“I didn’t throw a tampon at Ian MacKaye but I told him, “I threw it at your audience ’cause they suck!” –Alison Wolfe
“I didn’t throw a tampon at Ian MacKaye but I told him, “I threw it at your audience ’cause they suck!” –Alison Wolfe
“It seeps into your bones. That’s why I haven’t tried to be anything by myself. And I just figured out that it’s punk that’s for me.” –Charly, Pedal Strike
“Being reliable is good when you’re doing things you want to do, but being a bit donkey headed is an asset when you get to the part that is difficult, tiresome, and dull.” –Jean Smith, Mecca Normal
The Warriors are East Los Angeles’s least Chicano, most important, exceedingly groundbreaking, and utmost implausible of unsung hero bands; yet their core, side, and guest members (and punk trainees) read like a biblical “who’s who” list of their more famous posterities hailing from east of the bridges that separate the eastside from the rest of Los Angeles.
“Pipe Bomb played around two or three in the morning, and you called somebody out because they had brushed their teeth.... why are you minty-fresh at two am?! ...What’s wrong with you?” –Basement Benders
I cut my teeth on punk in the late ‘80s, early ‘90s. It was a scarier time at shows and I don’t miss the violence. I think it’s stupid to romanticize people getting stabbed, rat-packed, curbed, and crippled to prove that punk was dangerous or a threat. Yet I still sometimes crave nastiness in the music itself—unapologetic, raw-meat, acid-in-the-wound, life-is-fucked, punch-a-koala, it-won’t-get-better hardcore punk. -Todd
Triangulate Low Culture, Tiltwheel, and RVIVR and you’re in the vicinity of Iron Chic. It’s emotionally honest, strident DIY punk.
“The trends may come in waves, consuming the inexperienced, but authenticity was there the whole time. Calm, collected, sitting on the beach with a boombox and a cooler, watching the show.” –Daryl
“…it falls to us as punks and as reasonable, curious people, to seek out the histories that aren’t readily available.”
“What is DIY if it isn’t living one’s life as a life of action?”
Benny The Jet Rodriguez reminds me of the ninety-nine percent of L.A. that never gets on TV. They sound like morning haze burning off and giving way to 326 days of sunshine, cracks in the sidewalks from the roots of trees, 1960s AM radio, and Mexican food in strip malls. Simple pleasures.
Trans Punks: featuring interviews by Susan de Place with Kale Edminston (Nervous Nelly Records, Nashville Transit zine), Shannon Thompson (Nervous Nelly Records), Mars Dixon (Aye Nako), and Sadie Smith (Peeple Watchin’, G.L.O.S.S.).