My Punked Out In Whittier photos generated yet another strange loop last night. Blogger Matty Dread, who I mentioned a while back in a post about cardboard tikis, sent me this photograph of a band from Whittier called The Canz that he played in during the early 80s. Turns out that their guitarist was a mutual aquaintance of ours: Larry Lash, co-founder of Flipside magazine, who you can see in the photo sitting on top of the dumpster clutching a beer, and wearing a pair of very fashionable (for the Eighties) pants. Larry always was a snappy dresser. Dread is kneeling in front, wearing the plastic leis (even back then, he was tiki-inclined). He had no idea I'd written about Lash in my history of Flipside, which upped the serendipity/weirdness factor significantly.

I hadn't seen Larry since my 20th high-school reunion, so I was pretty happy when Matty gave me an e-mail address where I could contact him. We exchanged a couple of brief missives last night.

Like me, Dread was a prog-head before he became a New Wave kinda guy, and it appears that we have a mutual connection in that genre as well through another local band called Jester, that was fronted by a Whittier High alum named Eldin Green. Matty and Eldin are neighbors up in Northern California nowadays, and I had a friend named Russ, whose brother played bass for Jester. Damn, the music biz is even more incestuous than the computer industry.

Is that the Twilight Zone theme I hear playing?

[Link: Matty's 'blog, Behind the Eyeball]
[Link: Eldin Green]
[Link: Caught On the Flipside]
[Link: Punked Out In Whittier]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 7:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I've been working feverishly all week to preserve the old 35mm negatives I shot back in 1976-77, that chronicle the incipient punk scene in Whittier, California (such as it was). These photos feature long-forgotten bands playing private house parties for stoned, drunken teenagers, and I was there. Please revel in their proto-punk goodness, won't you?

[Link: Punked Out In Whittier]

While putting this photo album together, I experienced an extremely odd moment of serendipity: I had just uploaded a series of photos of a band at a house party in Pico Rivera. I couldn't for the life of me remember who they were, so I just called them "The Glam Corndogs" in my photo captions. Out of nowhere, an e-mail appeared in my inbox from someone named Dennis Catron who'd stumbled across my weblog while browsing Michele's Flipside magazine fan site [Link]. Dennis pointed me to the site he'd put together for his old band, the Mechanics [Link], and when I started looking at his photos I instantly realized that the Glam Corndogs and the Mechanics were one and the same! Turns out I'd photographed their very first party gig when they were called the L.A. Brats. Too, too weird!

I also received an e-mail from the Brats' bassist, Brett Alexander [Link], who filled in a few more blanks by pointing me to the current whereabouts of drummer Sandy Hancock [Link], and singer Scott Hooglin, who is busy playing with Rick Agnew's Poop [Link] these days (gawd, I loved saying that).

Posted by MrBaliHai at 8:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (5)

In 1977, Blondie and the Ramones toured L.A. for the first time, and I went to see both bands perform at the Whisky a Go-Go on Sunset Boulevard. I took a bunch of contrasty, grainy photos with a Nikon SLR loaded with Kodak Tri-X pushed to 1600 ASA, then developed the film in my friend Pete's darkroom. I decided to move them off my old website and into a new gallery today, so if you haven't seen them before, here they are for your edification. You'll note that a couple of shots are from Blondie's show the following year, when their original bassist, Gary Valentine, had been replaced by Frank Enfante.

[Link: Live at the Whisky a Go-Go]

Posted by MrBaliHai at 3:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (8)