“No one's trying to get famous”

In Oakland on any given weekend in the early 2000s there might’ve been be a punk show in an old Victorian happening down the block from a warehouse rave while, at the same time, a bunch of burners were doing pyrotechnics in an old factory and a few blocks away, experimental noise musicians were making bizarre sounds in an abandoned train station within spitting distance of hardcore kids moshing under a freeway overpass while the nearest intersection was being taken over by a sideshow blasting hyphy. It was raw, unpermitted, cheap, and people weren’t doing it to get rich or famous.

There was cross-pollination, collaboration and confrontation. It could be wild and dangerous, problematic and annoying… it could be whatever you wanted it to be because it wasn’t being sold to us from the outside, we were making it happen ourselves. For some folks, these overlapping DIY scenes were all about art, music, and building community. For others, it looked like gentrification, a wave of hipsters setting the stage for rising rents.

Inspired by Jessalyn Aaland’s article in the Oakland Review of Books, “Please do not hang out in the street: Oakland DIY music spaces of the early 21st century,” the Oakland Underground miniseries will explore why there was such a big explosion of underground activity happening here during this particular era – and how things have changed. This episode features interviews with Aaland, an artist and publisher of Current Editions, as well as Heather Freinkel (aka Heather Blotto), a musician and photographer who organized countless shows and cultural events at DIY spaces like Dead Rat Beach and Unimatrix Zero. Find the podcast via Apple, SoundCloud, Spotify, or wherever you get podcasts. This episode features music from High Castle, Ettrick, Vholtz, Circuit, Your Pest Band, and Eats Tapes.

Jessalyn Aaland and many other artists lived at 1919 Market, a former Greyhound bus depot, until the building was red-tagged in 2016 and all tenants were evicted with only 72 hours notice to vacate.

“Like the creek that tunnels under city streets until it opens into the San Francisco Bay, the scene lives as it shifts and reshapes itself.” -Jessalyn Aaland, in *Oakland Review of Books*

Heather Freinkel (aka Blotto) paid $137/month to rent a shared bedroom at Dead Rat Beach when she moved into the West Oakland Victorian in 2004.

Bent Outta Shape is one of the countless punk bands that played in the basement of Dead Rat Beach.

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A podcast about history

“No one’s trying to get famous”

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