Hail Murray!: The Bay Area Punk Photography of Murray Bowles

I went to La Luz de Jesus last Saturday to see the presentation of Hail Murray!, a book of photos of the Bay Area punk scene by the notorious Murray Bowles. There was a slideshow with Anna Brown, Jesse Michaels, and Joel Wing.

Bias Notes: I’ve been friends with the editor, Anna Brown, since about 1990, and I worked for the publisher for 11 years, and I have genuine love for the family that owns the business. And the subject matter of the work is very personal to me. So this is going to be a good review. But I really do love this book, and think it needs to be amplified. So here you go.

This is what all my Gen X friends wish our high school years were like. I was a little later to punk than this fella, and I was too big to confidently stage dive face-down. Any stage diving I would do required a dense crowd. If you know, you know. At this kid’s age, I was still standing on street corners talking about Jesus.

Back in the day, it was really hard to find good photos of our favorite punk bands. Bands would come to town and we didn’t know what they looked like. We were mortified to find out that guys in the Circle Jerks or MDC had long hair¹. How dare they! The only pics were if they were on the record sleeves and the zines of the day didn’t help much, giving us newsprint blobs or photocopied messes.

But there were a few really good books, like Hardcore California and Banned in DC. We could see what the bands looked like. And more importantly, and very ironically, we could figure out how to dress just like them. For a scene about being nonconformists, we really liked to cosplay our heroes. I have to also shout out movies like Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia and Another State of Mind. But most of public display punks on TV and film looked horrible. That’s a whole essay in and of itself.

What makes Hail Murray! different from the rest of the punk photo books is the equal importance of the crowds and people. Sometimes you can’t see who is playing but you can see the crowd at a living room show having a great time—and the truth of this is that most of the bands I saw back then weren’t good, but I did have a great time.

It wasn’t about the music all the time, but it was about seeing your friends and making friends and the hope you might meet someone special. About being broke but never being bored. About learning it’s not what you do, it’s who you do it with. I’d rather see a shitty band with a crew of friends than see a great band alone. I’ve never felt more lonely than when I went to see or do anything by myself and had no one to share it with, and I never felt more like I belonged than when I suffered bad art with people I cared about.

Murray Bowles captured the sense of belonging. Punks hanging out at the Winchell’s in Albany or walking to Gilman but not yet at the show. Backyard shows and tiny venues. Punks in the park. Punks just hanging out. Punks having their first kiss.

You might just see a band once a week, but you could be in the scene the entire rest of your existence. In other cities, it was likely different, but in the Bay you could be a freaky punk kid and work retail with a dyed hair or a nose ring (gasp!), you could live in communes, warehouses, or punk houses with other weirdos, you could go to punk movies and read punk comics and make zines. You could crowd into living rooms to watch VHS bootlegs on an 18-inch TV. You could shop at several different grocery co-ops where you had a choice of what kind of lentils you wanted from the bulk bin. And the political arguments you got in were “anarchy vs. communism vs. socialism” instead of Democrat and Republican. You could walk anywhere, given enough time, and sleep in any house in which you got tired or passed out. And occasionally, you would actually go see a band but some of those times you’d end up just getting fucked up outside.

I don’t want to get off on a tangent about the current state of the punk world revolving around festival appearances. I’m glad the 70-year-old musicians are finally getting paid the money they deserve. And if you just wanted to see one of your favorite bands play their hits, good for you. But I am saying it enough to say I don’t really miss the shows or the music.

I miss the people. What hit me most emotionally with the book was seeing pictures of my old friends, some of them before we met, while they were in high school, before I got to the Bay. To see how young some of them were, especially the ones who always seemed so old.

I don’t miss the chaos. It wasn’t always good times. There was well more death and mayhem than anyone should witness. ODs. A few murders. Crime, drugs, and diseases. Hospitals, jails, and the morgue. And horrible ends to people’s lives who fell off our radar. I bottomed out in a punk house, at times coming conscious to the sounds of bands playing in my backyard. But again, this is another tangent I don’t want to pursue.

The point is, this book is a great example of how punk felt. Not how the music sounded, or what the most popular bands were, but how it felt to be around, to go to the show with your friends and to hang out after.

I linked the publisher above. But here it is again if you need it. Unless you live in the Bay Area, I don’t know how available it is to you in stores. And rather than going through the big corporate usual places, I’d love it if you did the punk thing and order direct from the family-run indie publisher. And I know I said pretty much nothing about who Murray Bowles was or what happened to him and all that. It’s in the damn book. If I don’t keep these posts short, y’all don’t read ‘em. Anyway, get the book. Enjoy!

1. the first dreadlocks I ever saw on an up-close human were on the head of Keith Morris, at a Circle Jerks show in St. Louis in 1988.