Punk-rock teeth

As a medium-sized urban area with a mild inferiority complex, we revere our local exports who make an impact on the world at large. In the visual arts (Robert Arneson, Gregory Kondos and Wayne Thiebaud, for example), in literature (Joan Didion and William T. Vollmann), in music (Cake, Deftones, Oleander and Tesla) and in sports (Dusty Baker and the Kings), we take a personal interest in the accomplishments of our hometown products.

Although longtime hardcore-punk quartet 7Seconds isn’t originally from Sacramento, the band has spent enough time here to qualify as a local act, and frontman Kevin Seconds lives here and co-owns the True Love Coffeehouse on J Street with his wife, Allyson. The story of 7Seconds’ rise from disaffected Reno teenagers to internationally known underground heroes is an important chapter in the story of the DIY, or do-it-yourself, rock movement, which caught fire in the late 1970s and still continues today.

SN&R’s Clubber columnist, Christian Kiefer, spent time with the members of 7Seconds as they were working on their latest album in a downtown recording studio. (See “Hardcore devotion.”) Though the band members are now in their 30s and 40s and somewhat settled down, they still play music with the same fury and intensity that ignited their earlier efforts. Indeed, the idea that Seconds is still knocking his teeth out on microphones, while the band whips up a thunderous din behind him, is an argument against the conventional wisdom, which posits that aging rockers typically retreat to relative acoustic silence, playing Mississippi John Hurt and Johnny Cash covers on coffeehouse stages.

Elsewhere, in Arts&culture, Tim White writes about Midtown gallery owner Barry Sakata, whose failure as a tomato farmer pushed him toward finding something he could do well. And in Music, Dennis Yudt declares the Sacramento garage-rock supergroup Th’ Losin Streaks as, hands down, the best rock ’n’ roll band in town. In a city with a lot of good music happening, that’s a strong statement.