Wisdom Quarterly: American Buddhist Journal: KISS, Punk Rock, Lit Crawl, Los Angeles

Sunday, October 19, 2014

KISS, Punk Rock, Lit Crawl, Los Angeles

Pat Macpherson, Seth Auberon, CC Liu, Wisdom Quarterly; Jonny Whiteside (laweekly.com), Chicana/os Alice Bag and Jimmy Alvarado; Gene Simmons ("Family Guy")
"I want to rock 'n roll all night and party every day" - Gene Simmons and Company.

Most L.A. punk rockers were not Bavarian Nazis, but some were. Few were thrashing in lederhosen, but there were plenty of kilts (twentytwowords.com)

What would Noah Levine (Against the Stream Buddhist Meditation Society, Los Angeles) about a book like this or the social movement that was and musical style that continues? We'll have to ask him at Vromans.

We Were There: A Discussion on the Early Waves of Punk in L.A.

Vroman's Hastings Ranch at Sunday, Oct. 19, 2014, 2:00 pm

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When singer-author Alice Bag and musician-writer Jimmy Alvarado convene for We Were There: A Discussion on the Early Waves of Punk in L.A. event, it’s going to run a lot deeper than a mere nostalgic gabfest.

Who needs pubs? We have lit in NOHO

As two of the longest-serving participants in L.A.’s feverish Eastside punk movement, Bag’s (lead singer and author of the riveting, majestic memoir Violence Girl, one of the women in punk, who famously appeared in The Decline of Western Civilization, Part 1) and oral historian Alvarado’s firsthand experience in punk will provide a lurid trove of underworld insight.

(Decline) The Alice Bag Band, aka the Bags, getting socially conscious performing "Gluttony"

Violence Girl

Setting music and politics aside to examine the movement’s sociocultural aspects makes it clear that punk played an intensely penetrating social role, one that instilled a liberation from stifling polyester ’70s uniformity just as profound as the prior decade’s Summer of Love.

Where the hippie pathology largely focused on spiritual and personal gratification, punk was all about dissatisfaction, disorder [or reordering the unfair social order], and critical examination.

Gene Simmons tells all (youtube.com)

Add to that mix the piquant wrinkle of the Chicano experience, and that pathology and experience broadens to reach even more fascinating psychic-artistic territory. Enter Jimmy Alvarado.

This should be a highly entertaining and provocative afternoon, one served up with equal measures of reckless back-alley abandon and invaluable gutter-bred philosophizing. More

Vroman’s Hastings Ranch
3729 E. Foothill Blvd., Pasadena
Sunday, Oct. 19, 2:00 pm; FREE
Bag’s book is $17.95. (626) 351-0828

Decline featuring Interviews with punks from the early 1980s in LA:

Circle Jerks, Germs, FEAR, Catholic Discipline, Alice Bag, more

Me, Inc.: Build an Army of One... (facebook.com/KISSopolis)

KISS legend, Israeli-born, Jewish rock god Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz, follow on twitter) is gearing up for the Oct. 21, 2014 release of his new book, Me, Inc.: Build an Army of One, Unleash Your Inner Rock God, Win in Life and Business. He has announced a string of signing sessions to coincide with the release:

Sunday, Oct. 19, 2:00 pm
Barnes & Noble: The Grove
189 The Grove Drive, L.A., CA More (nationwide)