Recipes for Disaster: an anarchist cookbook

There were about sixty people from widely varied backgrounds {punks, art students, homeless people, a middle-aged professor "interviewing" people with a microphone that wasn't plugged into anything) lined up on the curb as we loaded two drum sets, four amplifiers and speakers, a vocal amp and borrowed microphone, and assorted other instruments and equipment into the store. The drummers had forgotten their sticks, or lost them at earlier shows or something, so they ended up just beating on the drums with various junk foods (beef jerkies, soda cans and bottles, popsicles), grabbing a new one whenever one substitute stick broke or shattered or splattered. The first notes of the sound check were so loud that I couldn't believe they were even going to get to play a minute.

Everyone pushed in, packed into the aisles, and the noise began. The members of the band were leaping around, smashing things and falHng over each other like they might have at a normal house show, but here it was totally new and dangerous, visceral, and music that could have been standard somewhere else was suddenly the fiercest, most vehement thing any of us had ever heard. At a normal show the band are the ones taking the risk, but here everyone was at risk, just by standing there in the store?and not just because of the threat of the police, either. There's no way I can describe what it felt like to step out of reality as it had been and into that space, to fuse two separate parts of my life {the passion of punk rock, the lifelessness of convenience stores) that were never supposed to meet. . . everything was electrified, tense and intense, ten thousand years of culture turned on its head in an instant.

Amazingly, the band finished one song, the members all switched instruments while the scream of feedback tore the air, and then they shot into another one, knocking against the shelving, smashing into the drink coolers, puUing the cardboard display posters over their heads and charging into people?all of us looking nervously back and forth between them and the police station out the window. A couple of civilians who had come up to buy cigarettes joined the crowd in total wonder. Some people were throwing junk food, candy, breaking things, wrecking the place; this was the most controversial topic afterwards, since the kids doing this were largely bourgeois children of the suburbs who had nothing at stake and weren't worried about Z?'s welfare or anything else. Others, and this was much more beautiful to me, realizing that we owned the place for a moment and they could do whatever they wanted, were picking up candies and other commodities, looking at them, and then just dropping them, realizing just how valueless they were at any price, especially compared with the lightning of what was actually happening. Z?, for his part, stood placidly in place behind the counter?for the only surveillance camera in the store was pointed there! The band switched instruments again in the middle of the song, banging out random notes and screaming nonsensically?someone from the audience jumped behind one drum set, and started playing along as natural as could be?others joined in?and then looks of terror spread through the room, as we all saw the flashing lights of an arriving police car.

And you know what? We got away with it. The pigs pulled up, looked in, and, seeing their favorite doughnut stop bursting with mayhem beyond anything in their job description, drove away in presumable despair or denial?basically giving us the go-ahead to take the city over: for if we could do this so easily, then what next? "Should we get out of here?" shouted a band member, clutching a cymbal stand. "Naw, man, tibiey've just gone to get the Black Mariah," drawled Z?, "keep playing." The band played for another twenty minutes, until everyone was satisfied that we'd done what we came to do; the

You can stage a surprise dance party in the lifeless office building or franchise of your choice: the dancers enter ore by one, their festive attire hidden beneath easily-removed disguises, until the last one strides in with a great big boom box and presses play.

Guerrilla Performances 273

You can put on public puppet shows

for children that impart important

information to their parents as well;

you might be able to arrange to give

educational presentations at local

schools, too.

Guerrilla Performances 274