San Francisco Benefit for the West Memphis Three

San Francisco - More talent, new location, and celebrity emcee onboard
for West Memphis Three Benefit.

SubPop's Zen Guerrilla have added their support to the upcoming West Memphis
Three Benefit show on March 31st. Fresh from their NoisePop Festival victory,
these local hard-rock/blues/gospel fusion favorites will be headlining.
Additionally, punk pioneer and Bay Area gadabout Jello Biafra has agreed to
lend his unique personality and spirit in emceeing the event.

To accommodate a larger crowd and allow for an all-ages audience, the West
Memphis Three Benefit is RELOCATING to the newly opened Pound Club in San
Francisco. In a local music scene that is supposedly shrinking, the owners of
the Pound have stepped forward with a fine new venue to support Bay Area
artists as well as national touring bands.

The March 31st benefit will be a full evening's worth of some of the Bay
Area's best music, with a few out-of-towners joining in... The lineup is as
follows:

Zen Guerrilla
The Supersuckers' Eddie Spaghetti and Ron Heathman
Three Years Down
Hotbox
The Crosstops
Salem Lights
Bottles and Skulls
Fracas
New Granada

West Memphis Three Case Summary:

In 1993, three young boys were brutally murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas.
The local police arrested and later convicted Damien Echols, Jason Baldwin
and Jessie Misskelley, three local teenagers who have come to be known as the
West Memphis Three. Echols is currently on death row, while Baldwin and
Misskelley are serving life sentences with no chance of parole.

In 1996 the HBO documentary "Paradise Lost" brought the West Memphis Three
case to international attention and told the story of three young men who
were railroaded by a prejudiced police department, a botched investigation,
and a media circus that resembled nothing quite so much as a witch hunt. A
subsequent, follow-up documentary, "Revelations," will be screened in
association with the San Francisco music benefit, The Pound immediately preceding the benefit concert at 3:30 pm.

The case of the West Memphis Three has struck a chord with the music
community, with many other events and fundraisers taking place around the
country, and a very successful benefit CD released last year on Aces and
Eights Records (featuring Tom Waits, Steve Earle, Joe Strummer, and John Doe,
among others)... One poignant note during the trial was the prosecution's
strong reliance on the use of concert shirts and hard-rock music as character
evidence against the defendants.

For any information about the West Memphis Three, please see http://www.WM3.org

For more information about the upcoming SF event, please contact Jenny Slater
at 510-523-1934, or at GoPetunia [at] aol.com