El Paisano
February 24, 1978

[ Portal Home ]

By Jeff O'Neill

Some see punk rock as a hype, some as a farce, others as grist for the mill of certain journalists and TV documentary makers; many don't see it at all. For the staff of the growing Whittier-based punk rock magazine Flip Side, it's a business. In an interview with the writers (five of the six are Whittier High grads) quasi-publisher and Rio student Sam Diaz proclaimed, "FlipSide is death to disco and commercial music." 

The writers,with their various punk aliases - Al, Dean Dead, Larry Lash, X-8 Sam and Pooch - experience punk in L.A. and live to write about it. Created last July, this pamphlet-sized monthly rag (25 cents) has emerged to be the vanguard of the Los Agneles punk rock scene - brandishing record and concert reviews and interviews with local bands, separated by murky montages and lettering at odd angels. Popping off at random, the Flip Side writers variously described punk rock as: "A rejection of all morals," "disorder," "an escape, like watching TV," "We tear down the walls that they put up." "Punk Rock is total commitment, it's audience participation. It's not sitting in the back of a 10,000 seat arena, loaded and not caring," said Al, a punk to the core. 

The participation equals a horde of punks in front of fast and harsh bands like the F-Word, Deadbeats, and the Screamers - as seen at the Whiskey in Hollywood last week-jumping up and down, as if having grand mal seizures. Even though, there are some sitting back loaded, much to the dismay of the Screamers' vocalist who sarcastically rebukes the crowd like a high school football coach. The ones in front answer by spitting up at him. As accessories to this cult and not merely detached observers, the Flip Side staff unflinchingly hold up the magazine as mirror to punk phenomena. 

Flip Side is, if not purposely, tolerably messy, looking at times like alphabet soup spilled on the photo album of some family with degenerative genes - a zoo of punks snarl out of dark, rudely cut pictures; a few look like autopsy photos; the irregular lettering you'd expect to find on a ransom note.  The writing at best is colloquial, much of it vulgar. Vomit is a recurrent topic. (Three different printers have refused to publish Flip Side; one in Whittier called it "off-color, tacky, and obscene.") Faced with the charge of critics that the staff couldn't write itself out of a pay-toilet, Al argued, "We don't try to write, we just talk." 

Indeed, Flip Side is purposely a conversational form. The record reviews are a brainstorming of the staff in dialogue form, the concert reviews anecdotal, the interviews impulsive and ribald. In fact, anything literate is discouraged. Al Gestured to Pooch, a sort of hippie cum punk rocker, "He's an English major but we don't let him write a lot. Anything, he writes we screw up." They won't even let him capitalize; most everything's typed in small letters, which is not to be rebellious, I learned, but rather because no one on the staff can type. But still, Flip Siders strain to show the significance of punk as a cult of rebellion and even go to the trouble to learn some of the words of the trade- avant garde, nihilism (Sam said wryly, "We're very pseudointellectual"). They pay lip service to the "philosophy of punk," but fall back on the advice of a poem they published by D.H. Lawrence about revolution: "Do it for fun." 

Most likely the phenomenon is little more than a generational thing that happens in cycles, but is nevertheless important to punks as their turn at the mutonous helm. Al told of some recent goings-on "When we got him (an indulgent staffer) away from the police, we went to Spires and threw food all over." Pooch said, as if to extenuate, "Richie Blackmore did that eight years ago." Al quickly added, "Yes, but we did it more recently." However ridiculous Flip Side may seem, when one considers the alternatives - the Channel 7 News, People Magazine, Robert Hilburn - it looks better all the time. Insofar as it is a radical diversion from the prepackaged, predigested it serves as a philosophy, crude though it may be. 

In a not wholly absurd statement, Al put it this way, "When you think about it, most philosophers were punk rockers in fact, except that the music wasn't there." Now the music is here. Al told how punk rock has incubated, "Rock and roll is so removed from the audience right now that you can't go to a concert and actually see the band - you have to sit in a big arena. And you can't talk to the people in the bands on the streets or at the clubs." "When you want to see something loud, hard and fast in 1978, you go to a punk rock concert," Sam added. The Flip Siders said that the violence of punk is somewhat overemphasized, but it exists and flares up occasionally as it did at the Troubadour a couple of weeks ago. "The punks in Hollywood literally tore the joint apart. Benches, chairs, tables flew everywhere across the room," Sam said. "Not to mention candles and drinks," Al interjects. The staff hints that the birth of their mongoloid of a publication may be evidence of this country's increased age and the beginning of her decline, which is not all together far fetched. Al sets a scenario that when today's sixth graders reach college age, they will face more strangling economic conditins. "there's no futhre for those kids. That's why punk rock's ahead of it's time." This is the last generation - playtime ", Same deadpaned. 

Punk seems to be continuing to grow and move into the suburbs, already rearing its head in certain degenerative pockets (the Rio Hondo area). Sam started a band called the Novas, with lyrics "Don't kill me, I'll do it myself!" I came away impressed with the Flip Siders' knowledge of the mushrooming L.A. punk scene and their reckless individuality. One may grimace at first sight of their style, but it serves its purpose - to be a stark reflection of L.A. punk. You either take it or leave it. What they have to say is clear enough, breezy and sometimes funny. One of the highlights in the making of Flip Side is an interview in which a band member of the Germs, Bobby tells in surprisingly literary terms,".... there's a bridge that goes to nowhere cause they're supposed to lower it for boats and you go out to the end and jump off right, and you can swim and it's so great cause it's dark, you know, and you can just swim and it doesn't matter if you live or die or anything just swim and swim and you can feel the fish nibbling at your feet... (sic.)"