At first I stayed with my Grandmother in Berkeley, but it wasn't long before
she wanted me out. I looked at a lot of places around the area. One place I
looked at, the guy who moved in shot a neighborhood kid and there was a riot.
) and I built a sound-proof room in a 40x20 foot space and I lived
on top of it. I found out that living in an industrial wasteland can be fun.
The goths next door didn't call the cops when there was noise all night, and the
guy on the other side also had a recording setup (handy when you run out of mics).
Life was simple and I recorded a lot of bad bands (remember when ska-punk was king) and a few good ones
(Accustomed to Nothing, Link-80, The Sellouts, Chemical Imbalance, Oppressed Logic, The White Trash
Debutantes, United Blood and others). A lot of the best recordings weren't being
released by anyone, so I decided to put together a compilation "Ramencore." That
was in 1997, and I still feel like it represents much of the best of the scene at
that time. But there were a lot of bands I wanted to record who never came in.
Then in 1998 the landlord gave me notice that he wasn't going to renew my lease.
I ran through a list of possibilities. I could sell everything and become a homeless
drifter. I could move up to Portland or Seattle and start again. All the time, I
was riding my bicycle around Oakland and Berkeley like I had been for years, looking
at warehouses. But everything was too big/small/expensive/you name it. I started
riding out farther from West Oakland, up north past Berkeley and El Cerrito.
Amazingly, I found her, run down, ancient and in the middle of the Hood; "Lou's Produce."
I knew it was perfect right away, but Richmond? Who the fuck would come all
the way out to Richmond? After many hours and trips to the dump, the place became
the new Burnt Ramen. Conveniently, there was an old aluminum walk in freezer that
didn't take much to make into recording room.
After about a year, a friend approached me about having his birthday party at Burnt
Ramen with some friends' bands. I told him, if you help me build the stage, no
problem. There was a big shelf about 7 feet up in a corner, so we lowered it down to
where it was 3 feet off the ground. Pretty high and small for a stage, but it didn't
cost a thing to build. I had some spare pieces of plywood to replace a few of the
broken boards, I just hoped no one would jump too high. The show went great, except
for the sewage line backing up. A christening of shit.
Over the next year we had a bunch more shows, but it wasn't until after John the Baker
arrived from New York that the shit really started hitting the fan.
The first really punk show
was one Oppressed Logic put together with
Molotov Cocktail (NY), 46 Short and
The Process. A bunch of crusties showed up early (probably to avoid paying at the
door) and one of them passed out cold on the floor before the show even started.
Oppressed Logic was the only band that could fit on the stage, the rest of them
used it for a drum riser. During most of the show there was complete anarchy, chairs
were being thrown around, punks were pissing on the floor, one guy pissed on the
kid who was passed out on the floor. A girl got really mad at him for something else
he did and beat him up in front of the stage. Then she spilled some beer on the floor
and proceeded to lick it out of a crack in the cement (um, well it was part beer
at least). The Molotov Cocktail bassist was
a complete asshole. First he broke the strings on his bass, then he borrowed one
from another band, and did the same thing. All through their set, he was shooting
bottle rockets off into the crowd. After the show,
the Molotov bassist and a guy from 46 short got into an argument. The next thing
I know is the bassist runs in with blood streaming from his nose and locks himself
in the bathroom. He stayed in there a while. It was a good thing I was plastered or I don't think I could have handled the Chaos.
Since that time, there have been a lot of shows here, with improvents to the stage
and PA. Many bands who have been on tour all over the country have said that
this is the most fun place to play. Why? I don't know, it's dirty, it' dark and it's in a
scary neighborhood.
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