MURRAY BOWLES PHOTOS!
How and why this online "photozine" came to be:
Before the pandemic and after Murray's passing, I was asked by my longtime friend, Anna Brown to come and work on her Murray book project, a project I had some initial input into when it was conceived some years back. One thing led to another, and I was hired by Murray's family to help catalogue Murray's voluminous photo archive, a job any punk rocker would give their right arm for! And, for a few months I meticulously went through Murray's binders of negatives, organizing them, noting how many/what frames seemed to be missing, and finally entering all this data onto a massive spreadsheet. I also continued this process with over a dozen external hardrives that contained all the photos that Murray took when he converted to digital photography. Of course, this was a great opportunity to find new photos for the book (or upgrade from just having a hardcopy that Murray printed), so every night after I was done doing the paid work of cataloging I used the newly found info to scan photos for the book on my offtime. But as things workout in life, artistic disagreements led me to ultimately leave Anna's book project.
So the photos you will see on the following pages are mostly ones that I enjoyed, but ultimately will not end up in the proposed book. A lot of these photos are ones I found to have interesting details, people or historical significance.
A final note: these images are raw scans of negatives and have not been altered in any way (except for the adding of text to them to keep them from being pirated). Most of the prints that Murray sold (for .25 cents, but he did raise his prices later on, but I forget what year) were 4" x 6" prints that he generally cropped down. These are the complete images not cropped down in anyway. Enjoy!
- Eric T. Yee
REAGAN YOUTH @ Booker T. Washingon Community Center, S.F., 11/84. Other bands that played: Youth Brigade, BGK, Cause For Alarm and Slaughterhouse 5.
Sado-Nation from Portland, OR playing Valencia Tool & Die.
VERBAL ABUSE playing the legendary Berkeley student co-op, Barrington Hall.
In the pit with some Berkeley skinheads and the "Punk Barbarian" on the right. This shot is from Eastern Front (#3) in 1983 when Black Flag headlined!
CONDEMNED TO DEATH playing the On Broadway with Treason and Teenage Warning.
BAD RELIGION's Greg Graffin playing a keyboard?! and being assisted on vocals by SF skater, Pierre!
In the pit during Youth Brigade's set at the Booker T. Washington Community Center! The Booker T. Washingon CC only had two shows to my knowlegdge, this show and few months earlier, the last Crucifix show (w/ Social Unrest and Trial).
When Green Day and Blatz were supposed to play the Red Barn in Santa Barbara, Green Day got so stoned on the drive there they arrived late and had to play accoustically! This pic features a local coming up to sing a blues jam with them!
Berkeley locals (including Dave Chavez, and DMR Girls) up on stage with Special Forces singing the background vocals for "Roller Coaster".
Berkeley "peace punk" band ATROCITY playing Club Foot in S.F. with PLH.