Various Artists-Live At Target (1980)

Artist: Various Artists (Factrix, Nervous Gender, uns, Flipper)

Title: Live At Target

Label: Subterranian

Format: LP

Cat #:sub 3

Year of Release: 1980

Country and Year of Edition Issue: US 1980 first pressing

Listed Condition: VG+/VG+

Sell Date: 6/24/21

Sell Price: $24.99

Discogs Last Sold: 3/22/21 $30.00

Low: $19.99

Median: $25.00

Average: $25.91

High: $30.00

Current low price: $17.86

Current Number on Sale at Discogs: 29

Have/Want: 395/263

Where Sold:Sioux Falls, SD

Time it took to sell: 6 years

Where and When Bought: mail order Subterranian 1985

Gwiz-gau Letter Grade: A-

Sad To See It Go: No

My 14-15 year old self had to have everything Flipper once I got the Let Them Eat Jellybeans compilation where "Ha Ha Ha" was the opening track.  I found a copy of Album at Al Bums and Gone Fishin' at That's Entertainment, both my regulars in Worcester in the 80's.  One of those had a mail order sheet so I sent away for around $50 worth of records.  This was paper route era where that $50 was hard earned.  This live compilation was one of the records in that order, 5 years or so after it was released.

I never knew there was an accompanying Target Video, they always seemed like a fascinating luxury in Flipside, especially since I didn't have a VCR in the 80's.  But this video is a document and fleshes out the record a bit better than letting the music stand alone.  This is how I treated it for decades, which meant play it once, play it on air a few times, and file it away for safe keeping.  I fell asleep to side one on headphones last night, so played it au naturale in the open air today and then watched the Target video.  

Art for the sake of art. Clearly the Sex Pistols, Kraftwerk and Throbbing Gristle still had some impact on San Francisco at the end of the 70's.  That none of these bands wallowed in tribute was a relief.  The shots of the crowd display boredom until Flipper confronts them out of their glazed faces.  Flipper, of course, are a marquee band in any setting, and there really isn't any competition to what they do.  For the United States of 2021 to produce a band like this can't happen.  People are too busy subsumed with technology to utilize it.  

 Nervous Gender close out side one in similar confrontation.  They look like high school kids especially the drummer Sven Pfeffer who looks younger than me in 1980 (elementary school) and probably has been drumming less than a year.  It seem like he has playing different beats with this hands simultaneously down.  Mostly.   Factrix were from the ruins of Minimal Man, a 70's proto-industrial favorite of mine led by Patrick Miller who passed in 2003. uns were led by Z'ev, whose albums also came in the mail from Subterranean.  Think slam poetry meets 70's tape effects and tinkered with parts bought at Radio Shack.

This stuff was anti-media for local public media outlets and the soundtrack was only a part of the presentation.  Public Access Television, public radio and videotape were cheapish ways to create media, and clearly San Francisco was ahead of the curve in this regard. Simultaneously protesting and embracing technology with a veneer of hatred of everything including ones self.  But loving ones self all the same because it's all you can really count on in your lifetime.  It's a little different than practicing and getting in a van.  This is music made for community with the commercially released by-product a window on that world in that place and time.  

Life is the only thing worth living for, after all.