L.A. Punk Has a Sense of Humor, Too

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


the-smell180.gif

The New Yorker has a great piece this week about how punk rock is again flourishing in Los Angeles, which in the early 80s was home base for a slew of Southern California’s influential punk and hardcore bands like Black Flag, X, and the Weirdos.

Sasha Frere-Jones describes a vibrant new scene that resides primarily in a small, dingy, downtown Los Angeles space called The Smell, where a close-knit group of friends hang out, play punk-influenced music, make T-shirts, and release one another’s records. I know the space well. While living in L.A. in the early 2000s, I saw a handful of shows there, including some extremely noisy and exciting performances by Nels Cline, before he joined the ranks of Wilco.

But to truly expose L.A.’s current punk scene, I’d be remiss if we didn’t also mention an equally important venue in the Highland Park area (sort of between Hollywood and Pasadena) called Mr. T’s Bowl, a former bowling alley that is now home to a funny, dorky, and quirky L.A. punk contingent.

Mr. T’s Bowl is where I’ve seen bands like the Mormons, who wear short-sleeved, white, button-up shirts with black ties, bicycle helmets and backpacks, and go berserk on stage while playing a hybrid of punk and hardcore. The band recently performed at Coachella (Southern California’s annual music festival) by meandering through the crowd with a bullhorn and portable amplifiers on wheels.

Mr. T’s Bowl also introduced me to Third Grade Teacher, a band made up of two men and two women who dress up in Catholic school garb and pretty much go wild on stage while playing loud, fast music. The club’s endorsement of hyper, nonsensical, punk-influenced music continues in 2007. This month, the club’s calendar includes Stab City, whose wry MySpace tagline is “You’re nobody ’till somebody kills you,” and who claims to play an oddball mix of grime, blues and crunk. Also billed this month is Artichoke (tagline: “cool locally, warm globally”), who do a happy, acoustic cover of the Sex Pistols’ “Anarchy in the UK.”

The best part about these and other punk clubs in the area? From what I’ve seen, a lot of people who show up to watch the shows come prepared to participate, whether that means dancing, heckling (in a friendly sort of way), or jumping on stage with the band, which to me is a good sign of a scene flourishing.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate