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The year 2000 was a big deal - after completing the end of a millennium, it was like a massively expanded new year's day - a new century's year, actually - and a chance to reset our lives and look forward to new possibilities. Burning Man had been going on for years, but had already become so massively popular and expensive that it had basically sapped most of the local underground talent's efforts away from doing regular events in or near the city... and most of the events that we saw happening were usually Burning Man fundraisers. It got to be pretty tiring when all people were talking about was how they would get to/what they would do at Burning Man, never any ideas for producing or promoting ANYTHING unrelated. That got me to thinking about doing our own FREE renegade event in the city for all of us who were "left behind" when everyone (who could afford it and wanted to go) migrated to Black Rock City.

So then the question was WHERE in the city could we set up a LOUD festival that would last all day and night, with easy to access for setting up the necessary equipment, without the risk of getting shut down by the authorities. Not long after that, I attended a few successful outdoor noise shows organized by the Brutal Sound Effects crew at Warm Water Cove a.k.a. "Toxic Beach", located on the waterfront of an old industrial warehouse zone at the east end of 24th Street. Erich Fendler of Filthmilk had also attended, and after some discussion, invited NBC to play a set at his own show there a week or so later. Once we had performed on the giant concrete ship-loading slabs, bordered by fields of brilliant yellow goldenrod, with sweeping views of San Francisco Bay and the extinct power station with its singular towering smokestack, it was more than enough to convince me that this would be the perfect place for the festival. After a few conferences with Erich, he agreed to bring his generator and P.A. and help us gather talent for the event.

One night after contemplating the promotion, it came to me in a dream: Our mascot would be the hipster kid who really wanted to go to Burning Man but couldn't afford it - he would be crying with his pockets turned inside out! In the fashion of Burning Man, we would make an effigy to be destroyed at the event. ROBO liked the idea and immediately got onto creating this character, the CRYING MAN, making color drawings for the promo posters (and later the CD-R art). I approached my friend (the "other" Josh Wilson - there's a story about how we met due to misdirected mail) who had a regular slot on local independent radio station KUSF, and he agreed to help us promote, putting us on their event list and doing an interview for broadcast. Shortly thereafter, we had commitments from giant robot performance artists PeopleHater (a division of Survival Research Laboratories), Pyrogeist (fire performers), Jet Black Hair People and God's Grandparents (live noise divisions of Negativland), and a bevy of noise artists from the infamous Clit Stop and Brutal Sound Effects crews. There were even a few groups who had heard/seen our calls for artists on flyers or radio who showed up to add variety. As we progressed in planning the event, Rob Wortman (aka DJ Skippy), a core member of Neighborhood Bass Coalition, decided that he wanted to set up his own space near the entrance as an alternate area for attendees, and to play exotica and lounge records on his 12-volt sound system as "contrast" to the noise performances. That left Drew Dobbs (aka ROBO), Chris Cones (aka Jehosephat Sprat), and me to represent NBC on the live stage. We were all set to fill the schedule covering an afternoon and evening on our very own waterfront "playa", well within San Francisco's city limits!

The festival started in the late afternoon and went until well after midnight; the weather was clear, calm and warm (for SF), absolutely perfect for August in the Bay Area.
NBC performed in the late afternoon with a driving noise set, with my circuit-bent “motor-boat” drum machine freak-outs deftly punctuated by ROBO’s electronic drum pad destruction and Chris’ treated “freestyle” feedback noise and scanner samples to round it out. Chris and another eccentric character we had just met called Wrecker Becker, known collectively as "P. A. Parasite" provided some really entertaining lo-fi noise interludes using cellphone scanner recordings and mini-cassette scrubbing, among other techniques, between each performer’s equipment set-up. ROBO brought the Crying Man effigy that he made, which was duly fastened to a jumbled and rusty scrap steel sculpture; instead of getting burned, it was attacked by the various PeopleHater robots during the unnerving but wryly humorous Destroy Ape Technology performance (painful harsh noise played by a gorilla in a space suit!). Someone brought a Kenny from South Park piñata that was sacrificed to the fire later. Toward sunset three noise outfits (Schematic, God’s Grandparents aka Univac, and Jet Black Hair People aka Peter Conheim of Negativland) decided to have a free-for-all with sequencers, hand-built synths, theremin, and circuit-bent toys - the most memorable of which were several Billy the Big-Mouth Bass units, flopping on the ground at the end of their electric tethers! After dusk, we enjoyed some fantastic fire juggling and manipulation by the Pyrogeist troupe and devoured some burgers prepared by “Bill the Grill” (who unfortunately had drunk most of the beer we had stashed near him). Filthmilk gave us another demonstration of brutal electronic/acoustic noise with dangerous sprays of sparks from steel grinders, but then later collaborated with Addiction Welcome Mat to give us some languid horror/sci-fi soundtrack-like sounds. We also experienced the turntable vs synth spasms of the Clit Stop’s own Planet-Size:Clit and the loud but precise synthesizer noise of SYMPLX aka Gustavo from Big City Orchestra. There were also a few music-oriented groups who showed up, like Satosonic Soundsystem (bass guitar and sequencer dub) and SOAPBOX (spacey jam band fronted by a super-nerd!) that gave some fun performances to balance out the noise.

Overall, the Crying Man Free Festival was attended by several hundred people over about 10 hours. Unfortunately my minidisc recorder failed after just a few line recordings (probably issues with dust and condensation), so for this release I ended up relying mostly on audio from camcorder recordings made by Bruce Gauld aka Brutallo of the Brutal Sound Effects crew… in certain cases, particularly the NBC set, I think those recordings captured the moment better anyway. All in all, this release is just a tiny sampling of the Crying Man experience. Though the original track order of the CD-R is still intact, for this web edition of the project I sectioned the tracks into clusters, “book-ending” each track with DJ Skippy’s contrasting lounge music and P. A. Parasite’s between-set antics. I hope the listener will understand my attempt to portray the sounds of the original event as best I could, with as little as I had to work with. I took a lot of interesting photos, which unfortunately can’t be shared here beyond the cover (actually the CD-R release BACK) and the CD-R release’s actual cover and transparency inserts, included as “bonus items” with download only. In any case, PLAY LOUD!

P.S. the “bonus track” is a wonky mishmash of two copies of the same sappy Marlo Thomas record that I found in a reject pile outside of Amoeba Records SF right after the Crying Man concept was born… I took it as a sign and originally made it to use during radio promo as background, but instead it was played as a “cringe-core” finisher at the end of the festival ;-)

-zerø K 2020