The San Francisco music underground, from the aftermath of punk to the dawn of the dot-com era. Includes interviews with over 100 musicians and artists.

“Hate Ashbury…”

Late ’70s San Francisco. The Summer of Love is a hazy memory, the AIDS crisis is looming, and nearby Silicon Valley is still an obscure place where microchips are made. The City by the Bay is reeling from a string of bizarre tragedies that have earned it a new name: the “kook capital of the world.”

Yet out of the darkness comes a creative rebirth, instigated by punk and sustained by the steady influx of outsiders who view the city as a place of refuge, a last resort. What ensues is a collision of sounds and ideas that spans the golden age of analog DIY culture, from the dark cabaret of Tuxedomoon and Factrix, the apocalyptic sounds of Minimal Man and Flipper, the conceptual humor of Gregg Turkington’s Amarillo Records; through to the subversive pop music of Faith No More, the left-field experimentalism of Caroliner, Mr. Bungle, and Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, and much more.

Drawing on extensive research—including interviews with over 100 musicians, artists, and other key players—"Who Cares Anyway" is the first book to chronicle the wild post-punk San Francisco music scene, courtesy of those who lived it. It’s a tale full of existential drama, tragic anti-heroes, dark humor, spectacular failures—and even a few improbable successes.

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Part I: The Punk Era
1 | “They Wanted Cabaret, and Then the Punks Came”
2 | “We Don’t Play, We Riot”: From Grand Mal to Negative Trend
3 | Little Ricky
4 | Seventh World: Introducing the Sleepers
5 | Punk, Art, and Anti-Art / The Mutants
6 | Terminal Fun

Part II: The Post-Punk Era
7 | In the Mission: The Deaf Club, Noh Mercy, and Pink Section
8 | 1979: The Punk Scene at a Crossroads
9 | “No Going Back”: From Negative Trend to Flipper and the Toiling Midgets
10 | Dark Cabaret: The Residents, Tuxedomoon, and Subterranean Modern
11 | California Babylon: Factrix and “Industrial Culture”
12 | He Was a Visitor: Patrick Miller and Minimal Man
13 | The Savoy Sound: Indoor Life and “Beautiful Music”
14 | Painless Nights: The Return of the Sleepers
15 | “Two Sides to the Coin”: From Pink Section to Survival Research Laboratories and Inflatable Boy Clams
16 | Club Foot

Part III: The Hardcore Era
17 | Generic Flipper
18 | Sea of Unrest
19 | “What if?” Arkansaw Man, Red Asphalt, and G.O.D.
20 | Hardcore
21 | “Get Away,” Gone Fishin’, and a Season in New York
22 | Demoralization

Part IV: The Mid-Eighties
24 | The Pop-O-Pies: In God We Truck
25 | “San Francisco as Manchester”: The Wiring Dept. Era
26 | “O”: Enter Gregg and Grux
27 | Creative Landmines: Joe’s Third Record, Tragic Mulatto, and Three Day Stubble
28 | “Institutionalized Dysfunction”: Flipper and Friends in the Mid-Eighties
29 | Shattered

Part V: The Late Eighties
30 | I’m on the Wrong Side: From Glorious Din to World of Pooh
31 | Hell Rules: Gilman Street, TFUL 282, and Bananafish
32 | “I’m Armed with Quarts of Blood”: Introducing Caroliner
33 | Introduce Yourself
34 | The Real Thing

Part VI: Into the Nineties
35 | HazTech, the Easy Goings, and the Zip Code Rapists
36 | Amarillo
37 | Life Beyond Eureka
38 | Faxed Head, Dieselhed, and the Brief Return of the Pop-O-Pies
39 | American Grafishy
40 | Son, Eitzel, and the Death of Ricky
41 | Angel Dust
42 | Wire Thin Sheep Legs: Caroliner, Part 2
43 | Nothing Solid: TFUL 282, Part 2

Part VII: End the Game
44 | “100 Bands”: Record Collectors, Side Projects, and the Yellow Paint Incident
45 | Acting, Theatricality, and “Joke Bands”
46 | Disco Volante
47 | Caroliner in Japan
48 | Leaving Has Hurt: The Breakup, Abundance, and Back to Basics – “Live”
49 | “What if you have a dream and no one’s interested?”
50 | Who Cares, Anyway?

Title: "Who Cares Anyway"
Subtitle: "Post-Punk San Francisco and the end of the Analog age"
Author: Will York
ISBN: 978-1-915316-05-9
Street Date: March 2, 2023
Category: Music
Binding: Paperback
Size: 216mm x 140mm
Pages: 572 
Illos: 87 B&W photos and ads