Anarchy in the S.C.
Heard in 'Wassup Rockers,' South L.A. punks make a new movement from an old sound
When Johnny Rotten sneered "no future, no future" on the Sex Pistols' 1977 fuck-all, "God Save the Queen," he seemed to mean it, maaan. When modern-day South Los Angeles punk band Defiance chants "there ain't no future, and there ain't no hope" on its derivative "No Future, No Hope," you can't even begin to imagine it's sincere. The high school group's tune is pounding with promise, roiling with energy, and aloft with adolescent optimism. The mind-blowing upshot is that, 30 years and 5,500 miles away from punk's London heyday, Defiance and other Latino backyard bands are constructing the new sound of contemporary South "Central" Los Angeles, going toe-to-toe with rap, reggaeton, and Mexican regional music for a piece of the cacophonous ambience around the Figueroa corridor.
"S.C. punk," as its adherents call it, is a joyous revelation, a beacon to the pop world that Los Angeles once again is on the map with a movement that's indigenous, fresh, and far from manufactured.
"This sure feels, smells, and tastes like the original thing," says longtime punk fan Jeff Wells, the 45-year-old music supervisor for Larry Clark's South L.A. skate-punk film Wassup Rockers, which expands to screens citywide this weekend. Wells also rounded up local punk groups for the Wassup Rockers soundtrack, due September 12 on the Record Collection label. "After the punk explosion on MTV," he adds, "there's still some real kids in the backyard stomping dirt."
The scene is a product of the changing dynamics of South L.A., a place now populated by the skateboard-toting children of Latino immigrants. Most of the teenaged participants in S.C. punk were barely in kindergarten when the rage-, class-, and gang-fueled riots of 1992 hit. But, while original punk was more than agit-pop - it was a call to arms that sometimes drew shady characters and created anarchic situations - the S.C. version is a refuge from the violence of ghetto indoctrination.
"South Central is home," says Wells. "They don't know any different. They don't feel they're oppressed or underprivileged. They're good kids. They just don't want to go on with the norm. They don't care about 24-inch rims and diamond chains. The diamonds are in their hearts."
Gilbert Lindsay Park, near racially troubled Jefferson High School in South Los Angeles, is just such a refuge. Latino skaters take advantage of ramps set up by the city. Semiannual skate jams organized by Venice Skateboarding Association founder Ger-I Lewis feature local bands that sometimes blur the lines between banda, cumbia, and punk rock. Local gangs cruise in bass-fueled lowriders along the borders of the park, in an area that was once the jazz capital of the West Coast. Further south, "one-light-bulb backyard parties," as Wells describes them, draw up to 300 kids, who pay $3 a head to mosh, thrash, and stomp to two-minute songs.
"The passion is so evident," Wells says. "It's loud, it's fast, and it's hard."
Near Watts, the backyard of brothers Jonathan and Eddie Velasquez, costars of Wassup Rockers, has become a clubhouse for their band, the Revolts. On a recent summer day, the group - sporting skate-label T-shirts, stovepipe jeans, long hair, and bleached streaks - hung out in the 90-degree heat as reggaeton wafted from the salmon-colored stucco home. The neighborhood is a musical smorgasbord.
We're not against hip-hop, but we're just showing our own colors," says Revolts guitarist Louie Rojas, 18. "Everyone shows their colors, so we're showing ours."
Scene-watchers estimate there are as many as 30 Latino punk-rock bands in South L.A. and nearby communities such as Compton, home to Public Assault. They often point to the Retaliates as the founder of S.C. punk. Other acts include 77 Stitches, Sacraficer, and Dirty Pit Kids. Many don't last, moving, dividing, and multiplying like cellular organisms. The lucky ones featured on the Wassup Rockers soundtrack include the Remains, the Revolts, the Retaliates, South Central Riot Squad, and Defiance. Moral Decay, often cited as an S.C. punk standout, is also on the soundtrack, but the group broke up long ago.
"A lot of these bands have never played outside South Central," Wells says. "It harkens back to the days of the Germs and Darby Crash. It's punk rock that's unadulterated."
Local S.C. punk band members describe being turned on to punk around the millennium, when candy pop and blingy hip-hop strangled the airwaves. Mixtapes in CD format circulated in the neighborhoods and featured icons ranging from the Ramones, the Misfits, and Black Flag to the Casualties, A Global Threat, and Virus. The explosion in skate videos accelerated the neo-punk juggernaut in this corner of teen America.
"I heard it in skateboarding videos and stuff, and I would look for it online, and I would download it," says Revolts member Carlos Ramirez, 18. (And here we must pause to assume that the Recording Industry Association of America isn't calculating the value of a genre's rebirth in its estimates of the costs of piracy.)
The S.C. sound is "street," as Wells describes it - "kind of thrashy, kind of punk core, but not enough of any of those things to be compared to them." On some numbers, you can hear the influence of snare-fueled Mexican music. But you can also hear faux British accents and plenty of chants of "oi." South Central Riot Squad's "SC Drunx" proclaims, "We're the fucking Riot Squad/We're South Central fucking punks/We're South Central fucking drunks/Oi-oi-oi-oi-oi." On "It's My Life," the Retaliates yell the lyrics mostly in Spanish. In "War on Society," the Remains declare, "War on society/fuck them all/War on society/Kill them all." On Moral Decay's "Unfinished Story," the lead singer says "Punk ain't dead, and that's a fact" before urging his fans to "never surrender" and "keep on fighting."
Keep on fighting against what? It's a welcome put-on. After all, these kids are the fortunate ones. They have hopes, dreams, and endless energy. They're streetwise. And they've found a vibrant voice in punk rock.
"We're trying to say that there's another way for younger kids," says Revolts vocalist Jonathan Velasquez, 18. "They don't have to be about gangs and drugs and jail and all that shit. You can do a lot more things, even though you live here."
Published: 07/06/2006
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