Chapter Four: My Punk Rock Influence and My First Band... Moral Sin

by Hanson Meyer

My father and sister and I had moved into our new place on Balboa Island, California during the summer of 1981. It was quite a change going from the high altitude, pine trees and warm clothes in Big Bear down to surf, sand, palm trees and bikinis. Although the Island was small and flat, it was protected inside of Newport Harbor and like many beach communities, the houses were small and all crammed in close to each other. It had one primary commercial street called Marine Avenue that had many shops and restaurants and this area became my new stomping grounds and where I formed many new friendships.

A couple of weeks before I began school, I landed a job as an apprentice butcher at Balboa Market on Balboa Peninsula across from the Island. The market was near all the attractions including the Fun Zone, Balboa Pier and Balboa Theater. From my house on the Island, it was a nice scenic route by skateboard down the sidewalk along the bay front, a short trip across the harbor on the ferry, and then only a couple of blocks again by skateboard to the market. I quickly made friends in the area and came to know everyone who worked on the ferry and in and around the Fun Zone.

After enjoying what was left of my summer, I began my senior year at Corona Del Mar High School. Being the new kid at school is always tough, but at least I got to know a few of my fellow students in the final weeks of summer there on Island and across the harbor on the Peninsula. The beginning of school, as I was not the smallest kid in my class, started out much more smoothly than the last time I started at a new school and I felt that I had transitioned fairly easily. 

I was a fairly good student in school and was a bit ahead of the other students so I only had to attend “half days” which allowed me to go home after lunch. Because of all this extra time, I ended up working quite a bit at my new job. I worked sometimes seven days in a row and routinely worked until closing. Sometimes I would get home so late at night, I wouldn’t have time to do my homework for school before the next day.

While working at the market, I was exposed to a wide variety of tourists who came in on a daily basis and every Friday and Saturday night we would get a strange looking crowd that would come down to see the Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Theater. I decided one weekend to check it out and I ended up meeting a lot of interesting people from all walks of life. The Balboa Theater was a “revival theater” and played a wide variety of movies including those that were older, artsy, controversial and foreign flicks. I picked up a schedule at one point and saw that they had a few punk movies coming up. I ended up seeing the Punk Rock Movie, D.O.A., and the Decline of Western Civilization there. While at one of these movies, I met a punk rock girl named Allison Blumberg from Huntington Beach. She had short bleached blonde hair, had the same musical taste as I did, and after a couple of weeks of dating she was my girlfriend. 

Paul Silverman, Parker Butterfield, Hanson Meyer at Eric's House

My wishes of finding other people who wanted to form a punk band came to fruition and before you knew it I was in a garage practicing with several other guys. Although they liked the music, these guys were not punks… they were rich kids who lived in Newport Beach and their parents bought them instruments. But I was still learning how to play guitar and they were willing to give it a go, so I figured we would see where it went. The lead guitarist, Paul Silverman who always wore Izod shirts with Ivy League sweaters and Argyle socks, lasted a few practices, but he ultimately decided that he didn’t want to play in a punk band. A few weeks later, one of my new friends from Balboa Island introduced me to Dave Marriott who went to the same school as me. He was also into punk rock and played guitar so he became our new lead guitarist. His friend Scott Brandon sang lead vocals, Parker Butterfield played bass and this crazy Mormon kid named Eric Hanna played drums. Like me, Eric didn’t drink, smoke or do drugs… and it’s a good thing too… He was nuts!

The New Olympic Marquee - December 31, 1981

The end of 1981 came quickly. As a surprise, Allison bought us tickets to see Black Flag, Fear, the Blasters, the Suburban Lawns and Saccharine Trust at the New Olympic Auditorium on New Year’s Eve. Apparently, it was a tough decision for her as that same night, T.S.O.L. was playing with Social Distortion, China White and Verbal Abuse at the Broadway Theater in Santa Ana. When we arrived there at the Olympic, there were a number of camera crews on scene outside the doors waiting like vultures as if they were expecting to see an outburst of violence right in front of them that they could capture on camera and feed into the media hype on television. Allison and I were targeted by several of them and we spent some time doing interviews before the show for Saturday Night Live and a program for PBS called “To Hear” which was supposedly going to air sometime in May. Unfortunately, we had no way of knowing exactly when they were going to air so we never saw the shows or episodes. To keep my dad off my case, I hadn’t cut my hair in a couple of months so it had grown out just a bit too long to feel safe down in the pit at the show, plus I was with Allison, so we watched

My Original Ticket Stub for the New Olympic

the show from the front part of the upper level. It was a great view of all the bands and the action going on in the slam pit below. For some reason, the Suburban Lawns and the Blasters were on the bill with two hardcore bands. You had to feel kind of sorry for them because the crowd wanted nothing to do with either of them and after Sue Tissue of the Suburban Lawns was hit in the head by a flying object from the crowd during their second song, the band left the stage. The rest of the show was great, but I really missed being down on the floor with the boys.

My next show came a little more than a month later on Thursday, February 11, 1982. I woke up excited because everyone was going to see the big BYO punk show at the Hollywood Palladium that night but I found out after school that my ride with Allison and her girlfriend Stacy fell through. Stacy was going to drive but she became sick the night before and was unable to drive. I quickly started calling everyone I knew to see if I could catch a ride with them but all their cars were already full. Finally, when I was convinced that the closest I was going to get to the show was hearing about it the next day in school, Dave Marriott called me and said that one of the guys going with him couldn’t go. It was only an hour before we had to leave, so I quickly got ready and rode my bike up to his house which wasn’t too far from where we went to school. I got there right on time and just as everyone was getting ready get in the car at about 4:30pm. Our singer, Scott Brandon, John Q. Humphreys, Scott Murdock and another friend Louis were among those who were heading up there with us in the car. 

Punk bands back then hardly made any money from playing shows so they didn’t have money to do merchandising. Most of the kids had to improvise if they wanted to wear clothing, etc. with a specific band logo. One of my friends was taking a screen printing class as an elective in school and he made a Wasted Youth screen. He had told me several days before the show that he could print the logo on a shirt if I gave him one. So I searched through all of my clothes and the only blank t-shirt I had was an old teal colored shirt that looked like my dad had used it for a rag at some point. But I decided that it would do and a couple of days later, I had a Wasted Youth shirt to wear to the show.

My Original Ticket from the BYO Show

The show started at 7:00 and even though we headed out early, it took nearly two hours to get to the Palladium because of the traffic. Because I was the only one who didn’t drink, Dave dropped me off in front to stand in line for tickets. One of the guys in the car managed to raid his parents’ liquor cabinet so everyone else went with Dave to park the car and get boozed up before going into the show. While I was waiting in line, a girl with a Mohawk walked up to me, pointed at me, smiled and then said, "Hanson". It was Andrea, the girl I met at the Dickies show more than a year before on Decmeber 23, 1980. She was with a girlfriend named Michelle and since I was up near the front, they jumped in line with me and we continued to catch up on things.

As usual, the news crews were there with their lights and cameras interviewing people about the violence… apparently there was no other news to be found anywhere in Los Angeles County. Shortly after they interviewed Andrea, Michelle and I, Dave and the rest of the guys showed up. A few minutes later the doors opened and we all went inside.

Wasted Youth's Flyer for the Show

There were a total of seven bands playing and T.S.O.L. was the headliner. The other bands that played were the Adolescents, Wasted Youth, Social Distortion, Youth Brigade, the Blades and AKA. T.S.O.L. was one of my favorite bands and I had been listening to them since early 1980 when I lived in Big Bear. Their album, Dance With Me, had just come out several months before this particular show and I was eager to hear them play the songs live. Adolescents were also a favorite band of mine and their song “Amoeba” was played constantly on KROQ by Rodney Bingenheimer. I had their “Blue Album” and knew every song on it. I remember being very impressed with Steve Soto’s ability on bass guitar and compared to many other punk recordings their album had superior production quality. I had only recently been introduced to Wasted Youth by Dave Marriott when we formed our band Moral Sin and immediately bought their album, “Reagan’s In”. I must have listened to that record 1,000 times before seeing them at this show. In addition, I had just missed them at the Cuckoo’s Nest the previous year in August when they played with Black Flag and so I was really looking forward to seeing them perform this night. I hadn’t heard too much Social Distortion before this show other than the song “1945” that was played on KROQ, but they were pretty good and we had fun slamming in the pit while they played. Youth Brigade I had never heard of before this show and it’s funny because they were responsible for putting on the entire show as “Better Youth Organization” or “BYO”. They were all brothers and I later learned that this show was an effort to raise money for the “Another State Of Mind” tour that they wanted to do that summer with Social Distortion. This was the second time that I had seen the Blades and AKA as I had already seen them the year before at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa. They were just as good as I had remembered them before and I never got tired of the song “Tomorrow’s Theme” by AKA.

The show was epic. There must have been two or three thousand punks there and the center of the floor was a mass of swirling bodies for most of the night. I managed to get on stage and Danny from Wasted Youth pulled me up next to him to sing one of their songs. After the song I ran and did a flip off the stage landing on the tightly packed crowd below who more or less slowed my descent to the floor. My newly screen printed Wasted Youth shirt was torn off of me… well at least half of it was. One sleeve was gone and I had to drape the remainder of the left side over my shoulder for the remainder of the night.
  

At one point, we noticed a fight up on the balcony level and it ended with a guy getting tossed off the balcony onto the chairs below. The rumor that quickly circulated was that he broke his back landing on one of the stationary seats below and he died from his injuries. I think this may have been what prompted someone there to call the authorities as the police ended up storming the building during T.S.O.L.’s set with the fire department who shot chemical fire extinguishers at the crowd from the stage. The crowd panicked due to the lack of breathable air and everyone dashed toward the exits at the back of the room. I saw people getting trampled and others were gasping for air. We made it outside but lost a lot of our friends in the chaos. I ran into Andrea and Michelle while everyone was trying to simultaneously squeeze through the front doors. Fortunately, I was with Dave because I had no idea where the car was. We made our way to the car with the girls and eventually, everyone else that was a part of our crew met us at the car. We hung out there with a number of others who had parked near us recounting the craziness and how much the police sucked. Although the show ended earlier than anticipated, we had stayed out talking by the car with the girls until about 3:00am. Scott Brandon suggested that since it was late and we didn’t have school in the morning, that we all just crash at his house. I said my goodbyes to the girls and we were soon on our way back home.

The next day we woke up and then had band practice there at the house. Afterwards Dave drove me back to his house where I got my bike and rode home to the Island. We had started to practice regularly and although we had a long way to go musically, were getting better at playing together. 

About two weeks later, Dave announced to me that our band, “Moral Sin”, was playing at a party the very next night on Friday, February 26^th and we needed to practice right after school. We spread the word to the other band members and all convened at Eric’s house a couple of hours later. Fortunately, all of our equipment was already set up in Eric’s garage and was ready to go. It was when we finished our practice that the bass player, Parker Butterfield, quit the band. He was a highly talented bass player, but he didn’t feel that he fit the mold and didn’t want to be associated with what he thought was going to be a catastrophe the next night at the party. 

It was too soon to find another bass player so the only logical thing to do was to have me make the move from rhythm guitar to bass. Eric knew these guys in a local surf band, “The Piers”, and their bass player, Bill Nemec, agreed to let me borrow his bass equipment. So the day of the party, Eric and I left during our school lunch break to pick up Bill’s bass equipment on Balboa Island. We ate a quick lunch at my house and then made our way back to school to pick up Dave.

Dave Loading His Amp into the RX-7

We all met at Eric’s house where we had time for one quick practice with the new line up: Eric Hanna on drums, Dave Marriott on guitar, Scott Brandon on vocals and finally me on bass. My dad let me borrow his small, brand-new Mazda RX-7 to go to the gig in, and between Eric and I, we were able to get all the equipment loaded for one trip to the party house in Corona Del Mar. My dad’s brand new RX-7 was crammed full of equipment, some of which was sticking out of the back and I had to drive with the rear hatch open. We arrived at the place and carried all of our equipment up the stairs into the small apartment in old Corona Del Mar. Somewhere along the line somebody found a large American flag that got thrown in for a backdrop. So after we set everything up, we hung the flag upside down on the wall behind our equipment.  We all then went our respective houses to get ready for the party that night.

Moral Sin: Hanson Meyer, Dave Marriott, Scott Brandon, Eric Hanna (not pictured)

Dave and I returned later at about 8:00 and people were starting to pour into the small upstairs apartment. Scott Brandon showed up shortly after we did and brought some friends. It was a going away party for one of our classmates named Brian who was moving away with his family and the place had already been cleared out of most of the furniture. The keg arrived there shortly after we did and so the people who were there started to drink early. As this was the era before home video cameras, a kid named Scott was walking around with an 8mm camera filming everything that was going on throughout the night. 

More and more people arrived and were filling the small apartment, but Eric, our drummer, was nowhere to be found. He finally showed up just after 9:00 with the excuse that he was at dinner at Denny’s with a bunch of friends and it took forever to get the bill paid. As proof, he brought with him a chrome sugar packet holder that he had stuffed full with sugar packets from neighboring tables at the restaurant. He positioned it so that it hung perfectly from one of his cymbal stands. He didn’t drink, so he ate tons of sugar before and while playing.  

Finally, the time had come for us to start playing. My nerves were sending my stomach into some sort of internal acrobatics but I managed to hide any signs of duress by just staring at the floor about six feet in front of me. All my feelings of anxiety were squashed though as soon as we started to play. Everyone was into it and even a number of the party-goers started slamming in front of us. Sometime early in our set, I remember looking over to my right to see Eric, in between beats, stuffing sugar packets into his mouth and then spitting the paper remnants out at the crowd. I had completely loosened up by this time as well and was having a blast as was everyone else.

After we finished, I had my first experience with groupies… several high school girls came up to flirt with me and it was at this point that I remember thinking that I had to get better at playing my instrument because, as I was still a new kid at school, this was a perfect way to meet girls. Right after we finished playing, my friends Chris Meyers and Adam Olmstead showed up with Allison and her friend Stacy. I left for a short time to get some food with them, and then they dropped me off afterwards at what were the remnants of the party… the groupies were still there…

The next day, we caught up with the guy, Scott, who had filmed our set and we were able to watch it. The only thing was that it didn’t have any sound… but it was cool to see it anyway. We also learned that a girl named Mary Jo had taken a lot of pictures of us while we were playing as well and we looked forward to seeing the action shots. 

Later that day I had to go to work and close up shop that night. Sometimes it was slow later at night and I was able to work on homework or other personal projects. But this day proved to be an important one as it was the day that I wrote my first song called “The World is Dying Now”. We didn’t end up playing it in Moral Sin, but it was the first song I brought to the table when I formed Uniform Choice with Mike Bates a couple of months later and I changed the name to “War Is Here”.

On Monday at school, the words of congratulations on a great gig at the party were overshadowed by the news that my friend Adam Olmstead who had just moved to America from New Zealand was beat up the day after the party by some football players because he was a punk rocker. They beat him up so bad that he couldn’t even make it to school that day. I was so pissed off that I went looking for the guy who led the assault who was named Rob Stefano. This news of course had circulated around school and by the next day everyone was expecting a war. We ended up facing off in the middle of the quad during lunch break and before I knew it there was a large circle of people around us. Just as things elevated to a boiling point, the principal and some of his staff rushed in to break things up. Apparently that was Rob’s last day in school before he moved, so I didn’t have to deal with him anymore.

Moral Sin Band Equipment

Not wanting to have to borrow a bass guitar anymore, I finally bought my own bass just before our next scheduled gig which was Saturday, March 13, 1982. The only issue was that I still didn’t have a bass amp and ended up having to rent one. We also rented a P.A. system at the same time and since we had rented all the equipment for the entire weekend, we were able to play another last minute party on Friday, the 12^th at a girl named Heather’s house in Corona Del Mar. The house was packed and there were a bunch of stupid people there but we played until the police showed up. The police really didn’t like the fact that we had an upside down flag on the wall and gave us hardly any time to get our instruments out… but we managed.

The party the next night, Saturday, March 13, 1982, was expected to have a great turnout. There were flyers made and everybody we knew was going. It took two trips, but we lugged all the equipment over to the party house from Eric’s place. Once we had everything set up for the party, we practiced there at the house for a couple of hours from about 4:00 to 6:00. This was by far the best we had sounded to date. Just before going to dinner we took care of one last detail… we spray painted our band name “Moral Sin” on the upside down flag. 

The Only Flyer ever made for Moral Sin

After getting food, we returned to the party house just before everyone started showing up. Once the house was full, started to play our set. We got through five songs when Newport’s finest showed up again to break up all the fun and as luck would have it, they were the same cops as the previous night. This time they were really pissed at us. They threatened to take all of our equipment and impound it. One of the cops went into a tirade and ripped the defaced flag off the wall all the while cursing at us. While we were laughing inside that we got the desired reaction from the spray painted flag, we were fairly concerned that we might have all our equipment impounded. And as we couldn’t afford to have the rented equipment go into the impound, we conceded to giving them a bunch of “yes sirs” and “sorrys”… We dashed back to Eric’s to unload all the equipment and then headed back to the party house to find the straggling groupies… success! 

After what appeared to be a strong start for our band Moral Sin, things started to go sideways. Scott Brandon started showing up to practice intermittently and he and Dave Marriott had a heated conversation about his lack of commitment. By the end of March, he was out of the band and we tried out a new lead singer named Jime Kime. But by the middle of April, it became apparent that he wasn’t going to work out either. Although he was enthusiastic and energetic, he had horrible timing and he was seemingly tone deaf.

If Moral Sin was going to survive, we needed to find a new band member who could sing and bring something to the table that we didn’t have. It was then that it occurred to me that I may already know the guy we needed. Allison had introduced me to a guitarist/singer in March named Myke Bates who had just moved to the area. He had apparently played with a band that we had heard on KROQ and he was looking for guys to jam with. So I decided to approach him and see if he was interested in putting something together. 

This was the beginning of a new era for me, and although it would not unfold to be the continuation of Moral Sin, it would become the birth of Uniform Choice.

FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS STORY, CLICK HERE

FOR THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, CLICK HERE

Chapter Three: At The Cuckoo's Nest in Costa Mesa, California... 1981

by Hanson Meyer
  
It was the summer of 1981 in Big Bear and there was nothing for a 17 year old punk rock kid with divorced parents to do, so I did what any other kid in my situation would do… I got into trouble. The previous year, my father had moved out of the mountains down to Orange County with my sister and I stayed behind and lived with my mother who was now working, going to school and dating. For a teenager I was fairly responsible and I didn’t drink or do drugs… I just liked punk rock and wanted to do my thing without people trying to “correct” my attitude and strip away my right of self-expression. My mother was genuinely concerned about my well-being and grilled me on a number of occasions… She accused me of smoking cigarettes and I know she thought I was drinking alcohol and doing drugs. I think that because of this she disciplined me rather harshly for minor offences such as getting home five minutes late, etc… The more she accused me and punished me, the more rebellious I became.

After getting into some trouble late in the summer, my mother decided that I should go live with my dad down the mountain, and by July 1981, I found myself living at the beach and preparing to start my senior year at a new high school. My dad decided to relocate from the house where he was living in Mission Viejo into a small apartment above a two car garage on Diamond Avenue on Balboa Island, Newport Beach. With me, my dad and my younger sister living there too, it was a little cramped for all of us but we made do and I welcomed the change. In the first two weeks of living there, I explored the area and met a few other kids who were into the same music that I was. They were a bit younger than me but they knew quite a bit about the local punk scene. Some of my new friends were John Q Humphreys, Hayden Thais, Scott Murdock and Chris Salsbury.

It was at this time that my friend, Mike Curtiss, came down to visit and stay with his brother, Don, in Costa Mesa before having to start the new school year back in Big Bear. We wanted to go to a punk show while he was there, but since I was so new, I had no idea where to go. I no longer had my ’69 Buick Skylark for transportation as several months previously, Scott Boyd decided to go for a joy ride in my car while I was away for a weekend trip and he crashed my car into a house totaling it… Without my car, and being new to the area and not having any new friends who had cars, getting back up to Hollywood to see punk shows was nearly impossible. Then my new, local punk friends reminded me about the Cuckoo’s Nest, and amazingly, it was just around the corner from the house where Mike’s brother Don lived. 

It turned out that we were in luck as we heard that Black Flag was playing two shows at there at the Cuckoo’s Nest that Friday on August 21^st… one matinee show with Circle One and Wasted Youth, and then another show later that night with Overkill and Saccharine Trust. Neither of us could make the first show so we planned on going to the later show.

Mike and I were excited about the show that night. Mike convinced an old friend named Rob Keuhne and one of his friends to go with us as they both lived in Costa Mesa… in addition, Rob had a car to drive to Balboa Island and pick me up. Rob’s friend was a jock but he was curious to check out the show and see what this punk rock stuff was all about. He had short hair, so we figured he would be okay. 

Once we were all in the car, we drove to Don’s house which was one house from the far end of the street on Shalimar Drive in Costa Mesa. We parked the car there at his house and went inside for a few minutes to say hello. It had been years since I had seen Don and it was good to see him again even though he and his friends had long hair and represented everything we were against. He was older than us and had a stocked bar. I didn’t drink alcohol, but Mike and the others did some shots out of a bottle to loosen up before the show. We walked out the front door and then Mike decided he needed to add one more thing to his punk rock ensemble. He pulled a safety pin out of his pocket and in true English punk tradition, he pinched the skin on the back of his hand and pushed the safety pin through clasping it shut after it made it through the other side. We had just left Don’s house and were walking up the street when Mike remembered that he forgot a small bottle of alcohol that he wanted to finish on our way to the Nest which was only a couple of blocks away. He ran back and raced in the house to grab it. He was just crossing the threshold on his way back out of the house when Don grabbed him by the arm and stopped him in his tracks. Don sternly asked him what he had. Mike told him it was only a small fifth of alcohol and then Don said he didn’t care about the booze, but pointed at the back of Mike’s hand. He told Mike that either Mike, himself, could take it out of his own hand, or that he would rip it out without opening it first. Mike gently took the safety pin out of the back of his hand and walked outside. Once the door closed, Mike shoved it back through the same holes and we were again on our way to the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Henry - (photo courtesy of Alison Braun)

The movie Urban Cowboy with John Travolta had just been released the previous year, and so the bar known as “Zubies” that shared the parking lot with the Cuckoo’s Nest was always full of “wanna be cowboys”. The center of the parking lot was a sort of “no man’s land” with the cowboys sticking to their side and the punks more or less staying on the Cuckoo’s Nest side. I remember when we arrived, there were a lot of punks hanging out front talking shit about the cowboys. We paid our admission of $6.00 and made our way inside. The club was small and had a stage in the corner with a backdrop of blue sky and clouds on the walls. By the time we actually made it inside, we had missed the opening bands and Black Flag was just setting up. Although the club was fairly full, we were surprised that it wasn’t packed since it was a Friday night.

Black Flag finally took the stage. They came out of the gates with a tremendous amount of energy and although the place wasn’t packed, the venue had a whole lot more people there than the Palm Springs show I went to earlier in the year. Everyone in the crowd showed their enthusiasm by slamming full speed in the pit in front of the stage. 

After the band finished their set, much of the crowd made their way toward the exit and left the building. Mike and I lingered near the front of the stage while others were talking to the band. We waited for an

opportunity to talk to Dez or one of the other members of the band that we had met previously and talked to in Palm Springs. I finally had an opening and approached the sweaty singer and said, “Hey Dez… It’s me, Hanson from the Palm Springs show at the Rumors Club”. He looked at me and said, “I’m not Dez. That’s Dez over there wearing the hat putting his guitar away. I’m the new singer, Henry.” So I started asking him all kinds of questions

Henry - Mike Curtiss behind guy with PIL shirt

about being in the band. He told me that this was officially his first day as the new lead singer of the band and that the matinee show earlier in the day was his actual first full gig. The one we witnessed was his second show with the band. And then he added that

although he was hopeful, he wasn’t sure how long it was going to last and it really depended on the rest of the band. He did say that Dez didn’t want to sing anymore and that he only wanted to play guitar. Henry went on to tell us that he might be back in Washington D.C. before too long and that if we ever got back there, we should look him up. At this point, he grabbed one of their set lists that was taped to the floor in front of us and wrote his phone number in Washington D.C. on it. On the other side of the set list was their flyer from the matinee show. It was the infamous Petibon flyer with Mickey Mouse hugging a skeleton. I noticed that there was a small stack of residual flyers at
the back of the stage that they were using for set lists and I asked him if I could have a couple more. He grabbed about six of them and gave them to me. I still have one of them, but sadly, I later lent the one with the set list and Henry’s number on it to one of my new friends at high school to make copies of and I never got it back.

The Flyer Henry Gave Me After the Show

We did talk to Dez and asked him if he remembered us and the “Big Bear Punks”. He smirked and said, “So you’re the Big Bear Punks?... You’re the reason we didn’t get paid that night!” He then told me that they were pretty bummed because they really needed the money then, but not to worry… it was cool.

Dez - (photo courtesy of Alison Braun)

We finally made it out of the club and with a good fun night under our belts we decided get back to Mike’s brother’s house so Rob could take me home. We left the parking lot of the Cuckoo’s Nest and started the short walk back to Don’s house all the while talking and recounting the highlights of the night. Just as we turned to walk down Shalimar Drive, Rob’s friend saw a car driving down Placentia Blvd and waved at the driver thinking that he knew him. We continued down the street until we reached the next residential intersection at Wallace Avenue. It was there that we saw the same car that had driven down Placentia Blvd. several minutes previously, but now it was parked just down the side street under a street light. There were the guys we had originally seen in the car but there were also others who had apparently quickly assembled outside of the car, one of whom was standing next to a stop sign banging on the metal pole with a piece of pipe. It was obvious that these guys were from this neighborhood (which was notorious for gang activity) and we were walking through their turf. The driver exited the car and yelled over to us as he started to walk in our direction. Three of his friends from the group followed. They were all dressed similar and as they walked towards us in the dim light it became clear that they were all Hispanic gang members. As he got close he stared directly at Rob and said, “Why’d you flip me off?!?” And before Rob could get two words out, he was punched in the face and stumbled back. I looked over and there were about three teeth sticking through his skin just below his lower lip. The blood started to flow and he was a mess. The rest of us were stunned but faced our attackers ready for whatever was about to come. I looked over at Mike and quickly asked him if he was ready. Just then the other three gang members pulled out weapons. One of them had a knife and another guy had a chain, and the guy I faced pulled a two foot pipe out of his jacket. Just then the other guys started to run towards us from the car. Mike and I looked at each other again and knowing we were out-gunned and outnumbered, we just yelled to the other guys, “RUN!!!” We ran down Shalimar toward Don’s house which was about a half a block away. The gang was gaining on us quickly as Rob was still dazed and bleeding. When we got close, Mike started yelling repeatedly for his brother. We weren’t even in the driveway before Don and a couple of his pot smoking hippie friends came running out of the house with baseball bats and nunchucks. They ran right past us toward the guys who were chasing us. In seeing what was running directly towards them, our attackers quickly stopped in their tracks and then found themselves on the run back to their car. Don and his buddies chased them halfway down the block swinging their bats wildly before eventually returning to the house. Rob had blood all over his chin and shirt and his friend had to drive us back to Rob’s house. We walked Rob into his house and then Mrs. Keuhne quickly took him to the hospital while Rob’s friend took me back home to Balboa Island. It was truly a night I will never forget.

China White played there with the Blades and AKA on Saturday, October 31^st… Halloween. We arrived just as AKA started the show off and played a short set. Their song “Tomorrow’s Theme” had come out a little earlier in the year on the compilation album “Who Cares” and was on KROQ at the time… it was the best song that they played in their set that night.

The Blades were good, but at that time, I was not familiar with any of their songs and I was really looking forward to seeing China White. China White lived up to my expectations and played everything from their Dangerzone EP. I was hoping to hear a song that I had heard played on Rodney on the ROQ the year before. I didn’t know the name of the song as one of my friends recorded a tape of KROQ on a Saturday night and then gave me the tape when I lived in Big Bear earlier that year in 1981. After they finished their set that night, I asked Marc Martin, the singer, about the song and hummed a few bars… he laughed and said, “We haven’t played that song in ages”. He told me the name of the song but said that they never put it on a record. Later, the next year in 1982, the song was released on a compilation called “Life Is Ugly, So Why Don’t You Kill Yourself” and the name of the song is “Solid State”… still my favorite China White song!

And then the Friday before Thanksgiving, I saw the Dickies play on November 20th at the Cuckoo’s Nest as well. It was one of their first shows since Chuck Wagon killed himself several months earlier in June. I remember hanging out after the band finished and asked the band where Chuck was… and that’s when I found out that he was dead. I liked the Blades and it was good to see them again and the opening band, the Dischords, were from Huntington Beach but their lead singer was from England. Having seen yet another great show, I wondered what my next night at the Cuckoo's Nest would have in store for me... but it would never happen. This was the last show that I saw at the Cuckoo’s Nest as the club closed down about two weeks later in the first week of December, 1981.

After seeing these shows at the Cuckoo’s Nest and experiencing the energy of bands and crowd, I knew that I wanted to either start or join a band. I had been practicing my guitar on my own for about a year, and even though I wasn’t very good, I started asking my friends if they knew any other musicians who wanted to play punk music. This would be beginning of my time as a musician…

FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS STORY, CLICK HERE

FOR THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, CLICK HERE

Some of the photos above appear courtesy of their respective copyright holders including:

Alison Braun:  http://www.alisonbraun.com/

Chapter Two: My First Black Flag Show... 1981

 by Hanson Meyer

  

Black Flag

At the age of 16, I made the long trek from Big Bear Lake to Hollywood to experience my first two punk rock shows at The Starwood nightclub. I saw the Dickies in December of 1980 and then again two months later in February 1981. After surviving these "soft-core" punk shows, I felt like I was ready to take it up a notch and make my way to either a Black Flag or Fear show in the ensuing months. Spring had arrived in 1981 and my friends and I were constantly scanning the sources we had for any shows coming up that we may, by some miracle, be able to attend. We listened to distant radio stations and checked the occasional copies of the Sunday edition of the LA Times Calendar section or BAM Magazine.
 

BAM Magazine - January 30, 1981 (Click to Enlarge)

On January 30, 1981, I ran across an article in BAM Magazine about the Black Flag show that had happened earlier that month at the Starwood on January 6th. The article was titled “The Black Flag Violence Must STOP!” We had just been there at the Starwood two weeks earlier to see the Dickies and saw how the violence had been ramping up even at that show…

It was also at this time that I became the official “punk rock barber”. Electric shears were too expensive, so I gave everybody their punk haircuts using scissors I bought at a local beauty salon. I gave everything from crop cuts to mohawks. Not knowing anything about coloring hair, my friend Scott Boyd and I experimented with bleach and peroxide. The only problem was that we used real bleach and peroxide and soon learned that your hair dissolves when using household chemicals. After our first couple of hair color disasters, we decided to ask for help at the same beauty salon where I bought my scissors. They thought we were crazy, but they steered us in the right direction and soon I was changing Scott’s hair color from dark brown to a sort of yellowish-blonde. As our other friends got their hair cut, we started using the bleach to create patterns and designs. One of our friends had a Mohawk that was about two inches high that I bleached so that it looked like a raccoon tail and with another friend we cut his hair on the back of his head into the shape of a crucifix leaving the bottom of the cross long… and then bleached the cross gradually from the top down going from dark brown to white. 

(flyer credit Gary Burns)

Once all my friends had joined me in committing themselves to "cropping" their hair, we set our sights on making it to our next punk show. Our minds were made up… We needed to earn our stripes by seeing Black Flag somewhere, someway, somehow. I can’t remember how we even found out about the show, but we heard that Black Flag was going to play at a small venue in Palm Springs called the Rumours Club during Spring Break on Saturday, April 18, 1981. Rodney Bingenheimer of KROQ radio announced on his program that Black Flag was playing a show that day... Here is a short clip of Rodney on the ROQ talking about the show: Rodney On The ROQ clip - April 18, 1981

My friend Scott Brett’s parents had a condominium there in Palm Springs and so we decided to drive down and make that our base camp. In addition to Scott Brett, my other friends, Scott Boyd, Mike Curtiss, Mike Schroeder and Eric Dakota decided to go and everyone piled into my green 1969 Buick Skylark and we headed down the mountain to Palm Springs. During the trip, we took turns picking music on home made cassettes and playing them on a small Radio Shack tape player that I had. None of us had too much money back then so we would always trade records and make mix tapes of our favorite punk rock bands. We all sang along with songs by the Dead Kennedy's, the Dickies, the Germs and Circle Jerks.  It was early afternoon and the winds became very strong and were sandblasting us as we made our way. At one point the wind seemed

Scott Boyd, Hanson Meyer and Mike Curtiss standing in front of the Buick

to die down a bit and the boys all decided that it was time to stop on the side of the road in the middle of the desert for a restroom break. And although I told them to walk a good distance from the car, the wind whipped up just as everyone was marking their own respective bushes and blew the piss back at the car and gave it a nice coating of urine and dust. We all had a good laugh and continued the rest of the way to our destination in Palm Springs.

Once we arrived at the condo, we ate some food and geared up for the show at the Rumours Club. The show was scheduled for the late afternoon and was “all ages”. When we got there, we thought we were wrong about the early starting time of the show because there wasn’t anyone around… The place was open, but there weren’t any patrons, only the staff. We asked, and they assured us that it definitely was the place and the bands were going to start very soon. The sun was still up, but we went inside the dark club. The place was very small with a bar to the right and a six inch riser for the band to set up on at the far side of the room. It was like the bands had to play on the floor with no protection from the violence that their music was sure to incite. A small 20’ x 20’ dance floor with vertical 4” poles holding up the roof consumed the open area just in front of the “stage” and the bathroom was located in the far left corner.

Black Flag at the Rumours Club in Palm Springs. Myke Bates playing guitar in back on Left

We were all decked out for our first Black Flag show. Knowing beforehand about all the violence, and not knowing how crazy the punks of the upper desert were, we decided to come prepared for anything short of all out war. We had boots, chains, spikes, etc... it’s amazing that the club even let us through the front doors because we appeared to be armed to the teeth. The first band was a group of local guys from Palm Springs known as Funeral Information whose singer/guitarist had written the song "Rodney On The ROQ" when he was with the band Target 13. They played for a fairly empty room and we kept expecting to see the masses pouring in any time to partake in the melee that Black Flag brought with them wherever they performed. After Funeral Information’s set, Black Flag came in carrying their own equipment across the empty dance floor and set it up on the stage. This particular early line up of Black Flag included Greg Ginn on Guitar, Chuck Dukowski on Bass, Robo on Drums and Dez Cadena (with a shaved head) on Vocals. By the time Black Flag went on there were about 15 or 20 other kids there besides us. No one else showed up. It was like we had our own party and Black Flag was there to play for it. My friends and I slammed on the dance floor encouraging others to engage of which only a few did. We had a blast… and without trying, we ended up really beating the crap out of each other. The back of someone’s head hit Mike Curtiss in the mouth and then he caught an elbow to the eye… swelling it shut and blackening it immediately. Eric Dakota caught his spiked wrist band on one of Scott Boyd’s chains and was thrown into one of the vertical poles on the dance floor breaking his wrist… We must have looked like a real parade of posers and we were too punk for our own good! The band played their entire catalog of songs and at one point they launched into Louie Louie and Myke Bates from Funeral Information took the stage and played guitar with them.

After the show was finished, the band started to slowly pack their gear on the stage and invited us to hang out with them. While Robo was loading up his drums outside, I remember asking Greg how Robo got his name… and he, probably sensing my young and gullible nature, told me that it was because they were so poor that Robo would drink Robitussin cough syrup to get drunk. The guys were really friendly and once we were done chatting, we helped them take their instruments out to their van. And then, just before we left (without saying who), a couple of the guys in our group, trying to live up to all the punk rock media hype, had scribbled “Big Bear Punks” all over the bathroom and broke a couple of fixtures. We learned later that as a result, the club took it out of Black Flag's pay and they only made $50 for the night… I don’t think they were too happy about that. And then to add insult to injury, someone stole Greg's guitar that night.

Since it was Spring Break and the streets were filled with people, we decided to walk around for the sheer shock factor. We really went over the top in terms of dressing for the occasion... And then you add Mike’s grotesque, swollen purple eye and bloodied fat lip, we were a true sight to behold. Although most people just gawked and stared at us, we did manage to talk to a few girls there. I can’t seem to remember what happened to Eric Dakota and how he managed the pain of his broken wrist that night, but he waited until we got back to Big Bear to see a doctor. We all made it back to our sleepy mountain community in one piece more or less and didn’t stop talking about the experience of it all for weeks. Each time one of us brought it up, we found ourselves reinvigorated and again chomping at the bit eager for our next show. Unfortunately for me, there would be a few obstacles and my next show would be little later than sooner… As it turned out, it would again be a Black Flag show, but it wouldn’t come until the end of summer vacation.

FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THIS STORY, CLICK HERE

FOR THE PREVIOUS CHAPTER, CLICK HERE

Chapter One: My Introduction To Punk Rock... And The Starwood

by Hanson Meyer
 
It was 1976… and a half a world away Punk Rock had started to take hold in London. I, Hanson Meyer, was unaware of the impact it would have on me just a few years later.

 

I was small for my age during my adolescent years and found myself bullied by most of the larger kids… usually those associated with sports. In 1976, I was 12 and our family moved from Costa Mesa, California to the mountain community of Big Bear in the local mountains. It was a big, but welcome change to escape from the stigma of being the smallest kid in the 6^th grade. Unfortunately, I soon realized that my relocation was not a solution and my problems were compounded with the fact that now, not only was I the smallest kid in the 7^th grade, but I was also the “new kid”... let the bullying resume. My father decided that he was tired of seeing his son coming home battered, bruised and depressed so he enrolled me in a Karate class. By the time I was a sophomore in high school my body had finally caught up to everyone else and even had passed the average height of other kids my age at that time. Because of the fact that I was bullied early on, I seemed to isolate myself and didn’t conform to the social norms that everyone else seemed so keen on creating and maintaining. I never did fit in with any of the social groups in high school… nor did I want to.

Me Learning How To Ride - Sep '79

Fads usually took their time to make their way up into our mountain community, and in 1979 disco was finally in full swing. And while everyone else was either learning the latest dance moves or clinging on to the worn out rock bands of the early 70s, I along with my best friends, Scott Boyd, Mike Curtiss and Scott Brett, were listening to new music coming from the student run Clairemont College radio station broadcasting from Pomona as KSPC 88.1 FM. Because we were so far away in the mountains, the signal was very weak, but we listened through the static and absorbed what we could. We tried to hear the DJ announce the band names and songs so we could special order records from Village Music, which was our small local record shop. Also at that time, Scott Boyd and I had built a small skateboard ramp at my house with lumber we had “liberated” from local construction sites and the ramp continued to grow in size over the course of a year until I had the largest, smoothest quarter pipe ramp that eventually even had PVC pipe for coping. (To view more information and photos on the Big Bear Skateboard Ramp in a new window, click here: Big Bear Skateboard Ramp )

Scott Boyd Riding The Ramp - Sep '79

It was also around this time that my dad took me on a trip to visit some family friends who lived in Mission Viejo located in Orange County. They had a son named Jeff Barnes who had a skateboard… so of course I brought mine along for the trip. While I was there, Jeff’s mom took us to Big-O Skatepark in Orange. It was an amazing place with one of my heroes, Duane Peters, from Skateboarder magazine actually skating there… all this while I heard all my favorite music being played through the overhead PA speakers. I wanted to live there so badly… these were my people! 

Blaise Ugolini Catching Air on The Ramp

In late 1979, two new skater kids who were brothers had moved up from Los Angeles, Blaise and Cam Ugolini. Blaise had been skating semi-pro for team Variflex but unfortunately, he had to give it all up when his family moved up to Big Bear. He and his brother both still had long hair as did I and my friends. I wanted to cut my hair so badly, but in this community at that particular time it would have been suicide. You have to understand that at that time the masses were not open to radical ideas and looks... there was a large barrier up and once you had made the conscious decision to cross it, there was no way of coming back. And believe me, there were consequences. You were truly alienated and people would stop being your friends. There was no way that any girl would consider dating you and you had a target painted on you by everyone from the football players in high school to the biker gangs who considered Big Bear a biker haven. You had to truly believe in what you were doing to make that kind of abrupt change and subject yourself to daily harassment and ridicule.

At the beginning of the new school year in 1980, another kid named Rich Parret had moved up from Huntington Beach. I first met Rich at a public indoor swimming pool and recreation center called Pan Hot Springs in Big Bear City. I overheard these jocks in the locker room talking about how they were going to beat up this new kid because he was a “punker” and he had short hair. I dashed out of the locker room to alert the new kid about his welcoming committee. While I was telling him in the parking lot about the situation, five or six of the guys from the locker room came outside and announced that the beating was going to begin. Although I recognized them because they were popular at my high school, I wasn’t friends with any of these guys or know them on a personal level. They apparently also knew who I was, calling me by name, and that I had a brown belt in Shotokan Karate… word gets around fast in a small community. They told me to step aside that their beef wasn’t with me. I told them that I listened to the same music that he did, I just hadn’t cut my hair yet. I also told them that he was my new friend and he had the right to look any way he wanted and that they were going to have to beat both of us up. Rich really had a mouth on him and egged them on, but they just pointed their fingers at him as they turned and slowly walked toward their cars and told him to just wait until he was alone. In all honesty, I was scared to death. I thought for sure we were going to get massacred… sure I had a brown belt, but in reality that’s all it was… a belt. I had some flashy moves I stole from Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon, and I could kick and punch a bag, but I had never been in a real fight before. After they left, he thanked me for my help, but he assured me that he would have been okay without me. He reached into the small pocket at the top of his Levi jeans and pulled out a small razor blade explaining that he would just do what he did before when he got hassled in Huntington. He would let the first guy punch him in the face… each time stealthily swiping the razor blade at the aggressors forearm. Pretty soon, the guy would realize that he was bleeding badly. Rich would then hold up the razor blade, shoot them a crazy grin, and then welcome the next bully. He told me that the group would usually just take off freaked out at the sight of so much blood. Because of the smaller community in Big Bear, it’s good that things didn’t go down that way, and ultimately the end result was that I had found a new friend who was going to open the punk rock flood gates to me and my small circle of friends.

My First Punk Show

Rich really educated us about English Punk Rock and he brought a wealth of knowledge about the Sex Pistols, the Clash and other English bands as well as what was going on in the scene near the beaches and in Hollywood at that time. Although my friends and I were already listening to the Ramones, Black Flag, the Adolescents, Devo, the Dickies and a number of other random bands at the time, he had now introduced us to the full catalog of the Sex Pistols, the Clash and Sham 69 from England as well as just about every other band that we hadn’t heard of who were playing in and around L.A. at the time. Rich told us about how crazy and fun the shows were and that we needed to go to one as soon as we could find a way to get to L.A. So we started scanning the Calendar section of the L.A. Times and listened to KSPC Radio to try to find out what shows were coming up in November or December. I really wanted to see the Germs play at the Starwood on December 3^rd, but at the time, there was no foreseeable way to get there and back on a Wednesday night. I had a 1969 Buick Skylark that my grandparents had given to me in June for my birthday, but there was no way that a brand new 16 year old driver was going to drive from the mountains all the way to Hollywood… or so I thought.

Because the Germs show was on December 3^rd which was a Wednesday night, and logistically we couldn’t make it at that time, we decided instead to see the Dickies play during Christmas vacation about three weeks later. It was only when we found out that Darby Crash had died on December 7^th that we realized that we had missed our last opportunity to see the Germs. Although we were saddened by the news, we were still upbeat about the possibility of our upcoming journey later in the month. 

It seemed like forever to reach Christmas vacation and what would be our first trip to the Starwood. During this time, my friends and I had plotted and strategized on how we could all go to the Dickies show on December 23^rd and then be with our families the next night for Christmas Eve. 

There were a bunch of us who wanted to go but some of our crew couldn’t make it for a variety of reasons not to mention there wasn’t enough room in the one small car we had finally procured. Scott Brett, had just received his driver’s license and somehow he talked his parents into letting him use the family Subaru wagon to drive me, Scott Boyd and Mike Curtiss to Los Angeles so we could see the show. We were really hoping that Rich was going to be able to go but at the last minute he told us he couldn’t make it. Rich’s mother moved up to the mountains to get him away from the “bad influences” he had been associating with down near the beach so the last thing she was going to do was to let him go to a punk concert in Hollywood.

Dec 27th, 1980 in my Black Flag jacket

Since I was on good terms with her, I called my ex-girlfriend, Ann Todd, who had recently moved from Big Bear to Hermosa Beach and was living with her mother there. I made arrangements for us to go visit her there and so we could stay at her mom’s house the night before the show. Scott’s sister, Kelli Brett, ended up going with us and filling the last seat in the car as she was friends with Ann and wanted to see her as well. I remember that that same month the soundtrack for The Decline of Western Civilization was released on vinyl. I made it my mission while I was there to go to the local record store in Hermosa Beach and buy it as well as several other records including Jealous Again by Black Flag that had come out a few months before.

When I got back to the house we all congregated in the back yard listening to our favorite bands on a small, hand held Radio Shack tape deck. It was at that time that I made the decision to cut my hair. Kelli went at it with a pair of scissors that Ann had grabbed from a kitchen drawer. It looked like I was attacked by a family of rats! But I was feeling like I finally belonged to something and was excited to finally make it to my first punk concert.

The Starwood Marquis (photo courtesy of Starwood Facebook page)

That evening Scott, Mike, Scott Boyd and I all jumped into the Subaru and headed for the Starwood which was situated on the northwest corner of Santa Monica Boulevard. and Crescent Heights. We drove under the Starwood marquis and into the open parking lot. I remember seeing the names of other bands on the marquis for upcoming shows including the Surf Punks, Plimsouls and the Blasters. We arrived there fairly early and took the opportunity to talk to a few other early birds about our punk scene in Big Bear and then listened to them tell stories of all the shows they had been going to around Los Angeles. I also remember people talking about how Middle Class and Black Flag were going to be playing there in a couple of weeks and some other punks were talking about this new band called “Mad Society” that was made up of a bunch of really young kids including a really young singer. I also recall that there were “Plimsouls” flyers glued to all the telephone poles on the sidewalk outside the parking lot as the band was going to be playing there soon as well. 

Very Faint Starwood Ticket Stub with DEC 23 Stamped On It

While talking to a couple of punks next to my car, we noticed others starting to move toward the doors. Filled with anticipation, we made our way with the others to stand in line and wait for the ticket office to open. While talking with my friends in line, I noticed a girl standing just behind me with her girlfriend. She was a cute punk rock girl, thin, powder white with red hair and was wearing jeans and a short cropped leopard print top. Her name was Andrea Sill and we chatted the rest of the time we were in line.

Andrea and I were engrossed in conversation about bands and other shows she had been to when we were suddenly interrupted by the push of people towards the now opening doors. We squeezed through the entrance and we all quickly made our way inside. The club filled up quickly and before I knew what had happened, Andrea grabbed my hand, pulling me away from my friends and dashed toward a small table that she spotted at the back of the club with enough room for she and I and her girlfriend. Andrea and I sat there glued to each other and drank a few expensive cups of Coca Cola while listening to KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer play the music that preceded each band. He played punk rock and new wave records there every Tuesday and Wednesday night which were the Starwood’s designated “punk” nights at that time. After Rodney, we watched the opening band, the Great Buildings. The band was made up of a couple members of the Quick who were actually responsible for connecting Leonard Graves Phillips with Stan Lee making Leonard the permanent front man for the Dickies. The Great Buildings were more of a “power pop” band that really didn’t fit the venue that night so during their set I took the opportunity to get to know Andrea a little better. Although I was enjoying the long needed attention of a cute female, when the Dickies started I felt the need to get out front with the boys and immerse myself in the rough and rowdy experience of it all.
 

Christmas 1980

We were up near the front of the stage trying to better our view with “slamming” going on behind us when all of a sudden a group of punks jumped on a guy next to us with long hair and held him down while another guy set his hair on fire with a lighter. The bouncers jumped in and put the fire out before it could do any damage to his skin, but needless to say, the terrified concert goer darted out the exit doors not to return. For us, the show was awesome on every level. We only got a taste of the true punk rock playground and we wanted more. After the show, we knew we were hooked, so we started planning our next pilgrimage to the promised land on our way back to Hermosa Beach.

The next day, Christmas Eve, I made my way out to my grandparents’ ranch just outside of Hemet to be with my family. Needless to say, they were horrified when they saw my hair, as it was truly butchered and would not do for all the family Christmas photographs… so my mother tried to even it out with scissors of her own. It was still “hacked” but I made it through the family photos. Even though I had a collared shirt on, you could still see the “Sid Vicious” chain and padlock around my neck in some of the photos… 

The week after returning to Big Bear, I modified even further the way I dressed to match my new haircut. I wore jeans and brightly colored shirts with black boots that had chains around them. I also tied a red bandana around my right boot because it was the opposite of where the hippies were wearing them around their heads. Scott Boyd and I cut dog leashes up with bolt cutters to add chains to other areas of our clothing. 

Practicing my Guitar with Mike Curtiss (it must have been cold)

That same week Scott Brett, Mike Curtiss and I wanted to form a punk band.  Besides me owning a CAT SRM Synthesizer (sort of like a Moog) and a Les Paul (copy) Guitar, we really didn’t have any instruments. Scott did find somebody who needed to sell a bass and he was able to buy it for $35.00. Mike had an older brother who was a drummer and had a drum set, but he lived miles away in Costa Mesa. We never did get a band off the ground but it planted a seed with me and I started to practice my guitar… I gained some basic skills that I was able to utilize about a year later.

The Second Starwood Show

Feb 27, 1981 - The Dickies

It was around the end of January 1981 that we noticed a lot of negative press about the Starwood in the newspaper and heard that it had been closed down until further notice. Apparently, the city forced the Starwood to close down due to “riots” at the Black Flag concerts in January as well as drug use and underage drinking. Even though the club was officially closed, the L.A. Times Calendar Section kept publishing the concert ads. The Starwood's owner, Eddie Nash, probably kept placing the ads with their expected schedule because he believed that the city couldn't keep the club closed permanently. I kept in contact with Andrea and she told me that the club owner fought with the city and won the battle to get the club reopened before the end of February. So my friends and I firmed up our plans to go to the “Grand Re-Opening” of the Starwood on February 27, 1981 with the Dickies and the Blasters performing.

My mother and father had recently divorced and I stayed in Big Bear to live with my mother while my father and sister had moved down to Mission Viejo and so I didn’t get to see them too often. My dad had worked things out with my mother where he could pick me up in Big Bear and take me to where he was staying to spend some time with them. He wasn’t too happy when I told him I wanted to take time out of my family visit to meet up with my friends and go to a concert in Los Angeles. I promised I would see him the next day, so the day of the concert he reluctantly drove me to Garden Grove and dropped me off at the Fire Station Motel where Scott and Kelli’s dad was staying. There I met up with Scott, Kelli, Scott Boyd, Mike Curtiss and Pete Todd. I remember being in this small dingy “drive-up” motel room where several of my friends were doing “whip-its” from small nitrous canisters. After hanging out for a little while, Scott’s dad let him borrow his early 1970s light blue Cadillac Coupe DeVille the rest of the day to take us on our adventure. As luck would have it, within the first 30 seconds of driving the massive American car, another car had run into us in the parking lot. Scott’s dad was surprisingly relaxed about the situation… after all it was the other driver’s fault. I just wonder how he could have not seen such a large car.

Part of our plan was to head back to my ex-girlfriend Ann’s house on 4^th Street in Hermosa Beach so that we all could visit with her, including her younger brother, Pete, who was also with us. But before we went there, we made a detour to West Covina. Since the last Dickies concert in December, I had been in contact with Andrea Sill both by letter and by phone and we had arranged to meet at her house there in West Covina before the  show. During this first leg of our journey, a winter storm had moved in and it had started to rain quite hard. Driving and navigating the large Cadillac was quite difficult but we finally made it. Unfortunately, she was not able to go out with us that night, but we were able to spend a couple of hours with her and have lunch at a Denny’s restaurant in not too far from her house. The rain did let up a little, and on the way back to her house, I cracked my passenger window open a little to help alleviate the foggy windows due to the number of warm bodies in the car. Not two minutes later a car drove through a large, deep puddle sending a wave of water our way, most of which made it through the opening in the window... I was drenched!

Once we had dropped Andrea off at her house, we made our way to Hermosa Beach. Fortunately, the rain didn’t return and it was actually dry there at Ann’s house. It was good to see Ann and her mother again. Pete was excited to see the Dickies and knowing about the stories of the punk crowd targeting anyone with long hair, he was determined not to attract any attention that night. I was entrusted to give him his first punk haircut and became the default punk rock barber from that point forward for years to come. I cropped his hair short and lent him what was sort of like a black and yellow “bumble-bee” striped rugby shirt. We decided that he looked “punk enough” and knew that he would fit in fine at the show. Then we asked Scott Brett if he was ready. Scott weighed his choices… One) cut his hair and for ONE NIGHT be safe inside the Starwood… or Two) leave his hair long, and be safe EVERY DAY back in Big Bear. In the end, he was the only one who didn’t succumb to a haircut and decided to take his chances at the Dickies show.

The time had come to make our way to Hollywood. It was Friday night, February 27, 1981 and I was on my way to my second punk show at the Starwood with some of my closest friends: Scott Boyd, Mike Curtiss, Scott and Kelli Brett and Pete Todd (or as we called him, Peeeetodd). We piled into the car, three in the front and three in the back. On the way, those of us who had been before, re-told the stories of the first show as if we were veterans and built up the level of anticipation and excitement. However, it was almost as if this feeling of excitement had some strong nervous overtones. As I mentioned before, there had been a lot of recent press about the violence at some of the punk concerts there at the Starwood, but we still understood it to be mostly confined to the Black Flag concerts and we had convinced ourselves that we were safe in our group and that it wouldn’t be too crazy for this Dickies show.

We, for the second time in a little over two months, pulled our car into the parking lot of the Starwood. The parking lot was filled with punks and although the doors weren’t open yet, people were starting to gather in a line at the entrance to the club. While in the parking lot, we took notice of a something that was completely strange to us… a group of about ten transvestites trolling up and down the sidewalk continually passing in front of the driveway to the Starwood. They were not there to see the show, but it was almost like they were a gang of she-males there to antagonize the punks… shooting glares from one strange looking group of people to another. We moved from the car to the line and took our place some 20 people back or so. Just as we did, we saw another bizarre sight… This massively tall man in camouflage army fatigues, black boots and large chains wrapped around his chest in an “X” pattern walked into the parking lot from the street with an entourage of about 25 short Asian kids all wearing white T-Shirts with fresh bloody hand prints all over them. We weren’t sure of what message he was trying to convey but he was seriously intimidating to a group of high school kids all less than 17 years of age. While we waited there and the line continued to grow behind us, an Eyewitness News crew

pulled into the parking lot. Anchorman, Paul Moyer, got out of the van with a microphone, bright lights

Paul Moyer - Eyewitness News

blaring and cameras rolling… Starting at the front, he walked down the line asking people what they thought of the violence surrounding punk rock and about this being the first concert there since the club had been recently closed. Paul Moyer skipped past a few people and then the lights and camera landed on Scott Brett. The red light of the camera came on and Paul Moyer asked Scott “What do you think about the re-opening of the Starwood?” Scott looked at the camera and replied, “I think it’s the greatest thing since Melba Toast.” We laughed and then Paul asked me and my friends if we were violent and if we were involved with the “crazy punk antics” that had been going on recently… I think it was right about then that my friend Mike Curtiss spit on Paul Moyer. We laughed and I just remember thinking, “How Punk Rock is that?!?”

Shortly after the Paul Moyer episode, the line started moving, we got our tickets, and before we knew it we were inside again listening to the familiar sounds of KROQ DJ Rodney Bingenheimer spinning punk rock records. The lights eventually came up and this time the opening band was the Blasters opening for the Dickies. The Blasters were okay, but didn’t exactly match the crowd’s expectations. They were spit at and jeered a bit and I think even they were happy when their set was over. After much anticipation, the Dickies came on. The crowd erupted and seemed to be even more wild than the previous show I experienced. We moved up near the stage so that the swirling mass of people was just behind us. Back then there wasn’t really a “Mosh Pit”, it was more of a bubbling sea of people all doing their own thing. Even the term “Slam Pit” wasn’t actually coined as such until Jerry Roach had filmed it in action in its infancy stages at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa later that year. The Dickies played on and we were all having a great time slamming with the crowd singing along with our favorite songs. Scott Brett showed some serious balls by coming out of the shadows to join us in front of the stage with his longer hair. He was only there a short time before the massive punk with chains wrapped around his chest came up and tried to hit him in the face and grab him by the hair. Instincts kicked in and we immediately jumped in between the guy and several others who decided they were going to join in on the ass-kicking. We pushed the instigators back into the melee of the swirling crowd in front of the stage where they disappeared temporarily due to other bodies flying by. Although our small wall of force was only a distraction, it was enough time for Scott to dive down and into the open area under the stage and for the rest of us to find another position where we wouldn’t be hunted down for interfering. In those few seconds, Scott had managed to crawl on all fours staying down low until he was safely off to the side of the stage. He then made his way back into the shadows to avoid any further confrontations but fully enjoyed the rest of the show from the sidelines. We all agreed that it would have been better if he chose to get his hair cut that afternoon and it wasn’t too long after we had returned to Big Bear that Scott finally decided to cut his hair and join the rest of us… and it was a good thing too, because our next punk rock journey would take us to see Black Flag less than a couple of months later.

FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER OF THE STORY, CLICK HERE

This Blog is Dedicated to one of my closest and dearest friends, Scott Boyd... RIP.