Great photos. It's so appropriate that they come out swinging with Alice Bag - the Bags were just the best.
I must have seen 50 shows at the Hong Kong - not so many at Madame Wongs, but I did see the 1st B52's LA show there (B52's would be Wongs prototypical band - more "new wave" than punk).
But EVERYBODY who was real played at the HK. You would get these fantastic lineups, like the Germs, Bags, Fear and Crowd all on the same bill. Early on, the GoGo's were more aligned with pure punk than pop, and so they played at the HK instead of MW's.
Won't get into everybody I saw at the HK (which would be, you know, everybody) but I did see Lydia Lunch and James White there - both from New York.
Punk made its way to China, where .. it did not quite survive as one might have hoped:<p><a href="https://www.huffpost.com/entry/film-review-beijing-punk_b_712248" rel="nofollow">https://www.huffpost.com/entry/film-review-beijing-punk_b_71...</a>
Just yesterday out of nostalgia I downloaded some classic songs by X - Los Angeles, Under the Big Black Sun, etc.<p>Fun shows!<p>I don't have any of my old vinyl anymore. Anybody here still holding onto your old albums?
the punks were certainly the most health-toxic sub-culture in post-hippy California.. definitely early pain-killer abusers, plus glue or extreme alcohol, etc. not uncommon to hear of deaths, treachery or jail.. SF Fab-Mab ruler Dirk was later found to be sexually using adolescents pretty regularly .. lead singer of Fang on America's Most Wanted national TV for killing a girl over heroin, things like that .. freedom has a price ! and if the songs regularly invoke violence and madness, guess what, it actually results in violence and madness.. who would have guessed
N.B. it has some confusing passages to people that doesn't know L.A. very well. e.g. "Chinese immigrants had started moving to suburban enclaves like the San Gabriel Valley, bypassing Chinatown and its businesses completely" and then proceed to tell an anecdote from a restaurant in the very heart of downtown chinatown.