Please join site editor and author David Ensminger at Modern Times Books in San Francisco on Oct. 18th as he hosts a panel called Punk: The Permanent Revolution as part of the city-wide Lit Crawl fest. Joining him will be icons like Kathy Peck of the Contractions (just confirmed), Mia Simmans of Frightwig, Jack Grisham of TSOL/Joykiller, Peter Case of the Nerves/Plimsouls, and Gary Floyd of the Dicks/Sister Double Happiness. Others might convene as well! The event is FREE, books will be found galore, and it rolls at 8:30, but be there by 8 pm to mingle and meet.
Also, the Gary Floyd memoir Please Bee Nice has just been published by Left of the Dial, a small publishing house headed by Ensminger. Copies will be distributed to outlets like Alternative Tentacles over the next few weeks, but you may order a copy right now via Amazon here. If you would like more information or desire to order a copy directly from the publisher, please send an email to leftofthedialmag@hotmail.com.
Gary Floyd is an iconic underground rock’n’roll figure who has resided in San Francisco for three decades. He epitomizes the links between the outsider ethos of the Beats (both their queerness and spirituality) and the vexing and volatile punk era. If one band other than the Dead Kennedys and MDC defined the political turmoil of the 1980s, it was the Dicks, one of the anchors of the Rock Against Reagan tour. Plus, Floyd was one of the very few openly gay punk rockers in a scene saturated with righteous politics. In a very earthy and honest voice, the memoir covers much of his life, including his early East Texas dog days, his queer-punk radicalism and ornery hell-raising in Reagan’s trickle down economy America, his rootsy and blues-leaning Sister Double Happiness alternative rock, and his discovery of Eastern spirituality (he almost became a monk), plus the Gary Floyd Band and Black Kali Ma. The book, stylized with rare flyers and photos, is breezy, sharp-tongued, detailed and insightful, poetic but not overly ponderous, raw and refined in the right places, and candid about a scene still mired in controversy.
The Center for Punk Arts 