Animal Boner isn't dead: A short history of punk rock.

The other night I was hanging out with some old friends who I've known for a good number of years. We were commiserating after hearing that a friend of ours had OD'd and died up in San Francisco. I'd like to say that's unusual, but for this group of friends it just isn't so. We've had a number of friends die that way over the years.

But that's not what this blog is about. It's about the last days of punk rock.

There was only three true punk rock scenes in the history of music. The first one in New York with bands like the Ramones, Patti Smith, Richard Hell and the Voidoids and Television.

The second and probably most famous scene out of the UK with the Sex Pistols. the Clash, the Buzzcocks, the Damned and so many others names both famous and infamous.

Finally, there was Los Angeles and Southern California. This was the Screamers, the Weirdos, X, the Germs and the like. This was the last original punk rock scene.

There are people who will debate this basic truth. But they would be wrong.

These are the people who want to include places like Washington, DC and Boston in the mix. But those scenes happened later and were much more influenced by the Hardcore Scene. That was a scene came out the last throws of LA's punk rock scene and included bands like Black Flag, the Minutemen, Husker Du and the Meat Puppets.

And yeah, I know the good folks at Sundance tried to pawn off that awful, revisionist piece of crap American Hardcore as a legitimate documentary of a scene. But then the film festival geeks tend to get everything wrong.

So, my friends and I were discussing the death of this friend and it was mentioned along the way that he used to hang out with a bunch of other punk rock kids at the old Cathay de Grande in Hollywood.

The Cathay de Grande was one of second generation punk clubs in Hollywood and as such was what might affectionately known as a dump. According to one newspaper it was also known as "The most dangerous club in America."

According to Wikipedia this was "Due to problems with neighbors, violence caused in part by punk gangs such as the LADS gang, FFF, HRP and others, and legal problems related to business conflicts, the Cathay de Grande closed in 1985 With Violent Psychosis, The Mentors with El Duce and Circle Jerks performing the farewell show. Shortly before,Dobbs, the booker at the Cathay de Grande, started Raji's a block to the north on Hollywood Boulevard.

This was the club where punk went to die. where the last remnants of the original dream of freedom turned into a cesspool of drugs, violence and excess. It is also where the last punk rock kids got the last punk rock names.

See the original punk names out of New York were things like the Ramones, Richard Hell and Tom Verlaine. These names, while colorful, were almost stately compared to the next generation of names out of London like Johnny Rotten and Rat Scabies. Then came the LA names like my pals Smog Vomit and Dick Rude.

Then came the fans started giving themselves punk rock names and everything got even nuttier, or better depending on how you want to look at it.

Suddenly there was a kid named Animal Boner. Who we ended up talking about because he was a friend of our friend who passed away. He was one of the kids at the Cathay de Grande when it was fucked up and violent right at the end.

Naturally we assumed Animal Boner went the way of all those other kids. No way he wasn't dead from a drug overdose after all these years.

"Let's face it," my pal Bob said, "chances are you're not gonna live a long life if you're drug dealing punk rock kid with a name like Animal Boner."

"Animal Boner isn't dead. " said Andre, another friend of ours, "He's a born again Christian in Seattle."

At that point we all laughed. Laughed hard. Piss your pants laughter.

Go figure. Kids named Jason and Jimmy didn't make it out, but Animal Boner did. And so did some other friends who no one thought had a chance.

It's good to be alive.

FYI - I do know that's a picture of DC stalwarts Minor Threat playing at the Cathay de Grande. The mantle was passed from punk to hardcore at venues like this and Perkins Palace.