Sacramento. Punk. The Loft

July 21, 2021 9:54 AM

The Boulevard Park Trio: One and Done This obscure Sacramento band's only record embodies the timeless beauty of bored, talented youth entertaining themselves in a hot, flat city in the 1990s. Well researched and detailed newsletter post about the punk scene in Sacramento in the 90's.
posted by josher71 (10 comments total)

Scott Miller - Not this one even though he spent time around Sacramento a decade earlier.

Not this one either.

We were really into Human League’s ‘(Keep Feeling) Fascination,’ and we would play it over and over again, partly to antagonize the employees.

Oh no! Not this again!

Man this article does a great job of capturing a 'scene' - the loose adherence to the law, the 'hall monitor' trying to prevent felonies, the cool or uncaring landlord, the empty space, the ones with a bit of talent who find actual success, and a bit of luck. But then it reaches its sadder end.

I don't even care for much of the music in the article, but still it's a great ride.
posted by The_Vegetables at 11:22 AM on July 21, 2021 [5 favorites]

Oh man. I love scene histories. I miss local scenes and all the weirdo squabbles and niche jockeying and the local celebrities and character that you had to be from there to know. This was always my favorite thing about traveling in the 90s, particularly in the US, but also in the UK. The bonus of everything and everyone being online is that I don't have to just happen to be in X town on X date so I can see the X local bands that everyone in that scene knows are VERY IMPORTANT and you will too after a thirty minute set and a 7", but I still miss the days of not knowing until I wandered into some record store in some remote-ish college town or small city and finding whatever bar/club/shabby rental house/defunct VFW Hall retrofitted into a roller rink retrofitted into an all-ages venue (or whatever).

Ah, nostalgia!
posted by thivaia at 11:45 AM on July 21, 2021 [7 favorites]

Very surprising to read a story that so heavily involves a 1990's musician from Sacramento named Scott Miller who wasn't the Scott Miller I was thinking of.
posted by Ipsifendus at 12:26 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Nice.

I love scene histories. I miss local scenes and all the weirdo squabbles and niche jockeying and the local celebrities and character that you had to be from there to know.

Apropos...
posted by praemunire at 12:36 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

This is insanely detailed and very moving for me: I lived in Sac in the 90s and several of the cast of characters are people I knew, made out with, or organized anti-war rallies with. I was only in The Loft a couple times - I remember meeting there after the invasion of Bosnia by the US & UN in '92 with the folks who had been organizing against Operation Desert Storm together (and later went on to found Alphabet Threat). I also bought my first album - The Man Who Sold The World - at The Beat. I was younger and also not very cool or as smart or whatever and always on the edge of these scenes that were populated by friends-of-friends, but they were incredibly formative on me even though I only ever went to a few shows and knew these people as somewhat awe-inspiring elders (by like 4 years lol at that now). I actually know nothing about the Yah Mos and don't recall ever knowing of their existence. But the author really dives into the entire ecosystem they swam in.

Thanks for posting this and hello to whatever Sac-scene lurkers are here on Metafilter.com.
posted by latkes at 2:04 PM on July 21, 2021 [6 favorites]

I lived in the Sacramento area for almost 20 years, and never knew any of this. Sure, I went to The Beat, and a few of the bands sound familiar. I still have a The Beat magnet on my fridge. I was sad to hear of it's demise.

Admittedly, most of the 90's I spent across the causeway in Davis, which had its own scene that I was only tangentially aware of.

For a brief time in the late 90's I was looped into an EDM house party circuit that was pretty fun, but I never made enough connections to keep in it when my one contact moved out of my social circle. There were a few local DJs I liked, and was always disappointed when they would play clubs in Sac (well, really only The Rage) because the venue owner made them tone it down. The internet was still pretty new and so it wasn't the resource that it is today.

I haven't been in Sac for over a decade, but the article about this time and place kicks off all sorts of nostalgia for me about it.
posted by Badgermann at 2:46 PM on July 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Man, that was pretty mind-blowing. I spent some time in Sacto back around '96. I went to most of those places and met a lot of those folks. Later, !!! played our place when they came to Ohio. Memories I can barely remember... Another DIY show space called The Barn comes to mind. Gonna have to dig out my Popesmashers and Girls Soccer records now. And have "Mr Octopus is Dead" by The Bananas stuck in my head again for days on repeat.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 4:26 PM on July 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

dancing on Friday nights at the Plaza was my jam.
posted by wmo at 9:28 AM on July 22, 2021

But does Tesla still live there?!
posted by SystematicAbuse at 10:40 AM on July 22, 2021

This is great. Now I want to see one for every other sub genre and microscene!
posted by CostcoCultist at 4:11 PM on July 22, 2021