Filmmaker/author David Markey (Lovedolls Superstar; 1991: The Year Punk Broke) has released full-length video of a historic 2013 punk lit reading event at Book Soup L.A. by several contributors to WE GOT POWER!: Hardcore Punk Scenes From 1980s Southern California book (Bazillion Points, 2012), by David Markey and Jordan Schwartz.  | | WE GOT P0WER! Reading @ Book Soup | This mind-expanding lineup of crucial L.A. punk figures includes:
Chuck Dukowski (Flag, Black Flag, SST Records, CD6) Tony Adolescent (The Adolescents)
Jack Brewer (Saccharine Trust)
Janet Housden (Red Cross/Redd Kross, Lovedolls) David Markey (Sin 34, Painted Willie, 1991: The Year Punk Broke)
Jordan Schwartz (Rip City Skates, SST Records) Jennifer Schwartz (Lovedolls)
Daniel "Shredder" Weizmann (Mad Libs, Rag in Chains)
The video (with timecode links to jump to specific readers) can be accessed via the image above, or link here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnvkaAP6cuQ
As teenagers in 1981, David Markey and Jordan Schwartz photographed the fledgling hardcore punk music community in their native Los Angeles, capturing the origins of the L.A. punk bands that defined and popularized the hardcore genre worldwide. Their book WE GOT POWER! offers 400 photos of Black Flag, the Minutemen, Social Distortion, Red Cross/Redd Kross, Suicidal Tendencies, the Descendents, White Flag, the Gun Club, Saccharine Trust, and many others.
Markey and Schwartz's amazing photographs present punks in their natural habitat: the dilapidated suburbs, abandoned storefronts, and dereliction of the early Reagan era-a rubble-strewn social apocalypse that demanded a youth uprising. Never before seen except in crude fanzine form (and six issues of We Got Power zine are also reprinted here), these detailed and richly narrative photos are now collected in an intimate portrayal of a uniquely fertile creative moment.
WE GOT POWER! is on bookstore and music shop shelves everywhere, and is available directly from Bazillion Points Books, "The first and last words in heavy reading."
"Essential reading... the funniest of the local mags"-Matt Groening, 1983
"The pair's gritty, deadpan photos captured the bands, DIY venues, and SoCal vagrants that would eventually define an entire subculture...stunning"-the Fader "Stunning and beautiful"-AP "A yearbook for SoCal dropouts who changed the world."-Inked |
