Punk Turns 30

Rocket From the Tombs featuring Cheetah Chrome will be one of the many fantastic bands playing in Brooklyn this weekend for the Dot Dash festival. Here's the line up and what it'll cost you at the door: Fri July 28 - $17 The Alarm Clocks! The Cynics The Original Sins The Hentchmen Turpentine Brothers Sat July 29 - $20 Rocket From the Tombs The Little Killers DC Snipers Angry Angles Imaginary Icons There's not a dud in there.... Of special note.... The Alarm Clocks are making their long-awaited return after 30 years on hiatus. Earlier this year, they played in Cleveland and at the Ponderosa Stomp in Memphis. Norton Records will be releasing the album they just recorded with ace producer, Freddie Fortune. I saw the Alarm Clocks in Memphis a couple months ago. If you're in NYC, you owe it to yourself to check this out. Turpentine Brothers from Boston Johnny Hentch of the Hentchmen from Detroit and on Sunday, at Union Pool....a double bill with The Reignin...

Here's an update for all of you who ordered this t-shirt .... I had my box of shirts sitting in my garage in California, ready to be opened and the shirts ready to be packaged and mailed. Then the main sewer line in my house backed up and flooded my whole ground floor and garage with what the insurance company euphemistically calls "black water." Just about everything that was downstairs got tainted. Including the box of shirts. So.... the insurance adjuster examined the damage yesterday. My t-shirt guy is printing more. Then he'll send them to me, and I'll send them to you. I'm so sorry for the delay in delivery.... but I figured you'd want your shirts clean. You can get em dirty in your own way...

When Pete Townshend wrote that lyric oh some 40 years ago, did he know he was writing a battle cry for a generation that went beyond his own? Surely he must have. But did he know that his own words could be turned against him when he turned 30, 40, 50... Obviously a metaphor for being young at heart, the lyrics to "My Generation" transcend a time/place fix....they suit anyone who's young at heart. Unfortunately, rock n roll has more than its fair share of young deaths. Punk rockers are no stranger to dying before they get old....from freaks like GG Allin to the conservative Johnny Ramone. In the words of punk rock poet Jim Carroll, here are people who died... they were my friends, but they died: Johnny Thunders Jeffrey Lee Pierce Darby Crash Stiv Bators Lance Loud Bryan Gregory Dee Dee Ramone Joey Ramone Johnny Ramone

Would you believe that the search engine topic that brings hordes of people to this site is not "punk rock" or any of the punk icons featured here - such as The Ramones, Stiv Bators, Dead Boys, or anyone else - but "punk haircuts." That's right. Every once in a while, I'll look at this site's statistics and find that the last 100 or so people who found it were looking for photos of "punk haircuts." The lady on the far right side of this photo is Connie Clarksville, hairdresser to the LA punk rock stars. She did the coiffures of everyone in this photo - Pleasant, Belinda Carlisle, and Dave Alvin. I've shown you photos of punk hair cuts before, I know --- but for all the newcomers, here is a punk hair cut fashion show just for you! Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook with his spiky 'do and Slits guitarist Viv Albertine with her punky reggae dreads are just two styles that UK punks sported. California versions of the spiky '...

The Dead Boys, punk pioneers from Ohio who took NYC by storm and made it, and CBGB their own. They are in the pantheon of punk rock for me. Of the few times The Dead Boys reunited since their implosion, they have always reunited with the original membership. In 2004, The Dead Boys reunited, and instead of finding a guest vocalist to perform their set in Stiv's place, Jimmy Zero and Cheetah Chrome took over vocalist duties. Yes... people would have gladly stepped in to sing on Stiv's behalf, but apart from the normal occurence of a musical friend coming on to guest anyway, The Dead Boys are the The Dead Boys: Stiv, Jimmy, Cheetah, Blitz and Magnum. To me, that's what carrying the torch is all about. Carrying on. I have mixed feelings about the Germs playing again. Mostly because Darby Crash was the focal point, the draw and the one whose lyrics seemed to galvanize the band's popularity. Without him, its just the Remaining Germs and an actor. Of course,...

Quick NOW, click on this link here and you'll go to the ARTHUR LEE BENEFIT AUCTION on eBay, sponsored by Allison Anders and the Don't Knock the Rock Film Festival she founded. Proceeds from these auctions will go to Arthur Lee who is battling acute lymphoblastic leukemia and the related medical bills. Every little bit helps. To help, I've donated 3 prints -- this one of Chrissie Hynde, and two with Stiv Bators, as you see above and below. They're all printed on 11x14 paper, the images are 9x12 and they're all signed and captioned. You can help by checking out the auction and if you see something you like, bid on it! Hey... get the action going! I'll tell you one thing about the prints I've donated. The Chrissie Hynde and live Stiv Bators prints will never be available for direct sale again! These are the last prints hand-printed by me. I think its worth it, if you're a collector OR a fan of Arthur Lee's.

Another unnecessary and untimely junkie death, Johnny Thunders. On Johnny's birthdate in 1981, Stiv, the Wanderers and I were all in NYC, on the Wanderers tour (NYC date with the Ramones! at the Palladium, also gone) and the night we arrived, Johnny's birthday party was going full swing and we joined in. Johnny's mom was there for a little while, and she gave him socks and underwear. She said those were the only things he wouldn't hock. Even she knew.... I knew it then that I was surrounded by a who's who of punk rock - it was Thunders, and the guys in his band, Walter Lure among them; the Wanderers - Stiv, Dave Parsons, Dave Tregunna, Rick Goldstein and Dean Klevatt, various members of the Ramones, and the Mayor of St Marks Place, the late John Spacely. Quite a lot of Stiv's lady friends were there, as well as the usual downtown NYC crowd. Dee Dee Ramone loved having Stiv around Dave Parsons and Stiv meet Jan Berry while on tour For all thei...

Vive La Revolution, etcetera! There is absolutely NO connection between the Welshman pictured here, John Cale, and the French Revolution.... however, one of my favorite of Cale's albums is "Paris 1919," which was a time of cultural revolution, what with the Dadaists and all.... or simply an excuse to post this most fave shot of Cale..... have a great weekend.

Here's half of Lobotomy, the brainless magazine, founder Pleasant, with man-about-town, Kid Congo Powers. Missing from this shot are co-founder Randy Detroit and art director Brad Dunning. As the photog and driver, I'm always in the shot because I took it! Ha! Anyway, I'm just sitting here on a library computer where I have but 60 minutes per day access to the internet - can't find no free wi fi where I am on my travels.... and it just got me to thinking HOW DID WE PULL IT OFF? Back in the 70s, we TYPED Lobotomy out! We cut up photos and pasted them on to our "layouts"---- it was so lo-fi and DIY, but it was the only way we knew how to do it. We took the pages to Charlie Chan's copy shop and then we stapled them together ourselves.... today - every magazine in the world that I know of is put together through computer aided design and emailed or FTP'd to the printer.... it feels like something's missing.... the footwork, I guess. ...

That ad from the Whisky ran in 1978, I'm pretty sure. It was right smack-dab in the middle of what are known as "halcyon days," though its not about the drug "halcyon," its about a dreamy time... when everything seems to good to be true. Then not long after these days start having more of the mundane, boring, even downright bad moments that we'd forgotten about and then we start to say, "the more things change, the more they stay the same..." Change is the only constant. That great moment in the 20th Century - from 1976 to about 1979/80 is really the heyday of LA punk. After that...well, it was less new, less cutting edge, less exciting and challenging. Black Randy and Stan Lee are pictured here - they fit in nicely with the ad... I've been thinking about Black Randy all day and what a crazy man but genius musician he was. "Trouble at the Cup" was one of the coolest records ever made. I've been looking for all the old ha...

That's right, if you love the Plimsouls, a fantastic live band always - and you're in and around San Francisco tonight, you've got a chance to see them play live at Cafe du Nord. Also on the bill are Magic Christian, whose members include rock n roll legends Cyril Jordan of the Flamin Groovies and Alec Palao from the Sneetches. I believe that Tubes drummer Prairie Prince is part of their normal line-up, but I'm not sure if he's still on the road with the New Cars.... That photo you see above was taken recently - last month, when the Plimsouls played in Nashville at the Mercy Lounge. It was taken by my life long friend, Joanna Spock Dean, who was an original LA Punk Rocker, putting in bass duties for Backstage Pass, the ladies who helped the Masque become what it did and who helped homeless traveling bands find a cozy couch from time to time (like the Damned. ) Spock is quite a great photographer in her own right. DO check out her stuff on fli...

This photo and a few others of Stiv are available. The very last prints from 2005's Punk Turns 30 tour can be yours. If you are interested, hurry and read this page as quantities are VERY LIMITED. But these prints are all available and ready to be mailed immediately. Email for more questions, if you have them.

After participating in a discussion at the Don't Knock the Rock Film Festival about all things punk.... I got to thinking, when the question was raised... "why is there no single punk rock narrative (film) out there?" Here's why: Punk is an Attitude. Punk was a Zeitgeist thing - that I've said a million times... it used to be the banner of this blog when it launched. Punk was DIY and as such... how could there be any one dominant narrative anyway? The whole DIY approach defies that! Go ask intellectuals like Donna Gaines, Dick Hebdige and a whole host of other people I've studied with or read.... Why is there a photo of Pete Townshend here? Well - many reasons. Today, I wanted to bring up all kinds of musicians who had that attitude we consider to be punk attitude. Pete Townshend wrote "My Generation," which was pretty much a galvanzing anthem that declared, "Hope I die before I get old." Well, Pete's old now, he...