JANUARY – MARCH 1979

1979 begins the last full year that I will participate in the original scene. The original core group of people are starting to disappear one by one as new people come in.  The scene is larger than ever but the beginnings of the end will begin to appear during 1979.

9 of 12 gigs that I attended in the first quarter of 1979 were at the Other Masque.  Then just as quickly as it came, it too was shut down for whatever reason.  The immediate remembrances that come out of that location were seeing Joey Ramone show up for a show (how I wish I hadn't been so shy and told him what he meant to me), Brendon and the Dils fighting over the price of admission (The Dils wanted a higher admission price and Brendon said no so they opted out of playing there) and Craig Lee at the soundboard.

Apparently the Dils were OK to play there at least once for $4 because that was the first headliner of the year.  The Rotters who had two great singles played on January 6th.  They were from the Santa Barbara/Ventura area and came down to play.  Two things that you never did in those days was play too long (40 minutes max) and play covers of other punk bands.  The Rotters did both.  They were finally asked to leave the stage after more than hour of originals and Sex Pistols and Damned covers.  The Rotters have recently reformed with only one original member from those days and I saw them play the Garage in L.A. several years ago.  I talked to him about that show and he said that they were used to being the only band on a card in their hometown and so they needed to play longer and they didn't have enough original material so they played covers.

The other band that makes it's debut now is the Simpletones.  Cutesy pop with 3 lead singers singing like they were in a barbershop quartet (trio?).  The songs were catchy and their entire catalog has recently been released on a German label.  It's well worth tracking down.  The other thing the Simpletones had going for them was Rover.  She was a friend of the band and the cutest little thing you'll ever see.  She was always at the Simpletones' shows and more.  I talked to her on several occasions and have an additional story to tell in the next segment.

A lot of the traveling bands that came to town were familiar from singles that we got mostly from Zed Records in Long Beach where we lived.  The Dead Kennedys were one of those bands with their great "California Uber Alles" single.  They had such a great name that we thought they were really gonna be this bizarre band but they were pretty normal.  What I recall most most Jello Biafra wearing translucent green gloves on his hands and waving them around as he sang.  I know DK are legendary but they were never one of  my favorites.  They headlined on the 12th of January and played second fiddle to the Germs the next night.

January 13th was also a sad night because it was the demise of the Red Army.  I don't what got up Spider's butt but he got pissed off over something and walked out in the middle of the show.  I believe Dan and Ray took over vocals the rest of the show but that was the last time I'd see my favorite band with that name.

The Suburbs from Minneapolis made an appearance.  They had a great EP out in this time period too.  The Neighbors I remember nothing about.

As I look through my list of gigs, I see band names that sound familiar or bands that the same name as other bands from around the country.  The Penetrators were such a band.  There was a Penetrators from Syracuse, NY but these Penetrators were most likely from San Diego although I remember nothing about them either.

Bands that have played so far that I haven't mentioned are Flyboys, Controllers, Eyes, Plugz, Rhino 39, Suburban Lawns and Middle Class.  These are bands that I saw on a regular basis and have been mentioned previously.

February 2nd has a band called the Others playing.  I remember them being really good bu that's about it.  Del and the Sensations don't sound like much of a punk band and I don't remember what they sounded or looked like either.

On the other hand, UXA is a band I remember quite well.  With the Great De Detroit on vocals.  Gravelly voice, big lips and an awesome stage presence.  Steve had the hots for her.  They had some tunes on the super Tooth & Nail compilation and a full length album that is an early punk classic.  I always loved the song "Sister Godfrieda".  

The might Clash make their SoCal debut at the Santa Monica civic with the equally politically  minded Dils as the opening act.  Rounding out the bill was Bo Diddley.  The Clash always sited early artists as their inspiration and used them to help support their shows.  The Clash would be coming to the end of their all out punk period at this time and delving into a bit more diverse work going forward.

San Francisco bands The Mutants and Negative Trend play a couple of weekend gigs with bands The Strict Ids, Schizos, Plugz and Simpletones.  The Strict Ids and Schizos are the 2 new entries at this time but I'm conjuring up any memories on either.

It's a whole month before I go to another show after having gone to the Other Masque just about every weekend up to this point.  I guess the venue closed down at this time and it was a matter of finding a new home for the locals to play.  I know, let's play the Elk's Lodge where we had those great Masque Benefits last year!!!

St.Patrick's Day, March 17th, 1979.  Anyone that was there will never forget it.  It started out peacful enough.  I think 5-6 bands were scheduled to play and it was a pretty early show as I recall, maybe a 6:00 PM show or thereabouts.  The Go-Go's were first up and as it turns also last up.  Steve and I did a soda run after the Go-Go's and went to a place a couple of blocks away.  As we come out of the store holding our sodas we seeing a whole battalion of LAPD officers march down the street in lockstep, helmets on, batons in hand.  "What the fuck", we thought.  We couldn't even imagine that they were headed to the Elk's Lodge.  We arrive back across the street from the Elk's Lodge and people are running everywhere.  Some of the more sympathetic cops are warning us that some of their companions "are having too much fun" and to just get the fuck out of there.  Dorothy James, one of the Lookalikes (I saw them called the Xerox Twins on another site) has been bludgeoned by an LAPD billyclub.  There is a picture of her with her boyfriend, Jeff Atta, after the show with blood on her head.  This show is listed in gig list with the comment "police caused riot".  The LAPD now feel it is their duty to break up peaceful punk gigs and they show up to quite a few gigs over the remainder of the year.

Club 88 opens as another venue for the locals and the Alleycats and Bags is the first show I see there.

Second quarter 1979 next week.  Some familiar bands will be introduced during this period.

Here's an email I got after the last segment from another fan, Tom,  that attended the Elks Lodge Riot show:

"..i was just a teen and the cops beat the shit out of me and arrested me..later to drop charges..that was the first weekend my parents had let me stay up in hollywood overnight..so picking me up in the rampart division of la wasnt what i had hoped for".

APRIL – JUNE 1979

As I said before Steve and I were suburban punks.  We didn’t live in Hollywood, we lived in Long Beach.  I’m sure that resulted in us missing out on a lot of things that happened outside the realm of the shows themselves.  I was holding down a full time job and about this time I was also going to school 4 hours a night after work so my opportunity to go to shows was pretty much limited to weekends.  The fact I was able to go to 90 shows in 1979 is pretty remarkable under the circumstances.  Steve was a little more flexible and went to more shows than I did.

I only really recall taking time off work to see one show and it is the first show in this time period.  I guess some of the colleges were willing to take a chance on this new music called punk and booked Middle Class, Rhino 39, Scientists and the Cynics.  We talked to Middle Class at this gig and they were surprised that we had come all the way out to Orange County to see the show.

The English bands that we had been listening to since the beginning made an occasional trip to L.A.  We saw 999 twice at the Whiskey.  Nick Cash is probably the least punk looking lead singer I have ever seen.  Great band though.

Back at Bace’s Hall on April 13.  We’re now two years after that first Germs/Weirdos show that I kind of use as a baseline for the start of the L.A. scene. 

At Baces Hall one night, Rover was short on money and asked if I had any I could spare.  I grabbed a handful of change out of my pocket and gave it to her, maybe a couple of dollar’s worth.  It always pissed Steve off when he saw Rover and she said that “Willy gave me a bunch of money” since we both had huge crushes on her and he knew it wasn’t all that much money and he wanted all the attention for himself.

The Whiskey is only booking the “big” L.A. bands now.  The Dickies and Screamers are the only headliners during this period. 

Several bands are listed that I have no recollection of:  Firebrand, Toasters, Total Media, Minors and Voyeurs.

I have a vague recollection of the Cynics.  They were led by a fellow Long Beach resident, Tab, that used to get rides to shows with us on occasion.  I don't remember much about the music other than I thought they were pretty good.

Steve did us a huge favor one night in Hollywood when he recognized John Felice of the Real Kids and started up a conversation with him.  That led to Steve getting put on the guest list (plus one) for the Starwood shows that they did.  We had their debut single and album for a couple of years at that point and they were always one of our favorites.  Anybody who can listen to “All Kindsa Girls” and not “feel like dancing” is one step from the grave.  They did not disappoint and I was also able to see them again a few years back with the original line-up.  Awesome band!

Don’t ask me where Bob’s Western Dance Hall is, but we saw the Scientists and Cynics there.

June was quite memorable.  We saw X, Middle Class and Eddie and the Subtitles.  Eddie and the Subtitles featured Mike Patton of Middle Class.  They were polar opposites as far as sound goes though.  They never moved me quite the way early Middle Class did. 

June 8^th is a super significant day.  It is the first time that I saw a show in Chinatown, a place that I was to frequent on a regular basis over the next 10 months or so.  There were two competing sites for your music dollar, the Hong Kong Café and Madame Wongs.  Both booked punk bands until Madame Wongs was trashed by an unruly crowd.  I wasn’t there that night and actually never attended a show at Madame Wongs.  If my recollection is correct, it may have been the Bags headlining that show at Madame Wongs when all hell broke loose.  As an aside, read the great story about the trashing of the Troubadour that most definitely featured the Bags.  This is from Alice Bag’s super web site:  http://www.alicebag.com/trashingofthetroubadour.html

The other significant thing about June 8^th was the first time I saw the Silencers.  They played melodic punk rock and had one of the most awesome female lead singers ever, Kat Arthur.  They also had that guy from Shock on bass.  As time went on and we went to just about every show the Silencers ever put on and became fast friends with Kat, Brian Hanson and Steve Reina.  I never understood why this band didn’t get more positive publicity than they did.  More on the Silencers later.

June 10^th at the Bla Bla Café, some dive in Studio City or thereabouts.  I remember some guy heckling Kat throughout the show.  She asked us after the show why we didn’t stand up for her.  Like we needed to?  She could stand up for herself quite well.

Later that day we headed down to Venice Beach to catch UXA, the Controller and Flyboys.  I have the show listed as being at “Venice Warehouse”.  From what I know now, this could be the place that was known as the “Church” where many beach punks hung out and lived.  Some guy was heckling De Detroit during the UXA show and she said “Go to Barneys!”.  He said “Barney’s?”.  She said “Barney’s beanery!!”.  Funny what sticks in your head sometimes. 

June 17^th  was our first introduction to one of the great beach bands from Orange County, the Crowd.  They had several great tunes on the Beach Blvd. compilation LP on Posh Boy Records. 

We had recently got a single down at Zed by a band called Black Flag with some absolutely fast, in your face tunes with a guitar sound that we hadn’t really heard before.  We had no clue they were a local band until we saw them for the first time on June 30^th.  You’ll see their name pop up a lot in the next two segments as they established themselves L.A.’s hardcore kings.  We actually became pretty good friends with Greg Ginn and talked to him quite a bit at the shows.  Steve later became good friends with Keith Morris.  The early line up would include Chuck “The Duke” Dukowski on bass and Robo on drums.  Robo was always worried about getting deported.

JULY -- SEPTEMBER 1979

If you scan down the list of gigs for this quarter you'll see quite a few where the price is listed as "free".  You'll also notice that almost every one of them features the Silencers.  I don't think it would be a stretch to say that we were the Silencers two biggest fans.  We talked and hung out Kat, Brian and Steve whenever we saw the Silencers.

999 must have enjoyed their previous visit because they returned within months of their most recent tour.  We checked them out again a couple of nights at the Whiskey.

The Damned finally get to play the Whiskey after being booted off the Television bill two years previously (much to our historical delight if you read the Jan-Jun '77 segment).  People threw change up the stage just like they had at the Starwood shows in April of '77 so there were quite a few repeat customers this time around to see the Damned.  They got a kick out of it.

Woo hoo!  The Masque reopens at least for none night.  I think there were several "private" shows going on about this time but the venue still had the fire marshal issue that there was no fire exit.  Ray Cyst of the Red Army and I shared a bottle (of something) at the Masque I remember.  What I can't seem to reconcile is a memory I have of Billy Zoom's silver guitar "disappearing" at the Masque.  None of my notes have X at the Masque listed so it either wasn't at the Masque or I failed to list that particular show.  Does anybody know?  Billy put out a plea to the audience "Just return it.  No questions asked.".  It got returned, thank goodness.

One thing that surprises me as I look through this is that Black Flag is at the bottom of the bill on most occasions.  Obviously they became huge (for punk, anyway) but paid their dues early on.  I have a band called the Black Hearts listed.  I'm not sure if this was the Joan Jett led band that became popular in the 80's.  The Smart Pills I remember being good but not much else about them.

Steve liked a band called the Mechanics.  They were more rock than they were punk and I thought the lead singer sounded like Geddy Lee of Rush.  I walked out in the middle of their set at Club 88 and Steve was really pissed at me.  

Lots of shows at the Hong Kong Cafe which could be relied upon to book all of our favorites.  The Bags, Controllers, Silencers, UXA, Flyboys, etc. all played constant shows and ended up at the Hong Kong on many occasions.

The B-People was an artsy band.  I never got into artsy punk and it still leaves me cold to this day.  Three chords, guitars and a melody will get me off every time.  

On July 22, I have two bands called the Wigs abd Armed Farces.  I do not remember them at all. 

The King's Palace was a new venue that started booking shows about this time.  It was later called Raji's and I'm not sure what it is called now.  I know in later years I saw some great bands there like the Adolescents, Humpers and Face To Face.  The first show I saw there actually had Black Flag headlining.  But more importantly was the band called the Mau Mau's.  There is an English band of the same name, so don't confuse them.  The Mau Mau's were Rick Wilder and were basically the Berlin Brats reincarnated.  New York Dolls style glam punk to the max.  Who could ask for more?

UXA is playing so many L.A. shows at this time that I'm pretty sure they relocated from San Francisco.

The Dead Kennedys play the Hong Kong Cafe on 8/17 with a band I have no recollection of called Vs.

The Weirdos re-emerge about this time with a show at the King's Palace.  Wall of Voodoo makes it's debut on the list featuring Bruce "don't call me Barf" Moreland.  Bruce is now in a sophisticated sounding band that actually got a record deal and some fame in the early 80's.  I'm sure you've all heard "Mexican Radio".  The Satintones were a lounge lizard band led by Hal Negro.  These types of bands showed up consistently throughout the L.A. punk era and were accepted and included on bills where they seemingly had no right to be.  They never did a thing for me.

The Terminals are a band I don't recall either.

We have a couple of shows at a place called Mars Studios.  The two back to back shows featured a veritable who's who of the times: X, Bags, Silencers and Black Flag.  To top it off, we get a new band, the Gears.  The Gears were great!  Led by Axxel G. Reese on vocals, quite possibly the best singer to come out of the times.  They played straight ahead punk rock.  Classic songs like Don't Be Afraid to Pogo, Trudie Trudie (dedicated to long time punk scenester Trudie) and The Elks Lodge Blues (about the Elks Lodge "riot").

The Stains come in at a place C.O.S. Hall which I don't remember.  I believe the Stains may have been an Hispanic band and I seem to remember liking them a lot but that's about all that's coming to me.  I don't have an exact date for this whow because I must have procrastinated long enough in logging the show that I forgot.  I messed up a few other dates along the way which will be fixed (a big THANKS to Jenny Lens for reading the entire story and pointing out typos and discrepancies for me).

The next new band to show up is Red Cross.  Featuring the McDonald brothers, Jeff and Steve, on guitar and bass, they were just little kids!  I believe Steve McDonald was 12 when they started playing.  They were really good though.  Get a copy of the compilation LP form the time called Siren and listen for yourself.  The "real" Red Cross didn't like them using their name however and they ultimately changed it to Redd Kross.  I'm still not sure how Black Flag has gotten away with it all these years.  Maybe the bug spray has a little better sense of humor and doesn't believe in frivolous lawsuits.

Audio Videot show up several times beginning with the Hong Kong Cafe show on 9/8.  For a band that I saw so many times (a quick glance tells me about 6 times or so), I remember absolutely nothing about them.  I can't claim my loss of memory is not due to drinking anymore however.  One Hong Kong Cafe show, Steve and I were out drinking our sodas and Keith Morris walks by.  He says to Steve "Orange soda again?!?!".  We went and bought beer after that, which I enjoy to this day.  Funny thing is, Keith has been on the wagon for almost 20 years now.  He was notorious for downing the brews in those days.

One of our favorite English bands, the Buzzcocks, played the Santa Monica Civic and a great time was had by all.  The Buzzcocks were amazing songwriters in the pop punk vein and have left a legacy of some the greatest melodies of our times.  The two opening bands, Gang of Four and the Cramps, both had success along the way but they fell into the artsy and psychobilly camps respectively, neither of which ever grabbed my attention.

Catholic Discipline was another artsy band (a recent compilation of their stuff was released on Artifix Records) that never did anything for me.  It was led by the great Frenchman and early punk pioneer, Claude Bessy (R.I.P.), otherwise known as Kickboy Face.  Claude wrote for the great Slash Magazine (I'm lucky to have the entire collection in my possession).   He was a wildman when he was drunk and I remember seeing him ranting outside some venue on more than one occasion.  No L.A. punk history is complete without mentioning Claude though.

The great D.O.A. from Canada show up for a couple of shows in mid-September.  We had the great first single by the band featuring Royal Police and Disco Sucks on Sudden Death Records and loved it.  Joey Shithead was a great singer and their earliest singles and the great Hardcore '81 album are classics.  After that, they kind of went down hill fast but there's no denying the greatness of the early stuff.

The rest of September '79 is filled with the usual cast of characters and the usual bands.

OCTOBER - DECEMBER 1979

The almighty Clash return to L.A. at the Palladium.  This was approximately the time that London Calling was released.  So many people speak with such reverence about that album and I’m going WTF?  The Clash were one of the original punk bands and it smelled of sell out.  Give me the first two albums any day.  Joe Ely was on the bill because the Clash liked him and they were rewarding one of their early inspirations.

I have no idea what I was doing at MacArthur Park on 10/27 to see 4 bands that have never been heard of since that day but I’m sure I must have had a good reason.  Sounds like a quartet of hard rock bands.

391 were a San Francisco band I'm pretty sure.  I remember them being pretty good.

One of the great things about punk rock was that there were no seats.  You stood as close to the stage as you wanted to experience the sound in any way you wanted.  On October 27th we went to Royce Hall on the campus of UCLA to see 20/20 and the Ramones.  20/20 are one of the best of the power pop bands of their day.  Seeing the Ramones from a seat was contrary to everything we learned to expect from the punk rock scene in those days.  If you wandered too far from your seat to dance or just move a bit to the beat, you were removed from the hall.  Steve decided he was going to make his statement near the end of the show and started pogoing in the aisles.  The was the last I saw of him until the show was over.  I didn't have the nerve to do the same.    

Halloween at King’s Palace was a rousing good time.  Nine bands in total with old favorites the Silencers, Red Cross and Black Flag.  There’s also a couple of bands that may sound familiar to you, the Descendents and Urinals.  Both bands were fairly prolific in the early 80’s.  Ella and the Blacks are a band I don’t remember.  The Rells were led by ex-Mau Mau, Jeff, and were a great punk rock’n’roll band of the band.  They were only together for a very short time but were one of the most memorable for playing the type of music that I enjoyed.  Yee haw!  The Cartwrights were also on the bill.  We were kind of wondering what kind of countrified band they might turn out be.  We couldn’t have been happier with the result though because it turns out it was the Red Army with a new name.  Hopefully Dan didn’t have to dye to his hair any more after the name change.  I’m sure he’ll let me know.  They definitely had not lost a thing and our favorite live band was back in business.

I hung out quite a bit with Ray Cyst of the Red Army/Cartwrights about this time and one funny story occurred at the King's Palace.  Ray was a big guy, strong as an ox.  Some guy that we had never seen before was giving me a hard time at the show. It looked like it might escalate into something more than an argument wen Ray stepped in.  I didn't ask him to, he just did.  I felt like the lid in that movie "My Bodyguard".  The guy started to take a punch at Ray and Ray just kind of caught his hand and gave him a look like "that wouldn't be such a good idea".  The guy left lucky for him.

Things were rocking in Chinatown throughout the 4th quarter of '79.  The Hong Kong Cafe had so many great shows.  One of the only times I got my picture in a zine during those times although I was at a lot of shows was Flipside 16 standing outside the Hong Kong Cafe with Steve Stiph.  My back was to the camera of course.

The Hong Kong was also where we saw "Mr. Macho" for the first time.  As I noted earlier, we gave people nicknames that we didn't know.  One guy we saw a lot during this time earned the nickname Ernie because I thought he looked like the character Ernie on the "My Three Sons" television show.  Anyway, Mr. Macho looked about 16 years old and saw these 3 long haired guys walking past the Hong Kong Cafe.  As a lot of punks thought at the time, these were hippies and punks pretty much loathed hippies.  He got in a fight with 3 guys and pretty much had his way with them.  Steve later told me that Mr. Macho was singing for a pretty good new band called Social Distortion.

November saw many of the same bands we had been seeing such as Red Cross, the Crowd, Gears, Scientists, Silencers, Plugz and Weirdos.  On Novemeber 2nd we saw Chinas Comidas which I have one 7" by.  I don't really remember much about them.  The Cartwrights continued to play shows throughout this time and we saw them whenever we could.  The Slashers on November 16th are another band I remember nothing about as well as the Adaptors on November 23 and the Alcoholics on 11/24.  One band that absolutely stood out was the Screws.  They had a great '77 punk sound and I believe they may have been an East L.A. hispanic band.  They are definitely one of the stand out bands from the era that no one has ever heard of.  Agent Orange was a good band but not spectacular.  They had more of a surf punk style and put out several records in the early 80's.

About this time the movie Rock & Roll High School was released.  Steve and I went down to the mall in Hawthorne I believe it was.  Steve had these nice new leather pants that he decided to wear to the movie that day.  Since this was a mall that we were unfamiliar with, we got a bit disoriented coming out of the theater and headed the wrong way to my car.  These three guys in a red truck started speeding their car towards us as we were looking for our car and we're wondering what the hell is going on.  Luckily the parking lot had these islands throughout the parking lot with trees planted in them.  They came roaring up close as we're standing behind the tree and starting calling us fags.  This is of course due to Steve's leather pants.  They finally got tired of chasing us around and we found the car and went home.

We saw the Gears again at the Hong Kong Cafe but by now they have a new guitarist by the name of Kidd Spike.  The Controllers were no more and Spike had taken over guitar duties for the Gears.  The Silencers also played that show and I knew that Kat had a birthday on December 7th so I made her a mix tape of some of my favorite punk tunes of the time.  She was so cool.  She made me feel like it was the best present ever.  Not long after she gave me a tape of the Silencers recordings that they were in the studio working on at the time.  It is still one of my most prized possessions from the time.  

Another of the greatest of the British bands, Sham 69, came to the Whiskey on December 7th and 8th.   They played great sets both nights.  I remember that one of the members of another of our favorite bands of the time, the Cockney Rejects, was a roadie for them.  The Dead Kennedys opened both nights.

The Cuckoo's nest in Orange County was another venue that had quite a few shows at the time.  The rivalry between the Hollywood and Beach punks had really boiled over by this time and you did not want to be on the other's turf.  Steve had the unique position of being accepted in both which helped throughout the early 80's as the violence escalated.  (I'll have to see if I can get him to do a guest column about the Hollywood/Beach punk wars).  

I don't remember anything about Stratus on December 16th.  

Another of the great bands of the time was the Chiefs, with former Simpletones' vocalist Jerry and drummer, Rabbit.  They were unique for having a black guitarist, George.  We knew George pretty well and he was a really cool guy.  One of the great things about the scene was the diversity.  Black, white, male, female, straight, gay - it didn't matter.  Try finding the Cheifs single for under $200 these days.  An album called Hollywest Crisis was released several years on both CD and LP that is well worth seeking out.

Having connections always helps.  Mike Patton of Middle Class/Eddie & the Subtitles got us into the Hong Kong Cafe shows on the 30th of December and also New Years Eve.  The New Year's Eve show was a Germs headlining gig and cost the astronomical sum of $10.  We saw the Cheifs for the first time on the 30th and Vox Pop, who I never cared for.  Johanna Went was also on the New Year's Eve show.  This would be the last time I would see the Germs although as I stated before, they were never a favorite of mine.