Sportswear, the band before Voice Farm

Journal entry, July 4, 1978: A small party for Charly...over at Gary and Barbie’s, with Steven, Steven, Matthew, Carol, two men I didn’t know. Fruit salad, bagels, meats, pie and Jack’s own date orange bread, from Quick Mix recipe. Made Charly two small photo pieces--one photo from Burke catalog--”this is a job for C. F. Brown,” and a photo from January of me (SX70) red hair, posing with Jeffrey’s acoustic guitar, white presstype around bottom and right hand side reading “I auditioned for SPORTSWEAR” . He seemed pleased. Charly and Steven went this afternoon to a fashion picnic, Charly apparently being asked for a date by someone--Am I jealous? I don’t think I should ever pose that question to myself again. It is stupid of me.

Am listening to a tape I made last night at Mark’s. Kathy took back her stereo, so I had to get some new music on tape. All the other stuff is from last fall. Now have Laura Logic, Teenage Jesus, Throbbing Gristle and the Alternative TV LP, “the Image Has Cracked.” Am just resting, trying to keep on top of this cold I have again. Slept a lot yesterday, missing out on seeing Charly for his birthday.
3:30 p.m.--thoughts while listening to Laura Logic and reading the Individuals book and Douglas Davis’s Artculture, thinking about punk. For Charly’s birthday, Steven bought him Essential Logic. I’ve been exposing people to it right and left. Marie and Mickey know the vocal inflections of that one and also X-Ray Spex’s Day-Glo, Teenage Jesus & the Jerks’ “Orphans” b/w “Less of Me.” All of these blew me away, and I play them for all. Don Vynil is always saying that the Offs aren’t punk. I feel I can’t discuss it anymore. What is, was punk?

You Can't Trust Redheads

you can't trust redheads.
You can't trust redheads.

red dreams red scream
red scare red cigarettes
red information red pants
red ties red, white and blue, I love you
red/dead

red scars on my hands, red hair on my hands/head.
red cot/red costs
red well red shoes red shirt red pants red socks red lips to intice you with



red im ge
sympathizing with the commies, they're up against an american wall
red, white and blue bunting.

On my calendar, red signifies a new week, starting out once again on the same old routine
not enjoying life all that much.

Someone asked me if the reason that I changed so much was because I wasn't content with my looks but I answered that on the contrary, I am satisfied enough to be able to change.

I owe three thousand dollars to the school.
I owe a month's back rent.
I owe fifty dollars a moth for my red Mercedes.
If I wasn't in the red already, I would something to become so.

Red Painting No. 5


a typewritten sheet from early 1978--Red Painting No. 5 is the painting destroyed at the SF Art Institute New Wave Show mentioned in another entry. Some nights I typed my journal entries, thinking the speed of the typewriter helped me think, captured better the thoughts rushing fast through my brain. The clack of the keys echoing the emerging electro-punk/post punk of the Screamers and the French punk band Metal Urbain. I write of wanting a rhythm machine, a percussion box. Screamers drummer K.K. played a drum set and ran a rhythm machine, kicking me fast in the face. Sound was the new visual art.
"If I wasn't in the red already, I would buy something to become so," and how true that is.

Note from 1978 journal about all the bands forming

July 7, 1978 (1:30 a.m.) "Now, in the immediate future, I will be needing to practice, the band is on the way. Three, no four, bands, I know of on the way in SF: IUD, Sportswear, Dead Kennedys, and Joy’s band, who at least have a place to play/practice. The Offs seem almost big-time, with offers to play LA and Cleveland."

Catching myself falling from a skateboard

a performance in which I tried to time myself falling off a skateboard to the ten-seconds of the Polaroid self-timer. I set the timer by rotating a plunger that would methodically wind back before plunging down to push the Polaroid One-step shutter button. The camera is propped on a step of a wooden step-ladder, facing the wall with my 45-rpm phono player, with the Stranglers' cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David classic "Walk on By" grinding out.
The piece began with me in an angry state, pissed off and probably piss drunk. I played X-Ray Spex "Identity" while changing into my performance clothes--grey tights beneath my jeans and red t-shirt. [News of the death of Poly Styrene come on the day I update this entry: http://www.spinner.com/2011/04/26/poly-styrene-dead/]



On the wall are a poster from New York post headline about the Son of Sam, an Itek photo enlargement of a self-portrait in center, and a grid of previously taken Polaroid self portraits on the right side of the wall. Of the five photos I have documenting the performance, three of the five show the same wall as two of the pics here.

"I've been trying to invent characters, someone else who could speak my lines.
Not that they could say them any better, but that you would accept them, my words, more readily. Coming from me, they sound didactic. Coming from an invented character, the words and the character seem to strike more chords."