Rock 'n' Roll in Orange County Read online

  Published by The History Press

  Charleston, SC 29403

  www.historypress.net

  Copyright © 2014 by Chris Epting

  All rights reserved

  Cover images courtesy of the author.

  First published 2014

  e-book edition 2014

  ISBN 978.1.62585.142.0

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2014953184

  print edition ISBN 978.1.62619.609.4

  Notice: The information in this book is true and complete to the best of our knowledge. It is offered without guarantee on the part of the author or The History Press. The author and The History Press disclaim all liability in connection with the use of this book.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form whatsoever without prior written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword, by Jim Kaa

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction with Jordan West

  Author’s Introduction

  1: The Late 1940s–Mid-1960s

  2: The Late 1960s–Mid-1970s

  3: The Late 1970s–Early 1980s

  4: The Mid-1980s–Early 1990s

  5: The 1990s 6: The 2000s

  Concluding Thoughts from Barry Rillera

  Epilogue: Ten Rock ’n’ Roll Resting Places in Orange County

  Afterword with Jim Washburn

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  Like a lot of kids growing up in Orange County in the 1960s, I listened to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and then a lot of things that my older sister brought home that were little bit different, like the Chambers Brothers. Plus, my dad was really into big bands, so I was exposed to that along with lots of other music. But in the early 1970s, I became a huge fan of Roxy music, bebop deluxe, mocked the bolt, David Bowie, Thin Lizzy—all of the hard-rock-meets-glam stuff.

  I certainly was not what you would call a punk rocker or anybody who was angry and trying to change the world. I grew up just a mile away from the beach and enjoyed the really nice and standard-issue Orange County life in Huntington Beach. When my brother would bring home the New Music Express and I would read about all of the things happening in New York, like the Ramones and the Talking Heads, and then learn about the Sex Pistols over in the UK, I got very interested in learning to play music because of how simple everything seemed. I knew I couldn’t play anything by Lynyrd Skynyrd or UFO or any of those things, but I sure could learn a Ramones song.

  And that simple music, to me, resonated because it had heart, way more than anything that bands like Journey and Styx were doing.

  At Edison High School, where I attended, there were a lot of kids in bands. One in particular was called Witchcraft, and it had this really pretty girl named Sandy West playing drums. Of course, she would eventually go on to play with the Runaways. The lead singer in Witchcraft was named Jim Decker, and he wound up being the singer in our band, the Crowd.

  Witchcraft would play things by Black Sabbath, they would play the song “Born to Be Wild” and a lot of other cover songs, just like every other band in high school. But they also would play at house parties around Huntington Beach, and that’s really what got my attention. I thought that just seemed such a cool thing—to stage concerts at people’s houses.

  As far as what the scene was like in Orange County back then for music, there really wasn’t one. And none of us were coming at it from any real angry or political place. For me and a lot of other people, I think it was the connection to surfing, riding our bikes and skateboarding that really kind of set our tone.

  So when we formed the band and Jim became our singer, we just wanted to do something a little bit different, just the logical progression of what he had already been doing in Witchcraft. We would go surfing in the morning and then start playing guitars during the day, and that became the logical step. All of the excitement that we felt from surfing and skateboarding started to get reflected in the music. The excitement we felt from catching a wave became the nondrug version of musical inspiration. We took all that intensity from things we would do during the day and simply channeled it into our music.

  It was very common back in the late 1970s to have all of these house parties with kegs of beer and all of your friends around. That’s just how people got together. There was no real element of danger and the worst thing that might happen would be the football player shows up and gets into a fight with somebody—just high school stuff. Guys might get in a fight, their friends all pull them apart and that’s it. It wasn’t like somebody would show up the next day with a gun and look for revenge. Once it was over, it was just over. If you got a black eye, it was no big deal. You just moved on. Today, it’s a whole different situation.

  We went to play a house party for this girl named Ginger Eastwood, who went to Marina High School in Huntington Beach. We put together seven original songs, and we played them each about three times to make up a full set. It was a great house party but to be honest, they were all pretty great back then. There was just a sense of community. Everybody you grew up with supported you. You might run into kids who went to different high schools at some of these parties or the cops might come break it up if there was a lot of beer there, but it was all good. It’s just how we spent our time.

  And we were just out to have fun. I was basically in a band to get chicks and play parties and not to change the world or anything really groundbreaking. This was not the Clash we are talking about. Now that said, throughout Orange County, as it turned out, there were plenty of other punk bands that were coming from a living-on-the-edge philosophy and were trying to incorporate that sort of intensity in their music. But in Huntington Beach, that’s just not how it was. I remember an interview some magazine did with our band, and one of our guys said that our dream was to live on boats in Newport Beach. That’s not really punk. But we all laughed about it because that was honest. I wanted to surf and to skateboard and ride my Stingray bike in the dirt and hopefully make some money so I could have a good life.

  Our drug was youthful energy, and we thrived on it. As we started to come together as a band, there really were no venues for a group of our caliber to play. We were very raw and inexperienced and had never even recorded anything. But we did play a lot of house parties and then started to get so popular that we eventually sort of grew out of them. This is before all social media, of course; everything had this underground flavor to it. But thankfully, once we outgrew our ability to play parties, we were lucky enough to land a gig at the Cuckoo’s Nest in Costa Mesa. The owner of the place really didn’t care for our music, but we did bring a lot of people in. That made a difference. If you can bring fans into a club, it will always have you back.

  In retrospect, we didn’t realize we were creating any sort of buzz with these huge house parties. But the house party scene really influenced a lot of other bands because it showed that you could actually draw a crowd even if you didn’t have a ton of talent.

  Our music is not like any kind of hard-core punk. I felt that we were always too pop for those who like punk and too punk for those who like pop. Just sort of stuck in the middle. What we were, exactly, was a rock band that just liked to play really fast music. We took the music we liked and just played it superfast. It was more or less just a joyous expression of what we heard on the radio.

  Nobody was ever thinking about a scene or building up some sort of environment or legacy. It was all totally spontaneous.

  So around this time, we were playing yet another house party, and a guy shows up from Posh Boy Records. He asks us if we wan
t to record, which of course we do. And so a year later, a compilation called Beach Blvd. came out that included the Simpletones, the Crowd and Rik L Rik. And that became a groundbreaking thing for us.

  Now all of a sudden we go from just playing house parties to being interviewed by Rodney Bingenheimer on KROQ radio in Los Angeles. We get hired to open up for the Cramps up in Los Angeles at the Whisky a Go Go, and Robert Hillburn from the Los Angeles Times actually reviews our set. We couldn’t believe it. All of a sudden, it seemed as if we had broken through. All of a sudden, other bands were looking at us as some kind of trailblazers. We were all living proof of what could happen to a local beach band.

  As for punk style back then, it was all do it yourself. It wasn’t like you could go to the mall and buy a studded bracelet or anything. But that wasn’t our style, anyway. Ours was much sillier. We would just spray paint our T-shirts and do things like that.

  To this day, people still tell me how much they remember the Beach Blvd. record and how much it influenced them. Other bands like the Vandals looked at us and said hey, if they can do it, we can do it, too. They’re just regular guys like us. And they were right.

  Also, there was no segmentation back then when we would play clubs in Orange County. There was punk and rockabilly and all kinds of other music being played. It was really great in the late ’70s, but then things started to get segmented and much more rigid in the early ’80s. I also got kind of bummed out when the punk world became more dangerous in terms of concerts. The hard-core movement resulted in a lot of fighting and things that we were not into. We got into it to have fun, not to get into fights. As I started to become a better guitar player, I became more concerned with people connecting to my songs. It wasn’t about a fashion statement, and it wasn’t about violence. It became all about music for me.

  And of course, we also got to see bands play, too. We were lucky to have the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach because we could see all of these new bands on the way up, and it didn’t cost a lot of money. We could sit right against the stage. I remember sitting just a few feet away from the Talking Heads right before they became too popular.

  I was so lucky to be in the eye of the storm seeing so many fantastic bands. People ask me now why didn’t I document things back then, but you have to remember that I was just nineteen or twenty years old. I didn’t think in those terms. I was too busy worrying whether a certain girl might’ve liked me to wonder about whether or not I should be taking pictures of other bands.

  One of the best things about that time was the friends that I made. The guys that are in the Adolescents, we’ve been friends for thirty-five years now. A lot of the bands from that scene, when we all get together, it’s like a high school reunion.

  All of the groups, especially those that came out of that beach scene in the 1970s, are part of a real brotherhood. Some of the best friends I’ve ever made in my life are a direct result of being in a band back then, and we still all play shows together to this day.

  As far as the local Orange County bands that really moved me back then, there are many, but two that really stand out are T.S.O.L. (True Sons of Liberty) and the Vandals.

  Early T.S.O.L. in particular had such a different thing going for it. They were just a band that had to be dealt with. They had all of this substance and heaviness that really impressed me. There was just so much going on in their music. On the other side of the coin, the Vandals brought a goofiness to punk rock that I loved. It was very tongue-in-cheek, and they weren’t trying to anger anybody but just kind of shock them with really stupid clothes and a craziness that was always amazing to me. They just had so much personality, still very intense, but they had a joy to them. Like I said, there were plenty of bands that blew me away back then, but those two in particular really had an effect on me.

  As for memorable shows that we played back then, there are two specific moments that really stand out to me. One was really early in our career when we went down to Costa Mesa and made a deal to play at the Boys Club there. We just rented the hall after pleading our case at city hall and amazingly they let us do it. I’m not sure they really knew what kind of crowd we would attract. We promoted the show ourselves, and then that night, there were hundreds of people lined around the place. There were so many people we actually got nervous that maybe we’d oversold. Those shows were just so crazy and so crowded and really blew us away. It was different for us because that was the moment that we realized that what we were doing went beyond just backyard house parties. The kids that were there came from all over Orange County to hear our music. Those shows at the Boys Club were wake-up calls not just to us but to the fans, too. Something groundbreaking was really happening in Orange County.

  The other moment I remember vividly that will always stand out was when the Crowd opened for the Ramones at the Rendezvous over in Garden Grove. It was in November 1979, and we could not believe we were actually playing with the Ramones. We felt like real hometown heroes that night, and all of our friends were there. A lot of people still talk about that concert as the first real punk show that they ever saw. It was a game changer for so many people, seeing one of the most famous punk bands up there along with this local band, us. I don’t think we even got paid a hundred bucks for that, but it didn’t matter. It was another big turning point in our lives. All of a sudden, we were not on the outside, but we were actually part of this thing, whatever you want to call it. It was happening not just in Orange County but all over the country.

  I read lots of things today about punk bands in Orange County claiming to be the first this or the first that, and I try not to pay too much attention to it. Who’s to say really who was the first punk band? But I do know this: there was no real scene before we started. There were no “punk” bands playing house parties all over the place. I take a lot of pride in the sense that we sort of helped ignite what was happening in Orange County. We have this song called “Love for Money” with these great lyrics our singer wrote that go “we took the fire that burns even brighter, young hearts of desire, we were the igniter.”

  That line says it all for me. I think we were like the igniter. It exploded past us, but I feel like we were the fuse on the powder keg. There was no master plan or anything, it was just circumstances. We never thought we’d open the door only to have a million people trampling right behind us. But it’s cool. We still play music today. We didn’t succumb to a lot of really negative forces back then. And we have some of the best memories in the world.

  All thanks to that house party at Ginger Eastwood’s house on June 20, 1978.

  JIM KAA

  Guitarist with the Crowd

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With deep thanks to Bob Chatt, Bill Medley, Jim Washburn, Jim Kaa, Charles Epting (for shooting many of the wonderful photos), Ernie Grimm (for the incredible vintage punk flyers), the Sullivan family, Barry Rillera, Jordan West, Glen Byron, Tris Imboden, Chris (TK), Carole Babiracki, Robert Carvounas, Chris Andrada and, of course, my family for their patience and support. Thanks also to The History Press and editor Jerry Roberts.

  INTRODUCTION

  WITH JORDAN WEST

  Jordan West has long been a part of the Orange County music scenes (among others). He arrived in the early 1980s, became a successful nightclub DJ, played drums in a few bands, was a roadie for a few more and then scored a gig with the famed KNAC.COM as an overnight DJ. He earned his nickname, the “Junkman,” because of his love of collecting things at garage sales, used record stores and swap meets.

  Long known as a musical tastemaker and shaker in Orange County, he shared some thoughts about his experiences here.

  I was a DJ back in Orange County in the early ’80s and wherever you went there was a live band or two. Every club in Orange County had live music, which was incredible. Even if it was a cover band, they still worked really hard and put on a good show. And some of these bands are still around. There was a band called Slingshot, and they still play around today in Orange County.
This is like thirty years later! And obviously it wasn’t just cover bands people went out to see. But man there was a lot of live music in Orange County, no matter what you wanted to hear. I worked a place called Faces in Huntington Beach that had been called Ichabod’s during the 1970s. It was right on Beach and Ellis. What made them special was they had an after-hours license, so it was a place where kids could go really late into the night. And bands would get out of their other gigs and show up at Faces and jam late into the night. That was a big deal.

  There was another place called Joshua’s Parlour in Westminster, which later became the Marquee, and that was the premier heavy metal club from the mid-to late ’80s. In the mid-’80s, they were getting bands before they really took off, and that’s how I remember the Skid Row show. They had booked Skid Row right as they blew up, which was amazing. That was so lucky. Just as the album took off and hit number one was when they played the Marquee, and there were lines all around the place. All the hair bands played there, along with Jane’s Addiction, L.A. Guns, Bango Tango, Little Caesar—just so many great bands played there.

  Then obviously you had the Golden Bear, and there was also this place called Goodies in Fullerton, which was a great place to see a lot of alternative rock bands.

  The Coach House obviously for a long time has been going great and has always been a great place to see bands. That place has been around forever now. The Cuckoo’s Nest was sort of the ultimate punk and metal club back in the day. That’s where Black Flag and so many other influential hardcore bands made the scene what it was. It was just the most authentic place. And then of course you had Radio City in Anaheim. I mean, U2 played there back in 1981. Can you imagine seeing U2 playing a club the size of your backyard? I drive by the site today, and it’s hard to believe U2 was actually there.

  That’s where the band Great White kind of got its start, too, as I remember.