Tag Archives: Punk Rock

The Dils

Once labelled as “California’s The Clash”, The Dils were part of the very first wave of the L.A. punk scene. They formed in Carlsbad in San Diego County before moving first to San Francisco – where bassist Tony Kinman was briefly in The Avengers – then to L.A.

In 1977 What? Records released their debut 7″ I Hate The Rich / You’re Not Blank. Their second release was their critical high-point, issued in 1977 on the Dangerhouse label, in a pressing of 1500 copies, entitled 198 Seconds Of The Dils. The last contemporary release was a three-sided double-7″, Made In Canada. The Dils broke up in 1980.

A. Official Releases (7″ vinyl)

1. The Dils ‎– I Hate The Rich / You’re Not Blank
Label: What Records?
Catalog Number: WHAT 02
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: September 1977

Notes: First pressing released with a unique sleeve, known as the “Oils” sleeve, as the band name appears to be “THE OILS”, due to the font used in the logo.

Tracklist
A ‎– I Hate The Rich
B ‎– You’re Not Blank (So Baby We’re Through)

2. The Dils ‎– 198 Seconds Of The Dils
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: SLA-268
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: December 1977

Notes: Recorded in Los Angeles in the Fall of 1977. Reissued in 2016 and included in the Dangerhouse box set.

Tracklist
A ‎– Class War
B ‎– Mr. Big

3. The Dils ‎– Made In Canada
Label: Rogelletti Records
Catalog Number: RR 001
Format: Vinyl, 2×7″, 45 RPM, EP
Released: 1980

Notes: Recorded November 1979 at Little Mountain Studios in Vancouver, Canada. Side D has a groove but no music on it.

Tracklist
A ‎– Sound Of The Rain
B ‎– Not Worth It
C ‎– Red Rockers
D ‎– [untitled]

Online Resources

Dementlieu Punk Archive – The Dils biography, interviews, discography, shows

The Weirdos

The Weirdos are an American punk rock band from Los Angeles, California. They formed in 1975 and broke up in 1981, were occasionally active in the 1980s, and recorded new material in the 1990s. Critic Mark Deming calls them “quite simply, one of the best and brightest American bands of punk’s first wave.”

The band was formed in 1975 by singer John Denney and his guitarist brother Dix, initially using the band names the Barbies and the Luxurious Adults. The Weirdos were originally a 1950s-inspired hard rock and roll band that, like the Ramones in New York City, predated the UK punk scene. While initially trying to distance themselves from the genre name “punk” that was created in New York, ultimately the band, in the words of John Denney, “just kinda became more like this punk ROCK N ROLL type thing and we kinda went with it because the fans wanted it. They wore us down and we just said ‘OK, fine! We’re punk rock, similar to the Ramones. Whatever you say.'”

Show List and Key Dates – This index features show dates, venues, and flyers

Releases – This index features only vinyl and includes official releases

Unofficial Releases – This index features only vinyl and includes unofficial recordings

If-Then-Else – Side project by Dix Denny and John Denny

In a 1990 Flipside interview, John Denney listed the Ramones, New York Dolls and Iggy Pop as fundamental musical inspirations, adding:

“When we saw the Ramones in ’76, we already had short hair and we were already playing fast music like that in late 1975 in small venues and halls mostly, but the Ramones really made us decide to go for it even more. We came before the Sex Pistols and The Damned. They may have been our peers later, but we already had a set of songs in 1975 which were sort of Ramones meets Iggy Pop’s Stooges influenced punk songs. Well before any of the UK bands started cloning America’s punk sound and before any of the UK albums were released. I always felt we were a true garage punk band…”

Denney claimed that the band’s name dated from the early part of the 1970s and referred to his countercultural short hair, at a time when long hair on men was the fashion of the day. “In 1974 according to some left over hippies, I looked like a lobotomy, hippies thought I was weird,” Denney said. “A few months later when we formed, the rest of the band got really short cropped hair too. “We were all weird then, we were considered weirdos”.

By the beginning of 1977, the Weirdos were able to pack clubs (eventually including the Whisky a Go Go, The Roxy and later The Masque) as a headlining band. Known for their zany stage costumes and antics, the band helped shape the vigorous and experimental early Los Angeles punk scene and served as an inspiration to a crop of new bands.

John Denney recalled:

“We [Los Angeles] had our own look, our own sound. It was apart from New York or London…. We were staunchly against safety pins, we tried to parody punk rock at first. We did happy faces onstage as a joke sometimes, which was the exact opposite of what New York was doing. We were just thumbing our noses at everything. Everything was a joke; punk was a joke, we were a joke. Nonetheless, we were still serious about rocking.”

Online Resources

Amoeba Music – The Weirdos biography

Break My Face – The Weirdos biography

Discogs – The Weirdos discography

 

Bags

The Bags were formed by Alicia Armendariz and Patricia Morrison, who had met at an audition for Venus and the Razorblades, Kim Fowley’s next attempt at creating a band after The Runaways had left him. Armandariz and Morrison decided to form their own band and from this the Bags were born. They took the band’s name and their stage names “Alice Bag” and “Pat Bag” from a gimmick that the band used during early performances where they performed with grocery bags over their heads (the practice did not last, in part due to an incident where Darby Crash of the Germs ran up on stage and ripped the bag off Alice’s head). Alice Bag was the vocalist and Pat Bag played bass. The band was rounded out by guitar players Craig Lee and Rob Ritter, and Terry Graham on drums.

The Bags played their first concert at The Masque on September 10, 1977. Their concerts were riotous affairs including altercations with celebrities, such as one between singer Tom Waits and drummer Nicky Beat at The Troubadour.

By 1978, they had released their only record during the band’s lifetime, a single called “Survive”, backed with “Babylonian Gorgon”, released by independent record label Dangerhouse Records. “We Don’t Need The English” was included on the Yes L.A. punk compilation album released by the same label.

After this, Pat Bag left the band. In 1980 the group, minus Pat Bag, was filmed by Penelope Spheeris for the seminal documentary film The Decline of Western Civilization, which also featured the Germs, Black Flag, Catholic Discipline, X and other prominent L.A. punk bands. However, at the release of the film in 1981 the producers billed the group as “Alice Bag Band” to avoid any conflict with ex-member Pat. By then, however, the band had broken up.

Craig Lee also played with Catholic Discipline, and he and co-member Phranc performed together occasionally when she embarked on her subsequent solo career. However, Lee is best known as a writer and critic for publications such as Flipside fanzine, among many others, and as co-author of the book Hardcore California: A History Of Punk and New Wave. He died, as a result of AIDS in 1991.

Terry Graham went on to play drums for The Gun Club. Pat, now known as Patricia Morrison, also joined The Gun Club soon after. Once she left The Gun Club she joined The Sisters of Mercy and then The Damned, one of the original British punk bands (and the one that was often credited with sparking the L.A. scene), for which she plays bass. She married Dave Vanian, the Damned’s lead singer.

Rob Ritter also joined The Gun Club, and appeared on their first LP Fire Of Love, but left, changing his name to Rob Graves and forming the seminal death rock band 45 Grave, with Dinah Cancer, Don Bolles, previously of the Germs and Nervous Gender, Paul Roessler of The Screamers and Nervous Gender and Paul Cutler. 45 Grave was influential in the creation of goth rock. Graves died in 1990 of a heroin overdose.

Alice Bag joined the deathrock band Castration Squad, which included Phranc and Dinah Cancer among its many members. In the 1990s, she formed Cholita! with punk rock drag queen Vaginal Davis and the band released several videos. After this, she performed with Las Tres and then formed Stay at Home Bomb, her most recent musical project. According to her official website, since the deaths of Lee and Ritter and her estrangement from Morrison, she considers the Bags to be permanently disbanded, and has refused to perform Bags songs in public.

A collection of recordings from the group has been released on Artifix Records as well as a reissue of the original Dangerhouse single.

Official Releases

1. Survive
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: BAG 199
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Single
Released: Dec 1978

additional notes…

 

2.Disco’s Dead
Label: Artifix Records
Catalog Number: SPR018
Format: Vinyl, 7″
Released: 2003

additional notes…

 

3. All Bagged Up: The Collected Works 1977-1980
Label: Artifix Records
Catalog Number: SPR025
Format: Vinyl, LP
Released: 2007

additional notes…

 

Unofficial Releases

1. No Excess Bagisims
Label: Dangerhouse
Catalog Number: BAG 200
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Unofficial Release
Released: 1990

additional notes…

 

Online Resources

Alice Bag

Flyboys

The Flyboys were a pioneering Californian punk rock band founded in 1975 before the first wave of American punk. The act was prominent in the Los Angeles punk rock scene around 1976 and 1977. The band broke up in 1980.

The Flyboys’s first release was a recording released on the band’s own record label, recorded in June 1976 and released a month later. The record quickly sold through a first pressing of 1,000 copies.

The band recorded another record which would be the very first for a new label, Lisa Fancher’s Frontier Records in early 1980, a seven-song EP titled Flyboys that included proto-type punk tunes such as “I Couldn’t Tell” and “Dear John” as well as their “Theme Song”, a surf inspired rave up that was covered by Jodie Foster’s Army.

Releases

1. Flyboys – Crayon World
Label: Flyguy Records
Catalog Number: FR001
Format: Vinyl, 7″, 45 RPM, Blue
Released: 1979

additional notes…

 

2. Flyboys – Flyboys
Label: Frontier Records
Catalog Number: FLP 1001
Format: Vinyl, 12″, 45 RPM
Released: Mar 1980

additional notes…

Discographies

The aim of these pages is to compile information about punk vinyl (mostly in the 7″ format) in the years from 1976 to around 1983 — about the time speed took over from inventiveness as the number one priority for making punk rock music. Individual band pages will include ‘official’ and ‘unofficial’ releases in chronological order, where possible. Pages for labels will attempt to describe releases. This is not a marketplace and no items are for sale, rather the pages here are meant for research and reading, and some listening…

Punk Rock in California

Bands:

Labels:

  • 415 Records (San Francisco)
  • Bomp! (Los Angeles)
  • Dangerhouse Records (Los Angeles)
  • Posh Boy (Hollywood)
  • Radio Active Records (San Diego)
  • Slash Records (Los Angeles)
  • Subterranean Records (San Francisco)
  • What Records? (Los Angeles)

Elsewhere