SoFA's Choice

 

Here’s another compilation of San Jose bands, this from Little Lucky (in fact it starts off with Horchata’s “Green Butter” that was on the last Little Lucky post). It is a broad brush-stroke of downtown San Jose bands of that time. This one’s called SoFA’s Choice. A little history. In the second wave of San Jose’s attempted musickal renaissance (the first wave involved The Laundry Works, Scottish Rites Temple, Ribzy, Los Olvidados, Frontier Wives etc.), clubs & bands flourished in the South First Street Area. The area was labeled SoFA, echoing San Francisco’s South of Market SoMA. One of the events moving the scene in the right direction began on Sunday, Sept. 27, 1992, when the first SoFA Street Fair took place on South First Street. The fair flaunted a more Bohemian bent than its downtown mainstream cousins like Tapestry in Talent. It celebrated more alternative culture & musick. The first year was wild, as all the numerous bars & night clubs located along the street were open for free & featured a non-stop roster of the newest local acts. Street vendors, artists, & poets were in abundance. Believe it or not, a lot of the locals hauled out their old beat up sofas & set them up on the sidewalk for seating to relax on & watch the events of the day unfold. But soon the fair evolved from its freewheeling free-for-all beginnings to a more traditional sort of music festival with the addition of gates & fences, admission charges, & hundreds of cops. By the third year, few of the original SoFA denizens even attended & sofas were banned. After 10 years, the SoFA Street Fair died an ugly death. This compilation is named after that area, those events, & the bands that tried to sustain the scene. 

 

Various Artists - Sofa’s Choice (Sounds from Downtown), Little Lucky, 1997. 

 

Tracks - 

Green Butter - Horchata 

The Giant Fish - Neosoreskin 

Artebella (Timbale mix) - Monkey 

Live My Empty - Grits 

Snowflake - Creamsickle 

Willie’s Blunt - Willie’s Conception 

Front - Insolence 

Cocktails - Jalopy Taco Stand 

It’s Alright - The Odd Numbers (only band to play every SoFA Street Fair) 

Clay Wheels’ Theme - Clay Wheels 

If You’re About to Cry - The New Mosquitos 

He & She - Terra Nova 

The Rain - Andalusia 

Under the Lean-to - Lisa Dewey (incorrectly titled on the release as “Close to My Honeypie”) 

Here’s Your Song - Your Precious You 

The Devil Just Got Fired - Redd Devlin 

Spies - Caustic Notions 

Would You, Really - Elric 

Enjoy, NØ