Camden Joy
In Los Angeles in the middle of the 1970s several hundred diverse misfits came together and began to collaborate. Some were high school glam-rock enthusiasts, like Belinda Carlisle, Jane Wiedlin, or the boys who became Pat Smear and Darby Crash. Others were older, having traveled farther. From Baltimore came John Doe, from Florida came Exene Cervenka; in California they met and fell in love. Together, and against the world, these few hundred sparked an experiment called LA punk rock—an impulse, some might say, a happening, an underground movement, a rebellion, a cultural revolution. Mention of it now usually stirs memories RECENTLY, a few books have tried to tell the story of LA punk rock in the late ’70s. There are firsthand accounts, such as John Doe’s Under the Big Black Sun, and there is the exhuming of artifacts. Slash: A Punk Magazine from Los Angeles, 1977-80 represents many things, especially a fantastic achievement of restoration. Slash was a striking, tabloid-shaped publication put out in tiny monthly runs. The rock writing it contained was hilarious and intense. This book rescues and reproduces pages from the magazine, smartly framed by essays from all the surviving coconspirators. Among the smudged newsprint of Slash