Punk Turns 30

REAL PUNKROCK BY REAL PUNKS! - BRING THE WHOLE FAMILY CUZ IT'S GONNA BE A GAS!! Chip Kinman, airborne. The Dils, 1978 cHip KiNMAn and Pch - "MY FIRST PUNK ROCK RECORD" - RECORD RELEASE PARTY!! THIS SAT. AUGUST 2nd - 6pm til 8pm - LA LUZ DE JESUS GALLERY - 4633 HOLLYWOOD BLVD. LOS ANGELES FREE SNAX DRINKS AND STUFF!!! - T-SHIRTS AND RECORDS FOR SALE!!! ChIP kInmaN and pCH WILL PERFORM THE ENTIRE RECORD WITH MAYFLY IS A LAYDEEBOT INTERPRETING THE SHOW FOR THE DEAF!!!! "A ROMPING NEW RECORD BY PUNK ROCK TRAIL BLAZER CHIP KINMAN"...L.A. WEEKLY WINNER OF THE PRESTIGIOUS 'LOUIE AWARD' FOR THE SONG "LOUIE LOUIE LOUIE"...LOUIELOUIE. NET DON'T MISS THIS SHOW. IF YOU'RE THERE YOU'LL BE TALKING ABOUT IT FOR YEARS...IF YOU'RE NOT YOU'LL SAY YOU WERE THERE SO YOU WON'T LOOK LIKE A LOSER!! Chip and Tony Kinman today with author and punk rocker Holly George Warren

Earlier this week, BBC News ran an article with the headline that Rock Drummers are 'Top Athletes' and ran a photo of Blondie drummer Clem Burke wearing a mask that presumably is some kind of measuring apparatus. The article discussed things like heart rate / beats per minute and stamina and all that sort of thing - full of double entendres the likes of which you remember and roll your eyes over - you know, the "drummers do it with a beat" or whatever... Seriously, I encourage you to click the BBC article link. It will make you laugh and also nod in agreement that it does take a lot of energy to pound the drums in a punk rock band. Here are a few drummers... Tommy Ramone - the Ramones played through their live set super fast and without so much as 30 seconds between songs. While it was Dee Dee Ramone who always counted off One Two Free Four , it was Tommy who kept the clockwork like precision of the power pop punk legends marching Gabba Gabba Hey in perfect ...

The Stranglers' Hugh Cornwell and an excited audience member with a wardrobe malfunction Hey, we may show mostly photos that are at least 30 years old, but we can't resist a contemporary news flash (pun intended) when we hear one.... The Stranglers "wardrobe malfunction" is posted in honor of the news that a federal appeals court today (July 21) threw out a $550,000 indecency fine against CBS Corp. for the 2004 Super Bowl halftime show that ended with Janet Jackson's breast-baring "wardrobe malfunction." Thank goodness for that! What harm, really, was done?

John Doe, a co-founder of X met his then-to-become paramour and partner, Exene Cervenka at a Venice Beach poetry workshop back in the mid-70s. They were and still are both literary and poetic people who plied the punk rock and led a charge resulting in the Los Angeles punk rock scene. Today, as I write this, John Doe is performing at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur, California. Check it out with a click here . I visited the Henry Miller Memorial Library back in 1993, the last time I took the long drive on Highway 1 (Pacific Coast Highway) from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Emil White, a friend, associate and the personal caretaker of Miller turned his own home into the memorial for his great friend in 1981 - a year after Miller died. It is full of Henry Miller relics and artifacts, art, videos he made and the obscura and memento mori that fascinate us all. Its appropriate that a renaissance man like John Doe finds himself performing there. The literary and poetic t...

On Paul Cook 's 13th birthday (20 July 1969), the American spacecraft Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. Less than a decade later, Cook's most high profile band, The Sex Pistols would have formed, toured their native England, made outrageous media headlines, finally arrive in the United States for a brief tour, and then break up pretty much immediately afterwards. What a year 1969 was... It was the year that Richard Nixon took office; 10 days later, The Beatles gave their last public performance - the famous one on the roof of Apple Records that's in the movie Let It Be. Not to worry though, for music would be forever changed again by a record released a couple weeks earlier - the eponymous Led Zeppelin debut album. Hard rock meets the blues = the birth of what would eventually become heavy metal. The Beatles would continue to influence people however... for in August (on the 9th - a day that would play a role in Nixon's future), the Manson family committed the grisl...

Norton Records & The A Bones' Billy Miller & me in Memphis photo by Windy Do Anything You Wanna Do is a punk rock era song by the punky pub rock band, Eddie & the Hot Rods. "Eddie" is songwriter Ed Hollis, whose brother Mark lead the pop-turned-proto-ambient band Talk Talk. I mention this record, these songwriters and bands because they are/were all Island Records/Music artists during my tenure at the firm. Island Records was always a dream job goal for me - ever since I was a teenaged Sparks, Roxy Music, Eno, Nick Drake fan. The Island Records imprimatur meant a lot when you were in a record store... if you were undecided about which record to buy with your limited funds, the Island label meant 9 times out of 10 that you'd love the record. The Plimsouls It was my friendship with The Plimsouls that lead to my job at Island. It was the place I had always wanted to work once I figured out you had to work. The Plimsouls' manager/producer, ren...

Piero, the French punk rocker from Perpignan Liberte Egalite et Fraternite! On this date in 1789, there was an uprising of the bourgeoisie in Paris, France's capital city. They stormed the Bastille and freed the scant seven prisoners (the infamous Marquis de Sade had been in the prison population, but was released on July 4, 1789... a mere ten days earlier), as the main purpose was to gather up (or liberate, as in steal) ammunition for battle. It was just the beginning of a 10-year period of social change in France... immortalized in literature and popular culture. I celebrated today by baking baguettes. Punk Turns 30 celebrates by sharing these images of French and French Canadien punk rock musicians. Ysael Pepin of Chocolat (in the picture, he was playing in Demons Claws and Mind Controls) and just around the corner from Ysael in the same room, I spied Ben from The Creteens with Demons Claws Piero. Piero had been in the Fatals and joined the Demons Claws on tour as keyb...

Every once in a while, its just more fitting to share with you emails I get from people than to re-write their message. Following (in italics) is one I received from Kristian Hoffman, and if you are one of the readers in the LA area, I urge you to attend this shindig! Living legend Paul Zone (The Fast, Man 2 Man, Violent World) lends his incredible collection of personal photographs of the New York Rock Scene from 1972-1977 - Blondie! Suicide! The Ramones! The New York Dolls! And of course - the Mumps! So come on down and enjoy the view - I will be your personal DJ , with punk rock nuggets and - of course! - some unapologetically pop psych that Paul and Miki Zone and I all adored at the time - and still do! PAUL ZONE: The New York Underground Scene From Glam to Punk 1972-1977 Opening reception Saturday July 12 from 7 to 11 pm Featuring Guest DJ Kristian Hoffman Drkrm. :: 2121 San Fernando Road :: Suite 3 :: Los Angeles, CA 90065 323.223.6867 :: www.drkrm.com :: drkrmgallery@gmail.com...

The Coral Sea , a live CD recorded by Patti Smith with My Bloody Valentine 's Kevin Shields was released today on PASK, a new imprint founded by Smith and Shields . It is a double-CD of their June 22, 2005 and September 12, 2006 performances at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. The collaboration was inspired by Patti's 1996 book of the same name, in which she paid poetic prose tribute to her dear friend, the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe ... the photographer who captured Patti's Baudelaire-invoking image on the cover of her debut album, Horses. I have been anticipating the release of this record for some weeks now, and I'm happy to hold it in my hands... its wonderful to read the positive reviews, such as the one in Pop Matters. But wait... there's more! Palm Pictures, the multi-media company formed by (one of my former employers) Chris Blackwell, of Island Records fame, has announced the theatrical release of photographer Steven Sebring's direc...

In 1974, proto-punk rockers, The New York Dolls were, according to frontman David Johansen, "briefly under the management of an English haberdasher." That haberdasher would be one Malcolm McLaren, who took back to London the Dolls and other New York underground band's style and attitude, and translated it into clothing for the shop he and fashion design business partner, Vivienne Westwood owned in the Kings Road... SEX. It is a very British thing...just like The Beatles and Rolling Stones did with American R&B influenced rock music - that is: loving the American thing, taking it back home, reinterpreting it and invading the USA with its own culture and making more hay than the originals... In 1975, McLaren was managing a band that would morph into the Sex Pistols. McLaren and Johnny Rotten strolling down Sunset Blvd. in Los Angeles, post-Sex Pistols break-up, 1978 In 1976, on the very historic date of July 4 - the United States Bicentennial - The Ramones ...

Joanna Spock Dean and Alejandro Escovedo Nashville, TN, 2008 Yesterday was my roommate's birthday. Spock is my roommate. That's her in the photo above with Alejandro Escovedo. Both of them, in their own way, are an essential part of the glue that held together punk rock back in the mid 70s. Spock was a member of the all-girl punk rock / glam group Backstage Pass. They had a short-lived career but their highlights were amazing... they opened for Elvis Costello at the Whisky A Go Go, which was his Los Angeles debut... and they were the people behind the scenes that enabled Brendan Mullen to open the Masque. When The Damned were unceremoniously kicked off Television 's tour in April 1977, Backstage Pass got them a gig, but even more helpful, lodged them all across the couches, floors and spare rooms of the girls in the band and their friends. If Almost Famous called such die-hard and helpful girl fans "Band Aids," then the ladies of Backstage Pass wrote...