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Live at the Deaf Club 1979 LP

by UNITS - Scott Ryser

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  • Streaming + Download

    Includes unlimited streaming via the free Bandcamp app, plus high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more.

    It also includes a 3 page color pdf "Story of the Deaf Club" by Scott Ryser, including the cover art and pics of Deaf Club flyers for UNITS shows there.
    Purchasable with gift card

      $7 USD  or more

     

1.
I see a lot of people lined up in formation Waiting for lively moments to come to them like victims Rows and rows and rows of vampire eyes This is a generation of cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals This is our generation Lines & lines & lines & lines of people Rows & rows of people feasting on a rare man's life Lines and lines of people, waiting for a victim This is a generation of cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals This is our generation People out there lying, waiting to be discovered People out there lying, hoping to be discovered Rows & rows of graves waiting to be uncovered This is a generation of cannibals Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life Hoping some rare man's blood is going to give them life This is a generation of cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals Cannibals, Cannibals, Cannibals This is our generation
2.
My dad yells, I gotta leave Get into my car, I drive hard Outside, it's a real nice blur But inside, I'm just sitting here I want to be a blur, I wanna be GO I wanna be go, I want to be a blur I wanna be GO! Like the blood in my veins I drive around the same old lanes With windows up at a hundred & ten I feel my sigh upon my head I've never held a girl As long as this wheel One two oh It seems so still I punch it to the floor I hit the tape machine I open up the windows And listen to the scream Now no more time, no more space just energy...until I stop some place I WANNA BE A BLUR, I WANNA BE GO Let's GO! GO GO GO GO GO GO GO GO....GO
3.
His father was a lawyer Mother a psychologist He was just a boy who liked to torture bugs When they'd go out to work He'd go out to play With pockets full of weapons Bugs you'd better stay out of my way He'd say There's no love, no understanding I just torture the bugs It's survival of the fittest And torture for the winner He liked to get in garbage cans And capture little bugs And burn them with a magnifying glass After he pulled off their wings His father did not think it right To pick upon helpless things And his mother did not understand How he could be so unfeeling He'd say There's no love, no understanding I just torture the bugs It's survival of the fittest And torture for the winner
4.
5.
New York and LA are ok Yeah they're alright But San Francisco is for me I am in love with this city From Hunters Point to the Golden Gate From Chinatown to SF State I love this city I love this city All you winos on 3rd and Howard All you secretaries on Union Square All you leather boys on Fulton I love this city Well I like living in a vertical town With a lot of things happening all around I like a lot of bright colors and sights and sounds And a lot of things to do when the sun goes down I love this city I love this city San Francisco San Francisco
6.
Out of six million sperm cells I came in first and won a warm moving body A warm moving body, a warm moving body I came in first and won a warm moving body We are the ones The ones that got the bodies We are the ones The ones that got the bodies The warm...moving...bodies I get to see hear touch taste smell my partner Attracted by the odor I respond to the stimulus A gene machine surrounded by a cell wall Protective shell of similar units We are the ones The ones that got the bodies We are the ones The ones that got the bodies The warm...moving...bodies Skyscraper cells Full of water A portion of matter, structure and substance Scientifically different than the monkey Turn back the hand of time with a youthful chin line Turn back the hand of time with a youthful chin line On our warm...moving...bodies Look sharp feel sharp be sharp see sharp Head to foot and cellar to attic Lovely hair deserves fine care There's a five o'clock shadow Beneath skin level We are the ones The ones that got the bodies We are the ones The ones that got the bodies The warm...moving...bodies An anonymous sperm bank donation Stepping in a roll of propagation Versatile hands and a well-developed larynx A nose that blows Tongue that licks Now let's Turn off the sentences And turn on the senses On our warm...moving...bodies
7.
8.
When the sun goes down And leaves this unit all alone I stand up to face him Because i'm tired of this lie life When no one hears my shoes And no one sees my face I feel just like a fast fog That goes dancing past the street light When the sun goes down And leaves this unit all alone I stand up to face him Because i'm tired of his lie life Surrounded by smells Surrounded by sounds I feel life on my skin Like a fog that's on a street light So quietly i yell It's my time now Invisible man What i want to be The crest of a wave Escaping the sea A dot of the fog Evaporating The part of the wind That lives in the night
9.
10.
Saw Johnny tonight But we didn't say hello to each other We're all moving pretty fast these days Bumping around like bumper cars Slippery kelp in the tide It's awful hard to hang on to each other Flying around hot H2O molecules Balls that come in contact often alter their direction High pressure days, high pressure High pressure days, high pressure High pressure days, bumping round bumper cars High pressure days, high pressure! Our paths still cross in these high pressure days A crowd pattern will emerge Exchange phone numbers, wither away Our paths still cross in these high pressure days A crowd pattern will emerge Exchange phone numbers, wither away High pressure days, finding that our motions High pressure nights, fit into a pattern High pressure days, finding that our motions High pressure nights, fit into a pattern Saw Johnny tonight But we didn't say hello to each other We're all moving pretty fast these days Bumping around like bumper cars Slippery kelp in the tide It's awful hard to hang on to each other Flying around hot H2O molecules Balls that come in contact often alter their direction High pressure days, high pressure High pressure days, high pressure High pressure days, bumping round bumper cars High pressure days, high pressure!

about

LIMITED EDITION 12" VINYL LP of this album at FDH RECORDS has already SOLD OUT!)

UNITS - Live at the Deaf Club 1979
The Deaf Club was an otherworldly underground music venue located in the Mission District in San Francisco. It only remained open for an 18-month period and it closed after the WESTERN FRONT music festival, a September–October festival of West Coast Bands in 1979. As most Deaf Club events, it went underreported in the local media at the time. The UNITS live performance on this recording, on October 10, 1979, came from that festival at the Deaf Club.

The Deaf Club name comes from the fact the building was a deaf people's clubhouse since the 1930s. But in 1979, its main attraction was punk music. Given the unique nature of the venue and its location in the Mission District it was enthusiastically supported by the punk and arts community, visited by film greats like John Waters and occasionally challenged by the officials of the San Francisco noise abatement patrol, the police, fire department, health department and the alcohol and beverage control until it closed. The club closed with a party hosted by the artist and filmmaker Bruce Conner.

There was a very small stage with no lights at the Deaf Club. If you wanted to order a beer (they only had cans of Bud for $1), you had to write it out on a little piece of paper and slip it to the bartender. The deaf regulars used hand signals to order beers and talk to each other. The club was dark, smoky & very crowded. I remember someone saying how it felt very private, like an insider thing. It seemed like everyone there was either in a local band(s) or in the SF art scene. By remaining essentially unadvertised, except for bands making and putting up flyers around town, the Deaf Club was primarily a place for local punks in the know. One of the few ways to find out about shows was Ivey’s Calendar or Vale’s Search and Destroy zine. Ivey always listed our shows in her incredible monthly calendar, and Vale interviewed us and gave us his support.

Part of what made the Deaf Club so cool was unlike the Mabuhay, the bridge and tunnel crowd didn’t know it existed, and also the deaf people who went to the shows could “hear” the music by feeling the vibrations that the loud music made. As Penelope Houston of The Avengers said, “It was kind of amazing. I think the deaf people were dancing to the vibrations. They were amused that all these punks wanted to come in and rent their room and have these shows.” As Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys) said, "The magic of the Deaf Club was its intimate sweaty atmosphere, kind of like a great big house party. The club remained raw to the very end.”

Starting in February of '79 the UNITS played there pretty often. The first time we played there I was struck by the fact that it looked like a scene out of a horror movie. I didn’t notice a sign or light or doorman or anything out front. You just had to know where it was. I remember going up a long narrow staircase to get to the actual club. The staircase must have been two feet wide, four stories up, and jammed with people in a cloud of smoke. Getting up there with all your gear was quite a challenge. I remember stepping over a dead person on the sidewalk who had fallen out of a window, right in front of the entrance to the club. An ambulance was on the way, and we had a sound check, so we stepped over him and made our ascent up Mt. Everest. When you made it up to the summit you squirmed into the room like a sardine into a can. Once inside, the smoke from the stairs turned into a fog so thick the light from our projectors could barely find its way to the screens. You couldn't hear a fucking thing in that room. It didn’t matter I guess, because half the people in there were deaf anyway. They were either born that way or had developed tinnitus like me from having put their heads next to blaring loudspeakers for too many years.

When we played our first show there, people were spitting at us. Well, not really at us, more like at the stage. From the ground level stage, trying to peer through the spit, our projector lights and the smoke, the audience looked like the Night of the Living Dead, only with smiles. The spitting mummies were having lots of fun. That's what people did back then. It was like audience participation. The crowd loved us that night. I forget how many encores we did. But that didn't make me enjoy cleaning the gooey spit off my synthesizer the next day. I remember seeing the Sex Pistols play around then in what must have been an old opera house with balconies around the stage. It looked like a scene out of Singing in the Rain with Johnny Rotten dancing around the stage like Gene Kelly in a blizzard of spit coming down off the balconies.

(UNITS') Rachel Webber's dad came to one of our shows at the Deaf Club. He was a very distinguished looking, well groomed fellow in a suit … and everybody assumed he was a major record label CEO who had come to sign us. The audience, as usual, was full of people from other bands. He reported that everyone was unusually polite and conversational with him that night and he described the crowd as “Mental Patient Chic”. It seemed appropriate, because as I looked at him out in the audience, he looked more like a psychiatrist in a mental ward than a major label CEO. I can’t say I missed it when the spitting thing became passe. But I do miss the Deaf Club.

Scott Ryser ~ 2021

credits

released October 16, 2021

Scott Ryser & Rachel Webber: synths, vocals, lyrics
Richard Driskell: drums, vocals

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UNITS - Scott Ryser Brooklyn, New York

Scott Ryser and his partner & wife, Rachel Webber, were the principal, songwriters, synth players, singers and filmmakers for the UNITS. The UNITS were one of America’s first electronic new wave bands and have been cited along with The Screamers and Suicide as pioneers of the music genre “synthpunk”. Scott & Rachel moved from SF to NYC in 1984 where Scott continues to make music & film ... more

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