Looking Through Some Pictures

Many of you will know MURRAY BOWLES as the GILMAN STREET photographer. He's no longer in attendance at every show the way he once was, but during the first few years the club was in operation, he turned out enough photos - invariably black and white - to start his own Gilman museum.

I mean, he could start his own Gilman museum; he hasn't actually done so as far as I know, but my one-time business partner and LOOKOUT RECORDS co-founder DAVID HAYES has compiled a nice little collection that's well worth having a look at if you're at all interested in the early Gilman scene.

Only about half of these were actually taken at Gilman, many of the rest were actually pre-Gilman, from 1985 and 86, but feature many of the same people who would later turn up at Gilman. Most likely David collected these photos the way many of us did: Murray would turn up at shows carrying several boxes of prints - yes, remember those? prints made from actual film? - which he would let everyone rifle through until they saw ones they liked, usually of their band or their friends' bands, which they could then buy from Murray at cost - 25¢ per photo.

The scary thing about looking at these photos - apart from the fact that not everyone pictured here is still alive today - is how young everybody was. I mean, they're practically children, which is weird, because they seemed perfectly grown up at the time, even though almost everybody then - as now - was considerably younger than me. It's strange enough that the stuff going on then - which I guess most of us just thought of as having fun and making some cool music - would become the stuff of legend in the minds of future generations without having to realize that the people making it happen were basically a bunch of kids. Anyway, cool pictures. Especially check out the one - #16 - showing ISOCRACY, JOEL WING, JESSE MICHAELS and Murray piled on top of each in the front room at Gilman, with the notoriously photo-shy TIM YOHANNAN poking his head in for a look-see.