BOOK REVIEW: UNDER THE BIG BLACK SUN...

THE BEST OF TIMES, THE WORST OF TIMES
New book recalls the early days of LA punk
by Don Stradley

The early LA punk scene was gone before we knew it -- a thorny hybrid of glam rock leftovers and undisciplined garage band energy, a seedy kid with an Eddie Cochran haircut wandering streets awash in the decrepit glamor of old Hollywood, where you might find yourself slam dancing at the Whiskey one night and sharing a joint with Tony Curtis the next -- without leaving much of a footprint. Maybe we should know more about this particular time and place, and learn how a scene emerged that made room for women, for Mexicans, for gays, and was versatile enough to spawn bands ranging from X to The Go-Go’s. Granted, the only LA bands I saw from this era were The Blasters and The Gun Club, and seeing them at Boston’s Paradise club rather than their home turf seemed to diminish the experience. It was also a mistake to have local icons Scruffy The Cat and Mission of Burma as their respective opening acts. But Under the Big Black Sun: a personal history of LA Punk arrives poised to remind us that something incendiary happened in LA between 1976 and 1982, something that fights to be remembered now.

Early in Big Black Sun we’re told by Exene Cervenka that the LA of ’76 created “a vortex, a vacuum, an underground scene so secret and so beautiful, it was hard to be believe it was happening.” While super famous bands like The Eagles snailed by in limousines, punk kids made their own clothes and lived in roach infested squalor. But it was this very gulf that seemed to energize the young bands. The book, written by John Doe of X with a dozen or so others, hits this same note repeatedly, until these do it yourself mavericks begin to sound vaguely self-righteous, wearing their misfit labels like merit badges, until the whole thing feels like a Spinal Tappish spoof of retirement age punks yearning for the days when high living meant having an apartment behind a porn shop.

It’s also the usual rock ‘n’ roll tale, and no one walks hand in hand with their past like a punk rocker. Every album purchased or new band discovered is treated like a historic milestone, particularly by the male contributors. The females write mostly about their shabby living conditions, and tease out a bit of sexy stuff, including some playful lesbian hookups, but not much else. The most surprising thing about Big Black Sun  is its tameness. The performers approach their chapters with an unexpected courtliness, as if they’re saving the juicy stuff for each other, or perhaps their own memoirs. Doe does a fair job capturing the frenzied force of X, and Henry Rollins is his usual articulate self in describing the toxic atmosphere of the times. Still, the chapters feel sketchy, more like raw material that a better writer could’ve picked through to create a more insightful book. I guess Doe’s punk ethos is still at work – it’s better to do it yourself than allow someone else to tell your story. Another surprise is that the contributing journalists and industry people try too hard to sound “punk” and come off like hero worshipping rubes. A&R man Tom DeSavia is the worst offender, embarrassing himself with lines like, “This Nixon guy was fucking up a lot of shit,” as if playing illiterate will give him more credibility in the company of his idols.

X was a critical darling – those Chuck Berry riffs played over tales of LA street life sounded mighty good to those afraid that punk had played itself out – and Doe probably feels somewhat bullet proof when helming a book like this one. To give the devil his due, I prefer this book to the dreary X documentary,  The Unheard Music, which was too precious and cute for my blood. But for a project that is trying to create a mythos around LA punk as if it were the lost city of Atlantis, the book feels slight. We get only fleeting impressions of The Screamers and The Germs and The Weirdoes, and we wonder what they were like at their best, and we get a few sections about the Chicano influence on the LA sound, and it’s funny when El Vez laments that a Mexican’s black hair doesn’t look right when dyed red, and those who overdosed on drugs or died in car crashes get their proper respects, and Mike Watt still gets choked up thinking about D. Boone, and the women from The Go-Go’s still seem awed by their own accomplishments. Cervenka again: “Nothing quite like LA punk had ever existed or would ever again. We won.”

What they won, exactly, is unclear, unless it was simply the right to exist, make some noise, and then vanish. True, there was a lightning in a bottle vibe to the time - it’s doubtful you could take 500 other latch key kids, turn them loose in a major city, and get anything like the LA scene of the late seventies. But what can you say about a “movement” when it was so easily crushed by a bunch of cretins from Orange County who wanted it all louder and crazier? Suddenly the women, the Mexicans, and the gays were gone, X couldn’t get airplay, and the whole scene crumbled faster than it had risen. The Go-Go's, despite their well-known infighting, found some success and longevity. Their contemporaries, however, for all of their rebel posturing and lip service, weren't built to last.