#242 with Jimmy Alvarado

Summary: “We're the people you don't wanna know/We come from places you don't wanna go….” – Sham 69 Those words resonated hard with me for obvious reason: they described exactly how I, and many others, felt. The punk of my formative years occurred in a wildly different world, one where people were openly hostile towards anyone who dared to be even slightly different – a silly haircut and the cut of one's jeans was an open invite to trucks filled with morons hunt you down to yell “Devo!” or “Faggot!” at you, pelt you with eggs, or worse; relatives told you they'd “beat the shit out of you” if you were their kid; cops fucked with for simply waiting for a bus and each excursion out the front door felt like a mad dash through enemy territory. Now imagine trying to be defiantly different in East Los Angeles. Fun abounded. It was, of course, tough early on, when there were only two of us in our immediate area that we knew of. Soon, though, we found another, then two more, then whole groups of kids grooving on the same vibe just around the corner, down the block and in the next 'hood over. Before I knew it we had a bit of a scene going, with bands forming and breaking up, kids fighting in backyards and, most importantly ideas and music from all over the world freely flowing back and forth. Most “normal” people still didn't wanna know us, but fuck 'em, their loss. This is the last of some podcasts featuring stuff my teenaged self liked to listen to, a theme initially suggested by Todd and ridiculously overkilled by me – he asked for one, I delivered four. The dearth of eastside punk/hardcore here is intentional – I've covered those efforts in two other podcasts, so this is stuff floating in from outside the neighborhoods. While it was a large part of my diet, punk rock was not the only thing I was listening to: metal, psychedelic rock, ‘60s rock, hip hop, soul, jazz, blues, Mexican music, disco, funk, art rock, new wave and a whole bunch of other stuff were making the rounds. This I feel is important to note, because one can't eat ham sandwiches the whole day and not end up somehow stunted. Same with music: you stick to solely the same thing, you don't grow. As mentioned prior, my exposure to most of the stuff here came from various sources and instead of prattling on more about things “back in the day,” I just want to take a quick minute to thank the following: Andrea ‘Enthal and Liz from 12 o' Clock Rock; Adam Bomb of The Final Countdown; Stella of Stray Pop; Rodney Bingenheimer of Rodney on the Roq; some thirty years of KXLU daytime DJs; Al, Hud and the Flipside folks; Thomas, Steve, Brady, Joe and all the Ink Disease folks; the Maximum Rocknroll folks; SFTG fanzine; Peter Ivers and New Wave Theatre; Shane; Tito; The Rodarte twins; Webster; Beatle; Happy; Topo; Boomer; Eyeball Ernie; Bear 'n' Mando; Boots; Becky; Mousie; Mike; Yogi; Matt; Stinky; Billy Branch; Brother Al; Kenny the Weasel; Art Muñoz; Ponyboy; Zambo 'n' Morris; Jaime; Mando Fimbrez; Junior; Gary Pogo; Scotto; Sluggo; Caesar; John Blakely; Mike Vallejo; Jake Smith; the East Side Punks tribe; the men of OBS; Danna and the Monterey Park punker kids; the Bloodcum boys; the Montebello UPA crowd; all the bands in the backyards, halls, clubs, on records and tapes traded back and forth, and anyone who ever popped in some music on the way to a gig, in between practice sessions, between band sets, at one of many drunken reveries, while waiting for the bus, or just ‘cause it was too damned quiet. Thanks also to Todd ‘n' Daryl for lettin' me drag this on for four podcasts, and to those of you who bothered to listen to any or all of 'em. –Jimmy To download the file to your computer, right click the link below and select "save target as..." It's a hefty file, so it may take some time to download to your computer. To pla