GAUZE U.S. TOUR in 1996....Part 2!

In retrospect, it was often asked if that show was TOO BIG for epicenter, same time they had done sold out capacity shows with everyone from BIKINI KILL to THE MAKEUP, so it didn't seem too ridiculous to book the show there, though I remember a little sense of foreboding going into it.It was a word of mouth show with no flyers, no listing in the vital bay area concert calendar "the list".
After the epicenter Fiasco, the band wanted a day of sight seeing- Japanese bands often requests days off between gigs as most don't commonly play day after day tours in Japan, THEN the recording of the prank single- (the photo of most of His Hero is gone, Katie G. Warrior and I with Gauze in their fourth LP is outside the iron Gate to Polymorph studios, taken at the end of the night they recorded), and the night before they left they were interviewed at the last minute at the Hotel they stayed at for MRR, with Ayumi Nakanishi helping translate for the interview that did not appear until the April 1997 issue of MRR. Gauze rarely, if ever, grants interviews, even in Japan, so it was quite an honor, though in retrospect I wish I'd had more time to prepare for it as there's even MORE questions I'd want to ask them now.

We then put them on a flight for Minneapolis the next day on September 10th and I took a seperate flight that routed through Dallas or Houston- I remember that I had a incredibly short connection, so had to run full steam with all this merchandise through this giant airport, otherwise Gauze would arrive at the show without me and stuff to sell, Show promoter Felix Von Havoc picked me up at the airport and took me over to the Bomb Shelter where the show was scheduled later that day.

The bomb Shelter was in a hot basement in a dodgy area of Minneapolis. Pat Davis, the original guitarist of His Hero is Gone had been attacked walking around the neighborhood there earlier that summer with a baseball bat but fended off the guy. After the show there there was a random fist fight of just neighborhood people across the street. They had been having trouble with the Police and noise complaints there, so it was decided Gauze would play early in the bill, with State of Fear playing before and then Code 13 playing afterwards. This show was video taped by a single camera angle, but decent quality and circulated in the midwest as a bootleg DVD in the past few years. Despite my efforts to stagehand, The place was small, packed and someone flew through the audience and into the drum kit ( and sent the cymbals into Hiko, Gauze's drummer) which did not go over well- You made GAUZE STOP PLAYING! but they set the equipment up again and continued.

Jack Control ( of Mind Control records/ Later World Burns to Death) drove a crew of people up from Texas for this show.We stayed with a gracious host from MISERY and spent the next day with Dan From profane playing tour guide at the Mall of america buying souveniers ,at the bar in the mall of America and later trying to find good Sake in Minneapolis ( which on short notice, at least, was impossible). The next day We flew to Chicago, again on separate flights.
The Chicago show on September 12th was set up by Martin of Los Crudos, but the problem with the show in Chicago was that CRUDOS was on tour in Japan at the time of the show. Martin had friends pick us up in this amazingly cruddy van that could not go more than 15 or 20 miles an hour or the engine would jump and stop. It stopped a lot anyway. Chicago is huge, so it was a long stop and start ride through Side streets from Midway Airport over to O'hare Airport to pick up Gauze and then back to the gig, But that aside, these friends took really great care of us. Their Show was that day at the Fireside bowl , but as they used to do, GAUZE was-suprising to us- the early show and there was some sort of Indie or garage rock show later. The fireside bowl was an Actual large bowling alley ( and now, apparently has been refurbished to JUST be that) with the lanes closed off and the bands played in the smaller area between the lanes and the snack bar.
Great chicago band MK ULTRA and Indianpolis' ICE NINE, who were working towards finishing writing a prank LP at the time ( this Lp was never recorded, though demos for some of the tracks appear as unreleased tracks on the phenomenal and recommended discography on Happy Couples never last) opened. Gauze played a great set, and jumped back on stage to play "children fxxk off" for two people from Montreal that showed up during the last song.The photo of Shin from the old Prank Poster catalogs is from this show, as well as a few photos on the insert of their fourth LP.
There was a small turnout at this Chicago show- 100 to 150 people. it might have been that it was not promoted properly with in Chicago with Crudos gone, Crudos at the time could draw between 300-500 people themselves at the fireside and maybe overestimated the draw the show would have. In retrospect it was the same as I felt New York would've been, though people like Wedge from Nine shocks terror came with a bunch of the Ohio punk people and Brian drummer from
Dropdead ( who came all the way from Rhode Island and back on greyhound)all figured it out to make it to the show. Dan and profane existence crew, so blown away by the Minneapolis show, drove down for this show ( an eight hour drive both ways!) as well.

In retrospect I can't find the MRR ads which were the primary way the tour was advertised, but it was maybe Naviete on my part that that was enough, same time there was not a broad reach of the internet in the way that there is now.The other cities were chosen for where we thought the strongest response would be.It was a different time as hardcore was still climbing out of it's collapse in the mid to late 80's and reestablishing itself as a viable music force , so the venues were whatever you could find to make it work. Prank had maybe five releases at the time of this tour,and not the broad wealth of contacts it has now.
It was also a really different time for acceptance of Japanese hardcore- it was more of a cult thing with a small group of fans, opposed to the overarching influence it has on the US and international punk scene it has now. Boxes of Gauze's only previous U.S. release, their appearance on pusmort's U.S. pressing of " thrash til death" had been clearanced for $2 apiece at Epicenter and Vacuuum mailorder a few years earlier. The JPC bootleg CD was circulating, but I think most copies of those were just shipped to japan- there were 2,000-3,000 of those made with a $6 wholesale and maybe a $2 production costs tops and after putting out a call through Vaccuum Mailorder, Gauze was generously provided 25 copies for their tour. Do the math...Well, better than nothing. FXXK the bootlegger.
In a way, I think this tour, as well as early to mid-90's West coast tours by Gaia, Assfort, Slight Slappers, Romantic Gorilla, Wag Platy, The Heck, Smash Your Face, FxxK on the Beach,Corrupted as well as Later tours on the East coast by DSB and Assualt that turned the corner towards acceptance of and later total obsession with Japanese punk in the U.S. scene.

Gauze flew back the next day on Friday, So were in the US a total of seven or eight days including the days they arrived and left. I stayed in the Pilsen over the weekend. Saturday was Mexican Independence day, and Martin's roomates cleared out for family events and I ended going to a nearby theatrical production of the OPTIC NERVE comics books that was in walking distance from their place. Fate would have it I ran into a friend of a friend I had met the year before in the Bay Area at this play, completely at random, who is now my wife and the better part of prank. Gauze declined to play our wedding five years ago, simply replying "Gauze is not wedding band"!!!

GAUZE US TOUR ...IN 1996! Part 1

I keep getting random emails with questions about when Gauze came to the U.S. in 1996 and get asked about it all the time, so figured I'd do a post with the story of the tour.It's a lot of obsessive detail,but so have been the questions about the tour, so Read on!

I had been a fan of Gauze since the 1980's- having traded with people in Japan in the late 80's and 90's for all of their records, and in 1992 or so a cassette tape I had made of their third LP was perpetually glued to my car stereo at all times. After moving to the Bay Area, I had visited Japan in 1995 to see a gig of GISM/GAUZE/DEATHSIDE and from that visit met people and organized a tour with ASSFORT in 1995 of a few cities on the West coast close to the SF Bay area- Santa Rosa ( an amazing show in a coffee shop to about 12 people), Berkeley, Petaluma, and SF.They also played shows around the Boston Area, set up by Yasuhiro Koketsu of the DEVOUR label, who later returned to Japan to play in MUGA. The Berkeley Gilman show is pictured on the cover of the Prank 7", which was my deal at the time, come to the U.S., record a 7" for my new label- the assfort was done at House Of Faith and I had no idea what it sounded like until I received the test pressing. In retrospect, ASSFORT was the perfect first japanese hardcore band to tour the U.S. as they were young, did not have a lot of expectations, were easy going about things and wanted to have a great time and were at their absolutely peak of a live band with their line up at the time. One of the best live bands I've ever seen... after Bad Brains.

Toshio Iijima, who then was working at either Vinyl Japan or Nat records, but now runs the great
Record Shop Base and Mangrove label was contacted by Fax as to whether Gauze would want to come to the U.S. and assisted with all the details as well as came on the tour- on the cover of the prank 7" 's he's underneath the cymbal next to Matt Average from MRR and later vocalist for Reagan SS who's taking a photo in the white shirt - you can also spot Jeff from Capitalist Casualties/Six week records ( in Glasses) in that photo and the back photo of guitarrist Momorin has Max Ward grinning along and Katie from Canada, who flew out for the shows and is now in Brutal Knights in the corner). The band gave me only a week or so to do the entire tour,as well as record the 7" for my label... so it was decided to fly between cities. They wanted to go to New York City, but at the time I had no contacts there and I felt the turn out would be low, so it was decided to go to San Francisco for Two shows-Minneapolis and Chicago. I also considered Los Angeles, but the only show I could find was a non-paying gig via Ron FInal Conflict as an add on to the band filming sequences for Decline Of Western Civilization 3 . Gauze would not have been filmed, but just played for the assembled audience.

I can't remember but I think on the thursday- * wait actually I'm wrong here, they had a day off after the SF shows then recorded then we went to Minneapolis**, The band first recorded at Polymorph studios in Oakland with Dan Rathbun. SCHLONG who had played a bunch of shows in Alabama I had set up ( including Man Or Astro-man?'s first show), turned me on to polymorph after I somehow got the part intended for lint on their insane re-working of the west side story soundtrack, Punk Side story. Gauze used Schlong's equipment and Dave Mello was kind enough to drive the band around while they were in the Bay area. The entire recording for Prank 09 was done in one afternoon, and while they considered recording a 12", they recorded five old songs and a unreleased track that was re-recorded on their fourth LP. Unfortunately, the started playing "shot" from Fuckheads in the studio but decided not to record it. The 7" of that recording never sounded as good as the Actual recording, though It was test pressed twice. There were 500 of these 7"s' with Patches and a white splatter on black vinyl that were entirely shipped to the band and the photos of the band are from the first show at Gilman, buy Ayumi Nakanishi. John Yates designed the t-shirt for the tour, turning in a really basic shirt with their logo and then I said " no john, this is the band that plays with Discharge In Japan, make something more insane!" and ended up with the shirts with the Dead Guy on them, which were probably off the mark a little bit, but were to echo the cover of "Equalizing distort" as well.

First show was Friday September 6th 1996 at 924 Gilman show was with Assfort, who had returned with a new line up and toured the area before Gauze arrived, Spazz, Dead And Gone and Eldopa . I got long time Gilman Engineer Radley Hirsch to come and do sound at Gilman so it would have the best sound possible, though he I think was a little stunned that Gauze would not stop playing even though they'd knocked themselves questionably out of tune.This show was the prank one year anniversary show and completely packed with people.
The next day, September 7th the band was scheduled to play at Epicenter Zone Record store, which used to be located at 475 Valencia in the mission. They did shows there all the time. His Hero is Gone, who I think had just completed recording " 15 counts of arson" were opening. This show was packed, and while they were playing some dork from San Jose grabbed ahold of the fire sprinkler pipe which hung over head only a few few feet from the audience, swung on it, and it broke in half under his weight and started spraying water everywhere like a high pressure hose. Carl Auge, His hero's bassist realized what was happening and turned off the band's equipment before they were electrocuted.Ironically, the next song on their set list was "rain Dance"!! Devon Morf made a valiant attempt to plug the pipe shut with the t-shirt he was wearing at the time, and on the 12" label of "15 counts of Arson" you can see him, shirtless, with William From Copout/
Talk Is Poison and Timojhen Mark of Vacuum Mailorder and MRR trying to figure out what to do. The HHIG banner in the photo is duct taped over the large wall painting by now-famous gallery/graphitti artist Barry "Twist" MCGee that was in the back of epicenter. Later it came out, maybe in MRR, that Epicenter worker and MRR contributor Tom Hopkins had let the guy who swung on the pipe in the show for free in exchange for free drinks the night before, a fact he apologized for or at least admitted he liked the free drinks! Gauze meanwhile had been hanging out backstage in what used to be Blacklist mailorder and We rushed them out of the building with everyone else as the fire department showed up. We wanted to cover tracks that a concert had been going on, so
Jello Biafra helped me carry all of Gauze's t-shirts back to the Van we were using. While everyone at Epicenter was in a total panic ( and luckily their stock was in a part of the building with no sprinklers and was undamaged) the fire Department, walks in, sees that no one is dead and nothing is on fire and nonchalantly goes and gets a pump to pump the water out of the building. Floyd took Epicenters Freight elevator down to see if he could find the water main, and said it was insane, like taking an elevator down a waterfall. Bad thing is the pipe being broken also set off the fire sprinklers in the clothing store below epicenter, soaking the entire place and their inventory...and since Epicenter was sliding away from being a great record store at the time, this caused them to stop being able to do shows which by then was really supporting the place and it sadly closed a few years later.

Gauze Sat outside and smoked cigarettes,They were then surprised when Pushead walked up with a member of City Indian who was here on business-who they said they had not seen in ten years. A member of the JAKS skate team tried to get us to go over to their annual party and jump on the bill there, but it was too chaotic, and We had to fly to Minneapolis the next day. I asked them if something like this had ever happened in one of their shows in Japan. They thought about it for a second, took another drag on their cigarettes and cooly replied " No...".