Punk Turns 30

As the garage/trash rock part of punk rock began to gain a foothold among mainstream music fans, hardcore started poking its head out and beyond its subcult audience... in Los Angeles, the South Bay was nurturing this movement, as was Orange County, with LA's own Germs laying the foundation for that movement at the dawn of the LA punk era... Over in the UK, the Oi and Skinhead subcults presented lads with much more dystopia to protest, resulting in a vibrant genre of music. Thirty years ago this week, 999 brought the Oi to Los Angeles, playing the Whisky and Orange County's Cuckoo's Nest. Ironically, my favorite image of them is this one, above, arriving at their Tower Records in-store in a town car. That's punk.

Darby Crash of the Germs - who I credit for inspiring hardcore Over the weekend, I was relaxing in front of the TV set with my friend, Jackie Sharp, who was (and still is) a principal in Target Video, the collective that I always refer to as the San Francisco punk rock version of the Factory (as in Warhol, and not like Tony Wilson's record label). We were watching American Hardcore and reminiscing about the old punk days and the birth and rise of hardcore. We even joked to ourselves that we were a couple of middle aged women watching punk rock on TV and laughed out loud at the reality that since Punk is 30... PUNKS themselves are 45+.... Mike Watt, Evan Foster, Michael Kastelic, 2004 Hardcore has always been a difficult one for me...it was hard core... literally rough and violent and way too much for a girl to withstand. And in watching American Hardcore and seeing all the footage, Jackie and I were noticing that the scenes in Washington, DC and other non-California venues d...