Latest news with #PunkOC:FromtheStreetsofSuburbia
Los Angeles Times
11-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
Pop (art) goes punk at Fullerton Museum Center
A wall covered in black and white fliers, the kind easily photocopied, lined the walls of the entrance to the Fullerton Museum Center's latest exhibit, 'Punk OC: From the Streets of Suburbia.' Duplicated and distributed outside other punk shows, the paper fliers were a precursor to social media invites and texting. Co-curated by Fullerton Museum Center curator Georgette Collard and music historian Jim Washburn, 'Punk OC' is on view through Aug. 10. The exhibit focuses on Fullerton's influential punk scene, the evolution of punk in Orange County and how the local scene influenced national and global punk culture. In conjunction with the opening, the museum hosted a punk show with a live performance from T.S.O.L (True Sounds of Liberty, for the uninitiated) and D.I., two Orange County-based punk bands from Huntington Beach and Fullerton, respectively. Paper fliers weren't necessary to get the word out about this sold out show, however. 'We had about 1,300 people there,' said Elvia Susana Rubalcava, the museum's director. Additionally, the evening included a DJ set from Joe Escalante of the Vandals with actor and comedian Chris Estrada, best known for his hit comedy show on Hulu, 'This Fool,' serving as emcee for the evening. 'I think it is really cool what the Fullerton Museum put together here, because there is a rich history of punk in Orange County and in Fullerton specifically, with bands like Social Distortion, Agent Orange and the Adolescents,' Estrada said. A thriving punk scene might seem unusual for a conservative region like Orange County but Estrada said it isn't as unusual as one might think. 'I think people have this perception of suburbia, but not everybody feels suburban,' said Estrada. 'Rockin' the Suburbs' Orange County is often viewed as the land of safe cities and pristine beaches. The county also consistently voted red until the mid-2000's but a statement from Washburn explains the idealistic suburbs were a prime environment for teen restlessness to fester and young punk bands to form. 'Orange County, and Fullerton in particular, has produced far more than its share of bands that made a difference, many with a sound that's as rooted in O.C. as surf music was. Most of the 1970's punk scene originated in metropolises suffering from urban decay, poverty, and other issues that justified the anger and nihilism of the music it spawned,' Washburn said. 'But what about suburban Orange County, with its manicured lawns, blue skies and beaches? One didn't have to dig too deep beneath the turf to find that O.C., too, had an underside of outcasts and disaffected youth, for whom this new home-brewed music meant the world.' Punk is generally regarded as a movement that emerged in the 1970's and revolved around fast and loud music coupled with anti-establishment attitudes and a DIY aesthetic. Collard, who has long been interested in documenting punk through the lens of museum studies, points out that like other counter culture movements, punk has historically popped up during times of political and civil unrest. 'I think it is indicative of areas where people feel oppressed or have a certain expectation that they need to be viewed a certain way, a lot of these people grew up with parents that were conservative. I think all of that played a role in this frustration and they needed to have other ways of expressing themselves,' said Collard. 'What better way to do that, than with music?' 'That's so punk rock' The exhibit begins with a reference to this very paper. 'In 1980, Orange County's Daily Pilot newspaper ran a front page headline reading: 'Punk: Fad or Peril?'' On black and red walls, an array of ephemera from Orange County's punk scene is on display from bands like the Offspring, Social Distortion, Manic Hispanic, Circle Jerks, the Middle Class and the Adolescents. Guitars and drum kits used by the bands are set up and photos, news clippings and sets lists also line the walls. Featured photographers include Linda Aronow, Alison Braun, Edward Colver, Dina Douglass and Marla Watson. 'T.S.O.L is a huge part of my teenage years, helping with my teenage angst, so to be here to help put this installation together is a dream come true for me,' said Seija Rohkea, a member of Fullerton Museum Center's board. Rohkea is also a gallery tech in the art department at Fullerton College and said many students volunteered to help put the exhibition together. She plans to keep the conversation going with her students by planning a field trip with the class to the museum. A large map on one wall charts the hometowns of O.C. punk bands and tracks the camaraderie in the closely knit music community. Mike Ness, leader singer of Social Distortion, had an apartment on East Wilshire Avenue that became known as the 'Black Hole,' a place were musicians and other misfits would come to hang out. Members of the Adolescents were frequent visitors and the apartment inspired their song 'Kids of the Black Hole.' 'There are people who are cynical about punk being in a museum, but I think punk is a subculture,' said Estrada. 'It has its own symbols, its own language, its own rituals like slam dancing, and its own art. I think that stuff should be archived and celebrated.' The show is dedicated to the punk rock musicians no longer with us, with a special installation honoring them hanging over the exhibit. 'All the 3-foot banners are black and white photos of all the musicians who have passed away, and now they are looking down on all the people who attended and all they have accomplished,' said Rubalcava. 'Punks not dead' The size of the crowd that gathered for the opening is testimony enough that punk is indeed still alive. As T.S.O.L. played, a group of toddlers milled around in circle, creating a mini mosh pit, egged on by a nearby adult. For every aging punker, it seems there is a young person just discovering the music and the movement for the first time. Besides the live show, the museum is hosting a few more events during the exhibit's run. On May 20, a book release party for 'Tearing Down the Orange Curtain: How Punk Rock Brought Orange County to the World' by Daniel Kohn and Nate Jackson will take place, moderated by Washburn and Collard. On July 12, a book signing with Roger Miret from Agnostic Front is planned and on July 20, Jack Grisham will read from his book, 'An American Demon: A Memoir.' The exhibit will close on Aug.10 with Leo Fender Day. Collard said demonstrating punk rock is still alive and well was among the curators' most important objectives and she was encouraged by the turn out. 'I feel like a lot of times when we think about punk rock, we think about the golden days of when it started in the late 1970's and 1980's, but I want to make sure people know there are still backyard gigs, there are still local shows,' Collard said. 'It might evolve and the sound might change, but I feel like punk rock is going to live on forever.'
Los Angeles Times
04-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Los Angeles Times
O.C. punk exhibit showcases the sound and scene that ‘put punk rock on the map'
In the early 1980s, at the peak of the punk rock scene in Fullerton, the interest and demand for punk in Orange County reached a boiling point during one particular TSOL show at Fullerton College. The band was playing a room filled to capacity when an overzealous throng of people stormed the back door, causing chaos as a ceaseless current of punks flooded the building just to see the most feared and revered band in O.C. punk history. . 'You know when people are trying to get out of a building and they're getting trampled? Well, these were people getting trampled on their way into a building,' the band's vocalist, Jack Grisham, told The Times. 'It was crazy, it was like people trying to get into Costco on a Thanksgiving morning, Black Friday, except they weren't going for TVs and f—ing Xboxes, they were going for punk rock.' Fullerton's punk rock history is spotlighted as part of a larger celebration of Orange County punk at the Fullerton Museum Center, where a new exhibit called 'Punk OC: From the Streets of Suburbia' is kicking off Saturday with an opening reception featuring live performances by D.I. and TSOL, Joe Escalante of the Vandals deejaying, and comedian Chris Estrada as the master of ceremonies. The exhibit runs through Aug. 10 and was put together by curators Georgette Collard and Jim Washburn. 'There was already a lot of punk enthusiasts here in Fullerton starting with our mayor at the time, and from there it was just kind of on the talks of 'Hey, we should have a punk exhibit, all these great bands came from Fullerton' … a lot of our board members were previously in the punk rock scene in their younger days, so everyone was just really excited to highlight and showcase that,' Collard said. The exhibit chronicles O.C.'s punk history starting with the early Fullerton bands of the late 1970s like Eddie and the Subtitles, Social Distortion, Agent Orange, D.I. and Adolescents before moving through the decades and highlighting bands that rose from other cities in the county. Notable bands like TSOL, the Crowd, the Vandals and the Offspring will be among those featured, and an assortment of rare objects, artwork, flyers, photographs and personal mementos will be on display. 'I was impressed because one tends to think of punk as almost a disposable commodity, if people are living too fast you'd think they wouldn't be preserving these things as they went along, and there's a tremendous amount of stuff that people did save, it's filling up the walls here,' Washburn said. As a conservative region, O.C. may seem like an unlikely breeding ground for punk rock, especially compared with neighboring Los Angeles, but Grisham, who came up in the O.C. punk scene with his bandmates in TSOL, credits the area for innovating punk rock with a distinct sound that catapulted the music beyond local neighborhoods. 'L.A. had cool bands, but the Orange County sound — that surf skate sound that came out Orange County — that's what blew punk rock up,' Grisham said. 'Now, some people would like it that it never got blown up, that it just stayed in their own little basement, backyard, but that's what really put punk rock on the map, the skaters, the surfers, the videos, the clothing, everything came out of that, it didn't come out of these other areas.' Even with the creation of this innovative sound, Orange County wasn't easy to navigate for punk rockers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to Grisham, and its conservative grip on residents often made life difficult for outliers and creatives. 'You can go to downtown L.A. or whatever and you can dress crazy and no one's even going to look at you, they don't care, there's so much craziness on the street, nobody gives a s—,' Grisham said. 'You come down in a suburban neighborhood and go walking down somebody's street with a leather jacket on and purple hair, there's going to be a problem, you're going to be stopped by the police, you're going to be harassed, you're going to be threatened, this is what we were going against down here.' Grisham said that poverty and family dysfunction also marred the region, and it was no different there from anywhere else. 'Out of the four original TSOL guys, I was the only one that had like a together family unit, they were all broken families, divorced, torn up, all of them,' Grisham said. According to the curators, the exhibit will help deconstruct preconceived notions about Orange County punk by exploring the diverse backgrounds and socioeconomic factors that prompted many bands to rebel and channel their creativity into the music. 'It was nice to learn a lot about it, I was, among other people, fairly dismissive of Orange County punk for a long time, you'd think, 'You live in a bucolic paradise compared to where some of the punk music's coming from, what are you upset about?' Washburn said. 'Then you talk to some of the people and realize how bullied they were in school, or what a horrible, broken family they came from and realize there was a lot of things driving them — just being outcasts in a society that looks perfect doesn't make you feel any less outcast.' Showcasing this juxtaposition and the community that grew out of it to create a vibrant music scene is one of the most impactful aspects of the 'Punk OC' exhibit. At its core, it's the resilience and community of the Orange County punk scene that is being illuminated and celebrated. 'One of my main goals for this exhibit is to educate the public, maybe people who don't understand punk rock,' Collard said. 'I want to educate people to show that this is an inclusive environment for punk rockers and that anyone is welcome to be in the punk scene — there's a big sense of community in the punk rock scene and I think that will be evident in the exhibit.'
