San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall was built in 1907 after the Great Fire and Earthquake of 1906. After many uses and incarnations, it opened as a music venue in 1972 and has been open since. This January, it hosted some veterans of the California punk scene for a night of great music.
Frightwig started in 1982 as an all-woman San Francisco punk band with a distinctly feminist message. They released two albums in the ’80s which proved to be an enormous influence on the Riot Girl movement. After breaking up in 1994, they reformed in 2014 and released a new record, We Need To Talk, on Label 51 Records.
Kid Congo Powers has been making music since the ’70s including stints with Gun Club, The Cramps and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds, before founding The Pink Monkey Birds in 1997. Since then, they have released four albums on In The Red Records with a new album, That Delicious Vice, coming this April.
The Avengers were among the first punk bands to form in California in 1977, famously opening for The Sex Pistols at Winterland. Their initial incarnation only lasted two years and produced two EPs, the second of which was produced by Pistol Steve Jones and released after the band had split. Original members Penelope Houston and Greg Ingraham reformed the group in 1999 and have been playing regularly since 2004.