L.A. PUNK IDEOLOGY (VERY FAR FROM DEAD IN THE 80S)
“TUPELO JOE” ALTRUDA (musician, co-founder, Tupelo Chainsex, Jump with Joey): The local club scene was very thriving. It was the 70s’ punk dream come alive: anything goes, just be yourself. It was a really good time for live music. The entire scene evolved around it. Every club had at least three or four cool bands a night, unlike these posey little DJ cigarette lounges of today. We were always looking for a party or a gig or any other reason to throw down. Every night there would be like a phone call, “Hey, what’s goin’ on tonight?”
WALT KIBBY, JR. (musician, vocalist, Fishbone): As far as clubs go, if you compared the club scene now to the club scene then, then it was a party which started with the bands and the people that hung out with them before they even got to the club, and then it just continued on in the band room . . . and then it finished up on the stage, a special show for everybody, for the other people they brought in from the street. Now it’s all business.
NORWOOD FISHER (musician, vocalist, Fishbone): Everybody was up to the same shit all the time. We were all looking for the same thing. Trying to end up at the Zero Zero after the Lingerie and the other regular clubs closed. Always trying to end up at the same places . . . Disgraceland; The Rhythm Lounge when Matt Dike was DJ’ing, the same spot where the Chili Peppers got started. Go see Psi Com at the Anti-Club, Tex and the Horseheads at the Cathay de Grande. The Untouchables and the Skanksters at The O.N. Klub with the Box Boys and the Babylon Warriors. . . .
WALT KIBBY, JR.: All the bands were like real raw at the beginning. There weren’t many real slick performers. The more punk rock that you would appear, the better off you were for that scene at that time.
WILLIE McNEIL: I was living in a house with a bunch of young party people off Melrose sometime around ’82-’83 near the Grandia Room, where the Rhythm Lounge was held. . . . Matt Dike DJ’d there on Thursdays. So this girl moved out who was a hairstylist known for doing crazy haircuts and dye jobs. Perry was a friend of hers who took over her room. We each paid like $180. When Perry first moved in he worked at Oscar’s [now the Union]. Oscar’s was a too hip English restaurant/bar at the time. Perry was a waiter there. He always paid his rent on time, which made him very cool in a sharing situation like ours.
JOEY ALTRUDA: Tupelo Chainsex was a mad, free-for-all thing. We did a spin-off jam session downstairs at the Cathay de Grande called the Slap and Rampant Trio. It was like me and Willie, Limey Dave and Flea and Anthony. I played upright bass, Flea played electric. Just one of these throw-together things for laughs and free beer. Upstairs you had Modi or Bob Forrest DJ’ing Grandmaster Flash. Somehow it all went together. . . .
WILLIE McNEIL: Eventually Perry jammed with us a few times on timbales. Once he came out onstage with us in a pink Mohawk [sic] with pink and black checked mod pants and a sleeveless greaser T-shirt with Beatle boots on. We were total shameless “Melrose People” back then. Melrose Flip where I worked had all kinds of looks. People would just cut and paste their own crazy patchwork image. Perry definitely needed to stand out, to be noticed. . . .
PATRICK MATA (musician, songwriter, Kommunity FK): Thrift-shop scavenging had become an artform and Melrose Avenue was getting famous over the world as this Holy Mecca for freaky-deaky postmodern fashion . . . anything went, any era, all styles, all deliberately crossed and mismatched. . . .
HEIDI RICHMAN (designer/promoter): Fiorucci in Beverly Hills, where Patrick worked, predated Flip [first mega thrift store on Melrose Avenue] in the way all the coolest musicians and artsy folk worked there. Patrick Mata was like one of their star employees, their in-house master of style. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: I thought Kommunity FK’s lead singer, Patrick Mata, was the most beautiful, coolest-looking, most talented musician I saw when I first came to the city.
Patrick Mata, “the coolest, most beautiful musician in L.A. . . .” (David Hermon)
PATRICK MATA: I’m astonished and flattered to hear this . . . all these years later. . . . He never said anything to me at the time. . . . I can’t think of a time when either of us were properly introduced. . . .
HEIDI RICHMAN: Patrick had the voice of an angel. No matter how extreme his music was or the other dissonance going on, here would rise this vocal that was amazing.
WILLIE McNEIL: From ’81 to ’85, if you showed up at Lingerie, or some cool club, there’s a good chance that if you were in one of the bands, some guy would come backstage and say, “Wanna do a bump of coke?” Kind of like a musician’s perk. I remember wild parties at Disgraceland [notorious crash pad/party house] and at Limey Dave’s house, where people would be lining up for hours to go to the bathroom. There was nearly always piles of coke on the table. We all used to do mushrooms, Perry too. Of course we also smoked weed, dropped acid once in awhile. It was still fashionable to do blow in the mid-80s. It hadn’t got to crack yet. Just snorting. We were all doing a fair amount.
JOEY ALTRUDA: But it wasn’t like we were doing anything more than anyone else.
WILLIE McNEIL: I had gotten all this weird face paint because it was around Halloween. One morning I got up and saw Perry had been up all night on acid or speed, or whatever . . . painting his face in the mirror! It was fantastic looking! He was just gazing at his face in the mirror without moving for hours on end. His face was all these crazy colors, all blotched and dripping down. It made me laugh so hard, even though I was a little pissed he’d used up all the paint I was planning for my Halloween drag. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: I badly wanted to get into a band because I wanted to have fun. The Paisley Underground scene was happening, so I’d see lots of ads for psychedelic bands: “Must like The Blues Magoos.” I was in a Paisley Underground band for a minute. I got a Paisley shirt and combed my hair down into bangs, and then I thought, “Shit, this is pretty short-sighted.” Then I’d see other ads in (local classifieds paper) The Recycler. Looking for a singer. Influences: Siouxsie and the Banshees. Joy Division. Bauhaus. Psychedelic Furs. The Cure.
PATRICK MATA: There was no term goth yet. When KFK opened for Killing Joke, [L.A. Times reviewer] Terry Atkinson called us “gloom and doom” because the songs were like really slow deliberately, but we also had some angry, superfast punk songs because it was fitting for what I was saying in the lyrics. One of the angry songs was “Fuck the Community” which means fuck the community before it fucks you.
PERRY FARRELL: Bands like Kommunity FK were doing great on the local “death rock” scene.
JOSEPH BROOKS (promoter-DJ, co-founder of Vinyl Fetish, the Veil): Before the Veil was even over [April ’81-August ’83] the scene was already beginning to morph into this death rock club. It wasn’t called goth yet.
PATRICK MATA: The Veil started the “Blitz Kids” West Coast in Los Angeles . . . [iconic early 80s predominantly gay club kids from London who regularly adorned The Face, a now-defunct internationally influential music and style magazine] . . . although Henry [Peck] and Joseph [Brooks] added their own spice to the Blitz playlist. The biggest highlight of that scene was when Steve Strange showed up at Club Lingerie in an Edwardian era horse-drawn carriage on one of the Veil theme nights [sometime in early ’81]. Even when the Veil was in full flight, Kommunity FK were NEVER “New Romantic.” Please. I’ve always been into fashion and my own way of looking. I wasn’t copping anybody’s look, but I will say I was inspired by the energy and the attitude of the original Blitz kids to step out all dolled up. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: I had the same admiration for Rozz Williams from the original Christian Death as I did for Patrick. Rozz was an amazing performer. He was so twisted that it was compelling. But I didn’t want to be like him because Rozz was so effeminate and I’m the kind of doof who can tumble down the stairs and have a laugh about it . . . and I wasn’t past a good dive off the stage. Rozz had style, but it was all so delicate, so precious. I thought he’s that way because he wasn’t accepted in high school. And now look what he’s made himself into, a for-real death rock
icon. I don’t want to say that hanging yourself is stylish, but in his case. . . . goth crowd. (Edward Colver)
The late Rozz Williams, dear to the goth crowd. (Edward Colver)
Psi Com live at Club Lingerie, circa 1984. (David Hermon)
Perry Farrell already dancing to a different drummer. (David Hermon)
HOOKING UP WITH PSI COM
“Psi Com [is] a new combo that label makers will file under post-punk or neo-psychedelic, but for now, let’s just say they are one of the most promising new modern music combos in town. . . .”
L.A. WEEKLY, NOVEMBER 1983
STUART SWEZEY: Mariska [Leyssius] and Rich [Robinson] were two artist friends who had this band Psi Com which had a bit of a gloomy goth vibe to it. They found Perry through the local classified paper, The Recycler, and he became their lead singer.
PERRY FARRELL: They were in a band prior to that called After Image that played at the Anti-Club and the Theoretical parties put on by Jim Van Tyne and Jack Marquette. I was so impressed by how the Psi Com people were living out their creative life. They loved music.
They loved art. They put their own band together. They put their own press together, their own artwork, their own flyers.
JOSEPH BROOKS: Mariska [Leyssius] had this magazine Contagion, which we carried at the [Vinyl Fetish] record store. She played keyboards in Psi Com and we carried that record, too. She’d bring copies herself. That’s how we knew Perry. Perry would also come around. We immediately noticed that he had great clothing sense, as much as the musicality; we liked his look.
PERRY FARRELL: When I started out [as a singer] nobody liked me. They thought I was too flipped out. In fact, Psi Com almost didn’t pick me up because at the first rehearsal I just started jumping around. They would look at one another like, this guy is fucking nuts! It’s not like I’d never sung before and just got up there. I’d been practicing in my room with headphones for four years while looking for a band that I could relate to, with people that I thought were great people.5
MARISKA LEYSSIUS (musician, member of Psi Com, promoter, filmmaker): My then-husband Rich and I had, like, 3,000 albums. We’d just sit around and play music all day. We turned him on to Joy Division. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: The music of Joy Division hit me. The story behind it was so compelling. I only found out about them after Ian Curtis died. This fellow was so saddened by love. His heart was broken. I couldn’t stop playing the music. Stuart [Swezey] started a business contracting work for commercial art companies. I was in the dark room developing images and listening to Joy Division and KXLU all day. I began doing my own artwork-flyers for my shows. Eventually he fired me after he figured out why no work was getting done.
JOSH RICHMAN (club promoter, character actor): Psi Com performed at the Lhasa Club, the Lingerie, and Al’s Bar; they were like an art rock band who used to open up for Kommunity FK. . . .
PERRY FARRELL: Rich was a great commercial artist . . . Mariska, too. How good you did with your artwork really mattered. You could get people to come if you had some really funny or bizarre twisted flyer. Everybody was into making 8 × 10’s. You’d Xerox them at Kinko’s and hand them out in front of the Lingerie when people were leaving.
PATRICK MATA: KFK and Psi Com played on the same bill at the Lingerie one night, probably around ’84. At soundcheck I was very wary of him because he was dressed down, very down, and then he pulls out a Gucci wallet! I remember thinking that’s not very alternative, punk, or post-punk, whatever you want to call it. When you grow up with nothing that kind of thing rubs against you. I’d never be seen dead with a Gucci wallet! I was quite shy. Maybe he was, too. We never approached each other.
“How good you did with your flyer artwork really mattered.” Psi Com flyers designed by Perry Farrell.
HEIDI RICHMAN: Psi Com gigs were small with ten to fifteen people there to see them. Mostly the same fifteen people.
PERRY FARRELL: Psi Com opened for Southern Death Cult [who eventually shortened their name, first to Death Cult and finally to The Cult) when Ian Astbury was still wearing that Indian hat with the feather in it. We opened up for Sex Gang Children, Gene Loves Jezebel . . . all these glammy, goth-type bands from across the pond who came out about the same time as the “positive punk” movement from London; but it was the goth scene that moved in and took over L.A.
PATRICK MATA: This audience had no use for the rockabilly and American roots music revival led by the Blasters, Top Jimmy and X . . . that was a whole other branch of the old ’77 punk scene . . . although Tex was kinda goth-looking and her band was sorta like Gun Club goth-a-billy. . . .
NORWOOD FISHER: We [Fishbone] were big Psi Com fans. We just loved watching Perry’s kooky stage moves. We first saw them play in front of this hot dog stand near Hollywood Boulevard, and that’s where we first met Perry. After that we’d go see him all the time. He was real entertaining to watch. We loved him. We just thought Perry was the shit.
ANGELO MOORE (lead vocalist, horn player, Fishbone): They were playin’ in this parking lot, right? They had the drums, bass and guitars, maybe keyboards, and a little PA and everything. My boys thought they were real cool. It was like rock/new wave, like Bauhaus type of shit.
WALT KIBBY, JR.: Psi Com was real artsy, but it was still a rockin’ band. Perry was so funny when he opened his mouth, a real strange lookin’ cat. You could see him slowly becoming a great frontman. . . .
MIKE WATT (musician, co-founder, the Minutemen): Psi Com was on the scene probably at the end days of the Minutemen, around ’85, playing the same circuit, Lingerie, Al’s Bar, Anti-Club, Lhasa, and stuff. We played with them on top of a hot dog stand or something. It was like synthesizer music. It wasn’t like Jane’s Addiction.
Texacala Jones, singer with Tex & the Horseheads. (Edward Colver)
PERRY FARRELL: Tex and the Horseheads would be on the same bill with Psi Com at the Lingerie. Or Kommunity FK. We’re bottom of the bill, but I can’t wait to see the Minutemen at the top. None of our bands look or sound anything like each other. This Mohican punker dude’s walking by with this whacked-out rockabilly cat from the Zero Zero Club with his hair slicked back in a duck’s ass; Mike Martt [guitar player-songwriter for the Horseheads] is coming over to have a beer with us and the Chili Peppers, too; they’re crazy, they’ve got coffee mugs on their shoulders like epaulets . . . and there’s a Fishbone or two . . . oh, hi . . . there’s Mr. Thelonious Monster himself, Bob Forrest . . . and we’re all having fun.
TEXACALA JONES (lead vocalist, songwriter, Tex & the Horseheads): There’d be like rockabilly acts with the punk acts and the psychedelic bands, the goth bands and there was the ska mod groups out of the O.N. Klub; they just kind of all mingled . . . at the Underwear is what we called the Lingerie. I started there as a waitress before I got in a band. Connie Clark did like really neat rockabilly hairdos and she was part of the original punker community.
WALT KIBBY, JR.: [There was] a goth scene, hip-hop, a reggae, ska scene. It had a little of everything, a punk-rock scene, rockabilly. It was just full of everything and it was all good. One time Fishbone, the Dickies, Run-DMC, and Social Distortion, I think it was, played on the same bill at the Stardust Ballroom and there was somebody else, too. Like Cathedral of Tears, this gothic group with the TSOL guy. Back then you could mix it up like that.
PERRY FARRELL: There were a lot of different niches to fit into. You weren’t just cornered into being a hair band. The Chili Peppers had a funk angle on their thing, Psi Com had an art angle on our thing. . . .
WALT KIBBY, JR.: There was a lot more unity in the fact that everybody was trying to do something artistic and different. Today’s mentality, that don’t work.
PATRICK MATA: I liked the sound of Psi Com. Perry was singing very differently back then. Not as high in the registers. And, like us, the music was very tribal.
ANGELO MOORE: Time for props, man. Perry became a great showman.
“Psi Com . . . are quickly becoming one of the best of the y
oung, post-punk new music bands in L.A., possibly because this rhythmically propulsive combo is more concerned with music than fashion.”
L.A. WEEKLY, APRIL 1984
AGENT AVA (aka SOLANA REHNE, college radio pioneer, radio DJ): There was a riot at the L.A. Street Scene [September 27, 1985]. Legal Weapon and Fear had played and there was tear gas . . . me and my pal Buzz were running for our lives from these out-of-control mounted cops. We were trying to find our friends in the chaos when suddenly the smoke cleared and there was the lead singer from Psi Com sitting coolly on a curb in a purple suit with a yellow hat holding an ornate cane with these elegant white silk gloves, like this trippy clockwork statue in white pancake. He stood up and said, “Agent Ava, I have a brand new recording, would you please, please play it on Demolisten?” I held onto that tape through thick and thin for the rest of the ordeal of getting away from the riot. Later when I listened I thought, “This is amazing.” It was Psi Com. I called Perry immediately and said, “I have a bulletin board at the station, when and where are you guys going to be playing next?”
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