#negative trend

The Clash, Zeros & Negative Trend

1979 - San Francisco

A small step for Rozz Rezabek, one giant leap for mankind during a Negative Trend gig at Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, 1978, as documented by Bruce Conner.

Rozz Rezabek was a livewire performer and a master of havoc, often jumping off stage and onto tables or knocking everyone’s drinks over. He also dated young Courtney Love, who desperately wanted to marry him and she occasionally/often proposed to him. One night, while they were sitting in a train boxcar and drinking champagne, she proposed to him again, only to find out that they were not alone, since a wino they had woken up grumbled: “Oh, go ahead, marry her!”

Punk band Negative Trend during a gig at Mabuhay Gardens, SF, while performing on stage along with other San Francisco-based punk choirboys/girls of the early Bay Area punk scene, such as members of The Avengers, The Dils and more, probably on the night the Sex Pistols played in Winterland on Jan. 14th, 1978, as captured by photographer Judie Parks, a punk rock musician herself at the time with the all-girl band The Blowdryers.

The day before the Sex Pistols show, someone had spray painted the walls of Winterland Arena with the words "Negative Trend", so before the band went on, Malcolm McLaren asked around and learnt that Negative Trend were considered possibly the worst band in San Francisco at the time and demanded that the show producer Bill Graham allow them to go on after The Avengers and open for the Sex Pistols but Graham agreed to let them go on after the main act, however by the time the Sex Pistols left the stage and Negative Trend got set up, there was nobody left in attendance, so they never actually got to play, performing later that night at the Mabuhay Gardens.