Eddie Munoz Rocked My Sunday Night

A month ago, I started out on the first leg of my traveling photo exhibit, Unguarded Moments: Backstage and Beyond. In the past four weeks, I've been to Oxford, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee, Houston, Texas, Los Angeles, California, with pit stops in Little Rock, Arkansas to catch planes and busses, and of course... my home in the vineyard-covered hills of Santa Barbara county. Along the way, I've seen old friends and made new ones.

Last night at the party at La Luz de Jesus for PUNK 365, I saw a lot of old friends from back in the day, including Eddie Munoz of the Plimsouls and Magic Christian, featured in the photo above, on the left (Peter Case at the mic). I'm always pleasantly surprised by the relative frequency I actually do run into Plimsouls Eddie and Peter...

The last time I saw Eddie was in August at the Knitting Factory in Hollywood where we were both seeing Detroit's great rock n roll band, The Go. Eddie even bought records from them!

Peter and I manage to run into each other in far flung places such as Tennessee or Ohio or the much-more visible NYC... usually he's performing somewhere. Like Bob Dylan, Peter Case seems to be on a never ending tour.

What excites me the most though, is when my old friends and my new friends mix it up and I can hang with them at the same time. I can't tell you how thrilled I am that Peter Case and Ron Franklin have started sharing stages.

Eddie recently started playing with Magic Christian, a band I've had an on-going phone relationship with since my days in radio. They were already a super group when Paul Kopf told me about their first line-up and these days, Magic Christian boasts not just Eddie but Cyril Jordan of Flamin' Groovies fame and another dear, dear friend and drummer extraordinaire, punk rock's Most Valuable Player of All Time: Clem Burke.

This phenomenon is not unusual... musicians who respect one another always look for a chance to play together... but what does rock my world is when a new musical line-up comes along and its a new band of old friends who are playing as a band for the first time.

Something like that - old friends playing as a new band - happened Saturday night in Houston... not that the guys were my old friends, but they were each other's old friends. I just had to mention Texas again... in this whole Eddie Munoz mind-set I'm in... because this photo of Eddie from the Plimsouls record release party caused a bit of a stir...



because he's a Texan? I like to think because he's a Texas punk rock hero and those terms don't necessarily have to go together. That photo is now living happily in the collection of my new friend Rosa Guerrero, an ace photographer herself, and a DJ of a great punk rock radio show on KTRU 91.7 in Houston. She promoted the show at Sound Exchange and convinced the amazing Sugar Hill Studios to help us out, which they did to the tune of pizza and beer for all... it was a great in-store party just like the good old punk rock days used to be.

I can't believe that Rosa and I were able to wake up early enough after the festivities so I could catch my plane... that left Houston at the crack of dawn, literally. The rigors of traveling had me fairly exhausted, however the grown up but still punk rock vibe of Tony Kinman's Los Trendy during the party at La Luz really helped calm my frazzled nerves.

To all my Los Angeles friends and readers, the Punk 365 photos will be up at La Luz de Jesus Gallery til December 30th. La Luz/Wacko/Soap Plant really is your one-stop Christmas shopping spot... I wanted to buy all the cool toys and trinkets I saw... and if I wasn't traveling by train, I might have.

Many of the photos on display (including mine) are for sale! Visit La Luz de Jesus Gallery and check out what they've got from the Punk 365 show and their current exhibitions. There are some amazing things on their walls.