by John Doe
No harsh screeching of wheels at dawn, no soft whimpering late at night, no roaring wind as the sun went down or moaning as the back door closed. None of these sounds were heard at the close of the first LA punk-rock era somewhere in 1981 or ’82. What was heard was quiet at the center of the music scene. A center that in 1977 through ’79 was louder than hell w/ people running here & there & back again. Now that center—which included art rock, hard rock, punk rock, funk rock, performance art, roots rock & all manner of rock that had influenced beginners & more experienced—had moved off into different genres at the fringe of the core.
It was quieter now, w/ loud pieces on the outside. The rockabilly or roots scene & what was sadly named “cowpunk” had one audience where it was a bit safer, a place where nonviolent or ethnic types didn’t need to worry about getting threatened or punched. The hardcore scene pulled some of the other original Hollywood punk bands & fans & hundreds of new people from the beach & San Fernando Valley into a swirling vortex. The truly adventurous art crowd went to downtown LA, found lofts & galleries, quieter roots music or experimental music bars & created more of an East Coast environment. By 1980 most of the core group of bands—The Weirdos, The Screamers, The Germs, Fear, The Go-Go’s, F-Word, Rik L Rik, The Bags, The Alley Cats, The Plugz, The Skulls, The Nerves, The Dickies, The Deadbeats, Black Randy & the Metro Squad, The Controllers, The Gears, The Gun Club, The Flesh Eaters, Black Flag, the Circle Jerks, The Minutemen, Rhino 39, Catholic Discipline, The B People, The Eyes & a few I might have missed—had moved on, swapped members, or quit altogether. Each of these groups had an identity that may not have been completely original or different from each other but, as a whole, made up an incredibly diverse & broad style of music. And though they didn’t always hang around w/ each other, they shared camaraderie in that they had been there at the beginning. That beginning may have been inspired by others, but it grew into something unique & extremely influential. There’s no doubt that San Francisco & San Diego influenced & contributed a great deal to this stew of California punk rock.
We had ripped through what seemed to be so very much in such a very short time. Somehow people from all over the US had found each other in Hollywood, California, the land of fruits & nuts. Each arrival & story had uniqueness. There were few enough of us so that we all stood out in some way. We gravitated toward the kindred souls that could make a band. The Canterbury parties before & after the Masque or for no reason but to hang out, make noise, get drunk & argue about ideas were always on. It happened late at night on the picnic tables outside Oki-Dog on Santa Monica Blvd. It happened hungover at Duke’s Coffee Shop beside the Tropicana or at Peaches Records on Hollywood Blvd or a corner pizza joint on Hollywood Blvd where we competed for high scores on the Playboy pinball machine. Sometimes it was only seven or eight people, sometimes 30 or 40. Everyone talked loud, smoked & drank & made outrageous claims about what might happen & what they might do. And somehow, through shitty jobs & asshole bosses, we found time to rehearse & places to perform those half-baked songs. Of that original “Hollywood 200,” everyone did something, whether it was make a fanzine, front a band, simply look outrageous, or all three. It took collaboration & will & maybe that’s why even now those survivors are proud & protective of that honor. By 1979 the Masque had been harassed out of existence by the cops from a couple of different locations. Five or six private halls had had their toilets or sinks ripped out by Black Randy or someone too high, too emotionally damaged, or just too pissed off to care. We had driven up & down the state to visit our rivals San Francisco & San Diego because no other opportunities existed in the middle of the state, or the country for that matter. The Masque promoted two infamous benefit shows at the Elks Lodge near downtown LA. One of them turned into an all-out police riot, clubbing dazed punk rockers as the cops stormed the building & the auditorium. More legit clubs like the Starwood & Whisky a Go Go had allowed some of us into their golden kingdom, where we didn’t have to bring our own PA systems, only to ban the more adventurous for bad behavior. Slash magazine came & went along w/ more than a few of its celebrities, but not before it inspired hundreds to start their own band, fanzine, art project, or at least take a stab at finding something to do that wasn’t status quo. As Slash became a record company, some found a home for their music. But when the magazine closed & Claude Bessy moved to England, it seemed there were fewer times for those spontaneous gatherings. Some of the groups & individuals who seemed poised for greatness just faded, either from lack of ambition or maybe talent or possibly lack of attention from the music business that we all didn’t care for in the first place. Maybe most of us were too weird & misfit for the world at large. Maybe it was a good thing we didn’t do more than make a bonfire in Hollywood for a few years, then pass the torch to a version of punk rock that was more uniform & willing to sleep on anyone’s floor, touring relentlessly under the SST or another DIY banner.
In 1978, after the Dangerhouse single “Adult Books” b/w “We’re Desperate,” X drove to & from New York to play only 3 shows (CBGBs, Max’s Kansas City & Studio 54) because we didn’t know of any other & there may not have been any other place to play in between. (Except one very sad pick-up “gig” w/ a broken-down Xmas tree—it was November—in Schwenksville, PA. Above the bar where we played for 20 or so people was an “apartment” where we could spend the night.) From ’78 to ’79 Club 88 & the Hong Kong Café opened & gave LA punk rock a more consistent home. Fear, The Germs, The Alley Cats, The Bags, The Go-Go’s, etc. all worked out the missing pieces of their songs in these 150-capacity bars. LA’s Chinatown, its broken-down courtyard, hokey wishing well, and Golden Pagoda Bar where we learned about the drink the scorpion became another hangout, a testing ground for punk rock. Seventy-five to a hundred punks hung around that courtyard every weekend for a year or two. Madame Wong’s welcomed the new wave bands. Blackie’s in Santa Monica also let some of the roots bands make a racket. The Whisky & the Starwood finally reopened its door to bands who could draw more than 100 people, but only after all these other venues proved that a movement was in their backyard. We thought that moving into legit clubs was what we wanted, but by walking into their world, we probably lost something in the bargain.
The LA Times, LA Weekly & Los Angeles Reader picked up on the new music & urged people to go out & find a style of music or band to love & they did. Now that the audience was bigger, they & the bands could afford to break off into genres & the bills where all manner of misfit bands playing together was becoming a thing of the past. Somehow amidst all this, Exene & I got married in Tijuana, where among the 25 friends who accompanied us, a couple of hotheads went to jail. Some local free newspaper ran a sensationalized account of the “crazed punk-rock wedding in TJ” & we were stung. A little more than a week later her sister was tragically killed in a car accident. Everything changed that night, though we didn’t realize it all at once & we began to pull inward. Six months later we released our first LP, Los Angeles, & X began touring the US regularly. The Go-Go’s finally got signed & released their debut. Then in December of 1980 Darby Crash ended his life at 22. We went on a US tour a week later. We weren’t even around for the memorial & that hurt. For a few groups who had more ambition & opportunities, tours became longer & more frequent. There didn’t seem to be the same people around when we returned. We all had grown tired of night-after-night parties & had seen the toll it took. We began to rely more on each other & a few close friends. We didn’t go to the after-hours club Zero Zero as much, a place where both The Germs and The Blasters could hang around w/ transvestites, artists, or other bands and desperate characters, a place where more than once I tried to talk Darby out of his final solution. By the end of ’82 X had two critically acclaimed records on Slash & were about to sign w/ Elektra Records, the home of Love, MC5, The Stooges & The Doors. We were sure we were on our way, but we had left more behind than we knew.