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Welcome to the War Zone: The Suburbs Strike Back
By Jonathan Formula
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| The original article is way too long to reprint in its entirety. It isn't until about half way through that it even begins to talk about the beach scene and since this is a "Vanguard vs. beach punks" discussion and I'm about to come down with Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from typing, I'm cutting to the chase and only retyping the relevant portions. Believe me, even with the relevant portions I'll be lucky if you make it through the entire article. Damage was a S.F. based publication so its long on artful context before you get to the meat. In any case I apologize if this seems to jump a bit as I'm trying to keep this article close to the vest of our discussion. The zine did run a disclaimer. | |
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FORWARD & DISCLAIMER First off is the matter of "credentials." The intent of this article is not to sensationalize or cop attitudes about the "beach punk phenomenon" as has been done in other publications. Rather, it is an attempt to get more of the truth out about the musical/cultural changes that have been taking place in LA for the past few years. So the personal dilemma I have encountered is whether someone like myself, who doesn't live in Southern California and who is at least a decade older than the people I am writing about, is "qualified" to do it. One of the problems implicit in magazines is the limited amount of time available to research something thoroughly. This ain't the Encyclopedia Britannica, droogie. With an unpaid staff and zero budget, this magazine has to put up with writers who actually refuse assignments! And also with truckloads of manuscripts describing Blondie's latest outfits or the burgeoning punk scene in Elk's Face, Wyoming. So, I'm doing it because I feel like it, and if you alert and committed readers, spot gaping holes in my knowledge, or if I forgot to mention your band, or your town, or have anything to say at all on the matter, the editor of this noble stalwart hankrag has assured me repeatedly that your letters of rebuttal amendement, supplementation or basic piss'n'moaning will be printed in the very next issue. So if you don't like it, write it yourself! (Unfortunately, I don't have Issue #12 so I can't print the letters that most certainly filled the pages of the letters section following this expose'. And at this juncture, let me describe a bit of what I cut out. The writer is discussing the complexities of Los Angeles and the many cities contained within the greater Los Angeles area. He states that due to the diversity of the cities that make up the LA punk scene, the LA media doesn't even attempt to get it right in terms of discussing the cultural nuances of the Los Angeles punk rock scene. The article also features a profile of Black Flag's precursor band, SWA, and following this is the beginning of the dissertation on Huntington Beach, which is where we will pick up the story. - Michele)
Swastikas on the other hand, are quite visible, especially among the subgroup of kids who live in the
Huntington Beach area, the militant minority responsible for the public relations effect of getting
all the bands and all the kids branded as "beach punks."
Huntington Beach is a traditional surfing town, some 40 miles south of LA, in Orange County,
the richest county in the world and a genuine WASP wealth, power and reactionary politics ghetto.
What happened is no more complicated than a few kids, in late '76 or '77, picking up on bands like
the Sex Pistols, and telling their friends about it. The surf/skateboard culture has always been
very much a movement towards freedom, and an escape from repressive or just plain stupid parents,
schools, churches and police. People are very physical in that part of the world, and once punk
was accepted by the surf/skate crowd, a new form of release was found and it was logically and
naturally expressed in very physical terms.(Wow, this guy is using
Eugenics to explain the cultural differences between HB and the rest of LA - this takes the
cake! - Michele)
The beach crowd, Huntington specifically, is endowed with a reputation both for fighting and fierce,
clique-ish devotion to each other. For awhile, there was almost a gang feeling to their approach.
And, naturally, they were made the scapegoats for everything that annoyed the sedate and complacent:
They were called naive, illiterate, stuck in 1977 because of their style of dress, ultra-violent.
The violence did exist, and continues too, but in recent days there is much less regionalism and
what appears to be a riot is simply a crowd of people blowing off their own frustrations. People
are bashed around, and occasionally real fights break out, but they are generally non-critical
and end with both parties jumping back into the characteristic beach dancing fray: A sort of
slow, vulpine prowl, arms pumping, elbows flying back, knees and feet lifted in a kind of rhythmic
skip. There is usually a hard core of these dancers in the middle of the floor right in front
of the stage, and when things get real wild, a few of them get up on stage and literally dive
into the swarm of bouncing, kicking, pummeling bodies, like espontaneos at a bullfight.
No one has bothered to point out that this activity is no more violent than football, which is
a noble American sport, and a whole lot less violent than any given heavy metal gig anywhere,
any time. Another fact that is omitted from the reports is that a large percentage of the
people bashing away in the thick of the ritual are young women, whereas heavy-metal is almost
exclusively a working-class male province.
And the class angle is the most telling. Most of these kids are normal, middle-class high school
students, almost all white. Many of them are children of Love Generation parents, who either
despise their look and attitutdes, or else are tolerant of them, causing the kids to push them
even harder. And you did wonder what the hippies' kids would turn out like, didn't you?
But for the most part, they are "normal" teenagers who have embraced punk as the best way to
release their anger at the futures that are presented to them. The beach punks are flexing
their muscles, and taking the heat from the masses of kids from the Valley, and all the other
suburban communities they come from. The beach punks are the risk-takers. They are learning.
They are not as stupid as you may think they look, and if the jostling ruins your fun, you're
probably non-SWA anyway, so fuck off.
Black Flag is one of the foremost among the bands the young suburban punks follow. Others are
the Circle Jerks, the Skrewz, the Adolescents, the Descendents, China White, Social Task, True
Sons of Liberty, Middle Class. There are also hardcore punk bands in East L.A. like the Stains,
The Undertakers and the Brats. Yes, they are Chicanos, and yes, they play punk rock.
According to some sources, a lot of the bands could be described as playing Black Flag at 45,
not to say there isn't a high degree of individualism in the scene. But Black Flag were a
seminal influence on Southern California music - the real thing that's happening in the sleazy
clubs, at parties- not the bands that are paraded thorugh the pages of the LA weekly and ProFun
as the new darlings of new wave.
So there is a huge underground music scene in LA that even the local media can't quite fathom.
Slash was one hope but no one knows when the next issue will out, and Flipside is the only other
fanzine operating at the moment. Other sporadic rags have come and gone and may come out again,
like Panic, No, Oh See (from Orange County), Brendan Mullen's Slush and Youth Party, but coverage
for this scene is badly distorted, and justice isn't done to the bands or their fans or the values
they claim to stand for.
The first signs of the coming tide were seen at a club in Redondo Beach in the summer of 1980 -
the Fleetwood. Mau-Mau's, Red Cross, Fear, X, Skrewz, Dead Kennedys and Middle class as well
as Black Flag played the Fleetwood. Other bands that played but were not received as well as
the above were Chiefs, Plugz, Agent Orange, the Go-Gos... before the Fleetwood, it was tough
for suburban bands to get gigs, so they were snubbed by the hipper-than-thou Hollywood scene.
The main HB club is the Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa. The Skrewz, China White and a few others
play there, and at parties, and a whole new "scene' exists, out of sight of even supposedly
tuned-in observers.
According to Black Flag's Chuck, the HB crowd are "just hectic, not malicious."
Most people regard them as dangerous. Chuck states that his feeling is that pot-smoking jocks
are more violence-prone than the skateboard punks of HB. For the most part, excessive violence
is perpetrated by security forces at clubs who don't know exactly what's going on, but can sense
the lack of any respect for authority and see a whole lot of pushing and shoving and rowdy fun,
not like the nice new wave gigs with the meek little Day Glo people who cringe when they're
told "Calm down or get out."
A good example is the recent Black Flag/Stiff Little Fingers show at the Stone in SF during the
Western Front. The security ran amok when people in the back stood on chairs to see better,
and their way of asking them to spare the furniture was to drag people off the chairs by their
hair, drag them out the emergency doors into the alleyway and kick the living shit out of them.
Jonathan, a burly black man with a salt-and-pepper beard who worked the front door of the club
that night dressed in Ranger Tom Event-Security drag, told us that he works a lot of big arena
heavy-metal shows, and that what goes on at punk shows is tame.
The behavior of the security squad that night was enough to seriously mar the evening for most
of the crowd, and those who were physically abused by drooling troglodytes in the management's
employ may have a serious grudge.
But up to now, information about the beach punks has been secondhand and filtered through any
number of biases. Following are excerpts from a taped interview with a group of kids who came
up to SF one weekend this summer to see the Circle Jerks and Black Flag at a couple of local
gigs. While they were here, they managed to cause mini-riots everywhere they went, got into no
end of fights, and gave the locals something new to piss and moan about for weeks. One of the
bunch - or his parents - is allegedly suing the Mabuhay Gardens for injuries sustained by a
Budweiser-bottle-wielding patron who was not in the least amused by the treatment he was
receiving from this youth-cultural vanguard. In any case, here are some beach punks speaking
for themselves. (The writer was interviewing a group. It appears the way
the writer has separated comments made by different people is with the use of ellipses "...." - Michele)
On the Definition of Terms and the Scene:
On Religion:
On Fashion:
On Hand-to-Hand Combat:
Defensive Dancing:
Incident at the Starwood Featuring Mike Marine:
Statement A:
The Time the Anti-punk Committee Showed up at the party:
Blue Suede Shoes:
The Cause:
Word Association Test:
The side of the story we haven't examined yet is the set of reactions to the suburban
punk craze on the part of people who aren't directly involved but are certainly being
affected. The overall feeling among some of the Hollywood crowd who are older and more
"sophisticated," is slightly ambiguous dismay and disgust.
Some strong opinions and analyses are also voiced by denizens of other cities, who experience
the apparent chaos and mob rule at gigs played by the new breed. It's frightening, they say,
to see all these kids who basically look like jocks in punk drag taking over the floor. It's
boring, they say, to see their vintage London '77 style of dress and their vintage ultra-snot
attitudes. Some refuse to go to gigs they know will result in the unruly horde. Possessed by
mob mentality, being the main attraction, even more so than the bands themselves. the latest
trend, we're told is for as many audience members as can fit to get up on stage and just
stand there, eliminating the barrier between performer and audience in a basic, brutal way,
and after that, what's the point of having a band at all?
As far as cause and effect, some feel that the fact of recent exposure to punk music, styles
and political stances are what have resulted in the fervor displayed by the suburban kids. Another
opinion favors a less intellectual motivation, although those factors may be of secondary importance,
emphasizing the deeply-implanted love in all American youth of group activity, real or dramatized
violence, rebellion, fuck-authority attitudes and wild parties.
My own view is that the new breed of young teenage punks represents a new expression of an
all-American, even a universal, human adolescent condition: the condition that was
hypothesized
by James Dean in Rebel Without A Cause; the condition of youthful alienation, powerlessness,
frustration and disgust with oppressive authority that exists among people of that age group
in every culture.
(I'm going to end it here. This is continues on for 3 more full-length finely-typed 11x17"
pages - and goes off into a tangent giving a blow by blow account of the riot at the Hideaway,
as well as a good account of the DOA/Black Flag "riot" at the Whisky, etc. At some point, I will type up the
remainder of that article for those who are interested in reading accounts of those riots. - Michele)
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They are the ones accused by the queasier writers of the LA Times, LA Weekly etc. of "ruining good
shows for the rest of the people," the ones who were the subjects of Patrick Goldstein's infamous
Times article playing up the horrid violence and unruliness. Essentially, the beach punks,
"Aitch Bee," (for Huntington Beach) are simply the advance guard of a movement that is spreading
throughout Southern California high school people and if California is the trendsetter for the
nation, will soon be visible among kids in that vast, uncharted marsh of middle-class desolation
between the coasts.