I am writing this from memories going back over 30 years, so I apologize for any factual errors that may be contained herein.

I guess someone would ask, why would I have become a punk rocker when I was a teenager; why do that to yourself?  That’s a pretty good question when you consider what a punk rocker went through in the mid 1970s, an experience that today’s punk kids will never know or be able to appreciate.  I have thought about this often enough and although I missed out on many so-called “normal” opportunities (such as going to prom and high school parties, joining the cheerleading team, or graduating college at an early age), given the same circumstances, I would do it all over again. 

To start, I am a native Californian and lived in Orange County until I was about 13, when my family moved to Hermosa Beach California.  Hermosa is one of 15 cities, including Redondo Beach and Manhattan Beach, that make up the greater South Bay area.  During the mid-1970s to be successful (i.e., popular) in high school in the South Bay, you needed to fit the cultural norm which, if you were a girl, meant you needed a tan and long straight blonde hair.  Unfortunately, I did not have those attributes, which basically meant I would be relegated to the life of a wallflower, hanging out with a few close girlfriends who also did not fit the cultural standard.  (This meant that we had no high school social life outside of hanging out with each other).  If I hadn’t been so insecure, and if the kids at school had been more accepting, perhaps I wouldn’t be writing this story.  But life isn’t like a Hollywood movie, kids are cruel, and its tough being a teenager.    However, my fortunes were about to change when in 1977 I came across an article about the Sex Pistols in a Creem Magazine.    I was immediately attracted to their "FU" attitude towards popular, music, culture and especially dress.  Punk rock provided an immediate vindication in my mind.  (A support group for misfits and wallflowers!)

Shortly thereafter I gathered up enough courage to show up at school wearing full white face makeup and a custom made torn up safety pinned shirt (hey, I was improvising!). That attracted the only three other punks at the school and soon we were all buddies – us against the jocks and status quo of Mira Costa High School.* One of them was David Nolte who played bass in his brother's band, The Last. The other two were long-time Hollywood scenesters, "Marz" and "Ratz".  Soon enough we attracted two other students, Bill Stevenson and Frank Navetta (founding members of the Descendents).  One day, while on my way to school, I met Janet Housden (Red Cross, Love Dolls) who became a quick convert to punk. Then I befriended a kid in my English class named David Levine. With his electronics background, he quickly became a fixture at the clubs recording bands and eventually formed the company Rat Sound (see links). Steve Anderson, another kid I had classes with, was heavily into Ted Nugent and status-quo rock music, although he was very friendly with us.  (If I was ever to attend one of my high school reunions, he would be the only person I would want to see).  In '81, to my surprise, I ran into him at a La Vida Hot Springs gig - he’d gone punk!  (I read somewhere that he had been in the punk band called Slovenly which put music out on SST Records).

It was really tough being a punk in those days; the Zeppelin worshiping jocks and surfers threw food at us and called us names.  I'd walk home from school and routinely kids driving by would yell at me, "Seymour's Fright Night" or "Dawn of the Dead."  This was a cultural revolution we were engaging in - and they didn’t like it.  There was no “alternative” scene - we were pioneering the way for what would one day be considered just “normal.”    Remember, there was no internet, computers, cell phones, Facebook, MySpace or even cable TV.  Networking/communications were handled via zines, flyers, land-lines or through snail mail pen pal relationships.  Over the years I corresponded with Mike Palm of Agent Orange, Tony of the Adolescents, Steve MacDonald (San Diego Flipside correspondent), Chris from the Lewd, and Mark Manslaughter from Social Unrest.  Television consisted of channels 2 through 13, and most stations at midnight signed off for the day by playing the Star Spangled Banner.  And most importantly, there was only the established rock/top-40 culture (disco was receding by then).   If you did not belong to this establishment, you culturally had no existence and (literally) had nowhere to go.  (Ok, maybe this is a bit dramatic, but ask anyone that went to Mira Costa in those days.... hell I went to a KISS concert when I was 16 with BF Patty Dempsey and we saw the opening act Cheap Trick get booed, I kid you not!  Yes there was a somewhat anemic rock band/club culture going on in Hollywood, but for the average teenager, this was unknown and not accessible).  The established rock/top-40 culture was crammed down your throat via big radio stations such as K-WEST, K-MET (remember their jingle? “A little bit of heaven - 94.7... the Mighty Met”) and KLOS.  On the AM you had Ten “Q” and KHJ blasting top-40 all day.  As a tweener, I was a huge Bay City Rollers fan, later I would listen to this black music station out of Inglewood (I forget the call letters) that played stuff like Parliament, Funkadelic, Bootsy Collins, etc.

But back to the story..... At the time, I had a real sense of the importance of "the movement," as we used to call it.  I kept a diary of events and a scrap book of every article on punk I could find.  Janet and I even talked about bringing a movie camera to record gigs at The Masque (but neither or us had access to one). Unfortunately, my parents didn't want their 16-year-old daughter going to nightclubs in Hollywood. (Up until this time, my curfew was to be home by 6pm!)  I had many arguments with them over allowing me to go see bands. I tried every approach, but nothing seemed to work. Finally, late one night I snuck out my bedroom window.  I went with Marz, Ratz and the gang to The Masque - the only time I ever went to the Masque. I saw  Arthur J. and the Goldcups, Weirdos, Controllers and Black Randy (I am guessing this was the 12/31/77 show, but can’t say for sure).

It was one of the most exciting moments in my life.  However, my parents freaked out, discovered my diary and I never saw it again. I was kicked out and had to live with my dad in Orange County. After two weeks, I came back to live with my mom and step dad and we worked out a 12 midnight to 1AM curfew situation. Under those circumstances, it was very difficult to see bands; often I was leaving before the headlining act. I was often grounded and there were many many shows that I missed out on due to the restrictions.

The punk world was so small that if you saw a punk walking down the street and you didn't know them, you went over and introduced yourself. That's how people met and networked. There was a real sense of comradery that would later disappear in the early 1980s as the scene got too big and kids fell into clicks.  Soon enough we found out about The Church and Black Flag.  Black Flag was virtually unknown at the time, just beginning to play shows. The Church became a central part of the scene; a site of frequent parties and a band rehearsal space as well as a crash pad.  Red Cross and The Disposals were regulars down there.  The parties brought punks from as far away as Hollywood and Huntington Beach ("HB").

Which brings me to how I started writing for Flipside. I was at a Clash show at The Santa Monica Civic one night when I met two guys from Huntington Beach;  Ray-Zer (real name, anyone?) and Chris Martin.  They invited me to  Edison High School to check out their scene. So I ditched school and took a bus down to Edison. I met and made fast friends with all the HB gals and soon enough, I was more involved in what was going on down there in Huntington, than I was with what was going on in the South Bay. I made so many phone calls to Huntington Beach, that I had my own phone in my room and a flat rate $60 per month plan to cover my calls down there. In those days (circa 1979-1980) every weekend there was a party, in fact, there were parties usually going on throughout the weekend. Sissy Barela, who I had met at a Church party, became my best friend and most weekends we could be found at HB parties and/or at gigs at the Cookoo's Nest.

Our school was selected by The Ramones to be extras for the filming of Rock 'n Roll High School. When the film was completed, we had a special event screening in the school auditorium. Now you would think this filming experience would have created some new understanding between us and the status quo of Mira Costa High School.  But I don't remember being treated any different. High School was a bitter experience; I have blocked it from my mind and have never attended any high school reunions. In high school I went from a mundane wallflower existence to a hated freak punk rocker.  But as a punk, I lived a grand life with new-found popularity that I never had as a high school student.  As far as I'm concerned, with a few notable exceptions (see above), the rest of my fellow Mira Costa High School students can all rot in hell.

I was having the time of my life; these were the golden years of punk rock in HB – always a party, every day and every night. I met all the bands, The Crowd, The Screws, The Blades, Social Task, Vicious Circle, etc.  Meanwhile, The Fleetwood in Redondo Beach started happening with big shows featuring bands from Huntington, the South Bay, Orange County ("OC") and Hollywood, often on the same bill. At about this time, HB was getting a bad reputation as a bunch of troublemaking kids who beat people up at shows. This prompted me to write into Flipside Fanzine to explain that a lot of this was just nonsense. Al Flipside then asked me to come on board writing my own column on the HB scene. I had also become very connected with the then burgeoning Orange County scene.

As the HB scene that I had hung with began to dry up, I officially suspended the column to cover OC exclusively (3/82). That column focused on bands such as  Social Distortion, Agent Orange, the Adolescents, Middle Class, Lost Cause,  etc.  During my "career" at Flipside, I also interviewed bands, including:  China White, The Hated, Bad Religion, Agent Orange, Adolescents, Jerry Roach, and did live show reviews and even covered San Francisco (with the help of my pen pals Chris from the Lewd and Mark Manslaughter of Social Unrest) when we lost our columnist up there.

I quit writing in the summer of 1983 and didn't even write a farewell address after such a long stint. You'd think I would have, but my reasons for leaving, which had nothing to do with Flipside, just would have read like a big gripe report. By this time, the music scene was really changing.  Bands that had been the hallmark of the earlier years were retiring or forced into retirement as the hardcore and straight-edge scene took the forefront. In my opinion, it was the end of an era; it was the beginning of the dark ages of punk. I had written little editorials and letters against the straight-edgers and against the violence at the gigs. The local club scene was killed by the incidents of violence that almost always occurred when a hardcore band played and with the national attention, it was bound to get to the point that all club owners or potential club owners would “get wise” to what could happen if they hosted a show.  I really didn’t like the hardcore music either.  To me, it was just a lot of noise.  The scene was getting huge and the intimacy was long gone.  Friends were moving on.  As I would later find out, many got involved in drugs and either ended up dead, in jail, or severely messing up their lives.  Since I was fed up, and as the scene was continuing to go in that direction, it was time for me to go. That was it.

I returned to write for Flipside in the early 1990s following a long absence from the music scene and a divorce. The music scene was happening in LA at that time; it was like a re-birth, although I there'd been plenty going on during my nearly 10-year absence.  In fact, being gone that long from the scene made it virtually impossible to catch up and by then I was working full-time, on my own and going back to school which didn’t leave a lot of time to become an expert on all things punk.  I fell into the scene that was there and didn’t attempt to try to catch up.  It was one of the last really good times for the music scene - lots of bands and places to play like Raji’s, the White Horse, Toe’s Tavern.... I can’t even think of them all.  I ran into old-timers such as Gwen Kahn and Janet Housden who were trying to start up bands again.  I met and made new friends and acquaintances.  During this time, popular culture had really changed and become more accepting of “alternative” people (for lack of a better word). 

Nowhere can this be more plain than the acceptance of punk as a legit choice of something to be.  At the same time, I am sure it was not the same experience that we had growing up.  Everything had already been done - networks established for touring, putting out music, etc.  The pioneering atmosphere definitely had gone.  Not to diminish the sheer fun and excitement I’m sure today’s teens have going into the punk music scene, but when they do so, they step into a readymade scene and they don’t face the entire news media and cultural establishment coming down on them.  Not too long ago, I was at the premier of the Cuckoo’s Nest movie and bumped into Steve Soto (pictured above) from the Adolescents.  His band plays very big shows, often with bands who are much younger (weren’t part of the golden age).  I asked him if he thought the kids today had the same experience we had in terms of what we faced, etc.  He says while as much as he can appreciate they are having the time of their lives, he too, doesn’t believe it is an equivalent experience.  Think about it; how can it be?  They don’t have the social stigma - it’s no longer the source of national (and some could argue, international) outrage like it was back then.  Although exactly when this happened is a debatable question, but punk was definitely co-opted by the media and eventually by mass culture and today is mass-marketed as a fashion/lifestyle option, via chain stores such as Hot Topic.  In the 1970s, a safety-pin though the lip was looked at in horror; today it’s socially accepted and called “body piercing.”  In the 1980s, a mohawk was greeted by disgust and stares; today the faux-hawk is a popular hairdo for boys and men (I don’t know what you call this, but guys grow their hair out longer down the center of their head and spike it up with gel).  What do I think of this?  On the one-hand it is kind of cool to be able to wear skinny jeans and studded belts without the glares of the past, but on the other hand, I am somewhat miffed by the fact that we got little to no credit for it.  I am quick to remind my parents (to be sure they suffered the most, socially, by my actions) that our music scene pioneered something - like the hippies did in their time.  (And who would have ever thought back in 1979 that the Hermosa Beach library would one day host an exhibit on the punk bands of the South Bay).  At the very LEAST you could say our efforts led to the more open acceptance of people being “different” in mass culture and on the other extreme, you might say we revolutionized the music industry and mass culture (I’ll let you decide).

I wrote for Flipside during that

period from October 1993 (Debuting with an interview of pop-punk band, Spindle in FS#86) to October 1998 (FS#114). I interviewed many more bands than I had in the early 1980s (this was a function of actually watching bands, instead of hanging out in parking lots with my friends). The local scene was vibrant - there was the more hardcore Hollywood scene which revolved around clubs like Raji's and the White Horse and then there was the burgeoning Silverlake pop-punk scene. Gus Flipside was a favorite companion during those years, as was best friend Michael Ascencios who's photos often appeared in my column. Tim from Pomona was another good friend in the scene who eventually went on to write his own scene report for Flipside. Naked John, who I met at a Downtown LACE art event during this time period, has become a long-time friend.

During this time period, I covered the Silverlake scene, and the more hard-rock "Hollywood" scene. Favorite bands interviewed or written about from that time period included Spindle, Possum Dixon, The Philistines Jr., The Haskells, Kryptonite Nixon, Ridel High, Skull Control, and The Humpers. I also participated and covered the very strange activities of the Los Angeles chapter of the Cacophony Society, a group of pranksters and artists. The column became pretty eclectic, covering such diverse subjects such as Los Angeles architecture, Huell Howser sightings and even Danzig's Franklin Avenue house. Later, as things began to fizzle, I began covering the grassroots lounge scene which was to eventually grow into a slick corporate co-opted national fad, symbolized by the ever-present cigar and martini.

I left Flipside in 1998 to concentrate on finishing my master's thesis (I have a master's degree in urban geography), as I just couldn't make the bi-monthly Flipside deadlines anymore. That time, I wrote a very nice farewell column and retrospective. I continued to write for Organ & Bongos, a small lounge fanzine out of Seattle, until even their quarterly deadlines became more than I could handle.

In '94 I met Mike Alessi of Skull Control/Dizbuster.  He was also an honorary member of The Controllers in the later years. He wants everyone to know that he started Glendale's first punk rock band, VOA.  He says they played with the Circle Jerks at  Stardust Ballroom and  the UK Subs  at  The Olympic Auditorium, but mostly they just wreaked havoc at local house parties and ran from the Glendale Police.  Part of his great flyer collection can be seen in the flyers gallery.  We were married in 2002 and reside in Northern Glendale.  Flipside Fanzine folded in December 2000 (according to Katz, a longtime Flipside staff writer). For details on the demise of Flipside Fanzine, please visit the FAQs page.

Flipside 2010 (Facebook and website) were founded by Hudley (former wife of Al Flipside) and former FS writer Joe Henderson.  We are not affiliated.  This is primarily a memorial and research (archive) website that I had set up as a personal project in 2004, which was later officially sanctioned by Al Flipside.   Visit their websites for more info on their activities.  Upon the demise of Flipside, former Flipside managing editor Todd Taylor went on to start his own webzine (later published) called Razorcake and I am also not affiliated with them, but based on what I’ve read and seen about them, they are worth checking out if you are interested in the current punk scene (locally, nationally and globally). 

No, I am not on Facebook or any social networking sites.  Anyone who knows me well, knows I just can’t make the commitment (I’m pretty sketchy on answering email in a timely fashion as well).  There has been a bit of a resurgence of the old 1990s punk scene in recent years (2006 - 2010).  Mike and I still go to occasional local shows such as the Gears, and the occasional big shows like the TSOL farewell concert, Masque Book Release party, and the Frontier Records 30th Anniversary show.  Mike’s band, Skull Control, is even playing around again.  Who knows what the future will bring!

Michele Flipside

Senior Staff Writer / Columnist

October 1980 – May 1983 (FS#19-38)

October 1993 – October 1998 (FS#86-114)