Punkhouse Oakland, the Pocast is an outgrowth of the instagram Elizabeth Whitney started during the pandemic, sharing photos of the many people she'd lived with in 20 years in a punkhouse. She invited everyone to share their photos, one tag led to another, and before long there were 6,000 followers and a huge backlog of photos to share.
This podcast is a series of conversations with people in, and adjacent to, the punk scene in the Bay Area in the 80s and 90s. We explore the stories behind those photos, and dive deeper into who we were, how we found each other, and what it means in our current lives.
Elizabeth Whitney - Producer, Interviewer. Erin Yanke - Editor.
Episode Four: Ravi Durbeej
Ravi Durbeej was born in Georgetown, Guyana, grew up in Queens, NYC, and went to high school in Ft. Lauderdale before moving to Berkeley, Ca. the summer of 1995.
The first record he bought was the 'Heart of Glass' single by Blondie in first grade and after buying the 'Let's Go Crazy' single by Prince in fourth grade, he proudly told his parents he was going to play Rock and Roll. As confused first-generation Indian immigrants, they acquiesced and enrolled him in clarinet lessons and math team later that year.
In Oakland he lived at the Chevron Station on 55th & MLK, the M&A Laundromat, the garage of the 54th St. House, and the Vallejo St. House to name a few.
He currently lives in San Francisco and plays music every day.
Episode Three: Janelle Blarg
Janelle Blarg (also known as Janelle Hessig) is a Bay Area writer, cartoonist, and multimedia humorist.
In 1990, while other bad kids were making secret bongs in her high school Crafts class, she made her first publication, Tales of Blarg, which became a definitive and influential East Bay punk fanzine.
Her writing and mostly-autobiographical comics can be found in numerous periodicals and comics anthologies published by Three Rivers Press, Silver Sprocket, KQED, Popula, Maximum RocknRoll, and Vice, though she always holds a special place for the xeroxed and ephemeral.
She’s been a touring drummer, a pop culture journalist, the subject of a seminal riot grrrl album, and the Marketing Director for San Francisco publisher Last Gasp.
She currently lives in Oakland.
Episode Two: Anna Brown
Anna Brown, Berkeley Punk from way back, has lived in many punk houses including Fairview and The Grimple House.
She recently edited a book of Murray Bowles’ photography called Hail Murry.
Episode One: Zebediah Gammack
Zeb was born on a hippy commune in the mountains of Colorado and grew up all over the country. He started playing in punk bands his senior year. His first real band was Cirrhosis in Minneapolis in 1993 where he moved after high school.
Within about a year he went traveling and met Mikey Matusio and the two formed Black Maggot in Oakland in 1994. The Maggot House was their house on Harper Street in Berkeley. Black Maggot had a few line up changes and then morphed into Skaven in 1995. That year they toured with Dystopia and recorded and released the Skaven/Dystopia split LP. The Compound was born in 1996 and Zeb lived there until 1997. With the break up of Skaven he moved to Berkeley with his girlfriend and out of punk houses for the moment. Also the beginning of an opiate addiction. He moved across the bay to San Francisco in 1999 and then to Bozeman Montana in 2002. He played in several bands in Montana, culminating in forming DemonSteed and playing with them until 2008. They played a reunion show on Halloween Night 2018.
Zeb moved back to Oakland in 2012/13 and met his wife Megan that year. They were married in 2015. Since moving back to Oakland he played in Skarz and now with Vermidax.
He continues to be incredibly good looking and a 100% Rock'n'Roll Werewolf.