Murray Bowles Documented The Bay Area Punk Scene of the 90s, From The Inside
Murray Bowles was, by all accounts, the very best kind of artist. For more than forty years, he was in regular attendance at punk shows billing up-and-coming bands in ramshackle and makeshift venues throughout Northern California (particularly in the East Bay). Honing his technical skill he developed and mastered a photographic style known as the “Hail Mary,” later dubbed the “Hail Murray”: an outstretched arm above the head, body still jostling in the fray, capturing in one moment the very essence and energy of the show in all its hectic glory. Yes, his hours of practice gave him skill. But it was his love of the East Bay punk scene—an affection that never waned and only deepened as he photographed generations of punks—a love that truly transformed his technical skill into an artform that transcends concert photography.
How lucky are we then to have a chance to travel back and pore through Bowles’s masterful, playful pictures in Hail Murray!: The Bay Area Punk Photography of Murray Bowles 1982-1995, newly published by Last Gasp in San Francisco, and lovingly curated by Bowles’s longtime friend, Anna Brown.
Brown, who co-collaborated with Bowles on this book before his death in 2019, spent five years without compensation combing through thousands upon thousands of Murray’s negatives. She and Murray had envisioned a book for years, something that would chronicle and forever encapsulate the scene they both dearly loved. When Murray died, Brown said she wanted to see the idea come to fruition, as a tribute to the man who gave so much to so many in the punk community.
“It’s hard to explain what Murray was to us. He wasn’t an outsider, a voyeur, or a fun uncle; he was just one of us,” says Brown. “[He was] a friend in a truly all-ages scene. That’s why he had such incredible access to everything—his presence was ubiquitous. Everyone trusted him.”
This was a trust gained from musicians and audience members alike. Indeed, both groups clamored each week during shows to shuffle through the photographs Bowles brought to sell for a quarter—just enough to pay for processing the film. It was considered a rite of passage to be in one of Bowles’s photos, a sign you had actually become a part of the family.
IT’S HARD TO EXPLAIN WHAT MURRAY WAS TO US. HE WASN’T AN OUTSIDER, A VOYEUR, OR A FUN UNCLE; HE WAS JUST ONE OF US.”
—ANNA BROWN
The collective energy of the entire scene radiates from each of Murray’s pictures. You can almost smell the sweat and feel the heat coming off the musicians and the people grinning and flailing in the pits. You can see the joy, the pain, that singular teenaged state of feeling so much on so many faces. It feels exuberant, turning these pages. If you weren’t there, you really, really wish you had been.
Paul Curran helped Brown for months with book design, gratis. Curran played in several bands in the East Bay punk scene (including Crimpshrine) and did graphic design for Maximumrocknroll—a monthly fanzine for the underground punk scene, which regularly featured Murray’s photos. “All of us in the scene felt Murray was an extremely important figure to us,” Curran says. “I wanted to help, because he meant so much to so many of us.”
Curran added that one of the most interesting aspects of designing the book was going through the photos and noting the disconnect between the typical punk stereotypes of the 1980s. Rather than being mainly white dudes in spikes and leather, the reality of the community was quite different. “It was so amazing to look back and see so many pictures of women and people of color, all of us just out there, just having fun,” Curran said. “Murray captured it all right there.”
Green Day offered to pay for the printing, and Brown says their generosity, coupled with the time and energy of other East Bay punk musicians and music lovers, helped her make the book she felt Murray deserved. It speaks to the lasting imprint Bowles left on the people he immortalized in his art: that so many stepped up to make sure Bowles, who lived faithfully on the other side of the camera for so long, had his proper moment in the spotlight.
Murray Bowles photo captions and recollections provided by book editor Anna Brown and musican and writer Aaron Cometbus below.
ABOVE: Operation Ivy at 924 Gilman. Operation Ivy shows were a raucous, ecstatic sing-along from beginning to end. As Paul Curran says so well in the East Bay punk documentary Turn It Around, “Everything you’ve ever heard about how special Operation Ivy was is true.” Alexandra, Marshall, Jake, Samantha, [Green Day’s] Billie Joe, and others are all on stage here, ready to belt out the chorus.
BELOW: Special Forces at Biko Plaza
UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza was occupied by protestors and renamed in honor of slain journalist/activist Steve Biko during the final, heady days of the movement to divest from South Africa—a decades-long battle that was a total success. In this photo, Special Forces rally the weary troops as the round-the-clock occupation grows long in the tooth. The band toted themselves as “Berkeley Hardcore,” and the same can be said about the whole panorama here.
ABOVE: Minor Threat at Tool & Die
The seminal hardcore album Out of Step had just come out and Minor Threat was on a cross country tour to promote it. The show was packed shoulder-to-shoulder in the sweaty basement fire trap. One of the fun things about looking at all the old crowd shots is seeing the crazy variety of people at the show. All kinds of weirdos were mixed together: art school dudes, hessians, goth girls, a couple clean kids from the suburbs, street people. Here you can see John Marr [the proprietor of print zine] Murder Can Be Fun—right behind Ian.
BELOW: Black Flag, Aquatic Park, Berkeley, 1983
Eastern Front was a big concert organized by Wes Robinson, owner of Ruthie’s Inn, which took place every year from 1981–1984 at Aquatic Park in Berkeley—a mere patch of dirt that ran beside a lake/urban cesspool right off Interstate 80. It was the ideal place for a punk show: polluted and remote. Some of Murray’s most epic crowd shots, of people thrashing in the dirt, were taken at these shows. I wasn’t sure if Black Flag even belonged in the book, as they’re covered in so many other places. But who can resist shirtless Henry [Rollins]?
ABOVE: Sado-Nation at Tool & Die
The storefront at 974 Valencia looked like a shooting gallery, with hazy figures huddled or passed out against every wall. You ran the gauntlet, then into the closet, where a hole in the floor and a steep jerry-rigged ladder led to the show. Mattresses tied to the basement posts and pillars helped dancing punks from getting badly injured, but obscured the already challenging view. There was no stage. It wouldn’t have been possible even if it were desirable, since the ceilings were comically low. In this shot, the magnetic Mish Bondage draws every eye in the room.
BELOW: Ribzy at Tool & Die
Murray Bowles […] was the champion of a scene and area that wasn’t even reviled or dismissed. To the rest of the Bay Area, it simply didn’t exist. Not even in the punk press, which focused more than the mainstream media on the stirrings of music in the suburbs and small towns. Besides The Faction—who towered above the smog because skate legend Steve Caballero was in the band—you would be hard pressed even today to name a notable figure from San Jose. But not Murray, whose massive archive of negatives has a strong showing of hometown heroes like Executioner, Los Olvidados, and Ribzy.
ABOVE: MC Punk at Own’s Pizza
Before Gilman, Kamala Parks and Victor Hayden booked shows at this pizza place on the corner of Adeline and Alcatraz. It was a cool spot, and a lot of great DIY shows happened there, but alas, like so many ephemeral venues, it didn’t last. The punks needed a place to call our own, where the proprietor wouldn’t close up shop or grow weary of all the destruction. Gilman opened its doors soon after. Pictured here is Noah Landis, Berkeley local and wearer of many hats in the scene. In this shot he’s rapping between sets as MC Punk with help from some kids from the neighborhood.
Below: Last Gasp’s latest book Hail Murray! The Bay Area Punk Photography of Murray Bowles 1982-1995*
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