In the Post-Punk, New Wave era of the late 70s in San Francisco, you could hear a new song, and then the next day another new song, and the next day another new song and life was great. This was a period of months between the Sex Pistols dumping John Lydon at Winterland in January 1978, and the onslaught of Hardcore and New Romantic and Electronic danceable bands of the early 80s.

In this interstitial period, punks who’d learned to play were making incredible powerful rock music. Lydon had Public Image. On the radio: Joy Division, Magazine, Echo and the Bunnymen, Teardrop Explodes, Killing Joke, Psychedelic Furs, Gang of Four….

I felt a lift in my feet those days – a lightness of heart when a new cool song came out, the first time you heard it on KUSF, the University of San Francisco FM radio station (1977-2011). We got it loud and clear on Valencia and 22nd in the Mission, raw sedition blasting from a Jesuit school. KUSF had a couple of memorable ID spots: Joey Ramone: “When I come to San Francisco, I take psychedelic drugs and listen to KUSF!” Or a bowdlerized remix of the Horst Wessel Nazi marching song, SS chorus in the background, someone bellowing over the top: “K-U-S-F, the leader of the airwaves.”

You were on top of the world – the sun was brighter, the air fresher, girls prettier, everything was great.

At the Home for Wayward Boys on Valencia, we followed a top local band, The Soul Rebels, watching them at the Savoy Tivoli on Grant in North Beach. They were exciting, fresh, a Ska band led by James Dean. The singer was Mikel Waters, with the legitimizing rhythm duo of the Stench Brothers (John Hanes on drums, Hilary on bass) providing a solid bottom, mainstays of the San Francisco New Wave scene in the late 70s-early 80s.

We saw the Stenches play with SF efforts as diverse as Chrome – Helios Creed and Damon Edge; Silvertone, Chris Isaak’s first SF band; and Pearl Harbour and the Explosions. Seeing the Soul Rebels and buying their 7-inch, Soul Rebels, was part of the thrill.

Way over here on the Pacific edge we were part of a movement of honesty and authenticity and us-ness, our time/our music, that survived, had grown up, and was doing really great things, putting a lift in our step.