Santa Cruz’s Lost Punk Scene

3 responses

1. 

   Ieatclitz

   October 20, 2023 at 9:09 am

   Seems to be happening everywhere.

   Reply
2. 

   Alarin fox

   March 1, 2025 at 12:24 pm

   How old are you? Were you around when club culture was purchased? I was not, but my x boyfriend opened club culture. His name is mike lofano and he was in a band called MOCK.

   BLAST was one of the best bands and ONLY band to ever be signed by SST. Dave Grohl just re recorded In My Blood with all the original BLAST dudes. It has been widely received in the crossover power violence community. And has even garnered main stream praise.

   Bands like queens of the stone age fu manchu and even Nails have all cited BLAST as an influence.

   Reply
3. 

   Mark

   January 25, 2026 at 6:37 pm

   The thing about punk rock (1976-1979) was that all the bands sounded and looked different.
   CBGB ’76: Ramones, Television, Patti Smith, Suicide, Blondie.

   And there was no punk “uniform” until around 1978–when all the kids from the ‘burbs got involved. Ditto in London: nobody could confuse the Sex Pistols with X-Ray Specs or Siouxsie and the Banshees: totally different.

   Punk is unusual in that it started in two places (separated by an ocean) at the same time.
   The “contagion” was carried by musicians and Malcolm McLaren flying back and forth.
   And by the fanzines. You could walk into Logos bookstore and buy punk fanzines.

   There were punk bands in Santa Cruz–but no major ones. It was difficult for bands to breakout from Santa Cruz because of limited media exposure and being over-shadowed
   by San Francisco. But by the 1980s college radio was a big thing and SC bands could break
   out (e.g, Camper Van Beethoven: David Lowry blanketed college radio DJs with the band’s demos).

   S. F. had several great punk bands, e.g, the Avengers (ft. Penelope Houston), Negative Trend, the Nuns. The Avengers opened for the Sex Pistols at Winterland–is that punk creds enough? How many hardcore fans have even heard of the Avengers? (They should listen to “Corpus Christi”.)

   The Associated Student of College V, UCSC, presented a bunch of L.A. punk bands in 1983-1985: the Dils, the Joneses, the Cambridge Apostles (ft. Alice Bag), Blood on the Saddle. And also, mixing it up: Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and Fishbone. All paid for and organized by students. No admission was chared, They were mostly outdoor shows with *good* sound–thanks to two tall buildings enclosing the Quad. Some got rained on. The prime mover was Jim Akimoto–who booked all those bands.

   The infamous *The End* show (when College V became Porter) had fireworks and free drinks. At midnight, KZSC broadcast “The End” by the Doors. And it really was the end
   of an era. A lot of negative change in Santa Cruz IMHO are due to the changes at UCSC: from 6,000 students (in 1979) to 20,000 students today; from liberal arts college (with
   great marine biology and astrophysics) to third-rate engineering school funded by SillyCon
   Valley. (Don’t miss your chance to invest in A.I. pilot-less flying taxicabs! )

   Punk rock was over in NYC and London by 1980. The bands that kept going became post-punk. L.A. didn’t get the memo.

   When John Lydon formed PiL and released the single “Public Image” that was its death knell. Time to move on. The first time I heard that song, it stopped me in my tracks. I had never heard an electric guitar playing as angular and trebley as Keith Lavene’s. And Lydon was at most anthemic. And Jah Wobble’s persistent bass. It just screamed “SOMETHING NEW!”
   But it’s a long, expensive flight from L.A. to London.

   “Post-punk” isn’t always chronological: Joy Division, Wire, Talking Heads were post-punk from the beginning (and all different). In 1980, each punk band had to decide what “post punk” meant to it. Tuxedomoon was a classic S.F. post-punk band: very artsy. (One of its songs, “In a Manner of Speaking” was covered in 2004 by the French band Nouvell Vague as bossa nova! Check it out: sublimely beautiful music.)

   And then there was Flipper (formed in S.F. in 1979). Grunge-before-grunge. Flipper had
   a big following in S.C.

   Hardcore was an extension of the LA punk scene that became a revival and then an international movement. Punk rockers were non-conformists but hardcore was conformist.
   My impression of East Bay and SC hardcore: all 15-year-old boys without shirts. 🙂

   Most hardcore bands sounded like Black Flag (or tried to). Black Flag was a good
   band–but one Black Flag was enough–we didn’t need 100 of them. Nobody sounded
   like LA bands X or the Gun Club because, well, that’s difficult: you have to create something.

   Henry Rollins is a gem–great guy, good vocalist, advocate for music, a writer, and his label has recorded some great artists (e.g., Tom Verlaine). But when he took over as singer for Black Flag–and chased out bass player Kira Rosseler–that was it for me. There were enough aggro boys in the room without one on stage. If you think back to punk: John Lydon wanted to bring down the Thatcher’s Government, not start a fist fight. Very few punk rockers were aggressive (sure, Sid was, and Dee Dee could be). Usually, punkers were the victims.

   Most of the hardcore bands played at break-neck speed all the time. But back in the
   day, even the Ramones–clocked at 210 bpm and playing *together*!–played some slow songs.

   The hardcore bands I enjoyed were the funny ones: Angry Samoans (L.A.), Dead Kennedys
   (East Bay). Great bands.

   Some hardcore bands endorse political philosophies–anarchism, etc. A few were almost
   political parties. Lydon had sung about anarchy in the UK, because there *was* anarchy in parts of London (and on the Lower East Side in NYC) in 1976. He wasn’t celebrating it:
   “no future”.

   By the early ’80s, S.C. post-punk bands and hardcore bands were playing at Molly’s,
   a dive bar frequented by Mexicans. And the Mall Punks were into the S.F. band Toiling Midgets. Very interesting band–not hardcore.

   Then in US hardcore, “straight-edge” came along carrying the hatchet for Carrie Nation (and as sanctimonious as any preachy vegan hippie).

   Hardcore was followed in the 1990s by punk revival. You could spot these bands because they played fast like the Ramones but played “power chords” (perfect fifth intervals) like Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols. That doesn’t work. Too much distortion, and the notes all run together. But without a lot of harmonic distortion, power chords don’t sound right (you need the distortion to synthesize the third of the chord).

   UK punk had many influences that were mostly absent in the US: reggae (Slits), ska (the Clash), mod (the Jam), and even some influence from the continent. But the US was back to it’s norm: not caring about the rest of the world.

   Punk rock wanted to change the world–which of course was doomed to fail. But it was a sincere attempt. Not “poseurs” (remember that word?). Siouxsie looked like that every day for two decades–it wasn’t stage make-up and costume. There were punks from the East End and there was a “punk princess”. Punk wasn’t for “joiners” and it wasn’t a uniform you could put on and march in rank and file.

   And it was extremely productive of new music and new rock subgenres. When the scenes in NYC and London begin to contract, and exert less of a pull, post-punk flew apart into new wave, no wave, dark wave, goth, “4AD sound”, industrial, noise rock, punk funk, mutant disco, ska revival, new pop, etc. Each followed its own path. Some hosted new music styles: the “4AD sound” was a ready-made audience for an Anglo-Irish-American band My Bloody Valentine–which in 1989 inspired a group of bands from the Thames Valley: Lush (on 4AD), Ride, Slowdive, etc.–which became shoegaze (which went almost unnoticed in the US, except for the Mazzy Star single “Fade into You”).

   So a band could do some (or all) of that–or it could keep imitating Black Flag…

   It’s always struck me that while Thurston Moore is an avid collector of hardcore singles, his music is nothing like hardcore. He (and Sonic Youth) came out of the Lower Manhattan “no wave scene”. He was never in a no wave band, but he and Lee Renaldo tuned all the guitars and guitar-like like instruments in Glenn Branca’s electric guitar orchestra. And Glenn had had a no wave band, Theoretical Girls. But Thurston Moore admits to being influenced by punk rock and early Sonic Youth is fairly punk–or post-punk.

   L.A. is insular: each group of people has its own suburb and does its own thing. NYC wasn’t.
   Look at those CBGB bands! London wasn’t. But hardcore is from L.A. and it’s insular: a hard core bill is usually all hardcore bands.

   So my two-cents worth: music matters. Don’t drive in the ruts. Do listen to what’s new and what’s “foreign”. And remember the pioneers. It’s better to stand on the shoulders of giants than on the toes of midgets.

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