HUMAN BEANS

It's weird to think about being "jaded" 25 years ago. The point is not if we were jaded per se, but more a nod to the constant thirst for something new, and recognizing the complacency that comfort can bring. We were in our mid-20s. We had toured a few times and were starting to feel like we belonged in our (new) City and now we were growing with the scene that we had been accepted into. The kids (and I mean "kids" as in actual young people) in the Bay Area primarily went to Gilman or other shows off of our radar. We played bars and drug dens disguised as artist warehouses, and there simply weren't that many teenagers in our midst, so when HUMAN BEANS started poking around...well, they stuck out, and I feel like I knew them all from shows before I knew they were in a band. I'll be honest and say that I kinda dismissed them before I saw or heard the band, maybe because I was pompous or maybe because they were a collective disaster - probably a bit of both. But when we eventually saw them play? Shit! You can make the argument that punk is a young person's game, and it's an argument that you'll typically win, but rarely has the mantra been so clearly demonstrated. HUMAN BEANS just exploded. Hormones and adolescence and broken homes and disenfranchisement spewed everywhere in a sloppy, out of tune fucking mess. They loved HICKEY and they tried to recreate the hooks. They failed. They loved OP IVY and the ska parts were so unbelievably fucked up. Simply put: They were a train wreck. But they were honest, they gave so much of a fuck about not giving a fuck, and that was a reminder we all needed shoved in our faces. Recorded, HUMAN BEANS are a different story - fast, tight, high energy punk with snot practically gumming up your needle (or, in this case, your tape heads). This handful of home made hand made, recycled cassettes and a split with THE BAR FEEDERS are the extent of their sonic legacy - more than an hour of recorded sound including blips and whirs, some songs that might not even be by HUMAN BEANS, some beer jingles, lots of general nonsense. The kids were real. 

OOH LA LA

LIVE on San Francisco Sound

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John is a dad, lives in the Northwest, and still has a VHS tape that LITTLE PRINCESS made for our wedding that I totally want back.

Jason is around, played in GO LIKE THIS! with some of the PLUTOCRACY dudes in the late '00s.

No clue where (or how) Alexis is, but that dude's quiet sense of humor was so fucking bizarre.

Pete died a lot of years ago, he painted a tape on wood that sits on a wood shelf with other tapes.