Punk in the Shadow of War

Abstract As punk reformulated topics and modes of resistance in the late 1970s, the impact of wars in Southeast Asia, as well as continuing histories of imperialist aggression elsewhere, served as a way for Los Angeles's racially and sexually diverse punk scene to imagine itself as resistant through (sometimes simultaneous) affiliation with and disassociation from the state, military, and acts of capitalist violence. This article reimagines the context for punk's politics by following racial, residential, and economic patterns, the influx of refugees, and the subsequent reimagination of punk spaces such as Hollywood, the Canterbury Apartments, and Chinatown to trace themes of race, sexuality, and violence. Keywords: punkdiasporaLos AngelesChinatownVietnam Warrace Acknowledgements "Living at the Canterbury," words and music by Jane Wiedlin. Copyright © 1995 by Universal Music – MGB Songs. International copyright secured and all rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard Corporation. The author would like to thank the organizers of "The Message is in the Music: Hip Hop Feminism, Riot Grrrl, Latina Music, and More" at Sarah Lawrence College for inspiring the first version of this article; my anonymous reviewers for their insightful guidance; the editorial board of Women Jeremy and Ian Brigstocke for letting me listen to their records; the inspiring Lisa Cacho for reading early drafts and offering the wisdom to help me pull it all together; the brilliant Ruth Nicole Brown for trying not to talk to me over computers and coffee; the unflappable Soo Ah Kwon for staring at me while I worked and otherwise encouraging my finishing of this piece with her generosity and always good advice; the super awesome Elizabeth Stinson for encouraging when others may have discouraged and for reading draft after draft after draft after draft; and Mimi Nguyen for sharing her genius, and for being a steadfast supporter, a careful commenter, and the best one I know. Notes 1. Graham (Citation1977). 2. "By the early 1980s," Juan Gonzalez notes, "Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua were all engulfed in wars for which our own government the United States bore much responsibility." Gonzalez also notes that many of the indigenous troops were trained at the US Army's School of the Americas in Panama during the early 1980s. Arms deals of the period came to the unflattering light during the Iran-Contra Affair. See Gonzalez (Citation2000, 132, 138). 3. Hebdige (Citation1979, 30–45); Gilroy (Citation1987, 120–30); Habell-Pallán (Citation2005, 147–80); Nguyen (Citation2012a, 217–23); and Nikpour (Citation2012). 4. Ngô (forthcoming). 5. There has been a continuing debate over the meanings of race, for instance, between the Central Hollywood scene and the East L.A. scene that also addresses the heterogeneous population of the city. Former Masque owner turned oral historian Brendan Mullen argues, for example, that the multiraciality of the Hollywood scene would seem to preclude racial revisionist readings of punk since he credits Chicanos as being a big part of his success. In contradistinction, the organizers of the art exhibit, "Vexing: Female voices of Los Angeles punk," staged at the Claremont Colleges, created the show in order to highlight the marginalized voices of Chicana punks from the East Los Angeles scene. Cultural theorist Josh Kun likewise argues that the Los Angeles River provided a dividing line for Racial difference in geographical terms, where the Hollywood scene was quite separate from the scene at a community center and performance space situated in East Los Angeles called the Vex, incidentally the site of another punk riot in 1980. Alternately, George Lipsitz has argued that the Hollywood scenes and the East Los Angeles scenes existed as a kind of bricolage, where members shared the same stages, musical influences, and, consequently, garnered new ways to create politicized culture across racial and geographic lines. To understand the complexities of racial and other discourses of difference, I think it is important to consider the truth of all these points of view: evidence from the time suggests that multiraciality was not something that was simply about democratization or racism. Brendan Mullen quoted in Agustin Gurza (2008); Kun (Citation2003); Lipsitz (Citation1990, 133–60). See also Habell-Pallán (Citation2009). 6. "Forming" references both the anguished anti-state rumblings of the Germs' titular song and the art exhibit, "Forming: The early days of L.A. punk." 7. Jeffrey Lee Pierce quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 174–5). 8. See recent scholarship such as Rodríguez (Citation2004), Cacho (forthcoming), and Kwon (forthcoming). 9. McKenna (Citation1979a, N73). 10. This song was first released on Yes, LA, a compilation for Dangerhouse Records, then was re-recorded for X's debut album (X 1979; X 1980). 11. Indeed, the minor pentatonic scale is most often referred to as the blues scale, but is also prominent in rockabilly. 12. Kittra Allen, who lived with members of X and had dated Billy Zoom, describes Faucet- Minor as "the racist bigot John wrote about in the lyrics to 'Los Angeles." Allen quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 98). Photographer Jenny Lens reports that Faucet-Minor "would taunt and torment me, stopping me on the street, standing so close to me, saying, 'Hitler was right. Jews should be burned …' beyond that, I couldn't listen" (Lens 2004). 13. Muñoz (Citation1999, 93–4). 14. Muñoz (Citation1999, 93). 15. Soja (Citation1989, 203). 16. See for example Rose (Citation1994, 22); Chang (Citation2005, 13–15); Lipsitz (Citation2007, 154–83). 17. Spheeris (Citation1981). 18. Pierce (Citation1980, 9). 19. Pierce (Citation1980, 9). 20. Pierce (Citation1980, 9). 21. X (Citation1983). 22. Soja (Citation1989, 213). Many engineers also lived along the coast in Los Angeles County, but decidedly few lived in downtown Los Angeles or the areas surrounding downtown. 23. Pierce quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 242). 24. Lipsitz (Citation2007, 120). 25. Ruddick (Citation1996, 99). 26. Ruddick (Citation1996, 100–2). 27. Art and rock critic Kristine McKenna notes that the Cathay de Grande is "an Oriental restaurant in Hollywood with a little disco/bar tucked downstairs" (McKenna Citation1980, G4). 28. Traber (Citation2007, 115–16). 29. This kind of reading of race, authenticity, resistance, and music scenes has happened regarding other scenes as well. Kelley (Citation1992), for instance makes this claim in reference to the folk revival in, "Notes on deconstructing 'the folk.'" following an argument by Hall in "Notes on deconstructing 'the popular,'" where Hall (Citation1981) argues the importance of blackness for popular culture in general. Cantwell provides a book-length study of these connections in the folk revival of the 1950s in When we were good and Eric Lott persuasively makes connections between blackness and various genres of nineteenth-century US popular culture, from minstrelsy to melodrama, in the classic Love Lott 1993). 30. Lee (Citation1980, 26). 31. The Canterbury is located at 1746N. Cherokee Ave., a block and a half north of Hollywood Blvd., where the Masque was located. 32. Escovedo (with Phast Phreddie) (Citation1991). 33. Lee (Citation1983, 22). 34. Brendan Mullen writes about the poor and about slumming punks living at the Canterbury: "Those not secretly kept trustafarians supported themselves from pan-handling, dumpster-diving, and turning tricks on and off Hollywood Boulevard", in Mullen with Roger Gastman (Citation2007, 32). 35. Felt and Robles (Citation1992, 30). 36. Margot Olaverra quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 167). Hellin Killer was a well-known scenester who later married Paul Roessler of Screamers. Alice Bag sang lead for The Bags, and her then-boyfriend, Nickey Beat, played drums for many outfits, including, most famously The Weirdos. Lorna Doom and punk poet laureate Darby Crash composed half of the legendary Germs. 37. Lee (Citation1983, 22). 38. Lee (Citation1981, 28). 39. Lee (Citation1981, 28). 40. Kim Fowley, quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 171). 41. Lipsitz (Citation2011, 52). 42. Mbembe (Citation2003, 11). 43. Bessy (Citation1977, 4). 44. Nicole Panter (Citation2005), in an interview with Alice Bag, recollects Screamers' performances as "so dark and fun and different. … I saw a video of them a couple of years ago and I was struck by how flamingly gay they were." 45. Halberstam (Citation2011, 185–7). 46. "Fantastic failure" is a phrase from Halberstam (Citation2011, 187). 47. Ferguson (Citation2003, 144). 48. Cherie the Penguin quoted in Lee (Citation1983, 21). 49. Additionally, Roderick Ferguson and David Eng note that racialization is sometimes accompanied by feminization, where race also points to an excess in gender. Ferguson (Citation2003, 58–66) and Eng (Citation2001, 1–4). 50. Named "Luxury living," for instance, by Margot Olaverra in an interview with Craig Lee in 1980, and named "Living at the Canterbury" when released by I.R.S. Records in 1994 (1994a). Olaverra quoted in Lee (Citation1980, 26); The Go-Go's (The Go-Go's 1994b). 51. Jane Wiedlin quoted in Felt and Robles (Citation1992, 50). The Go-Go's (1994b). 52. See Patterson (Citation1997, 26–7); Olaverra quoted in Lee (Citation1980, 27); and Olaverra quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 168). 53. Bag (Citation2011, 290). 54. Bag (Citation2011, 232). 55. Bessy (1978a, 5). 56. Margot Olaverra notes that his name was actually Oliver and his connection to Rastafarianism was suspect. Olaverra quoted in Lee (Citation1980, 26). 57. Chandan Reddy usefully addresses this kind of seeming epistemological contradiction and "the disorientation many Americans feel when they see supposedly progressive and egalitarian groups willing to share their beds with violent types like the military or the imperial actor" (2012, 5). 58. Cacho (Citation2007, 194) notes these phrases in relationship to how men of color's lives are devalued, to seemingly naturalize and justify their early deaths. 59. Similarly, Barbara Johnson writes about woman as allegory in an argument about the role of women in critical theory. Johnson (Citation1994, 59) argues that: "As an allegory, the female figure is not a literal representation of a woman as artist or theorist – not a 'real woman' – but rather an enabling figure for the production of male artists. 'Woman' is thus both that which is not, and that without which there cannot be." For the non-punks that inhabited the Canterbury, personhood remained elusive, while their role as allegory enabled the production of resistant artistry. 60. Jane Wiedlin, quoted in Lee (Citation1980, 27). She notes this in relation to a rape that occurred downstairs from Margot Olaverra, Black Randy's having written "Apes Live Here" on the doors of the suspected offenders, and two black men aggressively knocking on Carlisle's door. These other incidents from the same article relayed by Margot Olaverra and Belinda Carlisle. 61. Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers (Citation1979). 62. For more on the riot see Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 188–91). 63. Even scholar Dewar MacLeod mentions his presence at this event, I believe as a form of authorizing his scholarship, in the introduction to his Kids of the black hole, 13 (Macleod 2010). 64. Quoted in Davis (Citation1990, 268). Davis also notes "The 'them' – what a local mayor calls 'the Viet Cong abroad in our society' – are the members of local Black gangs," as a display of how policing targeted men of color in particular (1990, 268). 65. Snowden (Citation1997, 157). 66. Soja (Citation1989, 218). 67. Flyer dated Saturday, 19 July. The date corresponds with the calendar for 1980 (Human Hands 1980). 68. McKenna (Citation1979b, N95). 69. See Kelly (Citation1979, 37) and Anonymous (Citation1980, 9). 70. Information regarding Dianne Chai from Paul Greenstein quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 177). 71. In another context, Mimi Thi Nguyen argues (2012b) that Vietnamese refugees are often marked as illiberal and, therefore, outside the bounds of the state in The Gift of Freedom (2012). 72. Sources that mention this first story include Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 176–7); Bag (Citation2011, 311). Exceptions to these rules included The Plugz, who were never banned from Wong's. Tito Larriva, lead singer and guitarist for Chicano punk outfit, the Plugz, notes: "I don't know why, but we were the only band who could play both the Hong Kong and Wong's." Larriva quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 179). The Martha Davis-fronted Motels also played there regularly, though they most often were considered a "new wave" outfit. 73. Mullen quoted in Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001, 177). 74. Bag (Citation2011, 311). Bag places this event as happening in Fall 1979 in her memoir. 75. The Bags were also on the bill of a show turned violent at Doug Weston's Troubadour in February 1978 that also led to a post-riot fight between Tom Waits and Bag's then boyfriend, the drummer, Nickey Beat. For information on this confrontation see Bessy (1978b, 21); Spitz and Mullen (Citation2001); Mullen (Citation2007); and Bag (Citation2011, 240–2). Later that year the Bags were playing a show booked by Chicano artists Gronk and Jerry Dreva at LACE Gallery in downtown L.A., when another fight broke out and a lot of art was smashed. For more on this event, see Mullen (2007); and Bag (Citation2011). 76. See for instance, The Bags performing their Dangerhouse classic "Survive" (The Bags 2006). 77. Mullen (2007). 78. Flipside (Citation1979). 79. Kun (Citation2003). 80. Lowe and Lloyd (Citation1997, 7). 81. Davis (Citation1990, 268). 82. Gilmore (Citation2007).