In the annals of San Jose skate-punk history, one band looms larger than all the rest. Featuring South Bay skateboarding legend Steve Caballero on guitar and Gavin O’Brien—brother to Corey O’Brien, another San Jose pro and owner of The Ritz—fronting the group, The Faction helped launch a subgenre of fast, aggressive punk-rock music focused on the subculture of skating. Word on the street (and on the flyers) is that this will be The Faction’s last show ever.

The Faction
Sat, 8pm, $25+
The Ritz, San Jose

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.”

Skate-punk wasn’t just another hyphenate subgenre of good, old early ’80s punk rock; it was made by skaters, for skaters. In fact, San Jose’s the Faction, who formed in 1983 as part of the first wave of skate-punk, boasted one of the most famous professional skaters in the world as their bass player, Steve Caballero. Prior to the formation of the band, he had virtually no musical experience—which was why, he says, the music was attractive to him in the first place.

“It was easy to play. I never took lessons. I just kind of played and learned on my own,” Caballero says. “It was like skating, like a do-it-yourself type of thing. As we played longer and longer we got better and better at our instruments and the music got better.”

The band had an initial run of about two years—and have gotten back together on a couple occasions. This Saturday will be their first show in a decade.

Caballero had gone pro in 1980, three years before the Faction formed. Some other punk bands criticized the Faction for their success, saying that it was due to Caballero’s fame, but the truth was, they were one the hardest-working bands in San Jose. They were recording and releasing their own music, pressing their own shirts and stickers, and went on two DIY tours in the States.

An early song that gained them some popularity was the raw, rebellious anthem “Skate and Destroy.” It became a bit of a theme song amongst skate-punk rockers.

“The band was pretty underground besides the fact that it was so popular in skating,” Caballero says. “Back then we weren’t really musicians. We were just trying to make our way and just have a good time. There wasn’t any money to be made; we were just having fun.”

Though the city didn’t build skate parks until recently, San Jose has long since been a haven for skateboarders. The term “skate-punk” was coined by South Bay native MoFo, a photographer for skateboarding magazine Thrasher. He later assembled the first skate-rock compilation for Thrasher in 1983, which included several San Jose bands like Los Olvidados, Drunk Injuns, and of course, the Faction.

The Faction started out as a raw four-piece punk band, much in the vein of early hardcore bands like Black Flag and the Dead Kennedys, but in 1984, Caballero bought the Adolescents’ Blue Album and fell in love with the twin-electric guitar punk sound. He switched to second guitar. The band added Ray Stevens II from the recently defunct Los Olvidados to be their fifth member and new bassist. They ended up having a thicker sound like the Adolescents, though retained their hyper-energetic early ’80s hardcore sound, later adding some metal influences. And they didn’t lose their focus on skating and skateboarding culture.

“Really, we did get to skate a lot and rock a lot. I lived in the south side. That’s where we ended up rehearsing. We’d practice for hours, take a break and drive to Morgan Hill, and go skate, and then go back and practice. We practiced five to six days a week,” Stevens says.

The San Jose music scene at the time was particularly underground. It was a healthy, supportive scene with a lot of local punk bands, though the Faction (as well as most of the San Jose punk scene) stayed away from the bars, and played pretty much everywhere else, so kids under 21 would be able to go to their shows. In fact, the Faction’s first gig was at San Jose City College opening for Social Distortion. According to Stevens, one skate kid that was booking shows back then was Corey O’Brien, current owner of the Blank Club, and brother of the Faction’s lead singer, Gavin.

“We played art galleries and house parties, skate jams and contests at loading docks. People really got it together,” Stevens says. “Even though it took the city a while to come through with skate parks, it didn’t matter cause skaters were always making shit happen with backdoor ramps, putting out zines, putting on shows, building their own spots.”

Caballero recalls nearly 800 people showing up to a show in Palo Alto, one of the last during their initial run, before they broke up in 1985.

“I had a feeling right there that we were getting huge. Then we broke up,” Caballero says.

The band has held on to their legacy, reuniting in ’89 for a couple years and then again in 2000 for a couple more—and each time with a lot of interest from their fans, who are now in their 40s and 50s. Yet, at the same time, the band has gotten bigger since their 1985 breakup, skateboarding and punk rock have gotten more mainstream in subsequent years, so there’s a new generation attracted to the raw, aggressive, rebellious spirit of the early Faction records.

“I didn’t know I was still going to be playing when I was 50. I’m still skateboarding. To me skateboarding and music—if I do them every day, I have a really good day. I’m lucky that I have skate parks a couple blocks from my house and I can practice all the time, and that there’s creative people. It’s amazing that Corey’s still booking shows, and Steve is still a skate pro,” Stevens says.

Joe Sib became a household name in DIY punk rock after starting Sideonedummy Records in 1995 in Los Angeles, releasing albums by Flogging Molly, 7Seconds, MXPS, Gogol Bordello and many others. Sib has also gained recognition for his spoken word and comedy act, where he tells tales of punk rocking and skateboarding, most of which he did in San Jose, where he spent his formative years.

We asked Sib, how moved to Los Angeles in 1990,  to revisit some of his favorite memories and San Jose haunts. he knows, the one from the late 80s.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up on the border of Los Gatos and Campbell. This was in the 80s when I moved in with my dad. It seemed like everywhere there were condominiums with these names like Los Gatos Woods and there were a bunch of other people that were recently divorced and living solo and having their kids come stay with them on the weekends.

My dad moved into Los Gatos Estates. I lived there with him and I went to Westmont High School. I was a skateboarder. We were about two minutes away from Winchester Skate Park. That was the best thing. I was in skateboarding distance of anything I wanted to do. It was rural enough because you had orchards back then that you walked through, which isn’t the case anymore.

What was the best show you ever went to in San Jose?

The Ramones. It was 1989 July 4th, 5th and 6th at One Step Beyond. I went to the show on  the Fourth of July and totally get annihilated. If you’re a Ramones fan, you know they’re very American. To this day on Fourth of July at my house, we drink American beer and listen to American bands and blow shit up. My wife hates it, but I love it. It’s the way we roll.

So this particular Fourth of July, it’s 1989, The Ramones come through, I go to all three shows. The first night I got totally annihilated. The second night and the third night I wanted to be sober. The Ramones are in town, I really want to take it all in.

A buddy of mine, Corey O’Brien, who owns the Blank Club, we found out they were staying at the Holiday Inn and we were trying to go down there and find out where they were. Murphy’s Law was opening, from New York City. It was pretty amazing because Murphy’s Law is a legendary hardcore band. They almost blew the Ramones off the stage. All the sudden you had New York hitting San Jose.

The second night I watched the show, I actually climbed onto the lighting board and the sound board during the show and this guy reached over and grabbed my arms and was yelling at me while the Ramones were playing. But of course I couldn’t hear anything cause it’s the Ramones at full volume. He motions me to climb over the barrier. So now I’m in the lighting-sound booth and in-between one of their songs he’s like, in this crazy accent, “You can be up here, but you can’t get in my way.” It was half Spanish and half English. So now I got a full direct view of the Ramones and I’m just watching everyone lose their minds to the Ramones.

At one point the guy says to me, ‘”Hey, go get me a beer and I’ll let you watch the rest of the set up here.” I’m maybe 20 years old abd I run over and grab him a Heineken. I come back. I watch the rest of the set. At the end of the set he tells me he’s Arturo Vega—at that point I didn’t know who Arturo Vega was—but he seemed important.

He tells me, “hey would you like to meet the Ramones?” I’m like, “Nah, I don’t want to meet them cause if they’re dicks it’s going to bum me out.” I loved Ramones—everyone has their gateway band. He said to me, ‘The Ramones are not dicks.” That night he introduced me to Joey, Johnny, Richie and Dee Dee. It was like, there they are, right in front of me. It was insane. I got autographs and everything. Then they split.

I didn’t know it at the time that Dee Dee quit that night. That was the last show he ever did. Since then, I’ve become good friends with Johnny. I produced the 30 year anniversary concert of the Ramones here in LA. I became friendly with the Ramones when I was in Wax. We toured with the Ramones. I became really good friends with Joey when I was in 22 Jacks. 22 Jacks backed up Joey on his last trip to Los Angeles. He did a whole set of Ramones songs, which was pretty amazing. None of those experiences with the Ramones would have happened if it wasn’t there for that night in San Jose.