Concert junkie: A Knockout 20th anniversary celebration
Cultural anthropology is not for the faint of heart
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The Knockout 3223 Mission Street, SF CA 94110
Have you ever been someplace so dark that it moves something inside of you to another dimension? Cultural anthropology is not for the faint of heart. This was one of those nights to stumble upon a moment. It also meant being a part of something I didn’t know that I needed in the moment.
Across the street from the Ben Davis mural and the Burger King, that I have seen in San Francisco most of my adult life, is a bar that never noticed was there— The Knockout.
Going into the bar felt like a transformation was occurring. Well heeled and expensively dressed bodies were in close proximity to one another.
The Knockout, known to some for its punk parties, was new to me but only because I hadn’t walked in that part of San Francisco’s Mission District since I was a teenager. Driving up seemed like I was on a different street but wandering around at night felt familiar enough that I could regain a sense of equilibrium.
Music was sounding off, I was walking in the door and happened upon the 20th anniversary celebration. The man at the door told me what the cover charge was. I asked if I could just get a cup of water. This would give me a moment to take a peek at what was going on inside.
As I slid my hand across someone’s back to make my way to the restroom, I gave a man a piece of gum. He and the woman he was with were heading to the photo booth I was departing. As I handed him a stick of gum, I said he may want to consider making out in the photo booth (with consent, of course). Not sure if he heard me but I think he got the idea with the stick of gum.
The band CCR Headcleaner had just taken the stage.
I got the impression they were in the early stages of becoming a new kind of band. Their playing was out of sync, in a way that seemed scattershot but was well rehearsed. The training and discipline could be heard in the practiced transitions from staggering to uptempo and back to the staccato punk.
A drummer from a band he wouldn’t disclose to me said CCR Headcleaner were a jazz fusion punk band. Pretty sure he just made up a genre so that it fits somewhere in the mind.
The excitement of a 20th anniversary was not lost on me when Teenage Jesus and the Jerks hit the stage. The previous acts’ of band members were sweat drenched and wandering through the darkened crowd after packing up their gear.
They played the death howl of angry generations of those who left this world before and those to come. Teenage Jesus and the Jerks had changed the rhythm of the night as hit the stage. Jazz wasn’t recognizable, it was purely punk.
As I looked up at the album covers plastering the walls I listened to the band play something that an undertone of dark symphony. The walls were covered with homages of music lovers from jazz to reggae to punk history. Two decades seem light years away in memory, lost somewhere in time and song.
This was also a night that I did something I don’t usually do, which is leave a show before the last note. Upon my exit, I gave the doorman my moniker and shook his hand.
Whatever pulled me out to go home meant missing out on saying hello to Brontz Purnell who I had met through another artist years prior. My social feeds showed me he a solo while playing along with Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.
The guitar continued to play along with my steps towards the door. A shift in time had happened and I looked at the Ben Davis sign across the street as if for the first time.
When I arrived back onto the sidewalk, I knew I needed a softer edge to sharpen the sword I was welding. In the car on the way home, I barely noticed as a familiar playlist of R&B was playing in the background. I don’t know how much of me was left on the floor of the audience but something needed to stay there with the music that I could return to.
