The Punk that LA Forgot: Part III
When one thinks of LA punk one thinks of Black Flag or the Adolescents or Fear, but there was a punk scene before them. Where the hardcore bands were angry kids from the suburbs, the first wave, like the Dils, The Weirdos, and X, were the art school weirdos commonly associated with early punk. From what little I understand this scene collapsed, as punk scenes tend to do, after a year or two due to lack of interest paving the way for the new hardcore scene. Well, I occasionally have a bout of obscurist pretentiousness, and I feel like looking at a bunch of bands that seem to have been forgotten. And X.
The Weirdos: Destroy All Music
The easy thing to do would be to start with X, but when I'm doing something called "The Punk that LA Forgot" it would seem rather odd to start with one of the most well known punk bands on Earth, so instead I'm starting with The Weirdos. I seem to remember hearing that the Weirdos were a bunch of arty farty types with an arty farty band. I don't know why I have such an interest in finding arty punk. I mean, it's not like I have arty taste in music in general, and yet, here we are.
Arty? It must have been in the live show or something. Sounds like straight up punk to me. The biggest influence I'm hearing here is The Damned. I remember reading that the Damned went to LA and ended up not having enough money to get back to England, the end result being that they wound up crashing with a member of The Weirdos. So it's not surprising that The Weirdos and others of these LA punk bands would sound like the Damned.
This isn't hitting me particularly hard in the waist/crotch/upper thigh region, but there's nothing wrong with this other than being just good-but-not-great.