Punk Rock History Makes Landfall in San Diego with Dead Kennedys

There are certain nights as a concert photographer when you walk into a venue and immediately realize you are about to spend the next few hours dodging elbows, sweat, flying bodies and the general consequences of standing too close to a punk band. Sunday night at The Observatory North Park was one of those nights. The Zeros were originally supposed to open, but somewhere in the great chaotic machinery of punk-rock scheduling, the bill was changed at the last minute and punk rock legends The Detours ended up taking the first slot.

If you don’t know the Detours, then I’d like to take a detour (pun intended) and give you a little backstory. These guys were not some forgotten garage band that disappeared into the Orange County fog, they were part of the primordial soup that eventually crawled out as some of Southern California punk’s most important bands. The Detours formed in Fullerton, CA in 1977, and they existed in that glorious pre-hardcore era when the entire scene seemed to consist of a few broke teenagers and enough chemical enthusiasm to power a small city. Among them were drummer Casey Royer and guitarist Rikk Agnew, two names that would become deeply embedded in the DNA of Orange County punk. Royer and Agnew were also part of the early Social Distortion orbit with a teenage Mike Ness, before the various pieces of that wreckage scattered into new bands. Royer and Agnew eventually helped form the Adolescents with Steve Soto, Tony Cadena and Frank Agnew, carrying pieces of their earlier work with them, including widely known punk rock anthem “Amoeba,” which had roots in the early Social Distortion/Detours circle before being reworked into the Adolescents classic. There is something I’d like to make very clear about the SoCal punk scene at the time. It’s not like it is now where you have pockets with everyone forming different bands with different members. I guess the best way to describe it would be to imagine a punk rock family tree drawn by a drunk man with a broken crayon. Everybody was in everybody else’s band.

The Detours’ influence gets even stranger when you start following the songs. “Amoeba” wasn’t born fully formed under the Adolescents banner, its lineage runs through that early Fullerton scene, with Casey Royer and Rikk Agnew helping shape the version that became immortal on the Adolescents’ 1981 The Blue Album. Detours guitarist Jeff Beans also co-wrote Social Distortion’s “Lude Boy,” another piece of evidence that these bands weren’t really separate organisms so much as different mutations of the same pissed off Orange County virus. Social Distortion, the Adolescents, D.I. and the other bands that followed were all products of the same scene with bands that had revolving doors helping one another write and produce music. The Detours may never have become a household name, but they were one of the essential groups that helped the Southern California punk scene grow into what it is today. And to be able to see these legends live today was extremely cool, especially considering this show was being headlined by an even more influential punk band.

Then Flipper hit the stage, and holy shit. It was pure energy. This is yet another band straight out of the late 70’s but Flipper was born out of the San Francisco punk scene, which was wildly different from what we had going on down here in Southern California at the time. These dudes have always walked the line of genres showing the up-and-coming punk scene that punk didn’t always have to be fast, and that they could play slower, heavier, stranger, or uglier and somehow make it hit even harder. Their music has always sounded like the machinery of civilization grinding itself to death in a dark alley (and I mean that in the best way). Forty-plus years later that machinery is still running, and still grinding out epic music. The lineup has changed, the faces have changed, but the fucking spirit has remained fully intact.

For this show, they had Justin Pearson (of one of San Diego’s own deranged punk rock institutions The Locust) standing at the microphone and throwing himself around that venue like a madman. Pearson wasn’t trying to be Bruce Loose, and he didn’t need to be. Pearson was the perfect man to front this show, bringing his own particular brand of beautiful insanity to the wreckage. While behind him, Steve DePace, the sole remaining original member of Flipper pounded away on the drums, keeping the engine running hot and heavy. There was something almost perfect about it all — one of the guys who was there when Flipper first started making this glorious racket back in 1979 is still behind the drums — surrounded by musicians from a completely different generation who are helping carry the whole thing forward. I believe that represents punk rock doing what punk rock has always done best, and that’s refusing to die or stay dead. During this set you could feel the angst rolling off the stage, that ugly, beautiful, pissed-off sound that reminds you punk was never supposed to be polite. By the end of the set, Pearson had climbed into the crowd and was standing on the railing in the middle of the fucking room. Perfect.

We had about a 10-minute breather and then the lights went down…and Dead Kennedys hit the stage with “Forward to Death” and we were off and rocking again.

There are bands, and then there are cultural explosives that somehow never finished detonating. Dead Kennedys belong to that second category. They crawled out of the Bay Area in 1978, when East Bay Ray put an ad in a local paper and Jello Biafra answered it, soon joined by Klaus Fluoride and their original drummer Ted. They played their first show that year and within the next year, they became a neutron bomb and began throwing political gasoline on the already burning fire that was American Punk. “California Uber Alles” took a torch to Governor Jerry Brown, “Holiday in Cambodia” turned privileged college kids and political horror into cannon fodder. When Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables was released in 1980, it was like somebody had kicked down the front door of the collective American subconscious and started yelling and screaming about all the shit we promised we would never speak about. With Dead Kennedys came an awakening that I don’t think the world was ready for — but has since embraced with open arms. These dudes spent their entire careers building a language for political disgust, absurdity, and resistance.

Decades later here they were in North Park, and this machine was still running hot. A room filled with people who grew up listening to this music suddenly finding themselves in the heart of it all, unknowingly wrapped in the history that helped shape the very scene they chose to embrace. Guitars screaming, drums pounding, all the while the outside world disappeared beneath a wall of noise, decade after decade raining down upon the venue. But that’s the strange thing about Dead Kennedys…Their original era ended in 1986, but the ideas never went away. The politicians changed, the slogans evolved, and technology made its way to the front of the class as America found increasingly sophisticated ways to manufacture new reasons to be furious. East Bay Ray and Klaus Fluoride are the only two original members remaining in the band, and although Jello is no longer in the band, his essence is carried beautifully onstage (while obviously adding his own style and flair to the band) by Skip Greer. Either way the songs remained fully intact with just as much anger, angst, and absurdity that they bore when they were first written. They played each and every hit you could name and then some. Making this night one to remember for every person in that crowd.

Standing there with my camera in hand, watching the history unfold under the lights, it was difficult to not think about what punk rock was supposed to be in the first place. This wasn’t about fashion, or pissing off mom and dad like some believe it to be, and this show in particular wasn’t about nostalgia, or seeing some relic trapped behind museum glass. This was loud, it was in your face, it was forceful, and it was brash. Punk rock has never been something that was supposed to just be heard, or listened to, it was something to be lived. Not a fashion statement…a fucking way of life. Reliving parts of that history somehow makes you feel part of it, like an important piece to a living, breathing entity. Some people say that punk is dead… This show was an absolute, unequivocal truth that it is in fact still alive and well today.