Auction Launched To Raise Money San Francisco Punk Promoter DIRK DIRKSEN
December 26, 2006According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Kathy Peck, bass player for pioneering S.F. lady-punks the CONTRACTIONS and co-founder of HEAR Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to alerting musicians of the permanent hearing damage that can result from repeated exposure to concert-decibel music, is organizing an eBay auction to raise money to help cover the funeral expenses of much-revered San Francisco punk promoter Dirk Dirksen.
Dirksen, who died a few days before Thanksgiving at age 69, was to San Francisco's emerging punk-rock scene in the late 1970s what Bill Graham was to psychedelic rock a decade earlier. In 1976, Dirksen persuaded the owner of the Mabuhay Gardens, a Filipino restaurant and nightclub on a seedy, strip-club-lined stretch of Broadway, to let him book punk bands there. For the next 10 years, the club would serve as the center of the Bay Area's punk scene and earn Dirksen the title "the Pope of Punk." During its decadelong run, the "Fab Mab" helped launch the careers of countless local bands, including the DEAD KENNEDYS and FLIPPER, and played host to a who's-who of the national and international punk scenes.
Among the items on the auction block are several dozen pieces of local punk rock memorabilia. Go to www.hearnet.com/auction.html to check out the growing list of donated items.
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