Johnny Strike
Gary John Bassett (born June 6, 1948, in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania), known as Johnny Strike, is an American writer, mostly known as songwriter, guitarist and singer for the proto-punk band Crime based in San Francisco.
Songwriter and musician
Strike was raised in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In 1973, he approached high school pal Marc D'Agostino aka Frankie Fix and sold him on forming a rock 'n roll band. They learned a few chords and began rehearsing together with cheap guitars. In 1976 going by the name Crime their self-produced single became the West Coast's first punk record: "Hot Wire My Heart" / "Baby You're So Repulsive". The following year they self-released "Murder by Guitar" / "Frustration".
In 1977 they began wearing police uniforms and putting on their own shows at a Filipino supper club in North Beach called the Mabuhay Gardens prompting mentions in Herb Caen's column. The band ended this period in 1979 with a show inside San Quentin Prison. A bootleg was later released by Target Video, and a final single in 1980 "Maserati" / "Gangster Funk" was released by Berkeley Square Records. In 1983, Strike was experimenting with Joey D'Kaye aka Joey Swails in a synthesizer project called Vector Command. In 1987 Sonic Youth covered "Hot Wire My Heart" on their LP Sister. Spirit Records reissued the first single with liner notes by Thurston Moore in 1991 and Solar Lodge released an LP/CD, San Francisco's Doomed from demo recordings from 1979.
In 2003, Strike recorded with Jimmy Crucifix and Biff O'Hara in a group called TVH and a CD was released by Flapping Jet Records.
San Francisco's Still Doomed was a re-mastered version of the Crime album and released by Swami Records in 2004. In 2005, Crime reformed in time to headline the Road to Ruin punk festival in Rome.
Strike, Hank Rank (Henry Rosenthal), Count Fink (Brett Stillos) and Mickey Tractor (Michael Lucas) went on to record an LP, Exalted Masters in 2007, and three years later F.Y.B.S. Records released their 7", "Extortion".
Writer
Headpress published Strike's first novel in 2004, Ports of Hell, with a blurb by William S. Burroughs.
Strike also interviewed Paul Bowles, Mohamed Choukri, Herbert Huncke and traveled, with extended stays in Morocco, Mexico, and Thailand where he set his fiction.
His writing has appeared in Ambit magazine and Headpress Journal, and in 2008, with artist Richard Sala providing illustrations, Rudos and Rubes published his short story collection: A Loud Humming Sound Came From Above. In 2015 The Exploding Memoir was published as an e-book.
The prose and music came together in Remote Viewer, a splinter group featuring members of Crime backing Strike in what is sometimes called lit punk.
Currently
Strike lives in San Francisco with his wife, Jane. He is working on two novels.
References
External links
• Rudos and Rubes • An oral history of Crime • Crime Radio • Amoeblog • Murder by Guitar