LA Punk (Early 80s)

It begins in 1973, at Rodney Bingenheimer's English Disco on the Sunset Strip. Not quite punk yet, but already something else—David Bowie disciples in platform boots, a revolt dressed in glitter. Rodney himself, barely five feet tall, had befriended everyone from Sonny and Cher to the New York Dolls. He ran the club as a cathedral for misfits. When the Ramones played their first LA show in August 1976, witnessed by Greg Ginn and Keith Morris (who'd form Black Flag within months), the ground was already prepared. The Runaways—five teenage girls managed by the notorious Kim Fowley—had released 'Cherry Bomb' that same year, one of the first records anywhere that could be called punk. Proto-punk bands like the Flyboys and Atomic Kid had been making noise since '74. Black Flag's first show as Panic came in December 1977, at a Redondo Beach hall. LA had a lineage.