door called the cops and broke up the party). I’m not sure how I made it home but the next morning I woke up to strangers sleeping on my living room floor and yellow-paint footsteps covering my joint. I spent the next day gagging on my hands and knees scrubbing paint off the hardwood floor (even the shitty flats in SF have nice floors). Drugs, violence; general snottiness; elastic paranoid guitar; SRO drum kit; coke-bottle specs, sharp bass sounds. “An abstract guitar dance that still I can’t rip off without feeling guilty. Smirking medicated bass player whose heavy glasses slid down his sweating beak. Hot-as-hell and unapproachable drum master Sugar, whose boyfriend at the time I remember as like an extra from Warriors...