These guys totally ruled. I first saw them open for the Willowz at the Make-Out Room… holy shit… ten years ago, in ’04, around the time the Willowz had that song in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and were poised to become the biggest rock band in the world, but were still playing the Make-Out Room. For $6:
I didn’t have any friends here really, so I was standing alone in a corner between bands, and the show was sort of poorly attended because it was on a Monday night, so Myles (the drummer then but the singer in this new video) came over and made friends with me. We were both going to SF State, and we were both drummers, and I think we both lived in the Mission. It sure was a different time back then. Delfina was the only fancy restaurant. There was a KFC on Valencia. And bands like the Passionistas could still afford to live here.
They were a bare-bones rock ‘n’ roll band, a little arty but not too arty, with Myles’ slightly off-kilter drumming style and Aaron’s definitely off-kilter crooning. I would see them every chance I could after that. And I bought a lot of their (usually homemade) merch. Eventually they got another drummer so Myles could better help front the band, as you’ll see in a second.
They broke up in 2009 I think, and Aaron and Myles went on to do some amaaazing solo projects. But there was never anything quite like the Passionistas, so I was extremely pleasantly surprised to find this newly available song and video in my Facebook feed last night. It totally rules too:
(The Willowz were okay, but not as good as they got 5 years later on their killer album Everyone.)
Now check out all these old Passionistas-related Mission Mission posts…
Does anyone remember the name of the BBS (I think in Berkeley) where one could download the list? Something cow?
Some dude on reddit came up with this a while ago.
http://selby-list.herokuapp.com/
10 years is vintage now days? Thanks for making me feel a lot older than I am Allen. I still have band shirts from the 80′s what are they considered?
jurassic
I meant Allan.
Not really accurate to say there were no fancy restaurants in the Mission in 2004, or that it wasn’t fairly gentrified already. It’s funny how kids how moved here post first dot-com boom think they somehow experienced a pre-gentrified mission. I remember when the Brian Jonestown Massacre would hang out in the Mission, plus tons of other bands before all the studio space in the City got turned into housing in the late 90s.
But yea, I know your hipster cred rests on the fact that you were like so totally here in 2004 man.
I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City
Good band. I guess my point is, I get tired of people feeling they have to disparage a place (not saying you are really). I never saw Manhattan in the 70s, but I saw it in the 80s. Sure the arts scene was still in swing there, and the lower east side was insanity incarnate, but I wouldn’t go there now and disparage it to the current 20 somethings. Brooklyn either for that matter.
The next arts scene will probably take root in Detroit, Portland is already on its way to being prohibitively expensive. Seems to me people just need to calm down, choose a place to live, if you stop liking it then don’t live there. It’s just a city.
GIL SCOTT-HERON
But they’re actually really, really nice.
You need to tell me your aging secret Allan, you look barely 30.
Yeah… Foreign Cinema opened in ’97 or ’98 and was definitely in the cross-hairs of the Yuppie Eradication Project. There were some other upscale restaurants… Firecracker comes to mind.
I remember a flyer that threatened to fire bomb Tokyo A Go Go (on 16th Street).