In 1983, deep in the suburban hinterland of Campbell, the punk rock photographer Murray Bowles attended a backyard party and shot several pictures of The Faction, San Jose’s legendary skate punk band. A software engineer by day, Bowles was just starting a decades-long side job of capturing Bay Area punk.

In San Jose, the scene was a hodgepodge of house parties, rented halls and skate ramps because no real venues existed. As the Faction played, an 11-year-old kid named Lars Frederiksen sat on the ground in front of the drum set to keep it stationary. (See photo.)

“The cinderblock wasn’t working so the kick drum kept moving and moving and moving,” Frederiksen recalled. “I remember someone tried to put a 12-pack of beer in front of it, and that obviously didn’t work. I think someone even said put the keg in front of it, but then everybody would have to come up when the band was playing to fill their beer. So somebody said, ‘Put Lars in there.’ And that’s how I ended up in there.”

The rest is history. Ten years later, Frederiksen joined the band Rancid, which then exploded into one of the most successful punk bands of all time, inspiring generations of fans around the world, even still.

But now, in what is probably the most spacetime continuum-shattering full-circle punk hoedown in local living memory, the Faction will first open up for Rancid in San Francisco on Thursday, and then they will headline on Friday with one of Frederiksen’s other bands, the Old Firm Casuals, at The Ritz in downtown San Jose. The whole shootin’ match will trigger many individuals to reflect on their own crazy journeys over the last several decades.

Over the years, Bowles’ photos from that party have almost achieved folk status. He may have captured the most punk rock Norman Rockwell moment in San Jose history.

In those days, the Faction’s bass player, Steve Caballero, was already a world-famous professional skateboarder with sponsorships, trophies, tour stories and the whole nine yards, all while not yet even 20. People around the world devoured skateboard magazines and then VHS videos of the Bones Brigade, of which Caballero was a key member. Thanks to what he and his crew were doing, it’s not an exaggeration to say San Jose was one of the skateboarding capitals of the country. Specific street tricks and maneuvers were pioneered right here in town. As the lifestyle became inseparable from punk rock, the whole scene put San Jose on the map way more than any politician has ever been able to do. It is a travesty of justice that Caballero is not in the San Jose Sports Hall of Fame.

But I digress. With the Faction, Caballero eventually switched from bass to guitar as the band became a five-piece and then soared to even more stardom before breaking up a few short years later. After sporadic reunions over the decades, they returned to semi-regular gigging about four years ago.

Bowles’ photo captures what the scene was like in those days: punks and skater kids dealing with the intrinsic boredom of suburbia. Several people in the photo are still in the area. For example, leaning on Caballero’s bass amp is Denice Vaughn, wearing a pair of pink Paradise Garage creepers, shoes Caballero bought her when he was in LA for a contest.

“I threw a fit because he wanted to get me the red and black ones,” Vaughn recalled. “And I said, ‘No, I want the pink ones, and if I can’t have those, then I want nothing.’ And he drove all the way [across LA] back to Hollywood to get me those. I totally remember that. I still have them.”

Bowles has since retired from the software industry, but still has a long photography career on which to reflect. His catalog of photos, now in the thousands, remains an integral component of Bay Area punk history, although he doesn’t scour the scene as much as he used to.

“Nowadays everybody takes pictures with their phones,” Bowles said. “It’s not as though if I didn’t take pictures, there’d be no pictures taken at all. Which is sort of the way it was for a lot of shows.”

Eric Fanali doesn’t want you to go to San Francisco. The man behind the scenes of many downtown music events, from no-cover Blank Club concerts on Wednesday nights to the SubZero Festival and shows throughout Silicon Valley, puts all of his resources into nurturing the local music scene and connecting fans. His most recent effort, Rockage 2.0, arrives this weekend and goes even further—linking not only music fans with each other but also connecting music fans with gamers and gamers with bands. It’s all one big, rocking family.

I met up with the Rockage founder and concert promoter on a busy afternoon at Philz in downtown San Jose. Fanali looks the part, with shaggy black hair, a Cardigan, skinny jeans and a quirky personality that belies his not-so-secret ambition.

Originally from Connecticut, Fanali moved here as a youngster and grew up in the area. In 1997, at the tender age of 16, he took it upon himself to organize and implement an all-ages ska show—because he wanted to go to an all-ages ska show.

Since then, his DIY production company, Grand Fanali Presents, has put on thousands of concerts at a clip of eight or nine per month, ranging from indie to hip-hop to the new Bay Area–bred genre of “chiptune,” which transforms vintage electronic devices like Game Boys into musical instruments.

“I’m not profiting from these,” Fanali says. “Basically any money that comes in goes to things like gas and copies.”
He really just wants to provide San Jose music fans with somewhere to go—himself included.

Major cities such as New York and San Francisco, because of their geographic location and cultural cohesiveness, have an easier time maintaining a healthy music scene, the kind where you see the same people at every show you attend.

This area, however, doesn’t have the luxury of quick subway rides and accessible popular concert venues.

“San Jose is so large; there are too many factions that don’t know about each other,” Fanali says. His goal is to plug all the bands, fans, gamers and artists into the same system, and he’s already made headway in crafting a collective musical identity.

“It’s been a South Bay love affair between Eric and the chip-music scene,” says Matt Payne, of the eponymous solo “chamber-chip-doom-folk” project Matthew Joseph Payne, who performed at Rockage last year. “He’s been amazing about importing all the S.F.-based chip artists to the San Jose area, and we love him for it.”

The idea for Rockage came to Fanali five years ago when he thought about combining two of his passions, music and video games. He spent the next few years recruiting artists, raising funds and checking out venues.

“I went to 50 to 60 churches, auditoriums, Knights of Columbus halls,” before settling on the San Jose Woman’s Club on 11th Street across from San Jose State University, he says.

This past month has been was busy for local musician Anya Kvitka and her band Anya and the Get Down. After talking with different record labels—indie and major—she was asked to do a private showcase for Red Bull Records, where she and her band played an hour set to about 40 people, all of whom were associated with the music industry in some way.

Kvitka was first contacted by Red Bull after Menace, a DJ at LIVE 105 who is a friend of hers, sent out her demo to different people he knew in the music industry. The demo landed in the hands of someone at Red Bull and they were very interested in meeting with her. Right around the same time, Kvitka’s band “Anya and the Get Down” won the best band award at Metro’s Silicon Valley Sound Experience festival, which piqued the interest of Gary Avila, who previously managed Papa Roach in their heyday.

With Avila’s help they’ve met with other labels as well. So far, more than one has expressed some interest, but nothings official yet, Kvita says.

Her hopes are to find a balance between catchy songwriting and her interest in going all over the map with different genres.

“I definitely want to maintain as much diversity as possible, so that’s it’s not just one avenue or lane. I don’t want an avenue; I want the neighborhood,” she says.

There is talk that some of the industry people and labels she’s spoken to will be coming to the Blank Club show on February 15 to see her perform in a hometown environment. If all goes well, this show could be Kvitka’s last show in San Jose for a while. The plan is to hopefully move to LA and take some time to work on making a debut album that will really represent who she is an artist.

“Whatever you release for your first album, you’re always going to be that in people’s eyes. It’s very difficult to stray from that. Why would I put myself in this box that I won’t be able to get out of? I kind of want to be a bridge between accessibility and left of center. That’s kind of my goal with my music and how I write. I think that’s why I gravitate towards so many different genres, because I love so much music.”

Anya and the Get Down play the Blank Club on Friday February 15 at 9pm. Tickets are $8

Local indie roots rockers Northern Son haven’t been that active these past couple of years. But now with the new year, they’re ready to play more shows, write new songs, and hopefully record a new album. We talked with lead singer/guitarist Jeff Carmassi about what 2013 has in store for them.

In the first couple years of your band existence (2009 and 2010), you guys played a lot of shows and released a full length, an ep, and three music videos, and even got a fair amount of attention. Why have the last couple of years been so lean?

The last couple years for Northern Son have been a time of transition and personal growth. When we first started this band there was a solid group of five extremely motivated friends who wanted nothing more than to share the music being created, but, sometimes life leads people down different paths and things don’t always go according to plan. This led to many line-up changes! Some ex-members left to create other music projects, get married, start families and pursue higher education. We reached a point, during all the line-up changes, when Northern Son was almost no more. All the transitions over the years took Northern Son from a five piece band to a duo, myself and lead guitarist/Background Vocalist OJ Montevirgen.

We each took some time away from doing or thinking about anything Northern Son. But through the absence I realized one thing: writing, recording, and performing songs with Northern Son makes life better, just does something for my soul. I think OJ and I came to that realization about the same time and decided to give it another go.

Refreshed from time away and the addition of our new drummer Kyle Freeze, Northern Son feels new again. We are really excited about the future.

What are your plans in 2013? Are you planning on releasing any new material? Could you tell us about all that the future has in store for Northern Son?

It’s going to be a great year for Northern Son. We are doing a bunch of writing, and new material is on the way in 2013. A few new songs have already made it into our live set. There are plans to release an ep, possibly a full length album this year as well as playing a bunch of shows all over California. Maybe a music video or two! Hahaha.

One of the elements that fans were so attached to with your early releases is how you built such a large sound, while still pulling from the rawness of roots rock, classic rock n roll and alt country. With the member lineup changes, how has the sound of the new material been compared to what you created back then?

The new material is more mature but still has that classic roots rock backbone. I feel very blessed to be in a band where all the members play so well off each other. I will bring in the bare bones of a song and OJ and Kyle will shape it and it always comes out sounding like Northern Son. This is the strongest Northern Son lineup to date and I think people who liked the older material will like our new material because there is still the same heart and soul behind the music.

Could you tell me a little about the attention you got back in 2009 and 2010? I know you were played on Live 105. How did this come about? Were you ever approached by any record labels or management companies?

We had a few songs played on Live 105 and Aaron Axelsen even did a write up on us for live105.com as a south bay band to watch out for. That lead to playing some live 105 sponsored shows around the bay area and even landed us a spot on the local stage at BFD 2010 at shoreline. We’ve done some touring up and down the west coast and played with bands like Vertical Horizon, Third Eye Blind, and Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers. Our song “Spin” was featured in the season finale of an E! television show called “The Spin Crowd”.

We never officially received a record deal but we did talk to a few labels and management companies back in 2010. That was really eye opening for us. I think it’s the first time we realized there is a big business side to music. Almost no one starts a band because they love looking at contracts and talking to managers and lawyers. We just love playing music. Nowadays we are better prepared for all the business that comes with being in a band.

Your music—as well as that of your main influences, Tom Petty and Bruce Springsteen—lean heavily on roots rock. What do you think it is about roots rock that lends itself so naturally to emotional, honest and straight forward songwriting? Why have you chosen it as a foundation for your songs?

I like to think that we didn’t choose roots rock as the foundation for our songs but rather it chose us. There was never a conscious effort made to be a certain type of band or write a certain style of song. I think we focus on doing something really honest and simple. No bells, no whistles, just straight to what really matters – Lyrics, melody, emotion.

Roots rock always seemed like working class music to me. The emotions and themes found here are things everyone feels and deals with. It’s universal. These guys we look up to like Tom and Bruce seem like our best friends when they sing about life and relationships. We, as Northern Son, strive for that more than anything, creating a connection between us and the listener because we are those listeners too.

Northern Son play San Pedro Square Market on Saturday January 26th. The show starts at 7pm. Admission in free.

Local’s Picture Atlantic’s latest music video “Twist,” released earlier this week is one of the band’s most aggressive, dissonant songs today.  While the rest of the band’s latest album Digital Tension isn’t nearly as abrasive, it shows some changes in songwriting, not to mention, it showcases the group with one less guitar. We spoke with lead singer Nikolaus Bartunek about the video, the new album and their upcoming tour.

Your newest album “Digital Tension” sounds different than you prior releases, in that the vocal hooks are a little more subtle and the tone of the music is darker. Can you tell me a little about what factors influenced this change of songwriting?

I really can’t speak to that, simply for the reason that I think a lot of the changes happened without intention for a specific sound or vibe. Sometimes thinking too hard on what our sound will be frightens me too much. Sometimes thinking too hard takes the magic out of things. Sort of like closing your eyes on a roller coaster and just letting it happen. Every time we get into the studio, things seem to always come out at the end in a much different manner than the music before it.

Your new single “Twist” is the most aggressive, dissonant song I’ve heard of yours, including the remaining songs from Digital Tension. I’m curious to learn more about what motivated this song and why you chose this song to be your single?

I guess I must have had some inclinations for an angrier, crazier sound when I was writing those songs. The sound fit the lyrics, and the lyrics fit the sound. The motivation almost didn’t exist. I really liked the music a lot, and I wrote it in under 15 minutes on my couch one day.

If anything could be said specifically about the song though, I am certain it developed out of my love for the band Ceremony. I wanted to write something that had the same dissonance and angry aesthetic. But again, it took me barely any real focus to write it—sort of a “zen” song in that regard. As for it being our single, I don’t think we’ve really focused on it so much as a single, but it just happened to be a really easy song to film a music video for. It’s so short; just pure coincidence really. And besides, when do you normally see four guys in suits playing a song like that?

The cover for Digital Tension has a lot going on, particularly some political commentary on the state of America’s consumerist culture. Would you say this is a more political album compared to what has tended to be more personal songwriting in the past?

That was purely the work of our friend and partner in crime Mikey Montoya. He is an artist/tattoo artist who is an insanely good friend of ours, and he helped us out immensely with the album. When we were sitting around doing the art, he made this goofy collage image of Obama dressed as a cop giving the middle finger. The image was so outrageous that I told him he had to use it. It would be a crime not to. The rest of the cover fell into place around that.

Digital Tension, is less political and more social in its commentary, as a lot of the cover portrays. My politics aren’t blue or red. It isn’t any color for that matter. But my thoughts on our social culture in this country is definitely well defined. For the months where we wrote and recorded the album, I had all these ideas and concepts clashing and melding into each other in my mind. A lot of how I felt personally translated well into my thoughts about our society and culture. Not the most original or striking concept for a music album at this point in the history of rock, but it was an honest one.

Picture Atlantic, for the longest time, was a five-piece band. How has becoming a four-piece band altered your sound and songwriting dynamic? The biggest different I notice is the obvious lack of lush guitar-interplay, which was always one of your signature traits.

Being a four piece is the best thing that has ever happened to us musically. Having two guitars was nice to create a tapestry of sound, but at many times it just got tired, and expected to me. It was also damn hard to reign in two guitars. Someone had to play second fiddle to the other guitarist in many cases, or risk the “wank” factor. Some practices were living hell—like being in Guitar Center on a Saturday afternoon. Having the band downsize was really a huge hidden blessing. We had to learn that less is more; it took us years to see that. With four people, everyone does what they want and we rarely step on each other’s toes.

You are embarking on a West Coast tour with Dogcatcher. How successful have you been at building an audience outside of the bay area, and how have you done it? Also I’m curious to know why you are touring with Dogcatcher, who are a noticeably different band stylistically.

Building our name outside the Bay Area hasn’t been easy. Yet, I am still surprised at the places we find our fans popping up. It’s not that hard to do in this digital age, but it still astounds me sometimes that someone far away cares about what we do. The main thing we have followed in that approach to spreading our name is simply to stay out and about if we can, and as best we can.

Touring with Dogcatcher may seem like a really odd choice from the outside, and I don’t blame people for thinking that. It all comes down to two things: They are an amazing band in all regards. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t want to tour with them. The second reason is they are very good friends of ours and we love them a lot. Working with people you are close with is more valuable than gold.

Tour Dates w/ Dogcatcher:
02.07 San Francisco, CA @ Bottom Of The Hill w/ Cash Pony
02.08 Fresno, CA @ Kuppajoe w/ Sea of Sound and Indian School Rock
02.09 Davis, CA @ The Turtle House
02.15 Newark, CA @ Love at First Slice w/ Girl Named T
02.23 Hollywood, CA @ AMYPLYFi w/ Summer Leagues and Cat Who Will Eat Planets

People new to Cartoon Bar Fight might expect—based on the name—a lighthearted or even goofy punk-rock band. The San Jose quintet is actually an eerie, experimental indie-folk outfit with heavy, cerebral lyrics.

The members are well aware of the confusion their name creates; they just like subverting expectations. “When you hear the music, it’s a surprise,” says guitarist and lead vocalist Kendall Sallay. “We like it because it doesn’t match up with the music.”

Sallay describes the band’s recently released debut album, Reincarnate, as a “concept album about death,” so it’s no surprise that they venture in an unexpected direction. Rather than making Reincarnate depressing or macabre, they gave it a more inquisitive bent. The subjects range from death in a very literal sense, as on “Hymn,” to death in the figurative sense—”Fox and Grapes” is about the death of a relationship.

“It’s not negative,” Sallay asserts. “It’s something that everyone can relate to.”

This isn’t to say that there aren’t depressing songs on the album. “Fox and Grapes” adopts the point of view of the person who was dumped in a relationship. But the individual songs vary in topic, perspective and tone. Some, like the title track, take a position that death isn’t altogether a bad thing.

“It’s fascinating, the concept of death as reincarnation—like the transfer of energy from your body when you die,” Sallay muses. “It becomes something else—in the sense you never really die.”

Before Reincarnate, Cartoon Bar Fight released the EP Tell All the Children, which is a more straightforward, mellow indie-folk effort, somewhere between Feist and the Decembrists. Since then, other than founding members Sallay and keyboardist Dirk Milotz, the whole band has changed. About a year ago, Joel Zelaya joined on guitar and Max Rogers joined on bass. Just two months ago, Jerald Bittle joined on drums.

Their music has veered a bit from folk to experimental soundscapes. They also play heavier rock sections than before, while still retaining plenty of softer, quieter moments.

“We were writing music based on the instrumentation that was available to us at the time,” Sallay explains. “The sound was never as full as we wanted. It was more intimate. It’s fun to play an intimate little acoustic place, but we wanted to be able to put on a solid rock show.”

Between the contributions of the new members, and the process of working on all the material for Reincarnate, Sallay and Milotz, who started the band in 2007, believe that they are just now coming into their own.

Even still, they are quick to point out that part of coming into their own also includes the flexibility to change. They already have new ideas for what their next project will be—a concept album about space, covering such topics as solitude and mystery of the unknown. Musically, they’d like it to be more synth-driven and to actually sound like space. “We don’t want to be limited to one thing. It’s ongoing. We just want to play whatever kind of music we like,” Sallay says.

The idea for the space concept album came to them, in part, from the title track from Reincarnate, the last song on the album. It has a more futuristic, synth-driven sound and moves lyrically into the unknown—reincarnation. The song, they hope, will serve as a bridge between the albums.

Their fascination for concept albums didn’t just begin with Reincarnate. The songs on Tell All the Children revolve around the theme of childhood and disillusionment, which gets expressed in ways such as disenchantment with fairy tales and religious beliefs.

“When I listen to an album, I like the feeling that there was a greater vision than the individual tracks,” Sallay says. “I like being able to get inside an artist’s head and think that these thoughts must have been something that was picking their brain for years, so they wrote this whole album,” Sallay says.

The three albums even have a nice flow to them—disillusionment with childhood fantasies, facing the reality of death and then exploring the unknowns of the universe. Only question is: What comes after an album about space?

For 11 hours on Saturday, the debut Silicon Valley Sound eXperience festival took over nine venues in downtown San Jose with more than 20 local performers, starting with an afternoon set by DJ Cutso and closing with an after party with B. Lewis at Pagoda.

The festival featured everything from electronic music to punk and indie rock from some of Silicon Valley’s best musicians at San Pedro Square Market, Old Wagon Saloon, the Hedley Club, Johnny V’s, the Blank Club, Mezcal, Mmoon, Myth and Pagoda. Metro photographers Jessica Shirley-Donnelly, Alex Stover and Jennifer Anderson canvased the festival to capture the performances. Here are 10 highlights.

Curious Quail at Old Wagon Saloon

Picture Atlantic’s second full-length album, Digital Tension, marks a huge stylistic shift for the San Jose-based band.

Starting with the band’s debut EP Change is Welcome in 2006, a six-song collection of alternative pop songs, Picture Atlantic has grown and matured through lineup changes. Today, the band features Nikolaus Bartunek on vocals, Ryan Blair on bass, Brian Graves on keys and new drummer Daniel Hernandez Martinez.

Digital Tension is playfully self-described as “witpop,” but many of the songs on the album feature a darker sound than the band’s previous releases. You can feel the weight of the digital age with the band as it moves forward in an uncertain future . “Halogen Nights,” the fourth track, sets the tone of this weight as people today “fall for the panic as the news heads shout and blare of an old Iron Curtain and a terrorism scare”.

The overall album sound is completely unique in comparison to Picture Atlantic’s past work. It’s covered with synths—present before but with less dominance—and heavy-laden bass solos followed abruptly by bursts of noise rock. This is most apparent on tracks like “Twist” and “Oathbreaker.”

“White Knight” features a haunting but memorable bass line while Bartunek tries to find balance between the admiration of the “white knight” but also not disregarding one’s “black night deeds.”

Bartunek, especially in the middle of tracks “Don’t Be Cheap” and “5:50 Hurts,” hits the high notes with control, a signature to each of Picture Atlantic’s releases.

Digital Tension is out now on Bandcamp . The CD Release Party is at Bottom of the Hill July 14, with Cold Eskimo, Dogcatcher, and Please Do Not Fight.