#la punk

[hollywoodreaper]

Johnny Volatile (R.I.P.) on the roof of 1825 N. Ivar / Hollywood, CA 2004

[slashdementia7734]

MAU MAU'S // HOLLYWOOD

[slashdementia7734]

[BABY] FEAR.

[nobrashfestivity]

‘Pass The Dust, I Think I’m Bowie!’: True tales of Black Randy, first wave Los Angeles punk icon

The many roads that led to the happening that was to be referred to as "punk" are varied and often way more interesting than punk itself. It

[slashdementia7734]

[laarteoscura]

One of the few humans I can relate to

[bitter69uk]

“In retrospect, it’s easy to dismiss the Germs as the epitome of LA’s early identipunk scene. Singer Darby Crash was a barking spiky-haired brat, an alarming adolescent combination of Johnny Rotten’s snarling vocal ferocity and Sid Vicious’ self-destructive cool. Three years after the band’s first live performance (at the Whisky in 1977), Crash died of a drug overdose, reportedly self-inflicted in morbid tribute to Vicious’ own fatal OD in 1979.”

/ From The Trouser Press Record Guide, 1985 /

Died 45 years ago today: feral frontman of Los Angeles punk band the Germs, Darby Crash (aka Bobby Pyn, real name: Jan Paul Beahm, 26 September 1958 - 7 December 1980). “He was Johnny Rotten and Sid Vicious rolled into one, a befuddled punk prophet with a brilliant mind,” Chris Campion writes in “Darby Crash: Saint Anger” in the October 2014 edition of Dazed Digital. “Darby Crash presided over the birth of the LA punk scene in 1977 and signaled its demise with his own self-inflicted death three years later. His was a vision of chaos that would never come to pass but left in its wake a legacy of destruction and one fiery punk classic, the Germs' 1979 Joan Jett-produced album, G.I.” Swallow a fistful of ‘ludes, give yourself a Mohawk, smear yourself in peanut butter and blast “Forming”, “Lexicon Devil” or “Media Blitz” LOUD today in Crash’s memory!

[randomvarious]

Flyboys - "Theme Song" Burns From the Valley of the Sun Song released in 1980. Compilation released in 1991. Punk Rock

Like so many other seminal L.A. punk bands of their ilk, The Flyboys didn't end up leaving behind much of a recorded discography that people could absorb, but despite that lack of output, they were still key cogs in a hugely vital and revolutionary local movement, that, much like the original era of American-made rock & roll that'd inspired it, embodied an enthralling 'live fast, die young' attitude for a new generation of righteous nihilists who'd all been born right around the same time that the original rock & roll generation's initial flames had been fully sparked themselves. Having formed in a downtown LA suburb in 1975, before the first American punk wave had even officially hit, the Flyboys would soon blend their rockin' ways into the L.A. punk underground's raw and drug-addled fabric, and despite losing their frontman David Wilson to a car crash soon after the band had just opened for The Go-Go's and Avengers in early '78, they still pushed on into the new decade, waving their final studio goodbye by christening the deeply impactful Frontier Records with a self-titled 12-inch. In a way, the Flyboys were one of the bands who helped to bridge a gap between L.A. punk's first wave and the emergence of local hardcore acts, because even though they couldn't really be credibly classified as hardcore themselves, the bands that soon released stuff on Frontier after them all turned out to be hardcore legends: Circle Jerks, Adolescents, T.S.O.L., and Suicidal Tendencies.

So, here's the final track off of the Flyboys' final studio release, a super catchy instrumental called "Theme Song" that simply reimagines killer surf rock as anthemic punk instead, but rather than fuse the two genres together—like some of their peers had been doing—makes sure to only echo surf rock's heyday through a full-on two-guitar punk rock setup. You can still visualize the same massive, beautiful, cerulean waves forming, cresting, and then crashing onto the sun-drenched SoCal shore as you listen, but now there's an unmistakably fiery and freshly energized attitude that coats it too, and man, is it terrific, as the short, main riff loops on repeat, and each repetition lulls you further and further into a state of satisfied hypnosis 😌😵‍💫.

Such a total rousing banger of a swan song from this less remembered band who were nevertheless fixtures of punk rock's original Los Angeles scene 🤘. Don't sleep on it!